Plutonium Pit Production

A federal judge has placed a South Carolina lawsuit against the Department of Energy on hold until an appeals court decides if she was right to block the agency from stopping work at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). It would not make sense to address other issues in the high stakes […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is considering a radical restructuring of its nuclear weapons mission at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, including moving some work to another location. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency, said she must at least consider winding down certain operations at the Aiken, S.C., […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is considering a radical restructuring of its nuclear weapons mission at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, including moving some work to another location. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency, said she must at least consider winding down certain operations at the Aiken, S.C., […]

The Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) will enjoy judicial protection from the federal ax for essentially the rest of the government’s 2018 fiscal year after an appeals court last week decided not to immediately lift a lower court’s ban on closing the plant. South Carolina sued in May to prevent DOE […]

The Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) will enjoy judicial protection from the federal ax for essentially the rest of the government’s 2018 fiscal year after an appeals court on Friday decided not to immediately lift a lower court’s ban on closing the plant. South Carolina sued in May to prevent DOE […]

One of the two men who pleaded guilty to $4.58 million worth of fraud while working at the Savannah River Site’s MOX project was sentenced Monday to 23 months in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs also sentenced 66-year-old Phillip Thompson to three years of supervised release after prison […]

A federal judge this week refused to lift a preliminary injunction preventing the Department of Energy from canceling the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The Tuesday ruling means project prime contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services will continue building the plutonium-conversion plant — which is by […]

One of the two men who pleaded guilty to $4.58 million worth of fraud while working at the Savannah River Site’s MOX project was sentenced Monday to 23 months in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs also sentenced 66-year-old Phillip Thompson to three years of supervised release after prison […]

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to lift a preliminary injunction preventing the Department of Energy from canceling the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The ruling means project prime contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services will continue building the plutonium-conversion plant — which is by the […]

At least 1 metric ton of plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site may be suitable for use in the nation’s defense program and could be shipped out of South Carolina in time to meet a Jan. 1, 2020, deadline set late last year by a federal judge, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. […]

The Department of Energy wants a federal judge to let the agency resume closing an over-budget plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina, court papers filed on June 15 show. On June 7, in a lawsuit brought by South Carolina, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs ordered DOE to halt its planned closure of the unfinished […]

The Nuclear Weapons Council would have to write annual progress reports for Congress about the Department of Energy’s plan to produce 80 nuclear-warhead cores a year by 2030, if an amendment proposed this week to a fiscal 2019 budget bill becomes law. Amendment SA 2921, from Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), would require the chair of […]

The Department of Energy wants a federal judge to let the agency resume closing an over-budget plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina, court papers filed Friday show. On June 7, in a lawsuit brought by South Carolina, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs ordered DOE to halt its planned closure of the unfinished Mixed Oxide […]

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) must return some $20 million in fees its clawed back in 2016 from the prime contractor on the unfinished, over-budget Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). In a series of filings since consolidated in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, CB&I AREVA MOX […]

Official documents unearthed this week by anti-nuclear organizations show price took a back seat when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) settled on a strategy to produce nuclear-warhead cores in both New Mexico and South Carolina — a strategy both states dislike, and which Congress may not approve. However, according to the roughly 300-page engineering […]

The House of Representatives easily passed its version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Thursday, sending the Senate a strongly bipartisan bill that calls for the National Nuclear Security Administration to begin work on a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead. The same day, the Senate Appropriations Committee also overwhelmingly approved funding for the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would get the $65 million it seeks in fiscal 2019 for a low-yield nuclear warhead, but nothing for a new warhead-core factory in South Carolina, under a budget bill approved this week by the House Appropriations Committee. The bill, voted to the floor Wednesday 29-20 along party lines, also […]

A leaked report from a nominally independent office within the National Nuclear Security Administration offers a trove of new details about the plan the agency must sell to Congress in order to start producing nuclear-warhead cores in South Carolina. On May 10, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he would officially cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would get the $65 million it seeks in fiscal 2019 for a low-yield nuclear warhead, but nothing for a new warhead-core factory in South Carolina, under a budget bill approved Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee. Overall, the NNSA would receive more than $15 billion for 2019: 4.5 percent more […]

A draft 2019 budget bill up for a vote in the House today would steer the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) away from creating a nuclear warhead that could fly on both Navy and Air Force missiles, and jump-start construction of a new warhead-core factory at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. That […]

A leaked report from a nominally independent office within the National Nuclear Security Administration offers a trove of new details about the cost estimate for a plan the agency must sell to Congress in order to start producing nuclear-warhead cores in South Carolina. On Thursday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he would officially cancel the […]

It will cost about $20 billion to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium by burying it in the New Mexico desert, compared with almost $50 billion to convert the material into commercial reactor fuel using an unfinished facility in South Carolina, Energy Secretary Rick Perry told Congress on Thursday. The preliminary life-cycle […]

It will cost up to $4.6 billion to convert an unfinished plutonium-disposal plant in South Carolina into a working factory for nuclear-warhead cores by 2030, a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration said Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency delivered the preliminary cost estimate a day after it announced it wanted to turn […]

The Department of Energy said Thursday it will produce nuclear-warhead cores for the ongoing 30-year, $1 trillion modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at two sites instead of one, and will convert a major nonproliferation facility into a weapons plant to do it. The Department of Defense wants DOE to make 80 fissile “plutonium pits” […]

The man who would lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons branch, better than a $10-billion-a-year portfolio that includes the some of nation’s most sensitive and secret defense work, drew barely any attention Thursday in a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing. The exception was Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who warned Charles Verdon that if […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory called a two-day time out on some of its plutonium work late last month after personnel put fissile material in the wrong containers, according to a report released April 27 by an independent federal nuclear-safety watchdog. Both mishaps took place in March at the New Mexico lab’s Plutonium Facility. During […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory called a two-day time out on some of its plutonium work late last month after personnel put fissile material in the wrong containers, according to a report released late Friday by an independent federal nuclear-safety watchdog. Both mishaps took place in March at the New Mexico lab’s Plutonium Facility. During […]

Sen, Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) publicly went on the offensive this week against the National Nuclear Security Administration’s slowly gelling plan to shift production of some nuclear-weapon cores to South Carolina from New Mexico. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is in the final stages of deciding whether to start manufacturing a select number of plutonium […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will decide in early May whether it wants to build nuclear-warhead cores known as plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., the agency’s new administrator said here Wednesday in congressional testimony. The Pentagon needs the NNSA by 2030 to produce 80 plutonium pits a […]

Local and state leaders in South Carolina told the new head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that the Savannah River Site would be the best place for plutonium pit production just before her visit to the Energy Department facility last week. NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, who has been on the job since […]