Vol. 22, No. 12

Budget & Policy

Six Months Into Fiscal Year, NNSA Gets Big Weapons Boost With Permanent 2018 Budget

The fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill President Donald Trump signed this week would give the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) warhead refurbishment programs the 30-percent boost the White House requested, but it would also sustain a major nonproliferation construction project the agency has tried to cancel for three years. Overall, the permanent, government-wide spending bill […]
  • Life Extension Programs

    Projected NNSA Budgets Can Handle Low-Yield Warhead, Perry, Gordon-Hagerty Tell Congress

    Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) both assured Congress this week that the two new low-yield warheads called for in the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review can fit in projected agency budgets. Perry and NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty faced the same question Thursday on separate sides […]

  • Non-Proliferation

    MOX Alternative is ‘Billions’ Cheaper, NNSA Tells Skeptical Lawmakers

    WASHINGTON — Replacing an under-construction plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina will be billions of dollars cheaper than finishing it, even after accounting for transportation and storage costs associated with a proposed alternative, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) told lawmakers here Tuesday. The Department of Energy wants to cancel the the […]

  • Plutonium Pit Production

    Heinrich Blasts NNSA Pit Study, Resists Moving Any Production From N.M.

    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 […]

  • Non-Proliferation

    Senate Confirms Park as New NNSA Nonproliferation Boss

    The Senate on Thursday unanimously approved Brent Park to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s roughly $2-billion-a-year nuclear nonproliferation branch. It took the Senate a little over a month to confirm Park, a physicist and associate director at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, as deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation. President Donald Trump […]

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