Vol. 23, No. 25 
AECOM Contracting Spinoff Will Chase More NNSA Business
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Life Extension Programs
Postponed Explosives Order Means Delay for W80-4 Warhead, GAO Says
Late delivery of insensitive high explosives to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will delay by “at 2 two months” the National Nuclear Security Administration’s program to refurbish an old warhead for a next-generation air-launched cruise missile, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported this week. However, the semiautonomous Department of Energy stockpile steward still […]
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Budget & Policy
House’s First 2020 Spending Bill Heads to Senate on Party Line Vote; Would Cut ICBMs, Plutonium Pits
The House of Representatives this week approved a fiscal 2020 minibus spending bill that would slow development of the next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), bar deployment of a low-yield nuclear missile, and provide more money than sought to research the use of low-enriched uranium as fuel for the nuclear Navy. The bill went through […]
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Budget & Policy
DNFSB Needs Major Changes, Senate Committee Says
The Senate Armed Services Committee is eyeing a drastic overhaul at the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), including limiting its members to a single consecutive term and bringing on an executive director to improve management. The measures, contained in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act approved by the committee in May and […]
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Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile
DOE Should Better Guard Against Explosions, Fires, at Savannah River Tritium Facility, DNFSB Says
The Department of Energy should better protect workers at the Savannah River Site’s tritium facilities from accidents that could deliver high doses of radiation, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) recommended Wednesday. The board said in a new safety recommendation that DOE workers, and the public at large, could be imperiled by “energetic accidents”: fires, falling […]
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Budget & Policy
White House Wants to Cull Federal Advisory Committees
The White House wants federal agencies including the Department of Energy to kill off some of their Federal Advisory Committees by September, according to a presidential order published recently. Federal Advisory Committees are nominally independent, government-chartered groups that provide advice to U.S. agencies. Either the president, Congress or agency heads can require an agency to […]
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Plutonium Pit Production
DOE Still Expects to Meet Savannah River Plutonium Removal Deadline
The Department of Energy remains on track to remove a remaining half-metric of plutonium from the Savannah River Site and the state of South Carolina by the end of the year as ordered in a federal lawsuit from 2016, according to a recent status report. South Carolina sued the federal government in 2016 in the […]
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Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile
Y-12 Prime to Contract for Up to Four Uranium-Melting Furnaces in 2020
The prime contractor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main uranium enrichment site intends to award a contract in 2020 for up to four furnaces that help reclaim excess uranium metal left over from defense missions, a company spokesperson said Monday. The award will be for at least one pair, and possibly two pairs, of […]
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Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile
LATA-Atkins Gets Y-12 Waste Subcontract
LATA-Atkins Technical Services, a team including Atkins and Los Alamos Technical Associates, said this week it won a potentially 7.5-year waste-management subcontract from Y-12 National Security Complex operator Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS). The team also includes a small business, Strata-G, which has previously worked on liquid- and solid-waste management at the nation’s primary uranium processing […]
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Plutonium Pit Production
NNSA Pledges $5M Over Five Years to Train Future Savannah River Workforce
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will dedicate $1 million annually over the next half-decade to train college students in South Carolina and Georgia to take over the upcoming plutonium pit mission, among others, at the Savannah River Site (SRS). NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty discussed the $5 million commitment Monday afternoon during a press event […]
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Delivery Systems & Nuclear Triad
House and Senate NDAA Would Require New Reports on Columbia Subs
Both the House and Senate defense authorization bills, approved by their respective armed services committees, directed reports and briefings on the Columbia-class submarine program due to schedule and cost concerns. The House Armed Services Committee’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), approved by the Committee on June 13, includes an amendment from Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) […]
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International
Defense Intelligence Agency Says Russia Did Nuclear Yield Test
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency amped up criticism of Russia’s nuclear weapons activities last week, saying the nation at some point “has conducted nuclear weapons tests that have created nuclear yield.” That is a step beyond what agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley told reporters and the public in May at the Hudson Institute in […]
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International
Global Nuke Count Declined to 13,865 by 2019, Says Swedish Arms-Control Advocate
Nuclear forces worldwide in 2018 declined by roughly 4% over the course of the year, or by 600 weapons, to 13,865, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its latest annual yearbook on nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia, which have more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world’s seven nuclear-armed states combined, drove […]