Vol. 25, No. 38

National Laboratories

Religious Exemption to LANL Vax Mandate Means Leave Without Pay

Workers who secure a religious exemption to the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will be barred from the lab and allowed only to go on vacation or take leave without pay until they quit their jobs or get vaccinated, according to an all-hands memo from lab Director Thomas Mason. “On October 15, staff […]
  • Contracts & Procurement

    SRS Ops Contract Solicitation Coming in October

    The Department of Energy missed its self-imposed target to issue a final request for proposals by Sept. 30 for the multibillion-dollar Savannah River Site Management and Operating Contract and now plans to put the deal on the street in October. The agency made the announcement in a procurement notice posted online Thursday. DOE’s Office of […]

  • Budget & Policy

    Shutdown Averted, DOE, Other Feds to Stay Open Until Dec. 3

    After both the House of Representatives and Senate passed a stopgap funding plan Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the continuing budget resolution to keep the federal government open through Dec. 3. The action prevented the Department of Energy and other federal agencies from largely shutting down at midnight. The short-term funding bill will hold spending at […]

  • Stockpile Stewardship

    Stockpile Stewardship Tools Today ‘Far Outstrip’ What Creators Thought Possible, LLNL Director Says

    Todays’ computing, modeling and simulation tools, plus the National Ignition Facility that unlocks physics “not accessible in the laboratory,” have given nuclear-weapon stewards capabilities unimaginable almost 30 years ago, when the U.S. ceased explosive tests, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said this week. “On all of those fronts, the capabilities we have […]

  • Plutonium Pit Production

    Senate Authorizers Demand NNSA Plan for Treatment of Modernization Waste

    The Senate Armed Services Committee has demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration come up with a “comprehensive strategy” for disposing of nuclear waste created by the ongoing 30-year refresh of U.S. nuclear weapons. The provision is part of the committee’s fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the full text of which the […]

  • Plutonium Pit Production

    Enterprise Assessments Opening Investigation Into Summer Flood at LANL Plutonium Facility

    The Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessments office is opening an investigation into the flooding of Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility earlier this year, an event precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet vacuum. DOE’s internal watchdog notified lab director Thomas Mason of the impending investigation in a Sept. 23 letter posted online recently. In late […]

  • Plutonium Pit Production

    S.C. State Senator From SRS Area Wants 80-20 Split in Plutonium Settlement Money

    The minority leader of the South Carolina Senate this week made an opening bid in the statewide tug-of-war over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal money up for grabs from last year’s plutonium settlement with Columbia: $100 million for the state, $425 million for seven counties near the Savannah River Site. “That would […]

  • Defense Low-Level Waste

    Settlement Over Y-12 Waste Shipments, COVID Highlight Annual Nevada Site Report

    The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a June legal settlement between the state and the Department of Energy to prevent mislabeled radioactive waste shipments from again ending up at the Nevada National Security Site dominate the site’s just released 2020 environmental report. The settlement reached this summer calls upon DOE to increase the vetting and […]

  • Naval Nuclear Propulsion

    DOD Restructures Submarine Acquisition Shop

    The secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations announced four new flag officer assignments as part of a submarine acquisition restructuring as well as a new shipyard improvement position. Rear Adm. David Goggins is moving from program executive officer for submarines to program executive officer for attack submarines, which will consolidate and oversee […]

  • Nuclear Weapons & Stockpile

    Correction

    The story “NNSA Active COVID Cases Hit Summer High in September; Three Deaths This Week” [Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Vol. 25, No. 27] should have said that an employee died of complications related to COVID-19 at the Sandia National Laboratories’ California campus.

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