The new Los Alamos National Laboratory manager missed out on nearly 45% of its potential award fees for fiscal 2019, owing to a lackluster safety posture, while the contract prime at the Kansas City National Security Complex might have trouble delivering nuclear-weapon parts on time, according to new federal performance evaluations.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) detailed the missteps by Los Alamos prime Triad National Security and Kansas City operator Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies in contractor evaluations for the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2019.

The agency releases performance evaluations around this time of year for the management and operations contractors for the eight major U.S. nuclear weapon sites.

At deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, the NNSA had not released an evaluation for Consolidated Nuclear Security: the Bechtel National-led team that manages both the NNSA’s uranium hub, the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the agency’s weapons assembly and repair facility, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.

Award fees are fees a company must earn by fulfilling contractual milestones. Fixed fees are those that the company gets just for being under contract. 

Here, in alphabetical order by site, are some of the details about the latest round of NNSA performance evaluations, along with links to the agency’s scorecards for each contractor:

Kansas City National Security Campus, Kansas City, Mo. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technology.

• Total fee earned for fiscal 2019: $42.8 million of a possible $48.7 million, including $17.4 million worth of fixed fees.
• Earned more than 80% of the total available award fees, or almost $25.5 million. 
• Available award fees made up about 65% of all available fees for 2019.
• The NNSA’s manufacturing hub for non-nuclear weapons components.

Honeywell was already in the hot seat to find replacements for unsuitable capacitors that have delayed two ongoing nuclear-weapon refurbishments before the NNSA, in the company’s 2019 performance review, revealed that “multiple weapon program components [at the Kansas City plant] are not on track to meet full rate production requirements.” 

That means a snafu with at least one part in addition to the commercial-off-the-shelf capacitors that the NNSA until last year planned to use in both the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb life extension program and the W88 Alt-370 major alteration to the larger of the Navy’s submarine-launched ballistic-missile warheads.

If Honeywell does not deliver parts on time, it could slow work at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, where the NNSA repairs and refurbishes all U.S. nuclear weapons.

In May, the agency acknowledged that the commercial capacitors would not last as long as the military required. Finding replacement capacitors to plug in to the weapons would add a total of $850 million to the cost of the first-production units of B61-12 W88 Alt-370. 

Capacitors store electrical charges and can be used in firing systems.

Honeywell has had a hard time getting on the ball with fixes for the two programs, the NNSA said, writing that the company’s “senior leadership did not provide proactive engagement and leadership in support of ongoing warhead modernization activities, in particular the coordination and collaboration required on the B61-12 LEP and the W88 Alt 370 with senior leadership from the Design Agency.”

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is the design agency for both weapons.

Honeywell did get high marks for safety, according to the evaluation, and the NNSA elevator wrote that the contractor met “overall cost, schedule, and technical performance requirements with accomplishments that greatly outweigh issues.”

A company spokesperson said “Honeywell is proud of the work we perform for the National Nuclear Security Administration,” and that it will “continue our focus on delivering for customers, maintaining a safe and secure workplace and executing our national security mission.”

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., Lawrence Livermore National Security (University of California and Bechtel National, with AECOM and BWX Technologies).

• Total fee earned for fiscal 2019: $50.7 million of a possible $47.6 million, including $20.5 million worth of fixed fees.
• Earned 90% of the total available award fees, or about $27 million.
• Available award fees made up about 60% of all available fees for 2019.
• The younger of the two nuclear-weapon design laboratories, responsible for the upcoming W80-4 cruise missile life extension, as well as the W87-1 intercontinental ballistic-missile warhead life-extension.

Livermore more or less cruised in 2019, with the lab’s heavy lifting on major nuclear weapons life-extension programs still a few years off.

The National Nuclear Security Administration did knock the contractor for failing to complete on time studies regarding the thermodynamic effects of plutonium aging “due to scheduling issues ineffectively communicated to HQ.”

Communications issues figured further into the government’s criticism of the contractor this year, with the NNSA also telling Livermore not to do end runs around senior agency management.

“Leadership must directly engage in the management of Defense Programs mission work and participate in enterprise decision making rather than allowing this to occur at lower management levels,” the NNSA wrote in Livermore’s evaluation.

Lawrence Livermore will be in charge of the life extension for the W80-4 nuclear warhead, which is slated to produce a first production unit in 2025 — a little sooner than the Air Force plans to start deploying the weapon on the yet-to-be-built Long-Range Standoff Weapon cruise missile, which will replace the 1980s-vintage AGM 86-B nuclear cruise missile now carried by B52-H aircraft. 

Livermore will also helm the life extension for the W87-1 warhead, which will tip the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles the Air Force wants to start sinking into silos around 2030 to replace some 400 1960s-vintage Minuteman III missiles.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M. Triad National Security (University of California, Battelle Memorial Institute, Texas A&M University, with industry subcontractors Fluor Corp. and Huntington Ingalls). Previously operated by Los Alamos National Security (University of California and Bechtel National, with AECOM and BWX Technologies).

• Total fee earned for fiscal 2019: $35.8 million of a possible $43.5 million, including $20.6 million worth of fixed fees.
• Earned about 65% of the total available award fees, or about $15 million.
• Available award fees made up about 52% of all available fees for 2019.
• The nation’s first nuclear weapons laboratory, responsible for the B61-12 life-extension program and the W88 Alt-370 major alteration. Also responsible for manufacturing war-reserve pits for W87-1 warheads beginning in 2024.

The nonprofit Triad National Security took over the Los Alamos National Laboratory in November 2018 from Los Alamos National Security, with the NNSA hot to improve the safety culture at the world’s first nuclear-weapon laboratory.

Triad got off to a slow start on that front, with continued safety and operational bugbears sapping the Battelle-led team’s fee significantly in 2019. 

“Triad has not proven to be a learning organization, as evidenced by many significant safety issues, repeat injuries, and waste management issues,” the NNSA wrote in the contractor’s first-ever evaluation.

The agency cited “several safety and subcontract management issues both on and off-site including a breach of a sealed source causing a release of Cesium-137 resulting in multi-million dollar cleanup costs and delays in important programmatic activities.”

The cesium breach refers to the a May 2018 accident that contaminated a University of Washington hospital research building in Seattle. The incident happened while contractor International Isotopes was removing a cesium blood irradiator from the premises as part of the NNSA’s Cesium Irradiator Replacement Project, which Los Alamos administers as part of the agency’s Off-Site Source Recovery Program within the NNSA Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Global Material Security office.

Although the company is only in the first year of a potentially 10-year pact — a five-year base with five one-year options — that scathing government critique marks an inauspicious start for the team that beat out three competitors to win a contract that NNSA billed as a vehicle for fixing the carefree cowboy culture that got Los Alamos National Security kicked off the site.

On the other hand, the NNSA did laud Triad for wrapping up an “integrated plutonium Requirements document” that thoroughly describes the mission requirements for annually producing at least 30 war-usable plutonium pits — fissile nuclear-weapon cores — by 2030. Pit production is supposed to start in 2024 at 10 a year in the lab’s Plutonium Facility.

“Operational improvements, which are designed to make the Laboratory a learning organization are being implemented, leading to a reduction in repeat injuries and incidents, but there is significant room for improvement,” a lab spokesperson wrote Friday in a statement. “This rating is consistent with where we believe we are, and where our efforts need to be focused. The Laboratory is laying the groundwork for further improvements in our operational performance this coming year and beyond.”

Nevada National Security Site, Mission Support and Test Services (Honeywell International, with Jacobs, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear). 

• Total fee earned for fiscal 2019: $19.3 million of a possible $21.5 million, including $3 million worth of fixed fees.
• Earned about 88% of the total available award fees, or about $16 million.
• Available award fees made up about 85% of all available fees for 2019.
• The former Nevada Test Site, where the NNSA now performs subcritical explosive plutonium experiments underground. The agency will start expanding the underground U1a complex, site of the subcritical tests, this year.

The NNSA lauded the Nevada National Security Site for completing the first of three planned Ediza subcritical plutonium experiments, and for successfully keeping the series more or less on the rails after a February 2019 Ediza shot resulted in some radioactive contamination in the U1a Zero Room.

The site took a bit of a hit for missing a pair of scheduled plutonium experiments at the Joint Actinide Shock Physics Experimental Research (JASPER) facility. Electrical workers in July accidentally knocked out power to the Device Assembly Facility that hosts the railgun-like JASPER device. Still, the site got through 23 of the 25 experiments planned for the facility in 2019.

The NNSA also warned that portions of the U1a Complex Enhancement Project, which will expand and equip the underground lab to continue non-yield stockpile stewardship in the decades to come, “are behind schedule.”

NNSA Production Office. Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas, and Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, Tenn. Consolidated Nuclear Security (Bechtel National, with Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and SOC).

The National Nuclear Security Administration had not released a performance evaluation for Consolidated Nuclear Security at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.

A source with knowledge of the NNSA’s schedule said the evaluation could be published in March, around the time the agency decides whether it will pick up a one-year option to extend Consolidated Nuclear Security’s contract into 2022.

Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif. National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (wholly owned Honeywell International subsidiary).

• Total fee earned for fiscal 2019: $36 million of a possible $37.3 million, including $29.6 million worth of fixed fees.
• Earned about 84% of the total available award fees, or about $6.5 million.
• Available award fees made up about 20.5% of all available fees for 2019.
• The nuclear weapons engineering lab, which designs the non-nuclear components and systems of nuclear weapons. 

A pretty good year for Sandia, the lab nevertheless took some of the blame for the capacitor issues with the B61-12 and W88 Alt-370 programs.

Sandia management “[d]id not proactively engage in developing a viable enterprise strategy to address B61-12 LEP and W88 ALT 370 Issues,” the agency wrote in the performance evaluation.

Savannah River Site, Aiken, S.C. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (Fluor, with Honeywell International and Stoller Newport News Nuclear). 

• Total fee earned for fiscal 2019: $16 million of a possible $18.8 million. There are no fixed fees for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ NNSA work.
• Earned about 85% of the total available fee.
• NNSA funds the contractor’s work through a contract owned by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
• Mostly a Cold War nuclear weapons complex cleanup site, Savannah River hosts the NNSA’s tritium harvesting operation and is scheduled to host the larger of two planned plutonium pit plants, the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. The pit factory will be built from the partially completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.

The contractor “met all cost, schedule, and deliverable requirements related to the proposed – Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility conceptual design development,” and “ met cost and schedule performance for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project,” the NNSA wrote in the evaluation. 

The Surplus Plutonium Disposition project will use three glove boxes to blend plutonium once intended for transformation into civilian nuclear fuel by Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility with an inert material. The mixture would be buried deep underground at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The agency docked the contractor’s award a little due to perceived problems executing unspecified “small projects.”

“Small Project execution has shown little improvement from last year’s performance,” the NNSA wrote. “Inadequate project planning led to significant project delays and increased costs realized in [2019]; 2019 planning for future projects continues to be inadequate,” the agency wrote.