Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Kremlin is open to a one-year extension of the New START nuclear arms control treaty, but not on the terms the White House has proposed, according to a widely translated Russian-language statement from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. “I have a proposal, namely: to extend the existing Treaty without any conditions for at least […]

It was another week of climbing COVID-19 cases at the National Nuclear Security Administration at deadline Friday, when the agency saw new infections outpace recoveries and leave the civilian nuke steward with 33 active cases. Cases among National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) federal employees and contractors at the eight major sites across the country rose […]

In the second-to-last week of fiscal year 2020, the National Nuclear Security Administration wrapped up its customer requirements review with the Department of Defense for the W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile warhead, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said. W87-1, the replacement for W78, is arguably the civilian agency’s most ambitious nuclear modernization project of the 21st […]

A pair of university systems plus just about every major contractor to run the sites in the last decade-plus were among the 49 entities whose representatives toured the Y-12 National Security Site and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, last month as part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s competition to find a new site […]

Personnel at the Pantex Plant will have their dosimetry badges analyzed at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee indefinitely after the Texas assembly facility’s decades-old dosimetry processing equipment finally broke down. Pantex shifted dosimetry processing to Y-12 on a permanent basis at the end of September, and “there are no current plans to restore […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s six major management and operations contractors have so far reported about $140 million in reimbursements for paid leave granted to people who could not work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, an agency spokesperson said this week. The tally includes reimbursements claimed from March 27 through Aug. 31 under Section […]

New infections eclipsed recoveries this week across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s labs, plants and sites, where there were 41 more active COVID-19 cases than in the prior week, an agency spokesperson said Friday. The agency discloses only confirmed cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China, late […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration should hold a COVID-19-safe virtual meeting to brief New Mexico residents about a planned venting of tritium from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, members of the state’s congressional delegation said Tuesday in a letter to the lab’s local fed. “[W]e strongly urge you to hold an open public information meeting […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration may need to start qualifying the W87 warhead for service aboard Ground Based Strategic Deterrent Missiles in roughly three years, the Air Force’s program director for the next-generation nuke launcher said Thursday. The first test flights for the silo-based missiles that will replace Minuteman III will be in “three years […]

A non-government group using commercial satellite imagery believes it caught the start of structural construction on a new, highly-secure nuclear-weapon storage facility at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. “A satellite image taken in August and obtained from Maxar shows construction is well underway of the underground [Weapons Generation Facility (WGF)] as well as several […]

For the first time in 15 years, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is making shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a lab spokesman said this week. Three shipments left Lawrence Livermore for WIPP during the week of Sept. 21, one week after a […]

The former chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board used procedural tactics to block board approval of a COVID-19 response plan that complied with federal best practices, the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog drafted a COVID-19 response plan at the onset of the pandemic, but […]

Federal agencies remained open for business this week, after President Donald Trump signed a stopgap budget bill that freezes most federal budgets at 2020 levels through Dec. 11 — meaning the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons portfolio temporarily has a budget about $3 billion lower than what it requested. The Senate on Wednesday cast […]

The competitive landscape for the potentially 10-year, $28-billion contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two big nuclear weapons production sites is starting to come into focus, now that the agency has hosted hopefuls for site visits and one-on-one meetings. Following tours of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the […]

Not that it ever stopped, but the National Nuclear Security Administration this week officially reaffirmed its decision to continue building the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The long-expected news, delivered Wednesday in an amended record of decision filed in the Federal Register, was presaged in June, when […]

OSI Systems acquired the radiation detection company Nucsafe in a deal that expands its products and customer footprint in the nuclear security market. Terms of the transaction, which was conducted by OSI’s subsidiary American Science & Engineering, were not disclosed late Tuesday. Nucsafe’s management and development team will remain with the company. OSI highlighted Nucsafe’s […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration picked up nearly 40 new confirmed COVID-19 cases this week, but recoveries well outstripped new infections, leaving the nuclear-weapon steward with six fewer active cases, at deadline Friday. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency was tracking 87 active cases among its federal and contractor workforce Friday, making for a total […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is consulting with Norway on a study about whether the nordic nation can downblend its own stock of highly enriched uranium and thorium, U.S. and Norwegian officials announced this week. In 2020, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency expects to spend only about $50,000 on the effort, which […]

A two-university team is offering its services to prospective bidders on a potentially 10-year contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two major nuclear-weapons manufacturing sites, but it had not hooked on with any industry partners this week. “The University of Tennessee System and the Texas A&M University System have announced a strategic alliance […]

Expect the Department of Energy to issue the long-anticipated paramilitary security contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina within the next few months, a federal official said Monday. Michael Budney, the head of the department’s Savannah River Site’s (SRS) operations office, made the assessment during Monday’s online meeting of the Savannah River Site’s […]

Gene Sievers is taking over as manager of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., backfilling a position left vacant after his predecessor was promoted as part of the leadership shuffle that ensued when Morgan Smith retired as head of the outgoing nuclear-weapons production-site prime. Sievers, most recently vice president of the Bechtel […]

A nuclear brain-drain in the military has shown signs of reversing course in the decade-plus since the mistaken delivery of nuclear-armed cruise missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, the head of the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research said Monday. “My sense of it is that that bottomed out,” Brad […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration finished an environmental review that will could the civilian nuclear-weapons agency to formalize a decision to make plutonium pits in South Carolina within about a month. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency approved the final site-specific environmental impact statement this week and published it Friday. A formal record of decision […]

At deadline Friday, Congress appeared on track to pass a just-in-time stopgap budget that will force the National Nuclear Security Administration to operate for nearly three months with a budget that’s about $3 billion a year less than what the agency says it needs to keep nuclear maintenance and modernization programs on time. The Senate […]

Active cases of COVID-19 among the National Nuclear Security Administration contractors and civil servants rose by 15 week to week, a spokesperson with the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency said Friday.  That left the agency with a total of 93 active cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, at deadline for Nuclear Security & […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday finalized an environmental review that could allow the civilian nuclear-weapons agency to formalize within a month a decision to make plutonium pits in South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) released a draft environmental impact statement about the proposed Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) in April. […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved retired Army Gen. Lucas Polakowski to be assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, and staff director of the joint civil-military group that coordinates nuclear weapons acquisition. Polakowski was one of six civilian nominations the Committee advanced in a meeting Tuesday, held just over a […]