Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Fluor Corp. said it has not reported formal earnings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020, as reported in an article in the July 24 edition of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, and will not do so until it answers the regulator’s questions about 2019 earnings. In February, Flour disclosed some preliminary select financial […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)  still plans to produce the first copy of a refurbished Navy submarine warhead in 2021, and the first copy of a refurbished nuclear gravity bomb for the Air Force in 2022, a senior official with the civilian nuclear-weapon agency said Wednesday. Those were the new dates, announced in February, […]

Bolstered by generally solid results across its operating segments, Northrop Grumman on Thursday reported higher sales and earnings in its second quarter and the company raised its outlook for the top and bottom lines for 2020. in a quarterly call with investors, Kathy Warden, the company’s chairman, president, and chief executive officer, said the company […]

There were 15 fewer active cases of COVID-19 this week than last among National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees, marking the first week in July that recoveries outpaced new infections in the complex, according to an agency spokesperson. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency was tracking 114 active cases at deadline Friday, down […]

The House of Representatives on Friday passed a $1.3 trillion “minibus” appropriations package that would give the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) $2 billion less than it requested for fiscal 2021, even as the Senate has yet to release any spending bills and remains tangled up in controversy over a new COVID-19 relief bill. Congress […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is preparing to release another tranche of funding for companies working to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 without use of weapon-grade uranium. The semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy said it received $35 million from Congress for this work in the current 2020 federal budget year. The agency […]

Lockheed Martin on Tuesday posted double-digit percentage gains to its top and bottom lines in the second quarter, driven by strong operating results across its business segments. The company raised guidance for sales, earnings and cash for 2020. Lockheed Martin was able to shrug off negative impacts from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which it said […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries said Tuesday its operations for the Department of Energy would not be affected by the newly announced merging of two business groups. The corporate parent of Newport News Shipbuilding is combining two business lines within its Technical Solutions division: The previous Fleet Support and Mission Driven Innovative Solutions (MDIS) groups are becoming […]

Air Force Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser has joined the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as principal assistant deputy administrator for military application in the Office of Defense Programs, where she will oversee weapons modernization and testing, and serve as the military’s point of contact for these civilian-run programs. Huser will run “stockpile management activities, […]

Michael Steuert has ended his second term as chief financial officer for Fluor, and was succeeded Wednesday by longtime company executive Joe Brennan. The financially troubled Irving, Texas-based engineering and construction multinational announced the change on Friday. Steuert joined Fluor as CFO and senior vice president in 2001 and retired in 2012. He returned as […]

The House and Senate approved their respective versions of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act with bipartisan votes this week, supporting the Trump administration’s requested funding for nuclear-weapon operations at the Department of Energy. However, President Donald Trump threatened to veto the measure over provisions including production of plutonium warhead cores and removing Confederate iconography […]

The White House on Tuesday nominated a former staff member at the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) to become a member of the panel. Matthew Moury has since June 2017 served as Energy Department associate undersecretary for environment, health, safety, and security. His nomination to the DNFSB will be considered first by the Senate […]

In a revised order, the Department of Energy has relaxed the firewall it attempted to erect between personnel at nuclear-weapon sites and the federal agency responsible for sniffing out potential threats to public safety from those operations. The Energy Department shared a draft of the revised Order 140.1 with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) in […]

The lawyers for a disgraced former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who pleaded guilty to lying about his involvement with a Chinese talent-recruiting program said his client should not be sentenced to prison on the technical grounds that the deception did not amount to perjury, which under federal sentencing guidelines could carry harsher penalties than […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week finalized environmental paperwork that completes a court-ordered re-review of earthquake risks at the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. — but environmental groups with a live lawsuit over the plan are complaining that the agency’s second look was not adequate. The finalized supplement analysis, published July […]

Bruce Blair, the missileer turned nonproliferation scholar and activist, died Sunday following a sudden illness, Global Zero, the advocacy organization he co-founded in 2007, announced Monday. The Global Zero statement did not specify the cause of death, nor identify any survivors for Blair — a prolific writer and advocate for nuclear arms-minimization who often warned about the […]

Marshall Billingslea’s bid to become the Trump Administration’s top nuclear arms negotiator may not have been knocked off easy street yet, but it certainly encountered some potholes in his confirmation hearing this week, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat said the nominee is stained by his support of torture and generally unfit for […]

Active cases of COVID-19 at civilian nuclear-weapon sites jumped by 34 this week in the largest week-over-week increase the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has acknowledged since it began sharing data about confirmed infections. That makes for a total of 129 active cases among federal employees and contractors at the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to host another virtual job fair, this time on July 22. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency set a goal of hiring 130 people this summer, specifically in Albuquerque, N.M.; Amarillo, Texas; Kansas City, Mo.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Livermore, Calif.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Aiken, S.C., and Washington, D.C,  […]

It will take at least until 2021 before the University of Washington can reopen a building contaminated with cesium-137 by a 2019 radiological source-removal gone wrong — and some of the facility might have to be torn down and rebuilt, a university official said Wednesday. “The current timeline has remediation going basically to the end of […]

The leader of the National Nuclear Security Administration this week pushed back against a gavel-wielding congressman’s public claim that the semiautonomous agency is increasingly dismissive of the authority for its work held by its parent entity, the Department of Energy. Rep. Frank Pallone (D.N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committe, made the statement […]

A 2021 spending bill the House Appropriations Committee passed this week would prohibit development of a proposed new nuclear warhead for the Navy while upping investments in infrastructure to produce new plutonium triggers — but not by as much as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wants. That is according to a detailed bill report for […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will soon consider alternatives to breaking down nuclear-weapon cores for disposal at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as part of a plan to eliminate 34 metric tons of excess plutonium, an agency official said this week. Dilute and dispose, officially the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, involves […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has not missed a single milestone in the six months since the first case of COVID-19 was recorded on U.S. shores and four months since the World Health Organization declared the disease a pandemic, the agency’s leader said this week. “Faced with the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 […]

The Department of Defense would get at least close to its requested funding for most strategic nuclear weapons programs in fiscal 2021, under a spending bill approved on a party-line vote Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The bill passed 30-21 with no Republican support. Nobody offered amendments that would affect nuclear weapons funding during […]

An employee at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee died this week from COVID-19, as confirmed cases of the disease across the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) complex again shot up by double digits. The Y-12 worker “reportedly contracted the virus from a contact outside of work,” an agency spokesperson wrote Friday in an […]

As part of what it has dubbed a good-faith effort to better cooperate with the federal government’s independent nuclear health-and-safety watchdog, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) this month delivered an updated plan for implementing safety recommendations for the Pantex Plant in Texas. Whether the changes will convince the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) […]