Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Energy Department has applied for renewal of the state permit to operate the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The New Mexico Environment Department issued the current Hazardous Waste Facility Permit to DOE and WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership in late November 2010. The state agency has said it has no timetable for […]

National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites logged more positive cases of COVID-19 this week, boosting the total number of confirmed infections in the civilian nuclear security enterprise beyond the half-century mark. The semiautonomous Department of Energy branch would not say how many new cases of the viral disease its plants, sites, and headquarters had racked […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped the Department of Energy’s plans to dispose of surplus plutonium, nor arguments in a long-running $200 million lawsuit on the matter with the state of South Carolina. The Department of Energy and South Carolina are actually close to settling the matter. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal […]

Both chambers of Congress will remain on recess later than scheduled, returning no earlier than May 4, lawmakers said this week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced the upper chamber would add two weeks to its current recess in a Tuesday note to fellow senators, then in a press release. His announcement followed a […]

The members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday unanimously approved a license for the Department of Energy to export nearly 5 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium to Europe for production of medical isotopes. The four commissioners offered no comments on the matter before or after a roll-call vote on the memorandum and order. The document […]

The Air Force expects to award a contract for its next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles on schedule, if not earlier, Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper said Thursday Despite the service and contractors enacting new teleworking policies and other social distancing efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) believes it can safely continue building the Uranium Processing Facility, and operate it starting this decade, after taking a court-ordered look at federal earthquake data from 2014. In a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee last year ordered the semiautonomous Department of Energy […]

BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services this week reported multiple cases of COVID-19 among its workforce. The Erwin, Tenn., defense-uranium contractor did not say how many employees were infected, or how many potentially exposed employees were in quarantine following contact with the sick workers. “Our coronavirus response protocols call for enhanced cleaning across the site, […]

The Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories has started offering limited COVID-19 tests for its employees, but it was unclear if the weapons engineering lab had tested anyone as of Friday. Sandia is also “entering into a contract” to provide tests for the general public, but “there’s some federal paperwork that has to be resolved” […]

The Department of Energy published guidance Wednesday for contractors that need to bill the government for paid time off given to employees unable to report for work due to COVID-19. The new guidance attempts to steer contracting officers through the process of modifying existing deals so that vendors can claim reimbursement under the $2.2 trillion CARES […]

With the United States probing the possibility of thawing the social freeze from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories plan to start slowly ramping up on-site work this month. Los Alamos has been in a mission-critical operations posture since March, limiting on-site work to what Director Thomas […]

Air Force Global Strike Command is looking to boost its number of bomber aircraft through 2040 and incorporate a number of new weapon systems on the fleet, even as dozens of current bombers may be retired by 2036. The service’s fiscal year 2021 presidential budget request included plans to cut 17 B-1B Lancer aircraft from […]

There were 51 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Friday among personnel working at sites housing National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) operations, up from 26 a week ago and nine the week before that. Spokespersons for the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency and its sites generally declined to say which cases were at which locations. But […]

The president of General Dynamics Electric Boat has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus while the company confirmed further changes to the workforce configuration to limit the disease’s spread within its facilities. In an April 4 message to employees, Electric Boat President Kevin Graney disclosed he has tested positive for the pandemic virus, noting his […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee called off an exchange of letters and statements about the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons budget that was scheduled for Thursday between lawmakers and top managers from the agency and the Pentagon. The committee had not announced a makeup date at deadline for the so-called paper hearing, which was delayed […]

Honeywell executive Eric Wollerman on April 30 will become president of the subsidary that manages the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Kansas City, Mo., National Security Campus. At the end of the month, the buck will stops with Wollerman at the NNSA-owned manufacturing hub for the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons. The Honeywell Federal Manufacturing […]

Essential federal workers, including those at National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plants that have not paused operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, should have access to protective equipment and daily testing for the virus, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said this week. “Every day, if you go to work at the White House, […]

All but one of the main Department of Energy nuclear weapons production sites have now hunkered down into minimum mission-critical operations because of COVID-19, keeping only the personnel needed to assemble nuclear weapons and components, maintain key infrastructure, or provide security. The Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak […]

Because of COVID-19, the management and operations contractor for two of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear weapon-production sites may not know until June whether it will be kept on the job into 2023 and what fee it earned last year. “Due to the ongoing COVID-19 national emergency, the contractor notification date for the CNS [Consolidated […]

A recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report update lays out how the COVID-19 pandemic could impact the Navy’s shipbuilding programs and noted what action Congress has taken in the past to mitigate other events. The report, Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress, was last updated March 27. It notes COVID-19 […]

A longtime employee of the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has filed a lawsuit under the Americans With Disabilities Act against facility management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS). The case was filed last week in the Second Judicial Circuit of the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas by Richard […]

The Pentagon has agreed to tidy up records of responses to three Obama-era reviews of its nuclear infrastructure, personnel and programs, according to the unclassified version of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from the fall. The three internal reports made hundreds of recommendations, but the Defense Department has done a poor job tracking which […]

International Isotopes said Tuesday it would no longer provide radiological field services for the Department of Energy, after the federal agency put a hold on all existing contracts in the wake of a cesium-137 spill last May during a job in Seattle. “Regardless of the DOE’s future plans for field service contracts, it is unlikely […]

A 6.5 magnitude earthquake shook Idaho at around 6 p.m. local time Tuesday, with the epicenter about 120 miles from the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed. “While ground shaking was felt, there was no damage to any INL facilities,” INL spokesperson Sarah Neumann said in a Wednesday email. It was […]

The Defense Nuclear Safety Facilities Board (DNFSB) is urging its inspectors and staff to press their newly bolstered authority to inspect Department of Energy defense-nuclear sites, as codified by Congress last year. Congress, at least in the board’s interpretation, used the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 to short-circuit DOE Order 140.1, which was written by […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapon sites are modifying confinement vessels for planned underground subcritical plutonium experiments, after one such vessel blew a leak last year. A confinement vessel is designed to contain an explosive compression of plutonium metal, which is rigged to bring the material to the brink of a fission chain reaction. Observing that […]

The United States and Russia were each deploying fewer strategic nuclear weapons as of March 1 than they did six months earlier, according to the Department of State’s latest data on the bilateral New START nuclear treaty. Since the last official State-published tally in September 2019, Russia cut more strategic warheads from its arsenal than […]