Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration last spring quietly backed off a drive to produce 30 plutonium nuclear-warhead cores per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory earlier than the long-established target of 2026, a recently published contract modification shows. The April 30, 2019, modification to Triad National Security’s lab management and operations contract scrubs out […]

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 […]

The Donald Trump administration plans to pay for a larger civilian nuclear weapons budget in fiscal 2021 by requesting funding for only a single Virginia-class attack submarine next year, rather than a pair, Bloomberg News reported Thursday. The outlet is the first to confirm rumors that circulated in Washington in January that President Donald Trump’s […]

Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) held a groundbreaking on Jan. 23 to renovate Dry Dock 4. The U.S. Navy said the renovation effort will cost $200 million and take almost three years. This makes it the largest NNSY initiative under the larger $21 billion 20-year Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP). The Navy said this renovation will […]

The Department of Energy is not publicly discussing the progress of conversion of highly enriched uranium shipped from Canada at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, including whether the project remains on track to be completed in April. Multiple questions sent via email last week to the department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

A former physicist at the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory on Friday pleaded guilty to one count of lying to federal authorities about his alleged connection to a Chinese government-sponsored talent recruiting program. Turab Lookman, formerly of the New Mexico facility’s Theoretical Division, pleaded guilty to the second of three counts of fraud and […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s said Thursday its next-generation Lithium Processing Facility, needed to produce tritium for future nuclear weapons programs, will cost $955 million to $1.65 billion to build by 2031. The official baseline is higher than the rough cost estimate of $720 million that the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon agency penciled into […]

International engineering and construction provider AECOM appears poised to complete the $2.4 billion sale of its government contracting division to a joint venture of two New York investment firms, a company official said Tuesday. Eric Knox, AECOM vice president for strategic development for nuclear and environment, cited the impending change during a panel discussion at […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is establishing a new office to manage “all policy within the Department,” and appointing a new personal adviser for nuclear security, according to an all-hands memo dated Tuesday. To do this, Brouillette will rebrand the current Office of Policy (OP) as the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy (OSSP), which […]

Northrop Grumman swung to a loss in its fourth quarter due to a change it adopted a year ago in accounting for pension and other post-retirement benefits, but its adjusted earnings were well above consensus estimates, the company reported this week. Also this week, the Falls Church, Va.-based defense contractor, now the presumed favorite to […]

A new inspector general’s report bashed the human resources department at the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as ineffective, inefficient, and incapable of supporting the agency’s oversight of defense-nuclear sites. The board’s “human resources program is currently not designed and implemented to effectively support the execution of its mission,” reads a report issued this […]

The USS Tennessee ballistic-missile submarine went on an Atlantic Ocean patrol in December, armed with “one or two” of the brand new W76-2 low-yield warheads, the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists reported Wednesday. “We estimate that one or two of the 20 missiles on the USS Tennessee and subsequent subs will be armed with the W76-2, either singly […]

Lockheed Martin on Tuesday reported a strong close to 2019 with double-digit sales and profit growth, and the company expects further gains in 2020. The company’s net income in the fourth quarter jumped 15% to $1.5 billion, or $5.29 per share, from $1.3 billion, or $4.39 a share, a year ago. That was comfortably above […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has decided to use a cleanup facility in Ohio to help produce high-purity depleted uranium metal for nuclear weapons programs. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency will do that by installing a fourth process line at the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion facility at the Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, […]

Led by its aerospace business, General Dynamics on Wednesday reported strong fourth-quarter earnings on solid sales. Management said it expects continued growth in 2020. The Reston, Va.-based company, whose subsidiary, General Dynamics Electric Boat, is the prime contractor on the Navy’s next-generation Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines, also signaled an improved outlook in cash collections that will […]

The vendor providing paramilitary security for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina received its second four-month contract extension this week, keeping it on the job at least through June 7. The option with DOE was signed Thursday, Suzanne Piner, a spokeswoman for Centerra Group parent company Constellis, said by email. […]

Lynchburg, Va. -based BWX Technologies has promoted Richard Loving to the newly created post of senior vice president and chief administrative officer (CAO). Loving has been senior vice president for human resources at BWXT since mid-2016. He has about 40 years of management experience in manufacturing, energy, and government operations, according to a press release. That […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) pledged to this year implement several incremental steps toward a common financial reporting system that Congress has ordered put in place by December, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The GAO’s report includes a letter from NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty describing three steps the agency would […]

Citing the dwindling power of arms control agreements and escalating tensions with adversarial nations, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this week moved the hands of its symbolic Doomsday Clock 20 seconds closer to a metaphorical midnight that symbolizes the extinction of humanity via general thermonuclear war, civilization-altering climate change, or both. In a press […]

A recently unsealed lawsuit accuses a former U.S. Department of Energy contractor at the Savannah River Site’s now-canceled plutonium recycling plant of filings thousands of dollars’ worth of false claims by paying out a relocation package to an employee who never actually moved. Then, when employee Peter Michael Wanco Jr. resigned from MOX Services after […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) said Monday it has appointed Brandi Smith as program director for the U.S. Navy’s Columbia-class submarine program at the company’s Newport News Shipbuilding division. There was no incumbent Columbia program director at HII, according to a Tuesday email from a spokesperson for the shipbuilding subcontractor for the Navy’s next nuclear-armed ballistic-missile submarine fleet. […]

The story “Centerra Parent Downgraded by Credit Raters, Signs Forbearance Agreement” (Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Vol. 24, No. 03, Jan. 17, 2020) should have reported that Centerra’s paramilitary security contract extension at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was scheduled to expire in February. The U.S. Energy Department can exercise two more four-month options […]

The former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist is set today to change his plea of not guilty to charges that he lied about alleged connections to a Chinese-sponsored talent-recruiting program, a new court filing shows. Turab Lookman’s plea-change hearing is slated for 10 a.m. local time in U.S. District Court for New Mexico in Albuquerque. The […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) hopes to meet soon with new U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette to discuss public health and safety issues at nuclear sites overseen by his agency. In a Jan. 16 letter, DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton congratulated Brouillette on his December confirmation as energy secretary and said the board would […]

The head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the secretary of energy are reportedly at odds over the weapons agency’s 2021 budget request, which would be at least $17.5 billion and perhaps as high as $20 billion for the coming fiscal year, a new digital publication reported this week. The Dispatch, a […]

An Air Force three-star general has been nominated to become the deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Commander, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday. Lt. Gen. Thomas Bussiere currently serves as commander of the Alaskan Command at U.S. Northern Command, as well as the commander of the 11th Air Force at Pacific Air Forces, and commander of […]