Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is revising its plan to implement recommendations the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board made this year about the Pantex nuclear-weapon servicing plant in Texas. “The Department of Energy has accepted the need to revise and update our implementation plan,” James McConnell, NNSA associate administrator for safety, infrastructure, and […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration appears set to get all the money it wants for the current budget year, and a little more, including some $710 million to start work on a controversial two-state plutonium pit complex intended to bring a new nuclear-weapon mission to South Carolina. A compromise budget bill that passed through […]

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. — The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) took delivery of three new radiation monitoring aircraft recently and put them on display here Wednesday at one of two home bases for the airborne leg of the agency’s counterterrorism office. The three new King Air 350ER airplanes provided by Textron Aviation of […]

The Kansas City, Mo., National Security Campus plans this coming spring to open a small satellite factory about 1 mile east from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) main workshop for non-nuclear components of nuclear-weapon. “Occupancy is expected to begin next spring after tenant improvements such as utilities and furnishings are completed,” a spokesperson […]

The compromise National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2020 would allow almost $2.1 billion for defense environmental cleanup operations the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Defense environmental cleanup is the largest tranche of funding for Hanford and other properties managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. In total, the office would […]

Northrop Grumman is officially the only company to bid on the potentially $25 billion contract to build and deploy the U.S. Air Force’s Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missiles. The company confirmed Friday, at the deadline to submit bids, that it put in an offer with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. Boeing, the […]

A risk of combustion linked to calcium prompted suspension in November of transuranic waste shipments from the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant further south in New Mexico, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). Workers discovered calcium metal in certain transuranic material that can ignite […]

Department of Energy contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security returned some piping to a subcontractor after determining it was unsuitable for installation in the main uranium processing building at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. Subcontractor Hicks & Ingle, of Knoxville, Tenn., fabricated the pipes under a two-year contract awarded in 2018. A spokesperson for Consolidated […]

MCLEAN, Va. — The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to help defray cost overruns on two nuclear-weapon refurbishments by stripping features out of the planned warhead for the Air Force’s next land-based intercontinental ballistic missile, a senior agency official said Thursday. The features to be cut, however, are not mission-essential requirements for the […]

The U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) would move to keep inspectors on the job at Department of Energy defense nuclear sites beyond Dec. 20, if the federal government shuts down when the current stopgap spending measure expires. In the event of a government closure, “the Chairman may designate resident inspectors at designated DOE defense […]

Members of the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board would generally not be allowed to serve in expired terms any longer, if Congress’ compromise 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) becomes law. The measure would make an exception in cases where the departure of a board member would leave the nominally five-member body without its […]

House Democrats failed to slow procurement of next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles via the 2020 National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA), the final version of which almost fully supports the Trump administration’s funding request and approves the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to build warheads for the missile. However, the bill is loaded with legally binding language […]

Despite discussing arms control in private meetings Tuesday in Washington, the top diplomats for the United States and Russia gave no hint in a subsequent press conference that the countries would extend the New START nuclear treaty. Speaking with reporters, Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, stuck to the administration’s position that New START […]

Nevada National Security Site prime Mission Support and Test Services said it has hired Jose Sinibaldi, a subcritical experimentalist formerly of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as its chief scientist. Sinibaldi now will be in charge of creating a strategic plan for the former Nevada Test Site’s future subcritical plutonium experiments, which the National Nuclear […]

House Democrats opted not to fall on their swords this week to slow the ongoing nuclear arsenal modernization program, when they overwhelmingly supported passage of a National Defense Authorization Act that approves just about all the Department of Energy weapons spending requests for fiscal 2020. That means that through the Sept. 30 end of the […]

Members are Congress are keeping the pressure on the Department of Energy to explain why it gave Centrus Energy Corp. a sole-source contract to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel using a brand new, domestic-built cascade. Senators pressed now-Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette for details during the latter’s confirmation process, which wrapped up successfully last week […]

Thousands of pounds of stainless steel originally intended for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., has been donated to welding programs at nearby high schools and colleges. Fifteen high schools and colleges each received a ton of metal from the U.S. Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Monday it has selected a longtime Department of Energy manager to lead its field office for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Michael Weis comes to Los Alamos after nearly 25 years with the department, most recently as site office manager for the Fermi National […]

James Peery will become director of the Sandia National Laboratories on Jan. 1, after current director Stephen Younger retires, the multistate Department of Energy nuclear-weapon-engineering lab announced this week. Peery is now  associate laboratory director of national security sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. In that role, he succeeded Brent Park, […]

The U.S. Department of Energy spent $8.6 million during the last fiscal year on remediation of a cesium-137 spill at a hospital research facility in Seattle. Remediation is ongoing at the Research and Training Building for the University of Washington’s Harborview Medical Center, according to Al Stotts, a spokesman for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security […]

BWX Technologies has tapped Dave Broussard, a former contractor at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, to be general manager of the company’s nuclear-naval parts factory in Barberton, Ohio. Broussard will take over the 750-person manufacturing site as it prepares to hire 80 more people and spend $80 million to ramp up production of […]

AECOM disclosed Nov. 29 that Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Carla Christofferson was resigning her post effective immediately. The Los Angeles-based infrastructure multinational said its leadership and Christofferson “mutually agreed” she would resign her management position, but would remain a “non-executive” employee of AECOM through Dec. 16, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities […]

A cybersecurity provider for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is urging reconsideration of the recent follow-on award for the work to a rival company. The transition out of the contract held by information-technology specialist Criterion Systems, of Vienna, Va., was driven “by a perceived need to rapidly remediate a contract protest action lingering […]

The U.S. Department of Energy and the contractor hired to build a now-terminated plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina are seeking a joint dismissal of nine lawsuits the company filed against its employer over the past four years. Filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the stipulation of […]

The U.S. Department of Energy is studying whether to sign off on an extension of the legal deadline to end exports of weapon-grade uranium for foreign production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). The agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is accepting comments from the public through Dec. 27 ahead of the secretarial certification […]

Some time before the new year, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is scheduled to award a new protective forces contract to guard its Albuquerque Complex at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. The three-year contract will include a one-year base period and two single-year options, according to a Nov. 19 solicitation […]

By Richard Abott Defense Daily The U.S. Navy awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat $22.2 billion to build nine Block V Virginia-class attack submarines, with an option for a 10th, the Navy’s top acquisition official said this week. It is the “largest shipbuilding contract the Navy has ever awarded,” James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy […]

Veteran Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi took over Tuesday as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Grossi, 58, will become the sixth director general of the United Nations organization, which promotes the peaceful use of nuclear technology and the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons technology and materials. He will serve a four-year term after […]