Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The U.S. Department of Energy has until late September to either accept or reject the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) recommendation that the agency fix perceived safety defects at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, the board said in a recent letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. According to the Aug. 22 letter, newly […]

Andrew McIlroy has become associate laboratories director for the Sandia National Laboratories California campus in Livermore, Calif., the New Mexico-based laboratory system said Wednesday. McIlroy now will lead the smaller, satellite campus of the main U.S. nuclear-weapon engineering laboratory, which employs about 1,000 people. Among other things, the campus includes the combustion research facility that studies […]

Calling the Department of Energy’s 2018 shipment of plutonium to Nevada a “nuclear incident” and a nuisance, the state is asking a federal judge to boot half a metric ton of the fissile material out of the Nevada National Security Site (NSS) and prohibit further shipments. The draft amended complaint filed late last week is the latest […]

Senate Democrats — led by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Democratic presidential candidate — are calling on committee leaders to adopt several House-passed measures that would ban low-yield missiles deployment and extend the New START Treaty during future conference sessions over the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Sen. Elizabeth Warren […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Wednesday it had completed the last of four new funding agreements for private manufacturing of the medical isotope molybdenum-99. This means Northwest Medical Isotopes, of Corvallis, Ore., will now receive $15 million from the NNSA that it must fully match. The announcement comes almost five weeks after […]

Plutonium downblending at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has increased significantly after more shifts were added in November 2018. Assuming work continues to proceed well, shifts could be further increased in fiscal 2020, about a year sooner than the initial target date. Workers have downblended just over 17 kilograms […]

The security provider at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is expected to receive a four-month contract extension ahead of the end of its current deal on Oct. 7.  Florida-based Centerra could also secure another eight months on the job. That would come via two more four-month extensions, keeping the […]

Nuclear Security & Defense Monitor took a break over the past two weeks for Congress’ annual summer recess. Our affiliate publication, Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, kept up on the latest news around the nuclear security enterprise and its industry partners. Here’s a recap of what happened while we were out. After Appeals Defeat, Nevada Wants […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will award its John S. Foster Medal to Linton Brooks, who led the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration during the George W. Bush administration. Brooks, a former submarine commander and arms-control ambassador, is only the fifth person to receive the award, which is named for the pioneering nuclear-weapon designer and fourth […]

As expected, South Carolina appealed a federal judge’s refusal to force the Department of Energy to pay $200 million in fines for failing to remove weapon-usable plutonium from the state. The state docketed its appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Court on Thursday, but had not at deadline Friday filed […]

The U.S. Department of Energy expects to release this year some $35 million in funding for Centrus Energy Corp. to begin building a new uranium enrichment cascade required to produce 600 kilograms of high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel by June 1, 2020, according to a letter contract filed Aug. 12 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange […]

Merrick & Co. has opened a new office in Aiken, S.C., to support subcontract work on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) expanding plutonium mission, the Greenwood, Colo., nuclear, defense, and infrastructure contractor said. Bill Taylor will manage the new Aiken office, the company said in a press release. Taylor spent the last 15 years […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) confirmed Wednesday that Stephen Younger will retire as director of the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico effective Dec. 31, after two years managing the nation’s nuclear-weapon engineering laboratory. The local Albuquerque Journal reported the news first. In a short note to employees, provided by Sandia’s public affairs office, Younger said […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is looking for a new manager for its Los Alamos National Laboratory field office in New Mexico, according to a want ad on an official federal jobs board. There are seven NNSA field offices, where local officials who report directly to the NNSA administrator oversee the agency’s multibillion-dollar site-management contracts. […]

International Isotopes on Aug. 14 reported a net loss of nearly $1.2 million for the second quarter of 2019, primarily due to expenses for ongoing remediation of a May radioactive contamination incident in Seattle. The $1.16 million net loss was close to four times the $332,279 loss reported in the same period of 2018, the […]

It’s clear that Boeing, which designed, built, and serviced every Minuteman missile since the venerable launcher became the backbone of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, does not like any of the options available to it under the Air Force’s current procurement for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). That’s why the company quit the competition to build the […]

Longenecker & Associates promoted Mike Briggs to the newly created post of group vice president for High-Hazard Operations support, the small-business subcontractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory said. Briggs joined the Las Vegas-based company last year and helped launch the business line that supports incident response and recovery at DOE sites, the company said […]

President Donald Trump has signed H.R. 3877, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, into law after the bill passed the House July 25 and the Senate Aug. 1. The legislation, signed late last week after deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, suspends the debt limit through July 31, 2021, and sets defense spending toplines at […]

A “trace amount of plutonium” found inside a glove box at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on June 27 did not endanger any employees, a spokesman for the Department of Energy facility in New Mexico said Wednesday. Employees discovered an “unexpected powdery residue” underneath a brush in a material management room glove box at the […]

The ExchangeMonitor is heading into its annual August recess, and Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not be published during the second and third full weeks of the month. We’ll still be in the office, so keep the news tips coming, and look for the next weekly newsletter in your inbox on Friday, Aug. 30.

The top brass at AECOM has received plenty of positive feedback since announcing June 17 that it would spin off the business segment that contracts with the Department of Energy and other federal agencies. “We are moving ahead of schedule” toward separating the Management Services line into its own publicly traded company, Chairman and CEO […]

The former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist indicted for lying about connections to a Chinese government-sponsored talent-recruiting program is scheduled to be tried starting June 22, 2020, in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, N.M. Turab Lookman has pleaded not guilty to three counts of fraud and false statements for allegedly lying to the Department of Energy and […]

BWX Technologies is about halfway through repairing 12 submarine missile tubes it welded incorrectly in 2018, Rex Geveden, president and CEO of the Lynchburg, Va., nuclear-hardware and fuel provider told investors Tuesday. Under multiple subcontracts to Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine production prime General Dynamics Electric Boat, BWXT is on the hook to deliver tubes through 2021. […]

A half-decade after Congress gave the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) special authority to bar certain suppliers from providing components for nuclear weapons, the agency still has exercised that power, the Government Accountability Office said this week. The new report is the third time the congressional watchdog has checked in on the agency’s use, or […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said this week it has shipped 1 metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium out of South Carolina as ordered by a federal court in 2017. The Department of Energy and its semiautonomous nuclear-weapon branch “have removed not less than one metric ton of defense plutonium or defense plutonium materials from the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to start building the replacement for the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) some time after Sept. 30, 2021, according to the agency’s latest annual report on its nonproliferation programs. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon branch formally terminated construction of the Savannah River Site facility in October, […]

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) expects by the end of this month to receive additional U.S. Energy Department information on numerous shipments of mislabeled radioactive waste to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). After reviewing the latest material from DOE, the state “will determine whether the material is stable in the current disposal […]