Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Sheep Fire at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is contained enough to allow the emergency response to be scaled back, officials said Thursday afternoon. Firefighting crews will continue to keep an eye on the blaze there are no remaining hot spots, according to an update posted on the INL website. Fire officials expect […]

Centrus Energy expects the Department of Energy by Oct. 31 to finalize the company’s contract to build a new uranium enrichment cascade in Ohio, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A temporary DOE letter contract with the Bethesda, Md., nuclear fuel company’s American Centrifuge Operating Co. subsidiary authorizes $6.4 million […]

The U.S. Air Force said Tuesday it plans to award a contract sometime between July and September 2020 for production of the United States’ next nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. The service plans to buy more than 600 Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) missiles, about 400 of which will go into silos starting around 2028 to replace […]

ESCO Technologies earlier this month said it acquired Globe Composite Solutions, LLC, a provider of composite-based products for the Navy and defense industry customers, including for the Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear submarines. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Globe, which is based near Boston, is expected to have about $37 million in sales this year. Globe provides […]

The Savannah River Site’s security contractor earned $96.1% of its possible award fee from the U.S. Department of Energy for services provided during the first half of fiscal 2019. Centerra-Savannah River Site brought in just shy of $3.14 million, out of a potential $3.26 million for the period from Oct. 1, 2018, to March 31, […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) this week removed a breached cesium-137 source from a University of Washington medical research building in Seattle, clearing the way to begin remediation of the facility following its May 3 contamination. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency on Tuesday trucked the cesium-137 source to the Pacific Northwest National […]

Marian Davis has resigned as chief financial officer of uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology company Centrus Energy Corp., according to a regulatory filing. Davis submitted her letter of resignation June 7 and was expected to leave the company after it filed its 10-Q report on quarterly earnings for the period ended June 30, according […]

Mark Esper, who could be confirmed as secretary of defense as soon as next week, held strictly to U.S. nuclear orthodoxy in his Senate confirmation hearing this week, boosting the Department of Energy’s stockpile stewardship program and urging continued funding for long-term modernization and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved […]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has demanded the U.S. Supreme Court consider the case of South Carolina and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), which the state’s senior senator says has turned the Savannah River Site into a permanent plutonium dumping ground. Graham made his argument in an amicus curiae brief filed with the court on July […]

The Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SNRS) will continue managing the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina for up to three more years, the agency announced Thursday. The contract extension includes a 14-month base worth $1.5 billion, plus a pair of one-year options, the value of which DOE did not disclose. That […]

The University of California expects to bank some $22.5 million in fees in 2019 for its part in managing the two main U.S. nuclear-weapon design laboratories, the university’s Board of Regents estimated this week. The University of California (UC) is a senior partner on Triad National Security, which has managed the Los Alamos National Laboratory […]

Centrus Energy Corp. has started work on a next-generation uranium enrichment cascade that could give the company a leg up in the competition to build the next domestic enrichment facility for national defense, according to a document published Wednesday by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In a June 27 letter to the federal regulator, the Bethesda, Md., […]

A federal appeals court decided last week it does not need to hear oral arguments about whether the U.S. government violated environmental law when it sent half a metric ton of weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada in 2018. In what could be a sign that judges will rule swiftly on Nevada’s appeal of a lower […]

The Department of Energy is scheduled next week to send a cesium-137 source that contaminated a University of Washington building in May to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for “forensic analysis,” an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. Until then, the damaged irradiator’s cesium-137 source remains in the Research and Training Building near the university’s Harborview […]

As expected, Northrop Grumman on Tuesday said that its board has elected Kathy Warden as its chairman effective Aug. 1, adding to her current duties of president and CEO of the $30 billion defense company. Warden succeeds Wes Bush, who has been the company’s chairman since July 2011. Bush will resign from the board effective July […]

WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama administration’s National Nuclear Security Administration leadership duo whipped the Donald Trump administration here Wednesday to immediately extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and forget, for now, about modifying the pact. The bilateral treaty, which limits Moscow and Washington to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 […]

The Department of Energy acknowledged Wednesday that for six years it sent nuclear weapons waste to the Nevada National Security Site in violation of its waste acceptance criteria. The agency confirmed the information the same day Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) made it public in a press release. Senior DOE officials including Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, head of the […]

The Z Pulsed Power Facility at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., was back online this week after a serious accident in June knocked the facility out of commission for three weeks, a senior laboratory employee said this week. The June 17 accident, which shook Sandia’s high-energy density physics lab longer and harder than […]

The House of Representatives on Friday passed its 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), after bipartisan blocks of lawmakers rejected further restrictions to the W80-4 nuclear warhead life-extension program and development of next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles. On a more partisan basis, lawmakers voted 201-221 against an amendment from Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) that would have […]

Preparations began this week for repairing the roof on the H Canyon facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, with the physical repairs due to start later this summer. In January, the Energy Department announced plans to spend an estimated $1 million from the SRS fiscal 2019 maintenance and […]

The Department of Energy inspector general has “potential concerns” about agency oversight of $500,000 in grant money awarded to a regional group that promotes economic development around the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. That is the assessment offered in a July 2 memorandum from Deputy Inspector General Michelle Anderson to DOE Undersecretary for […]

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The site operations contractor for the Y-12 National Security Complex is finishing decontamination in Building 9995 after a furnace there blew open and spewed uranium in late May. The muffle furnace in Y-12’s Analytical Chemistry Facility partially exploded after an unexpected reaction, contaminating nearby space and equipment, but neither injuring nor contaminating any personnel, a spokesperson […]

BWX Technologies has finished a uranium conversion contract for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency confirmed this week. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency awarded the roughly $30-million contract in 2011 and extended it through June 30, 2019, at no cost. The NNSA wanted BWX Technologies to hold on to some converted […]

The U.S. Senate’s recently passed version of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act calls for nine reports or briefings on Department of Energy nuclear weapon programs. Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor has listed each of them below, in the order in which they appear in the bill. None of these reports are required yet. […]

It has been more than a year now since the Department of Energy ordered stricter limits on communications with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), but the independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog has mostly not cataloged the stonewalling connected with Order 140.1. Chairman Bruce Hamilton, in an April hearing before a House Armed Services […]

After settlement talks collapsed, a federal judge this week cleared the way for a long-awaited decision in a $200-million lawsuit between South Carolina and the Department of Energy over the federal government’s failure to remove plutonium from the state. The Energy Department and the state had for more than a year tried to settle the […]