Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

By Richard Abott Defense Daily The U.S. should speed up efforts to develop new nuclear-capable weapons, including a “cost-effective, credible” replacement for the Trident II ballistic missile, the Chief of Naval Operations said this week. In a talk at the Mitchell Institute Tuesday in Washington, Adm. John Richardson also called for exploring capabilities such as low-yield […]

The U.S. Senate has confirmed former Pentagon and State Department career man Jeffrey Eberhardt to be special representative of the president for nuclear nonproliferation. In his new State Department job, for which he was confirmed last month, Eberhardt will be the Trump administration’s central figure in talks over international nonproliferation agreements, including for the 2020 […]

Saudi Arabia will have to sign “a very strong 123 agreement” to be counted among the “adult members of the world community” that use nuclear power, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said this week in congressional testimony. Perry has made that point directly to the Saudi government, the Energy Department chief told the House Science […]

A federal judge this week stayed the almost 3-year old lawsuit filed by MOX Services against the National Nuclear Security Administration after the parties announced they were close to settling the $200-million-plus case over a now-terminated plutonium conversion plant in South Carolina. “After mediation, the parties have come to an agreement in principle on proposed […]

The prime contractor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 National Security Complex continued to grapple with a fix for a hydrogen fluoride system until earlier this month — well after an April leak that prompted an evacuation of the agency’s main uranium processing building. The system in Building 9212 “returned to operation on Monday, […]

As the Air Force and wider Defense Department work to address threats posed by peer competition and to fulfill the requirements of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the service must invest in a workforce that can build and deliver crucial capabilities to sustain the nuclear arsenal, the Air Force’s top military official said June 26. […]

DAYTON, Ohio — With a series of modernization efforts on the table for the Air Force’s aging B-52 bomber fleet, the service will decide over the next two years whether the upgrades merit a model change, officials said June 20. Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, program executive officer for fighters and bombers at the Air Force’s Lifecycle Management […]

Doug Fremont is the new chief of staff for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an agency spokesperson said Monday. He succeeds William “Ike” White, who left to work at the Department of Energy’s Cold War nuclear-weapon cleanup program. Fremont is the former security chief for the semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency. He was removed from […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) intends to award BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services a sole-source contract to purify highly enriched uranium and convert it into metal for nuclear weapons programs. The semiautonomous nuclear-weapons steward needs Nuclear Fuel Services to step in around 2023, when the civilian agency plans to shut down existing uranium purification […]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would authorize all the White House’s requested funding for nuclear modernization programs at the Department of Energy and the Pentagon. The Senate bill would provide a year of bipartisan support for the Donald Trump administration’s nuclear arsenal modernization plans, which […]

The Department of Energy can annually produce 80 nuclear weapon cores in two states without beginning an all-new environmental review of the full program, according to an already-contested review of the issue released on Wednesday. Instead, DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) concluded that the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requires the agency only […]

The House of Representatives will not debate its version of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) until after the Fourth of July, but lawmakers have already proposed several pro- and anti-nuclear amendments to the annual defense policy bill. Lawmakers proposed their amendments Tuesday to the House Rules Committee. The panel plans to set […]

The White House wants federal agencies including the Department of Energy to kill off some of their Federal Advisory Committees by September, according to a presidential order published recently. Federal Advisory Committees are nominally independent, government-chartered groups that provide advice to U.S. agencies. Either the president, Congress or agency heads can require an agency to […]

Nuclear forces worldwide in 2018 declined by roughly 4% over the course of the year, or by 600 weapons, to 13,865, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its latest annual yearbook on nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia, which have more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world’s seven nuclear-armed states combined, drove […]

AECOM plans next year to spin off the business that contracts with the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense into a separate publicly traded company. The Los Angeles-based infrastructure multinational said Monday its Board of Directors unanimously signed off on the separation, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2020. The […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee is eyeing a drastic overhaul at the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), including limiting its members to a single consecutive term and bringing on an executive director to improve management. The measures, contained in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act approved by the committee in May and […]

Late delivery of insensitive high explosives to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will delay by “at 2 two months” the National Nuclear Security Administration’s program to refurbish an old warhead for a next-generation air-launched cruise missile, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported this week. However, the semiautonomous Department of Energy stockpile steward still […]

LATA-Atkins Technical Services, a team including Atkins and Los Alamos Technical Associates, said this week it won a potentially 7.5-year waste-management subcontract from Y-12 National Security Complex operator Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS). The team also includes a small business, Strata-G, which has previously worked on liquid- and solid-waste management at the nation’s primary uranium processing […]

The House of Representatives this week approved a fiscal 2020 minibus spending bill that would slow development of the next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), bar deployment of a low-yield nuclear missile, and provide more money than sought to research the use of low-enriched uranium as fuel for the nuclear Navy. The bill went through […]

The prime contractor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main uranium enrichment site intends to award a contract in 2020 for up to four furnaces that help reclaim excess uranium metal left over from defense missions, a company spokesperson said Monday. The award will be for at least one pair, and possibly two pairs, of […]

The Department of Energy should better protect workers at the Savannah River Site’s tritium facilities from accidents that could deliver high doses of radiation, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) recommended Wednesday. The board said in a new safety recommendation that DOE workers, and the public at large, could be imperiled by “energetic accidents”: fires, falling […]

Both the House and Senate defense authorization bills, approved by their respective armed services committees, directed reports and briefings on the Columbia-class submarine program due to schedule and cost concerns. The House Armed Services Committee’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), approved by the Committee on June 13, includes an amendment from Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will dedicate $1 million annually over the next half-decade to train college students in South Carolina and Georgia to take over the upcoming plutonium pit mission, among others, at the Savannah River Site (SRS). NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty discussed the $5 million commitment Monday afternoon during a press event […]

The Department of Energy remains on track to remove a remaining half-metric of plutonium from the Savannah River Site and the state of South Carolina by the end of the year as ordered in a federal lawsuit from 2016, according to a recent status report. South Carolina sued the federal government in 2016 in the […]

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency amped up criticism of Russia’s nuclear weapons activities last week, saying the nation at some point “has conducted nuclear weapons tests that have created nuclear yield.” That is a step beyond what agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley told reporters and the public in May at the Hudson Institute in […]

David Huizenga, a longtime manager in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nonproliferation branch, will be promoted to the third-highest career post at the nuclear weapons agency effective Monday, the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch announced Friday. In his new role as associate principal deputy administrator, Huizenga will be able to run the agency on […]

After a former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist was indicted for allegedly lying about contacts with the Chinese government, the Energy Department prohibited its employees and contractors from participating in certain foreign “talent recruitment programs.” Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette approved that prohibition Friday by signing DOE Order 486.1. The order bars agency employees and contractors […]