Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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 […]

South Carolina has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court’s 2018 decision to let the Department of Energy close a proposed plutonium disposal plant in the western part of the state, according to papers filed recently with the highest court in the land. After years of political and legal wrangling, DOE’s National […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security has received the go-ahead to install a piece of hardware at the Y-12 National Security Complex that will one day help the National Nuclear Security Administration end uranium processing in the World War II-era Building 9212 and transfer the work to the planned Uranium Processing Facility. In a report published on June 14, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to prepare an environmental impact statement for plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., according to a notice filed this week in the Federal Register. The public will have 45 days to comment on the agency’s proposed environmental impact statement (EIS) regarding its contentious plan to […]

The House Armed Services Committee early Thursday approved its version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act after about 18 hours of debate. The House committee’s annual defense policy bill, now headed to the House floor, authorizes about $15.8 billion for the active nuclear weapons programs managed by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security […]

The full House of Representatives will not consider several defense-nuclear amendments to a fiscal 2020 spending bill until next week. The House cleared the amendments for floor debate, but lawmakers spent much of Wednesday and all day Thursday discussing other aspects of the bill before adjourning. The chamber had no votes scheduled for Friday. Debate […]

The Department of Energy authorized two transfers of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after that nation allegedly authorized the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Tuesday. Beginning in 2017, the Department of Energy granted seven companies Part 810 authorizations — named for the section of the […]

Democrats on the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee on Tuesday used their majority on the panel to kill a GOP amendment that would have kept the Department of Energy’s plan to produce plutonium pits in South Carolina off the chopping block. Subcommittee Democrats, led by Rep. James Cooper (Tenn.), quashed the amendment from Rep. […]

Two of the most important bills of the year for the National Nuclear Security Administration are slated for consideration on Wednesday, when the full House and a key committee will take up proposals to fund and authorize critical nuclear security programs for fiscal year 2020. The House Armed Services Committee will vote on the 2020 […]

National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia appointed D.E. “Dori” Ellis deputy director of the nation’s nuclear-weapons-technology lab, the Honeywell-owned lab-manager announced Wednesday. Ellis will be the lab’s No. 2 executive behind director Stephen Younger. She will replace David Douglass, who will retire in June, according to a lab press release. Ellis is a longtime Sandia […]

The Energy Department published its justification for contracting a Centrus Energy subsidiary to demonstrate high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) production without competitive bidding. The federal government wants to deploy a 16-machine cascade at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio to demonstrate production of 19.75% enriched uranium fuel by June 2022 using domestic technology. Centrus’ American Centrifuge Operating LLC […]

Eight Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump in a letter to extend the New START arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. New START went into effect in 2011. The Barack Obama administration proposed the treaty, which the then-Democrat-controlled Senate ratified with […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has officially picked up the tab to keep the JASON group of independent scientists alive, awarding MITRE Corp. on Thursday an eight-month, $5-million contract to perform three nuclear-security studies, an agency spokesperson said. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “has awarded a short-term, sole-source contract to the MITRE Corp. for […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is laying the groundwork to acquire the three custom-built gloveboxes needed for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition program: the proposed replacement for the cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. Under the currently unfunded and unauthorized program, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would install the gloveboxes at Savannah […]

The Department of Energy on Friday swore in William Bookless as second-in-command at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Upon being sworn in by Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, Bookless officially joined the senior ranks of the semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapon steward, just over a week after the Senate confirmed him following nine months of logjams and political […]

By Rich Abott Defense Daily Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding held a ceremony on May 23 for its first cut-of-steel event to mark the start of advance construction for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) program. HII noted this will be the first class of submarines that will be built using fully digital blueprints. The first […]