Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act would allow for full funding of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) plan to build plutonium nuclear-weapon cores in two states, a senior committee aide confirmed Thursday. The committee finished a closed-door markup of the annual military policy bill Wednesday, then had senior staffers […]

After nine months of stop-and-start progress, the Senate on Thursday confirmed former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist William Bookless to be the principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Senate confirmed Bookless by voice vote. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had not set a date for his swearing-in at deadline Friday […]

A 2020 spending proposal passed Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee directs the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to tap the independent group of JASON scientists for at least one, and perhaps two, new studies. After the Pentagon ditched the JASON contract in April following more than 50 years, the NNSA picked up the deal […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has given the go-ahead for the roughly $145 million High Explosives Pressing Facility at the Pantex Plant in Texas to begin full-scale operations. The facility can press some 2,500 pounds of conventional high explosives a year, and shape up to 500 explosive hemispheres, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) does not anticipate initiating oversight of a planned plutonium warhead core plant in South Carolina until the National Nuclear Security Administration approves an official cost and schedule estimate for the expected multibillion-dollar nuclear facility — a milestone that could be years away. “I predict that oversight will begin […]

By Richard Abott Defense Daily The next contract for the U.S. Navy’s program to build its fleet of Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines will be the Block I construction contract, according to program manager Capt. John Rucker. That is expected to cover the first two boats. “[W]e will award that no later than Oct. 1, 2019, […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has taken custody of some 700 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the United Kingdom, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said. The material, shipped to the U.S. from the U.K.’s Dounreay fast-reactor decommissioning site beginning in 2016, was at Oak Ridge awaiting downblending in “commercial […]

Oral arguments are set for Thursday between the contractor for the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) and its customer, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), over some $800,000 in interest the contractor says it is owed. CB&I AREVA MOX Services sued the NNSA in 2016, and repeatedly afterward in cases that have been […]

An article in the May 3 issue of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor should have said that the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority arranged to ship 700 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to an undisclosed U.S. site.

WASHINGTON — The House Appropriations Committee is set to vote early next week on a 2020 budget bill that would increase the National Nuclear Security Administration’s 2020 budget overall, but provide fewer dollars than requested for active nuclear weapons programs. The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee approved the unamended, $46.4 billion Energy and […]

Deployed nuclear weapons do not contain the underperforming commercial capacitors blamed for delaying delivery of the first B61-12 and W88 Alt 370 nuclear weapons, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency “has verified that these components are not in use in other deployed weapons, nor will they […]

International Isotopes on Wednesday confirmed its role in an accident two weeks ago that contaminated more than a dozen people with cesium-137 during the Department of Energy-funded removal of a blood-irradiation machine from a research facility at the University of Washington in Seattle. “[O]ur radiological services team was involved in a contamination event at an […]

As expected, major Energy Department contractor Fluor has formally selected longtime executive Carlos Hernandez as its permanent CEO, about two weeks after he took the job on an interim basis. Fluor’s Board of Directors also announced Thursday in a press release that Hernandez, previously the company executive vice president and chief legal officer, would serve […]

The Department of Homeland Security should pay closer attention to how cities are spending federal dollars earmarked for an anti-nuclear-terrorism program, the Government Accountability Office said Monday. The DHS Securing the Cities program began in 2006 and helps municipalities develop plans to prevent and respond to acts of radiological terror, including deployment of the radiological […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) indicated Monday it will not start disposal of 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium in South Carolina until 2028 — a date by which the agency could accrue more than $1 billion in financial penalties for failing to remove the material from the South Carolina facility. The semiautonomous […]

Lawmakers over the past week filed a pair of bills to prop up the U.S.-Russian New START arms-control treaty, one of which aims to unite Congress in support of the bilateral pact, the other aiming to bind the U.S. to the treaty’s nuclear weapons limits even if Washington and Moscow do not extend the deal […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill that contains the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget will include about 4% more funding than the enacted 2019 bill did, according to spending limits published this week by the House Appropriations Committee. The total allocation for the 2020 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill, […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will be late in making initial deliveries to the Pentagon of two refurbished nuclear weapons, the head of the Energy Department’s semiautonomous nuclear-weapon agency said this week. The Air Force was supposed to get its refurbished B61, to be called B61-12, in 2020. The Navy was supposed […]

There are no problems with the data from a recent subcritical plutonium experiment in Nevada, despite the unprecedented breach of the protective steel container in which the explosive test took place, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said. The breach also has not set back the schedule for other planned subcritical tests, despite personnel at […]

A hole in a calibration valve caused the hydrogen fluoride leak that prompted the operations contractor of the Y-12 National Security Complex to evacuate the main U.S. uranium processing building in early April, according to a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). “Based on a visual inspection, a hole was identified […]

A big, mostly Democratic group of lawmakers from both sides of Capitol Hill wants the Pentagon to explain why it ditched its decades-old consultancy contract with the MITRE Corp.’s JASON group of scientists, a move that prompted the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to step in and fund the contract That is according to a […]

The Department of Energy’s contractor for the now-terminated plutonium recycling facility at the Savannah River Site is suing to recoup what it says is nearly $53 million the federal government failed to pay for its work. CB&I AREVA MOX Services added in its May 2 lawsuit that the Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration […]

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program has almost no margin for delays, but the boats will be built and deployed on time, and additional inspections of suppliers will continue, the Navy’s Columbia program manager said here this week. “We really have no margin for the lead [Columbia] ship, as well as every other [Ciolumbia] […]

Centrus Energy Corp. expects to receive a Department of Energy contract to produce an unspecified quantity of energy-dense low-enriched uranium “in the near term,” President and CEO Daniel Poneman said Thursday. “[W]e continue to negotiate with the Department of Energy on the contract to build a high-assay-low-enriched uranium [HALEU] demonstration cascade, utilizing our improved AC-100M […]

The management and operations contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has hired 900 employees to date in fiscal 2019, part of its efforts to offset workforce attrition and to ramp up current and upcoming missions. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) plans to hire up to 300 more workers before the fiscal year […]

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) suspended work for two weeks last month after an employee accidentally cut the tip of a glove while handling metal samples that contained tritium, according to a recent report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). The employee, a principle investigator, was not injured. But, according to the […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration were set to meet Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) in Nevada on Friday, about a week after after the Silver State’s senior senator stopped blocking nominees for senior Department of Energy jobs because of a contentious plutonium shipment last […]

Thirteen people at a University of Washington research facility were exposed to cesium-137 last week when a contractor attempted to remove a blood irradiator as part of a Department of Energy-funded program. Personnel were removing a cesium irradiator manufactured by J. L. Shepherd and Associates from the premises on May 3 when the workers “nicked […]