Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) won’t rule out pressing Triad National Security, the incoming management contractor for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, to apply for federal nonprofit status. The company apparently hasn’t done that yet, and its new host county hopes it never does. The NNSA “is focused on making the transition […]

In another sign the final end of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) might be near, South Carolina is trying to negotiate a settlement with the Department of Energy over $100 million the state says it is owed because the unfinished, now-terminated plant never processed plutonium. That is according to an order filed Tuesday […]

The first round of layoff notices at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) will be issued at some point in November, with impacted employees expected to exit in early 2019, the contractor building the Department of Energy plant said in an Oct. 22 letter to employees. The notice was first reported Tuesday […]

The internal emergency response organization at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, responded Tuesday to what the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) described as a “security event" involving an ultimately harmless parked car. “Just before noon on October 23, a routine inspection at Pantex identified a potential concern with a vehicle in the John C. […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) voted against submission of a preliminary fiscal 2020 budget request to the White House Office of Management and Budget after three of the four board members questioned whether the document reflected the agency’s funding and staffing needs, according to a recently published voting decision. On Oct. 17, the DNFSB […]

The contractor that manages the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina performed well during its emergency response drills earlier this year, but needs to improve its response in several areas, according to a new agency report. In a detailed assessment of the SRS Emergency Management Exercise Program, DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries said this week it has hired two former National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) field office managers to lead a performance assessment team for company affiliates at Department of Energy nuclear sites. Kim Lebak, who managed the NNSA’s Los Alamos Field Office from 2014 through 2017, and Doug Dearolph, who ran the NNSA […]

Former government officials suggested this week that the Donald Trump administration could reach for either the retired W84 warhead or the workhorse W80 if it wants a nuclear-tipped missile after walking away from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Trump announced Saturday, and reaffirmed Monday, that his administration would cease complying with the 1987 accord that forbids […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has concerns about the Department of Energy’s proposed change to nuclear safety management rules governing the agency and its contractors. The proposed rule, published in the Aug. 8 Federal Register, does not spell out certain bedrock nuclear safety principles such as “defense in depth” and the “hierarchy of controls,” […]

Representatives of seven companies attended a mandatory preproposal briefing for a contract to build custom road equipment needed to transport tritium to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., from a commercial nuclear power plant in Tennessee, according to a document the Department of Energy published online Tuesday. The companies that attended the August meeting, […]

Four universities will split more than $40 million in grant funding under a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) program designed to bolster fundamental science applicable to nuclear weapons and encourage students to come to work in the nuclear security enterprise. This brings the total number of universities receiving funding through the NNSA Stewardship Science Academic Alliances […]

One of two Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board resident inspectors at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant has left to join the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, a board spokesperson said Thursday. “Ramsey Arnold left the Board on September 21,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “He will be working for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). […]

A September review by the Department of Energy compounded the agency’s alleged transgressions of federal environmental law stemming from a 2016 design change to a next-generation uranium plant under construction at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, a band of environmental groups said this week in an amended federal lawsuit. The supplemental analysis DOE’s semiautonomous […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has scheduled a series of meetings, including a closed-door session to brew up a new safety recommendation and two public hearings about a controversial Department of Energy order the board says would weaken its oversight of defense-nuclear sites. In the closed meeting, scheduled for Oct. 23, the board […]

A longtime lobbyist for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility was laid off today as the Department of Energy closes in on its goal of ending the project. Veteran government-affairs hand Stephen Marlo acknowledged his termination by APTIM in a telephone interview with Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. The Woodlands, Texas, company was created by a private equity […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week postponed a confirmation hearing for the Donald Trump administration’s nominee to be second-in-command at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). William Bookless, a senior physicist form the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, was scheduled to testify before the panel Tuesday, but “this hearing has been postponed,” the committee […]

Bechtel promoted Catherine Hunt Ryan to chief financial office on Monday, the company announced in a press release. Hunt Ryan previously served as CFO at Bechtel’s Oil, Gas & Chemicals business for more than two years and has been with the company for 11 years. She has also worked at Credit Suisse and the World […]

Honeywell, which through its Federal Services division is a member of four prime contractors for the Department of Energy’s defense nuclear enterprise, said Friday it raked in more sales in a strong quarter than benefited in part from a onetime tax benefit. Third-quarter sales at the parent company rose about 5 percent to a little […]

A delegation of high-profile South Carolina politicians met Thursday with President Donald Trump at the White House to make a last-minute plea to save an embattled plutonium-disposal plant in the Palmetto State — a facility the Department of Energy wants to convert into a weapon factory. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), along with Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Wednesday notified MOX Services that the agency will terminate the company’s contract to build a long-delayed plutonium disposal plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency sent the letter one day after a federal appeals court lifted a lower court’s injunction […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina sustained minor impacts from Hurricane Michael late Thursday and early Friday, during a 24-hour workforce reduction activated as the storm approached. Effects included minimal damage to some administrative buildings at the 310-square-mile Department of Energy facility near the city of Aiken, along with some loss of power and […]

Next-generation nuclear missiles and submarines were among the weapons systems reviewed for hacking vulnerabilities by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a report published this week, The New York Times reported.  Citing interviews with unidentified GAO officials, the Times said the classified version of the report published in unclassified form Tuesday included a look at the cyber vulnerabilities […]

The secretary of energy and the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration on Wednesday expressed condolences for the death of an agency security employee who helped move special nuclear material across the country. Kristopher Youngberg, 41, died after a passenger van he was riding in last week along with four other Department of Energy […]

Companies interested in building custom road equipment to transport tritium-bearing rods to the Savannah River Site from a nuclear reactor in Tennessee got an extra month-and-a-half, until Nov. 9, to file their bids, the prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said Tuesday. Battelle, which runs the Washington state lab for […]

Barriers to producing plutonium nuclear weapon cores in South Carolina remain, but the way is wide open in New Mexico, where the National Nuclear Security Administration has entered the peak spending years of upgrades aimed at producing a war-usable “pit” by fiscal 2024.  The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous stockpile steward is entering peak construction years on […]

Charles Verdon, a longtime manager at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, on Tuesday officially started his new job leading the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) $11-billion-a-year nuclear weapons portfolio. Verdon was sworn in as NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs by Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette, according to an agency press release. […]

The Department of Energy has paused rollout of a solicitation for a 10-year, $14-billion contract to manage the Savannah River Site for most of the next decade, pending an internal review that could radically reshape the nuclear-weapon mission at the South Carolina facility. The agency announced the move late on Oct. 5 in a post […]