Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would get the $65 million it seeks in fiscal 2019 for a low-yield nuclear warhead, but nothing for a new warhead-core factory in South Carolina, under a budget bill approved this week by the House Appropriations Committee. The bill, voted to the floor Wednesday 29-20 along party lines, also […]

A leaked report from a nominally independent office within the National Nuclear Security Administration offers a trove of new details about the plan the agency must sell to Congress in order to start producing nuclear-warhead cores in South Carolina. On May 10, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he would officially cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel […]

The House Rules Committee will craft the rules of debate for the chamber’s fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act beginning Monday, and already members have proposed several amendments related to Department of Energy nuclear programs. One proposed amendment, from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), would entirely strip out $65 million the House Armed Services Committee authorized […]

Las Vegas-based Longenecker & Associates said Tuesday it has hired nuclear industry veteran Mike Briggs to the newly created post of senior program manager for operational support. Briggs, who has worked on major projects within the Energy Department complex, will oversee L&A’s operational support business, which includes training, nuclear safety, and radiation protection. “As L&A […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration said Wednesday it is gearing up to provide another $40 million in cooperative agreements supporting commercial programs to develop production capabilities for the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). That would be on top of $100 million pledged in recent years to four projects led by three companies: NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, […]

The U.S. Department of Energy and South Carolina said Tuesday they probably will not settle their differences about whether the agency owes the state hundreds of millions of dollars for its failure to remove plutonium from the state by 2016. That conclusion was all but foregone, as South Carolina has already submitted a motion for […]

After a marathon of amendments and votes that began Tuesday morning and ended Wednesday morning, the House Armed Services Committee defeated a doomed-to-fail Democratic attempt to prevent the National Nuclear Security Administration from starting work on a new low-yield nuclear warhead in fiscal year 2019. Ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who called the low-yield […]

Rich Abott Defense Daily The chair of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) seapower panel on Thursday said the FY ’18 shipbuilding authorization of $26.2 billion should be maintained before adding $3 billion when the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) starts production. “I think even the Navy hasn’t been as direct as they need to be […]

Department of Energy veteran Theodore Garrish has become the agency’s acting general counsel — a position he has held before. Garrish, whose name appeared without announcement in the general counsel spot on a Department of Energy organization chart, was already the agency’s assistant secretary for international affairs. The Senate confirmed him for the post in April. It was not […]

Seeking to cut the time it will spend in court, the Department of Energy last week asked a federal judge to consolidate five lawsuits filed against the agency by the prime contractor on a long-delayed plutonium-disposal plant in South Carolina. CB&I AREVA MOX Services first sued the Department of Energy (DOE) in the U.S. Court […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee approved a roughly $36-billion Department of Energy budget bill Monday, which heads to the full committee for a markup Wednesday, May 16. The Department of Energy (DOE) would receive a 5-percent budget raise over all from 2018, if the bill the House Appropriations energy and water development […]

The Department of Energy said Thursday it will produce nuclear-warhead cores for the ongoing 30-year, $1 trillion modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at two sites instead of one, and will convert a major nonproliferation facility into a weapons plant to do it. The Department of Defense wants DOE to make 80 fissile “plutonium pits” […]

The man who would lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons branch, better than a $10-billion-a-year portfolio that includes the some of nation’s most sensitive and secret defense work, drew barely any attention Thursday in a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing. The exception was Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who warned Charles Verdon that if […]

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is replacing an inner reflector plug at its neutron source with a new one, filled with about 6 metric tons of heavy water purchased from Iran. The Energy Department’s lab Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) produces neutrons for experiments to support scientific disciplines including physics, chemistry, materials science, and […]

The Board of Directors for the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC) voted April 27 to advertise for a new executive director to succeed Andrea Romero, whose contract was not renewed at the end of February following a public dispute over expense reimbursements. Los Alamos County, N.M., is preparing the necessary advertisement, County Manager Harry […]

By Marc Selinger Defense Daily Recent increases in U.S. defense spending have bolstered the Air Force’s nuclear modernization efforts, but the possible return of across-the-board budget cuts in FY 2020 looms as a potential threat to those programs, a service official said May 1. The two-year budget agreement that President Trump signed into law in February […]

Sentencing has been scheduled for the two men who pleaded guilty to stealing $4.4 million from the federal government while conducting work for the MOX project at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Aaron Vennefron and Phillip Thompson will both be sentenced on May 24 by Judge J. Michelle Childs, of […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory called a two-day time out on some of its plutonium work late last month after personnel put fissile material in the wrong containers, according to a report released April 27 by an independent federal nuclear-safety watchdog. Both mishaps took place in March at the New Mexico lab’s Plutonium Facility. During […]

A merger of McDermott International and CB&I, the majority partner in the contractor building a plutonium-conversion plant for the Department of Energy, is expected to close May 10 after shareholders for both companies approved the combination. That is according to a joint press release Wednesday from the companies. McDermott shareholders would end up owning 53 […]

Barbara Rusinko, a veteran of Bechtel National’s Yucca Mountain and Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant programs, has joined the parent company’s Board of Directors, Bechtel Group announced Tuesday. Rusinko, president of Bechtel Nuclear, Security & Environmental, gets her vote on the board after 33 years with the company. Before taking charge in 2016 of the unit that […]

A federal judge has decided to let the Department of Energy and a contractor argue in court about whether the agency was allowed to claw back some $20 million in fees on a long-overdue, over-budget plutonium disposal plant in South Carolina. That is according to an April 27 order by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge […]

A federal judge in New Mexico last week sentenced a former Sandia National Laboratories contractor to three years in prison for fraudulently steering procurement money to a moving company she owned. U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo also ordered Carla Sena, the convicted 56 year-old former contractor from Santa Rosa, N.M., to pay back $643,000 […]

The Senate on Friday confirmed a former national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. The Senate confirmed Andrea Thompson by a voice vote. A retired U.S. Army colonel, Thompson was most recently a special adviser at State’s Office of Policy Planning. In her new […]

The government sector was one of the few bright spots early this year in what Fluor Chairman and CEO David Seaton described Thursday as “a disastrous quarter.” “I think we have a good brand in that market and are continuing to bid those projects and being successful,” Seaton said of the company’s business with the […]

The governor of South Carolina this week promised a court challenge if the Department of Energy cancels the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction in his state, or turns the planned plutonium-disposal plant into a new weapons facility. The sprawling facility, billions over budget and years behind schedule, is being built to turn […]

The House of Representatives’ version of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act would authorize $65 million in funding to begin work on a new low-yield nuclear warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles as part of an overall $15.3 billion National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) budget, according to a bill summary provided Friday by the House […]

Joseph Henry, president and chief operating officer of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group, will retire June 30, the company disclosed Monday in a regulatory filing. It was not immediately clear who would succeed the retired Navy admiral at the helm of the Lynchburg, Va.-based company’s nuclear manufacturing and fuel-enrichment business. “We will announce [Henry’s] successor […]