Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will decide in early May whether it wants to build nuclear-warhead cores known as plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., the agency’s new administrator said here Wednesday in congressional testimony. The Pentagon needs the NNSA by 2030 to produce 80 plutonium pits a […]

WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy’s final budget for the 2018 fiscal year that began last October might be published Monday, the agency’s top House appropriator told reporters Thursday. After a hearing on the 2019 budget with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said congressional leaders “hope to put it [the bill] online” […]

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, said there have been some early production “hiccups” with the B-21, notably with its engines. Wittman told reporters following a speech at the McAleese/Credit Suisse defense conference that there have been challenges with airflow through the B-21 engines. “This […]

Vahid Majidi, a former Pentagon and national-lab hand who most recently worked in industry, is scheduled today to replace the departing Terry Michalske as director of the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. Majidi will be executive vice president at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), which runs the lab and the Savannah River Site’s non-liquid-waste-cleanup mission for […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry ducked and dodged in the first congressional hearing of the year about the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget, evading questions from the dais about when the agency would provide a congressionally mandated cost estimate that could allow it to cancel a massive plutonium disposal plant under construction at the Savannah […]

Local and state leaders in South Carolina told the new head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that the Savannah River Site would be the best place for plutonium pit production just before her visit to the Energy Department facility last week. NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, who has been on the job since […]

The new head of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, in office less than a month, should direct the agency to produce an overarching plan for the future of “the entire nuclear security enterprise,” a National Academies panel said in a report published Tuesday. “In response to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review and […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to host the teams bidding to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the next 10 years for face-to-face meetings next week, an official with one bidder said late Wednesday. “[B]idders will be receiving feedback on their proposals this week,” Kim Budil, vice president for national laboratories for the University […]

Next year, the Department of Energy wants to start extracting desirable national-security and nonproliferation isotopes from material stored at the Savannah River Site since the early 1970s, according to an environmental filing published Thursday. The agency wants to take 65 Mark-18A targets out of storage at the Aiken, S.C., site’s L-Basin and chemically process them […]

A story in the March 2 issue of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor should have said CB&I AREVA MOX Services filed suit against the National Nuclear Security Administration in 2016.  

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Bechtel National have finished the Site Infrastructure and Services subproject for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The UPF will eventually replace the World War II-era 9212 complex, reshaping uranium enriched elsewhere into forms suitable for use in nuclear […]

Following the advice of a U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC) judge, the state of South Carolina this week dismissed one of its two $100 million lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Energy, and amended the other to reflect a $200 million total demand. Both suits, and a third case in the U.S. District Court […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday approved the White House’s nominee to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s roughly $2-billion-a-year nuclear nonproliferation branch. The Donald Trump administration nominated Brent Park, an associate director and physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, on Feb. 13. It took the committee 21 days and one […]

As of March 2, Rick Perry had been U.S. secretary of energy for one year. Like his predecessor, Ernest Moniz, Perry has been on Twitter since the first day of his tenure at the top floor of the Forrestal Building in Washington, D.C. In that span of time, Perry tweeted exactly — yes, exactly — twice […]

President Donald Trump has nominated Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray to be the next commander of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command. If confirmed by the Senate, Ray will replace Gen. Robin Rand, who is retiring. Ray is currently deputy commander of U.S. European Command. Trump has also nominated Maj. Gen. David Thompson to be […]

The new administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration was set to visit the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., on Friday, sources said this week. A spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Washington declined to provide Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty’s agenda for the trip, citing agency policy against sharing travel plans. Savannah […]

In a blow to local interest groups that backed the measure, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have increased taxes for nonprofit entities that operate Department of Energy national laboratories in the state. Martinez vetoed the measure — which would have levied the states gross receipts tax on nonprofit […]

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) stuck to its guns that it does not need to conduct further environmental reviews for its plan to perform bigger explosive tests nearby the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a Thursday regulatory filing shows. “[A]fter considering all comments received, DOE NNSA has determined that the […]

The future of the Savannah River Sites nuclear-weapons mission should become clearer by next month, when the Department of Energy plans to release a draft solicitation for the contract that includes the site’s work for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). To date this year under a series of short-term budgets, the NNSA is spending […]

A federal judge will resume consideration of CB&I AREVA MOX Services’ argument that it should quickly receive a partial award in a $200 million lawsuit it filed against the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration for alleged mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar nuclear nonproliferation contract. In an order filed Thursday, U.S. Court of Federal Claims […]

Faced with local news coverage raising questions about her expense account, and in the middle of a state legislative campaign, Andrea Romero acknowledged Friday her days at the helm of an advocacy group for communities near the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are likely over. “It would be hard for me […]

In an expected move, CB&I AREVA MOX Services argued Thursday a federal judge should not dismiss a $200 million lawsuit that claims the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration mismanaged the company’s contract to build a massive plutonium-disposal facility in South Carolina. Hitting back against claims in the agency’s motion to dismiss the suit, MOX Services […]

In a letter Tuesday to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, two Democratic senators questioned whether the prime contractor for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California inappropriately billed the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to fight what the lawmakers called “whistleblower-related” cases in court. In particular, Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) questioned whether the […]

The metric ton of plutonium South Carolina took the Department of Energy to court over in 2016 is unlikely to leave the state for years, but the agency is seeking more money from Congress to make a move happen sooner, according to its latest budget proposal. In its detailed 2019 budget request issued last week, […]

It could be another year before the U.S. Department of Energy publishes an official cost estimate for the multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) that Bechtel National is building in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the agency said last week in its detailed fiscal 2019 budget justification. At the same time, significant portions of the UPF at the […]

The U.S. Energy Department said Wednesday it will begin the bidding process for the new Savannah River Site management and operations (M&O) contract by May 1. In an online announcement, DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said that, within 30 to 60 days, it would issue a draft request for proposals (RFP) to kick off the […]

The Department of Energy wants to do more plutonium chemistry and experiments in an existing building at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as part of a plan to resume the lab’s production of fissile nuclear-weapon cores called plutonium pits. The move would mean raising the amount of plutonium-239, or its equivalent, allowed […]

Although the Department of Energy has nearly finished the first of four ongoing warhead modernization programs, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is “very close to zero-percent modernized,” the general in charge of the Pentagon’s nuclear forces said Wednesday. “We’re starting down that path,” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said Wednesday in […]