Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

  The state of South Carolina has asked for summary judgment in its recent $100 million lawsuit against the Department of Energy over plutonium disposition at the Savannah River Site. The request was filed Oct. 6 – the same day the federal agency asked that the suit be thrown out. South Carolina filed the complaint […]

The hundreds of security personnel still on strike at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina are expected to return soon as their union and employer wrap up negotiations for a contract that won’t expire until October 2022. It was not immediately clear when the deal will be signed. Among its provisions, the new labor agreement […]

Days before President Donald Trump was expected to decertify Iran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear nonproliferation agreement, the White House tapped longtime House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer Yleem D. S. Poblete to be assistant secretary of state, verification and compliance. The White House announced the nomination online. Poblete spent almost 20 years on the House […]

More than 400 unionized workers at the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico ratified a new three-year labor pact Monday, the Atomic Projects and Production Workers, Metal Trades Council, said Tuesday. “The Collective Bargaining Agreement was accepted by a majority of the membership employed at Sandia National Labs who came out to vote […]

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to go to conference with the Senate on their respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2018, and selected its slate of conferees. The House panel primarily features 31 members of the lower chamber’s Armed Services Committee: 18 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Members of other […]

Honeywell’s decision to spin off three of its business units should not affect the company’s work with the Energy Department, a corporate spokesperson said Tuesday. Honeywell announced Tuesday it will spin off its Homes portfolio and ADI Global Distribution business into a separate home ventilation, security, and fire-protection company, and spin its Transportation Systems segment […]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a vocal advocate for the Energy Department’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and a sometimes-vocal critic of President Donald Trump, spent the U.S. Columbus Day holiday golfing with the commander in chief, multiple news outlets reported. CNN captured video of the senator on the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va. A […]

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is urging the state’s congressional delegation to continue advocating for the MOX project at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site, which is again in danger of being defunded. In a Sept. 14 letter, McMaster provided all lawmakers from the state with a recent report from the governor’s South Carolina Nuclear […]

The Russian Federation sharply cut its number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads over the past six months, putting the nuclear power within 11 warheads of meeting its disarmament obligations under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the U.S. State Department said Monday. The bilateral treaty, known as New START, requires the U.S. and Russia to […]

The leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wants the Government Accountability Office to examine whether the Energy Department’s contractor oversight practices are preventing company’s carrying out projects for the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration from getting work done. The committee is worried that some of the agency’s “burdensome practices” might “limit the efficiency […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily The U.S. Air Force has picked Lockheed Martin and Rockwell Collins to begin designing a replacement for the aging Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS), which allows command-and-control aircraft to launch land-based, nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Rockwell Collins have been awarded three-year contracts valued at $80.8 million and $76.3 million, […]

The Government Accountability Office said the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should draft tighter life-cycle cost and schedule estimates for its nonproliferation programs: something the Energy Department’s semiautonomous nuclear-weapon agency said is difficult to do, given the nature of the work. The NNSA should “require DNN [Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation] programs and subprograms to follow life-cycle […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site downblended 16 kilograms of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium in fiscal 2017, and is expected to nearly double amount in the current budget year. Officials from the South Carolina facility reported the figure last week during a bimonthly meeting of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). Downblending began in September 2016, […]

Several hundred unionized workers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., remained on the job this week after contract negotiations with the lab broke down, and are scheduled to vote on a new labor deal Monday. Sandia and the Atomic Projects and Productions Workers, Metal Trades Council (MTC), “met this week to address remaining issues […]

The Trump administration threw signal after signal this week that it could walk away from an international agreement aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — a deal the president’s own secretary of defense said is good for U.S. national security. The Washington Post reported Thursday that President Donald Trump plans to decertify Iran’s compliance […]

The Energy Department wants to move a lawsuit filed by environmental and anti-nuclear groups that aim to halt construction of new uranium enrichment facilities to a federal court in Tennessee, according to court papers filed last week. DOE wants the lawsuit over the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee moved […]

A Swiss anti-nuclear group that advocated for a United Nations ban on nuclear weapons this summer received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) “is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for […]

The Energy Department as of this week had yet to release a solicitation for the next 10-year contract to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) released a draft solicitation in July, which said the final solicitation for the next management and operations pact for […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily A key House member expressed confidence Sept. 26 that Congress will finish its work on the fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill despite Capitol Hill gridlock on many issues. The optimism from Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC’s) strategic forces panel, came eight days after […]

In a 10-9 vote Tuesday, the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) took a stance against the Energy Department facility’s potential receipt of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany. The decision, which included two abstentions, will now elevate to DOE headquarters for consideration. The Energy Department three years ago announced potential plans for the […]

General Atomics appeared a lock to once again win a contract, potentially worth more than $125 million over five years, to help the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) simulate conditions of a nuclear explosion. The San Diego-based company is the incumbent on the work under a nearly $150-million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract awarded in 2012 […]

As has been expected, the Energy Department on Tuesday issued a six-month extension for the current contract for legacy nuclear cleanup operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The department said Tuesday that Los Alamos National Security, the lab’s management and operations contractor, would also remain its environmental management provider through March […]

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s independent watchdog for defense nuclear sites backed off a formal safety recommendation to the Energy Department here Tuesday, citing a lack of confidence that the measure would better prepare DOE facilities for emergencies. In an open meeting at its headquarters, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) voted 4-1 to […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said it helped South Africa on the road to producing a medical isotope using low-enriched uranium instead of weaponizable highly enriched uranium. The conversion effort wrapped up in August, allowing the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation’s NTP Radioisotopes SOC to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 without highly enriched uranium, […]

Earlier this month, Charles Hopkins was appointed associate administrator for emergency operations at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the U.S. stockpile steward said. Hopkins’ first day was Sept. 5, a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) spokesperson wrote in an email Monday. Hopkins replaced Eric Smith: deputy associate administrator for emergency operations since November. Smith had […]

Workers were evacuated from a high-explosives research area at Los Alamos National Laboratory late last week after lightning apparently sparked a wildfire nearby, the Energy Department disclosed Tuesday. On Thursday, “personnel responded to a wildland fire west of Technical Area (TA) 40,” according to a report published in DOE’s official Occurrence Reporting and Processing System […]

A Japanese newspaper reported the United States and Japan are preparing to extend a longstanding bilateral nuclear-cooperation agreement, which the U.S. State Department would neither confirm nor deny Monday. Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday the Japanese and U.S. governments were “making arrangements to enable the automatic extension” of thei agreement. which was signed in 1988 and set to expire […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily The U.S. Air Force, which awarded two contracts last month to mature designs for the Ground-based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), plans to hold the program’s first major review next month, a program official said Sept. 28. The system requirements review will ensure the prime contractors, Boeing [BA] and Northrop Grumman [NOC], fully […]