Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The head of U.S. military forces in Europe said Tuesday the United States should do more to bring Russia back into compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty; former U.S. officials on Thursday then discouraged a “tit-for-tat” response and gave their own suggestions to the new administration. The Trump administration has determined that Russia is […]

Pat Host Defense Daily Most Republicans at Heather Wilson’s confirmation hearing to become the next Air Force secretary seemed largely uninterested in probing her alleged ethics missteps, instead saluting her experience and supporting her nomination. Aside from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) inquires, it was Democrats, led by Ranking Member Jack Reed […]

Redacted documents released to a nuclear watchdog group show that the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will receive shipments of plutonium, uranium, and other nuclear materials for the next 15-plus years, with no current disposition pathway for much of the material already stored on-site. Savannah River Site Watch in January received via a Freedom […]

The Government Accountability Office said this week it has accepted a request from two senior Democrats in the House of Representatives to study the value of a new nuclear warhead that would be manufactured to fit onto both ICBMs and sea-launched ballistic missiles. At issue is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s first “interoperable warhead,” or […]

The United Nations General Assembly this week began substantive negotiations on a draft of a legally binding global prohibition on nuclear weapons, which the official nuclear-weapon states condemned and boycotted. Elayne Whyte Gomez, ambassador of Costa Rica to the U.N. Office in Geneva and president of the ban treaty conference, said Thursday that over 115 states […]

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting the U.S. nuclear deterrent during […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is after the Energy Department for a long-overdue update on the agency’s plan to tighten emergency preparedness at active and former nuclear weapons sites. Sean Sullivan, appointed DNFSB chairman by President Donald Trump in January, made the request in a Feb. 16 letter to then-acting Energy Secretary Grace […]

The prime contractor at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina illegally fired an employee in 2014 for cooperating with a congressionally led investigation into whistleblower retaliation at the site, according to DOE’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. The quasi-judicial Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) subsequently ordered Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) […]

In a message that was fundamentally preordained, the Trump administration on Thursday officially made clear that it opposes a treaty for a global ban on nuclear weapons, which will be debated next week at the United Nations. “We recently met with Ambassadors about the upcoming conference to establish a treaty banning nuclear weapons,” U.S. Ambassador […]

The Nuclear Threat Initiative has named former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz its new chief executive officer and co-chairman of its Board of Directors. Moniz, a Ph.D. physicist, served under the Barack Obama administration as head of the Department of Energy from 2013 to 2017. He left his position upon the inauguration of President […]

U.S. and international officials are wrestling with the question of what the State Department funding cuts the White House proposed last week would mean for U.S. diplomacy worldwide. In the fiscal 2018 budget blueprint released last week, the White House requested $25.6 billion in base funding for the State Department, or 28 percent less than […]

Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday reaffirmed the necessity of sustaining all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad and indicated the “level” of that deterrent is under consideration. “The need for a nuclear deterrent . . . requires a triad,” Mattis said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. “To determine what […]

The Trump administration is reconsidering every piece of U.S. nuclear arms policy – even the broad end goal of global nuclear disarmament – in its upcoming Nuclear Posture Review, a senior National Security Council official said Tuesday. “We’re being encouraged . . . to do a real honest-to-God, bottom-up review, to rethink things from the […]

The international community is concerned about the future of arms control, particularly the fate of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) – issues that featured prominently during this week’s Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. The INF Treaty prohibits the fielding of ground-based cruise and ballistic […]

New Mexico Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall on Tuesday introduced a resolution that calls on the secretary of the Navy to name the next nuclear submarine the “USS Los Alamos” in honor of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s contributions to the service. The senators’ press release noted that 2018 will be the 75th anniversary […]

A federal judge on Monday ordered that 1 metric ton of plutonium be removed from South Carolina, but did not set a schedule for that to happen because she wants the Energy Department and the state – the two sides in a year-old lawsuit – to make that determination together over the next month. The […]

An advisory committee to the Savannah River Site is scheduled next week to discuss an international program that has previously sent, and is expected to continue sending, controversial shipments of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from other countries to the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. The SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) will on March […]

CB&I AREVA MOX Services, the contractor managing construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility near Aiken, S.C., said in a new letter to the National Nuclear Security Administration that the agency is attempting to terminate the project through a campaign of consistent obstruction. NS&D Monitor obtained the March 8 letter, a response to the […]

Until he joined the newly spun-off BWX Technologies in late 2015 as chief operating officer, former NASA hand Rex Geveden hadn’t had much to do with nuclear anything since supporting fast-breeder reactor research during his student days at the Argonne National Laboratory. That’s the sort of resume gap that was never likely to fly under […]

A group of Democratic senators sent a letter Tuesday to the secretaries of defense and energy to express their opposition to recent recommendations made by the Defense Science Board on low-yield nuclear weapons and full-scale nuclear testing. The letter, penned by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and 12 other lawmakers, highlights a December report by the independent […]

The Trump administration’s budget outline for 2018 proposes an 11 percent funding increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration while cutting overall funding for the Department of Energy. The White House released the budget blueprint Thursday, requesting $28 billion for DOE, down $1.7 billion or 5.6 percent from its 2017 annualized level under the continuing […]

Motor carriers of radioactive sources are not directly inspected for compliance with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s security requirements, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released last week. Radioactive sources, used worldwide for medical, industrial, research, and other applications, are vulnerable to theft by groups seeking to create radiological “dirty bombs,” or devices that […]

South Carolina and the federal government are in talks on a potential settlement for a lawsuit in which the state alleged the government breached an agreement by not processing plutonium through the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in February 2016 sued the Energy Department, then-Energy Secretary […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily The U.S. Navy loaded the first two life-extended Trident II D-5 ballistic missiles on an Ohio-class submarine last month, a service official said March 8. The event was a “significant milestone” for the nuclear-armed missile, said Adm. Bill Moran, vice chief of naval operations, who testified before the House Armed Services […]

Members of the Defense Science Board suggested Thursday that the United States keep its options open for someday enhancing the mission of the nuclear enterprise with activities including design competitions, resumed nuclear testing, and lower-yield warheads. The Defense Science Board is an independent expert advisory committee for the secretary of defense that currently has 46 […]

There is no more room to delay construction and deployment of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine if the United States is to maintain a continually viable sea-based nuclear deterrent, the former head of the program said last week. The U.S. Navy’s current fleet of 14 Ohio-class submarines will begin to retire about a decade from […]

The vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed Wednesday that Russia has deployed a land-based cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and that the Pentagon’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review will cover options for a U.S. response. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said at a House Armed Services […]