Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

At the last minute Dec. 9, after deadline for last week’s issue of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, the Senate passed a stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government open and funded at fiscal 2016 levels through April 28. An earlier stopgap bill, known officially as a continuing resolution, was set to expire at […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday said it had awarded the management and operations contract for the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) to National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (NTESS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International. Northrop Grumman and the Universities Research Association consortium will support NTESS under the contract, which, with all […]

Lockheed Martin said Thursday it began work in November on a $50 million contract to supply Minuteman III ICBM support technology. The defense contractor secured the four-year, firm-fixed-price deal in June for seven sets of ICBM re-entry system equipment and four additional units of support gear, according to a Lockheed press release. The equipment will […]

Rich Abott Defense Daily The U.S. Navy awarded BAE Systems a $368 million five-year contract to provide systems engineering and support services to the service’s Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) office, which covers strategic and attack weapons systems on U.S. and U.K. ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), the company said Wednesday. SSP specifically overseas the Strategic Weapons System and […]

Calvin Biesecker Defense Daily Boeing on Tuesday said it plans to move the headquarters of its St. Louis-based Defense, Space & Security segment to the Washington, D.C., area in January to be closer to its customers. The initial move next month will involve about a dozen people, including Boeing’s Defense Chief Leanne Caret. Over time, the […]

A new report from the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) suggests confidence-building and transparency measures to prevent miscalculations between Russia and the West, and thereby reduce nuclear risk, in light of current political tensions and the deteriorating U.S.-Russian relationship. The recommendations in NTI’s Rising Nuclear Dangers: Steps to Reduce Risks in the Euro-Atlantic Region are […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has processed 2 kilograms of plutonium since beginning its program in September to permanently dispose of 6 metric tons of excess non-pit material, according to DOE. The site said Sept. 30 its personnel had begun downblending the material at the site’s K Area Complex. After dilution, […]

A federal judge has partially dismissed claims that the Savannah River Site’s primary contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), and one of its parent companies, Fluor Federal Services (FFS), unjustly benefited from their contract with the Department of Energy. On March 18, the U.S. Department of Justice sued SRNS, the management and operations contractor for […]

A senior National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) official said Monday that fostering nuclear security relationships between U.S. and Russian technical experts, as was done in the 1990s, would play a significant role in restoring otherwise chilly relations between the two countries. “There is a quality to science-to-science relationships that transcends a lot of the political […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) received $39.2 million, or 87 percent, of its annual award fee for fiscal 2016 from the Department of Energy – a total amount earned for both its Environmental Management (EM) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) missions. The Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor could have earned up to […]

The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded $10 million in Phase II funding to SHINE Medical Technologies as part of the agency’s program to promote a domestic supply of molybdenum-99 (mo-99). The funding is part of a cooperative agreement, which involved a 50-50 cost-sharing arrangement between SHINE and DOE. The recent award […]

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, announced this week as the nominee to become energy secretary in the Donald Trump administration, would be responsible for a massive program to ensure the reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, sparking debate about whether he is qualified for the role – and whether management skill and bureaucratic experience matter […]

The Energy Department is scrapping a never-used step in the Savannah River Site’s spent nuclear fuel (SNF) processing campaign following a potential inadequacy at the site’s L Area, where the fuel is stored. Maxine Maxted, the site’s program manager for SNF, addressed the issue Tuesday during a meeting of the Nuclear Materials Committee of the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is accepting bids for the new contract to provide protective force services at the agency’s Nevada National Security Site. The contract would feature a one-year base period, from June 1, 2017, to May 31, 2018, followed by four single-year option periods through the end of May 2022, says the request […]

VIENNA — Governments, industry, and international organizations should work together to boost the cyber defense capabilities at nuclear facilities worldwide, according to a report from the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), released at a Wednesday side event during the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Conference on Nuclear Security. NTI’s Outpacing Cyber Threats report says traditional cyber defense methods at […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) found deficiencies in Consolidated Nuclear Security’s (CNS) procedures to guide employees at the Pantex Plant in Texas on the proper disposal of classified information, resulting in four security incidents in recent years, according to a Nov. 30 enforcement letter to Morgan Smith, CNS president and chief executive. The […]

Vienna – The United States and Russia have not held any discussions about resuming full implementation of the bilateral plutonium elimination agreement that Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended in early October, a senior U.S. State Department official said here Wednesday. Thomas Countryman, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an […]

VIENNA – A top Interpol official said Tuesday that funding for the global police organization’s CBRNE defense operations is a matter of concern given its work in building the capacity of law enforcement agencies worldwide to prevent acts of nuclear or radiological terrorism. Doug Ledingham, acting assistant director of Interpol’s CBRNE subdirectorate – which focuses on the threat […]

VIENNA – The role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the global nuclear security architecture is taking further shape as it inherits the commitments of its member states from the defunct Nuclear Security Summit process and adapts to expectations for a mission expanding beyond its traditional nuclear safeguards and security work. A series […]

With just a handful of days left until the end of the 114th Congress, a number of bills filed this year on U.S. nuclear security and nonproliferation are on the precipice of failure. Many of the bills made little progress through the legislative process – though in a couple instances this was seemingly intentional. Amid Republican […]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 92-7 to approve the conference version of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, sending it to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature. The compromise bill authorizes nearly $619 billion in spending through the end of the budget year on Sept. 30, the vast majority at the […]

A government shutdown loomed Friday as some Senate Democrats held hostage a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government and its Cold War nuclear cleanup work funded through late April. The House passed the so-called continuing resolution Thursday, then adjourned for the week. In the Senate, however, Democratic lawmakers led by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) […]

Slashing the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is one option to save tens of billions of dollars in the coming decade for efforts to reduce the growing federal deficit, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday. The CBO’s latest analysis of deficit-cutting opportunities covers the 2017 to 2026 fiscal years and encompasses 115 options to […]

The conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, which the House of Representatives approved Friday, strips out language from an earlier version of the bill that could have given the Energy Department a route to kill the embattled MOX project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In its last budget […]

With the impending ascension of former NASA hand Rex Geveden to the top spot at BWX Technologies, the Lynchburg, Va.-company has set an outsider from the aerospace business in charge of an effort to grow the company’s legacy nuclear cleanup business with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. “We remain strongly committed to that […]

Nuclear Navy vet Don Hoffman, longtime president of Excel Services Corp., in Rockville, Md., is reportedly out of the running to head the Department of Energy’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations, and Eric Knox, a former Energy Department civil servant with ties to the Yucca Mountain, is rumored to be in consideration, sources in Washington said […]

Marc Selinger Defense Daily Six senators and 33 House members have signed letters urging key congressional appropriators to pass language allowing the successor to the Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine to enter its next development phase. Navy officials have said the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) must begin detailed design work by January to meet a requirement […]