Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/9/2015 A former Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) employee must pay over $32,000 in restitution as part of her sentence for embezzling money from the Department of Energy. Theresa Romero, a former office administrative assistant at SNL, used a procurement card issued to her as an employee to make unauthorized purchases between […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/9/2015 Eighteen projects from National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) labs, some of which feature nuclear deterrence and stockpile stewardship applications, have been chosen by an independent panel of judges as finalists for R&D Magazine’s annual R&D 100 Awards, which recognizes “the 100 most innovative technologies and services of the past year,” […]

Staff Reports NS&D Monitor 10/9/2015 Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance for decades and a nationally known peace activist, said he got a home visit on Monday from agents who identified themselves as members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and who wanted to question him about photographs he had […]

NS&D Monitor 10/9/2015 EM Commits to Competing LANL Cleanup Contract The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management on Oct. 2 officially announced that it intends to open for competition the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s post-fiscal 2016 nuclear cleanup contract, after Los Alamos National Security’s $309.8 million “bridge” contract will expire sometime between October 2016 […]

NS&D Monitor 10/9/2015 NSTec Extends 30 Union Contracts at Nevada Site Contracts for the 30 unions representing personnel at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) have been extended, facility management and operations contractor National Security Technologies (NSTec) announced this week. NSTec said it “successfully completed contract negotiations” that resulted in the extension of 28 contracts […]

NS&D Monitor 10/9/2015 IN THE INDUSTRY BWX Technologies (BWXT) announced this week that Rex Geveden will become the company’s chief operating officer later this month. Starting Oct. 26, Geveden will execute BWXT’s government and commercial nuclear operations in the U.S. and Canada, the contractor said. Geveden most recently served as executive vice president at Teledyne […]

ORNL Reaches Tentative Contract With Unions UT-Battelle has reached a tentative agreement on a new five-year contract with unions representing about 700 hourly workers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Steve Jones, president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council, an umbrella labor group that negotiated on behalf of 13 unions at ORNL, confirmed […]

Jeremy L. Dillon NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The National Nuclear Security Administration said this week it has entered into a new cooperative agreement to help finance General Atomics’ molybdenum-99 production technology. The agreement, including a $9.7 million cost-share contribution, marks the fifth such agreement the NNSA has entered into with companies seeking to produce the medical […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 A former employee at the Y-12 National Security Complex filed a legal complaint last Friday against former Y-12 managing contractor BWX Technologies (BWXT) alleging he was unlawfully fired as retaliation for reporting the company’s violations of federal regulations to the Department of Energy (DOE). Michael Doughty, a Y-12 employee since […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The House of Representatives passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2016 yesterday in a 270-156 vote that authorizes President Barack Obama’s total $611.9 billion request for defense discretionary spending. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill next week before sending it to […]

Senate to Vote on Bill Next Week Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 Amid Capitol Hill rumblings of a possible cancellation of the beleaguered Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 passed this week by the House would require Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz to re-baseline project construction and […]

Staff Reports NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 Congress this week passed a continuing resolution (CR) that will fund the federal government through Dec. 11 at fiscal 2015 enacted levels and prevents a government shutdown. The CR, which President Barack Obama signed on Wednesday, provides Congress an additional 10 weeks to work toward a budget solution for fiscal […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 Days after a federal mediator intervened to facilitate labor negotiations between the contractor of the Pantex Plant and unionized workers, negotiations have been temporarily paused. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) announced on Sept. 25 that negotiations were “temporarily recessed . . . to give the parties an opportunity […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is urging the Department of Energy (DOE) to re-evaluate the benefits package at the heart of the strike at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant and calling for special attention toward the facility’s deferred maintenance issues. Unionized workers at the Pantex Plant have […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) said this week it will pay a group of former employees $37.25 million in contract damages to settle a lawsuit in which 130 workers claimed they were unfairly laid off in 2008. The settlement resolves 129 of the claims, while one plaintiff did not […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced last Friday it is inspecting BWX Technologies’ (BWXT) Lynchburg, Va., fuel facility following the discovery of a criticality safety incident. The NRC is investigating “the circumstances surrounding the discovery that workers may have exceeded controls for criticality safety in a production line glovebox,” the […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 A U.S. interagency nonproliferation team that for over two decades did not conduct physical security visits to 11 foreign nuclear sites containing thousands of kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) plans to visit one of the locations in the next six months, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is seeking industry comments on a draft request for proposal for design, integration, construction, communication, and engineering (DICCE2) services in support of the Office of Global Material Security’s Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence (NSDD) Program, according to a notice posted last Friday. DICCE2 services […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Material Management and Minimization returned the final 5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) spent fuel from a research reactor in Uzbekistan to Russia, the NNSA announced this week. The shipment from the IIN-3M “Foton” research reactor in Tashkent, part of a […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) this week honored former director John Foster with the newly established John S. Foster Jr. Medal at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. The medal will be awarded annually “to honor those who have made significant contributions to nuclear security through individual efforts, […]

LLNL Executive Killed in Accident Kathy Baker, chief financial officer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), was killed last week when an elderly woman drove an SUV into a gym where Baker was participating in a class. Five other people suffered nonfatal injuries in the incident. Baker, 49, had worked at LLNL since 2001 and […]

IN THE NAVY The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has awarded BWX Technologies’ (BWXT) Nuclear Operations Group an undisclosed number of contracts worth $34.5 million for nuclear reactor component manufacturing for U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers. Work is already under way, the company said this week, and most of it will be done over the […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 09/25/2015 Funding the $100 billion Ohio Replacement (OR) amid an austere federal budget environment is the leading challenge facing new Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, according to House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Ranking Member Joe Courtney (D-Conn.). Richardson will need to provide “thoughtful and creative solutions” […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/25/2015 The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said this week that its repatriation of about 1 kilogram of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from a Jamaican research reactor to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River Site in South Carolina has made the Caribbean HEU-free. The United States supplied Canada with HEU […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/25/2015 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case files required to be shared between the Department of Energy (DOE) and the White House at times lack “pertinent” documentation, the DOE Inspector General‘s Office (IG) found in a report released this week that reviewed samples of FOIA requests from DOE branches including the […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/25/2015 The Department of Energy (DOE) has called on the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) managing contractor to give greater attention to ensuring the proper execution of corrective actions following misclassification incidents revealed earlier this year, according to an Office of Enforcement letter released this week. The Sept. 18 letter to […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 09/25/2015 A continuing budget resolution set for three months or longer would likely affect the early acquisition stages for the $62.3 billion Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, even though the program is not a new start, Air Force spokesman Ed Gulick said by email on Monday. Continuing resolutions freeze federal funding at the […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/25/2015 The Department of Energy (DOE) and other agencies tasked with conducting global nonproliferation operations have not conducted physical security visits to 11 foreign nuclear sites containing over 3,500 kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) in more than 20 years, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released […]