Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

In a series of agreements, President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman finalized and signed a Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, according to a White House fact sheet released Tuesday. The Joint Declaration on the Completion of Negotiations on Civil Nuclear Energy Cooperation, as it is called, cements a “civil” nuclear energy partnership […]

Government and commercial imagery could help fill a void in on-site nuclear inspections, given the upcoming lapse in the New Strategic Arms Reduction (New START) Treaty protocol next February, a new report by the Federation of American Scientists said. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a nonproliferation-focused nonprofit founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists, […]

The Department of Energy told the Exchange Monitor Monday that, despite media outlets saying otherwise, President Donald Trump will not be meeting in the Oval Office with high-level nuclear weapons complex officials. News outlets such as CNN reported Friday that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) head Brandon Williams, and officials […]

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled the lawyers who successfully sued the Department of Energy over the Savannah River Site’s mismanaged Mixed Oxide (MOX) plutonium facility are entitled to $75 million of the $600 million settlement the state received.  The ruling was issued last Wednesday Nov. 12. South Carolina has litigation against DOE dating to […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has awarded California-based defense technology company Anduril with a $140 million contract to procure counter uncrewed aircraft systems (CUAS) on four sites, a procurement notice site said last week. CUAS is a capability used to detect and neutralize hostile drone threats with airspace security and sensors, usually.  The indefinite […]

Diana Toebbe, the wife in the husband-and-wife duo sentenced for conspiracy charges related to nuclear warships, has an appeal pending in a West Virginia federal district court, a document says. Diana and her husband Jonathan Toebbe, a naval nuclear engineer in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, are a Maryland couple sentenced in 2022 for allegedly […]

The Navy on Monday awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat a $2.28 billion cost-only modification covering additional advance procurement and advance construction of five more Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine hulls. The contract announcement noted this award also supports additional program execution in accordance with a Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement focused on “Obligations in Advance of […]

The Army and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) are requesting bids to provide nuclear power plant energy solutions that would be demonstrated on a military installation within the U.S. by 2030. The goal of the effort, named the Janus program, is to develop prototype Microreactor Power Plants (MPPs) to provide power to “installations and non-permanent operations” […]

Nuclear fuel reprocessing is an overpriced distraction that will slow down nuclear innovation and derail United States’s nuclear leadership if practiced, a former Department of Energy (DOE) official wrote in an opinion piece this week. In a Monday op-ed piece posted on Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) website, Ross Matzkin-Bridger, senior director of NTI’s Nuclear Materials […]

Laura McGill, director of Sandia National Laboratories, announced Thursday she was “absolutely confident” in the nation’s nuclear stockpile and had completed the lab’s annual certification of the stockpile. The stockpile assessment letter, which is addressed to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and will then go to Congress and the President, was finalized Sept. 22, the […]

BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., has appointed Toby Smith as its new senior vice president and general counsel, replacing Ronald (Chip) Whitford, the company said last week. BWXT expects that Whitford will stay on in an advisory role through early 2026, the company said in a Nov. 6 press release. BWXT said Smith has logged more […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – One or two advanced reactor pilot projects should reach criticality by next July Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said here Monday at the American Nuclear Society conference. In June, the Department of Energy, sparked by President Donald Trump’s May 23 executive orders, created an advanced nuclear reactor pilot program. Under the program, […]

Rather than a test silo, the Air Force will use a launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., for the first flight test of an unarmed LGM-35A Sentinel missile by Northrop Grumman. “The first flight test was moved to a pad launch to allow for a more incremental approach to flight testing,” the Air […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Republican chairs of Senate and House Appropriations subcommittees for Energy and Water expect to hold a conference meeting in late January to blend their two versions of a fiscal 2026 spending plan, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), said  Monday. Fleischmann, the chair of the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee, said he and […]

The Australian government early this month announced a strategic contract setting up an industry partnership that will potentially see Australian battery technology used in the SSN-AUKUS submarine design.  The Australian-based PMB Defense is partnering with the United Kingdom’s BAE Systems in contracts worth over $34 million in U.S. dollars to enable potential integration of its […]

President Donald Trump’s White House statements during Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent visit confirmed Trump supports advancing AUKUS, regardless of an ongoing Department of Defense review, a DoD nominee said last week.  Austin Dahmer, nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities, made these comments during his testimony to the […]

Ernest Moniz, former energy secretary and head of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour returning to explosive nuclear testing would have a “quite terrible” impact “on multiple dimensions.” When asked about President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would return to nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Sandia National Laboratories announced Thursday it conducted a flight test of the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb on an F-35 aircraft in August. The flight tests took place at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, with aircraft generation from Hill Air Force Base in Utah, a press release from Sandia said. […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Contractors in the nuclear weapons complex have come out of the shutdown relatively unscathed, although it could take months to catch up on work around the Department of Energy sites, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) told the Exchange Monitor this week.  Fleischmann, chair of the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee, shared his […]

The House voted 222-209 Wednesday to approve a stopgap spending bill that will fund the government until Jan. 30 with a loose promise from the GOP that Congress will negotiate on healthcare once the government reopens. The continuing resolution (CR), alongside a three-bill spending package, headed to President Donald Trump’s desk shortly after the House […]

Brendan Rogers, nominated to be assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, promoted small modular reactors (SMRs) as a viable option to power military installations at a Senate nomination hearing last week. Rogers said SMRs had “great potential” and if confirmed, would look for ways to implement the new nuclear technology to […]

Earnings rose at Centrus Energy, based in Bethesda, Md., in the third quarter, which the uranium broker and enrichment developer attributed to an increase in the volume of uranium sold. Net earnings for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 were $3.9 million, or $0.19 a diluted share, up from a net loss of $5 million […]

Earnings fell at Fluor, Irving, Texas, in the third quarter, which the international engineering and construction company chalked up to a court ruling and the declining share price for Fluor-backed NuScale Power. The biggest blow to earnings was an adverse court decision of $653 million in a completed infrastructure project in Australia, according to Fluor’s […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) last Thursday Oct. 30 posted strong third quarter results on ample top and bottom-line performance at its shipbuilding operations combined with a solid contribution from the Mission Technologies segment. Net income jumped 44% to $145 million, $3.68 earnings per share (EPS), from $101 million ($2.56 EPS), handily topping consensus estimates by […]

President Donald Trump last week announced South Korea will build a nuclear-powered submarine in Philadelphia, with the U.S. sharing sensitive technology with South Korea akin to the AUKUS agreement. “South Korea will be building its Nuclear Powered Submarine in the Philadelphia Shipyards, right here in the good ol’ U.S.A. Shipbuilding in our Country will soon […]

Earnings rose significantly at BWX Technologies (BWXT), Lynchburg, Va., in the third quarter, which the company attributed to its “differentiating nuclear credentials” and some multi-year, special materials contracts it received. “The demand environment for nuclear solutions in defense, clean energy, and medical markets is unprecedented,” Rex Geveden, president and CEO of BWXT, said in the […]

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would test nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with other countries, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright clarified this did not mean explosive tests. “I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests,” Wright said in the interview last week on […]