Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration will by March issue a final request for proposals for managing the Savannah River Site, according to a Dec. 31 notice. The presolicitation synopsis was posted on the government contracting databases sam.gov and FedConnect just before the New Year.  Jill Hruby, outgoing administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told […]

BWX Technologies last week completed its $100 million acquisition of a specialty materials business of L3Harris Technologies that is the sole provider of depleted uranium to the U.S. government, the companies said on Monday. The deal for the L3Harris Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee (AOT) business was announced November. The AOT business also provides tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, […]

A partial government shutdown loomed after President-elect Donald Trump this week told congressional Republicans to oppose a three-month continuing resolution.  With about 12 hours to go until a shutdown at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, lawmakers were still scrambling to find a bill that could pass the House.  A backstop continuing resolution favored […]

The El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will enter the classified network mid-March 2025, senior Livermore officials told the Exchange Monitor Tuesday at a press tour of the site. Sierra, the current Livermore supercomputer on the classified network, will retire when El Capitan takes over, Terri Quinn, the deputy associate director for high […]

Marvin Adams, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, told the Exchange Monitor Friday that the U.S. does not need to critically test, even in a new administration. “If it’s based on purely technical considerations, we are confident that we can get the information we need staying subcritical,” Adams said. “We […]

Centrus Energy Corp. said its domestic supply chain is in place to produce uranium usable in defense programs.  A spokesperson for Centrus told the Exchange Monitor in an email last week that Centrus’ manufacturing supply chain spans 13 states and 14 major suppliers, all of which are American companies.  “That gives us the ability to […]

Roger Rocha was appointed president of the prime contractor at Nevada National Security Site effective Monday, the site announced in a press release Monday. Rocha, the interim president since September when his predecessor resigned, now will take responsibility for all activities overseen by the Honeywell-led Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS) at the Nevada National […]

Federal and state agencies on Tuesday said they did not look for a radiation source, since recovered, that went missing in New Jersey earlier this month. Spokespersons for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection all said in emails Tuesday that they did […]

LIVERMORE, Ca. — The W80-4 warhead’s final design reviews are complete and its first production unit is still on track for fiscal year 2027, a senior official at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory official told the Exchange Monitor here Tuesday. “We’re in a phase called production engineering,” Brad Wallin, Livermore’s deputy director for strategic deterrence, […]

An executive with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, Johney Green, will be the new head of the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, Battelle said last week. Battelle Savannah River Alliance said in a Dec. 13 press release it chose Green, the associate laboratory director for mechanical and thermal […]

The Senate on Tuesday passed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, setting spending limits for nuclear weapons and waste programs and tinkering with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s authorizing law. The Senate approved the bill 85-14. Voting no were three Republicans, 10 Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats. President Joe Biden (D) had […]

MERCURY, Nev. — The next subcritical experiment in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Nimble is scheduled to fire in April, senior officials at the Nevada National Security Site site told the Exchange Monitor Wednesday. The experiment, named Nob Hill, would be the second in the three-shot series of experiments. The first experiment, called Twin Peaks, took […]

LIVERMORE, Ca. — With development of the Sentinel missile largely paused, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory here is doing what “relevant flight testing” it can on the missile’s W87-0 warhead, a senior lab official at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told the Exchange Monitor Tuesday.  “There have not been Sentinel flights associated with it [the […]

MERCURY, Nev. — The next U.S. laboratory for testing nuclear weapons without nuclear explosions will be done a year or two sooner but cost more than forecast this spring, officials said here Wednesday. The officials spoke to the Exchange Monitor and other media outlets during a press tour of the Nevada National Security Site, organized […]

In observance of Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not publish on Friday, Dec. 27 or Friday, Jan. 3. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Jan. 10. 

The National Nuclear Security Administration said it would update its strategy for disposing of defense nuclear waste in 2026, according to its response to a report by the Government Accountability Office. On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on what it called “shortfalls” in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) waste disposal […]

With time expiring soon on this congressional session, a longtime federal manager is still awaiting Senate confirmation to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The nomination of William “Ike” White to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) was unanimously endorsed by the Senate Armed Services Committee in September. The full Senate has yet to […]

The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which the House passed on Wednesday, would set the National Nuclear Security Administration’s spending cap at $24.9 billion for the fiscal year. The number, hashed out last weekend behind closed doors by a bicameral conference committee, is only about 0.2%, or $57 million, less than what the White House […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s probe into Syria’s potential nuclear weapons activities paused when rebels took control of the Syrian capital and forced its former dictator to flee. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a presentation in Oslo, Norway Wednesday that Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad gave the nuclear […]

The rear of an International Atomic Energy Agency vehicle was destroyed by a Kamikaze drone during a rotation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, the agency said in a release Tuesday. Personnel from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a driver and a security officer, were unharmed, IAEA said. The incident occurred almost five miles […]

Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko said this week that “several dozen” Russian nuclear warheads are deployed in his country, according to state-owned news agency BELTA Tuesday. “I have brought nuclear warheads here. … Many people are writing: ‘It’s a joke. No one has moved anything anywhere.’ They have. The fact they think it’s a joke means […]

As of Dec. 1, the New Mexico Environment Department has 27 pages of emails with comments on the Department of Energy’s plan to define legacy transuranic waste for disposal at DOE’s deep underground disposal site near Carlsbad, N.M. Most early comments are from individuals, not organizations, but follow a similar theme. Some commenters say the […]

The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the National Nuclear Security Administration’s spending cap at $24.9 billion, passed the House 281-140 this week. The bill now heads to the Senate, which is still controlled by a 51-member majority of Democrats and Democratically aligned Senators in the lame duck session that will end in a […]

Four Australian companies received Australian government contracts for a qualification process that will eventually let them work in and contribute to U.S. and U.K. submarine supply chains, the government in Canberra said this week. These four approvals, announced Wednesday, will allow the companies to manufacture samples of standard U.S. Navy valves and pipe fittings as […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration posted a source sought notice on sam.gov Tuesday for a contractor to purify and reprocess lithium hydride that the agency produces. Lithium is a component of producing tritium, which is used in the thermonuclear weapons maintained by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). According to the notice, NNSA targets recycling […]

The White House Office of Management and Budget last week requested another $1.59 billion from Congress to continue building the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. A senior Navy official told reporters Monday that OMB requested two anomalies divided into $1.59 billion to continue the Columbia-class (SSBN) program during a continuing resolution. The SSBN anomaly is aimed […]

In a bid to increase capacity and accelerate production of submarines for the Navy, Huntington Ingalls Industries has agreed to acquire the assets of W International. W International is a 500-employee strong metal fabricator that already supports the submarine industrial base with structures, modules, and assemblies. The deal for the South Carolina-based company is expected […]

Santa Fe County commissioners met this week with a coalition for the Caja del Rio plateau that has proposed making the plateau near the Los Alamos National Laboratory a monument, one of them said Wednesday. Commissioner Anna Hansen told the Monitor about Wednesday’s meeting in an email the week after the local Santa Fe New […]