Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Department of Energy’s inspector general questioned $34,796 in unallowable costs paid for 330.5 overtime hours at the Sandia National Laboratories’ badge office in Albuquerque, N.M., according to a report dated April 1 and published this week. The report detailed the results of an investigation into time card irregularities, which the Inspector General’s office conducted […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned in June to award a one-year contract to study a pilot defense-uranium enrichment plant based on technology developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the agency said Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency narrowed the timeline for the award in a question-and-answer document published on a […]

The Department of Energy plans to use Aptim, one of nine companies selected in a national solicitation in 2020, as its decommissioning and demolition contractor for Building 281 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. DOE published a justification for not doing additional competitive bidding for the work, worth up to $22.1 million, in […]

The Department of Energy is giving bidders on the $2.9-billion Portsmouth / Paducah Project Office (PPPO) Operations and Site Mission Support contract until April 17 to tweak their proposals, sources tell Exchange Monitor. The contract will mostly cover cleanup of Cold War-era uranium hexafluoride in Ohio and Kentucky, but it will also include production of depleted […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments will investigate the prime contractor of the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., for allowing “an unauthorized bluetooth-enabled electronic device” into an area where such devices are prohibited, according to a letter dated March 22 and published this week on the DOE’s website. The incident occurred in […]

Site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security planned a fundraiser Thursday to help cover some of the damages caused by recent wildfires near the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, the joint venture said in a press release. The fires, which drew the attention of major news outlets, forced Pantex, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear-weapons service center, to briefly shut […]

April 15 is the new deadline for potential developers of carbon-free energy projects to respond to a request for qualifications at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site. Sunday March 31 was the prior deadline for responses to the request for qualifications (RFQ) announced March 1 for clean power projects of 200 MW or more […]

Claudia Jaramillo, Jacobs Solutions’ chief financial officer, will leave the Dallas-based company effective April 15 after less than a year in the job, the company announced Monday in a regulatory filing. Jaramillo “is departing the Company to pursue other opportunities,” Jacobs wrote in a press release distributed Monday. She became Jacobs’ chief financial officer on Aug. […]

The separation of the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee took a baby step forward this week with the opening of separate federal field offices for the nuclear-weapons production sites. Consolidated Nuclear Security, still the joint operations contractor for the two sites, announced the split on Tuesday in a […]

Environmentalists suing the federal government got two more weeks to file briefs in their case about a planned South Carolina plutonium pit factory, according to an order filed late last week. The case, involving the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) plans to make nuclear weapon first-stage cores in South Carolina and New Mexico, has been […]

During 2023, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board advised the Department of Energy on issues ranging from on-site transportation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to overseeing aging nuclear infrastructure across the weapons complex. Those are some highlights of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB)’s 34th Annual Report to Congress published March 18. DOE […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Tuesday officially announced Michael Mikolanis as its new top federal official at the agency’s Savannah River Site field office near Aiken, S.C. The Exchange Monitor reported in December that Mikolanis would make the move to the Savannah River Site from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The NNSA announced Mikolanis’ […]

President Joe Biden requested $47.2 million for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for the 2025 fiscal year starting Oct, 1, or $5.2 million than the $42 million recently appropriated by congress for the small watchdog agency in fiscal 2024. The White House requested the $47.2 million and the equivalent of 128 full-time staff positions, […]

Although congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a major fiscal 2024 appropriations bill over the weekend, it did not include an extension of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), said via social media. “Total failure,” Hawley said last on the website X after learning the radiation compensation extension would not make it into […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Saturday signed a package of appropriations bills that fund the Department of Defense and other agencies through Sept. 30 and extended a key federal nuclear indemnity program. The bill extended Price-Anderson protections for Department of Energy contractors and commercial nuclear companies to Dec. 31, 2065 from Dec. 31, 2025 and […]

Settlement talks collapsed weeks ago between the Department of Energy and environmental groups who sued the agency over its plan to produce nuclear-weapons cores in South Carolina, a Tuesday court filing shows. “Both parties were hopeful that the nearly two-month mediation process would bear fruit and focused their attention on those settlement efforts,” Todd Kim, […]

Speed cameras will soon be installed to help curb speeding and aggressive driving along the truck route at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top local fed told county officials last week. The laboratory is “finding ways to try and better manage traffic flow,” National Nuclear Security Administration […]

The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is drafting its formal response to public comments filed on the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration field office said last week. The environmental assessment public comment period ended Feb. 20 on the upgrade project for the […]

Frank Rose, principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, will leave the nuclear weapons agency this spring, his boss said Tuesday in an all-hands email. “Principal Deputy Administrator Frank Rose will be leaving,” National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby wrote in the email. “Frank has been an energetic and deeply valued […]

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday he’s “optimistic” Congress will take action on the pending supplemental with further aid for Ukraine, while adding that Kyiv’s “survival is in danger” in its fight against Russia’s ongoing invasion. “I am optimistic that we will see some action [on the supplemental] moving forward. But, again, this is a […]

The U.N. Security Council met this week in New York to discuss, among other things, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The U.N. released a summary press release of a portion of the meeting, in which U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned that “geopolitical tensions [are] escalating the risk of nuclear warfare to […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration last week solicited bids for a one-year study about a pilot plant to test defense uranium-enrichment technology developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Bids are due April 15, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wrote in a procurement notice posted online March 15 for the firm-fixed-price NNSA Domestic Uranium […]

A federal nuclear liability shield would be extended for 40 years and quadruple the value of federal indemnity for nuclear incidents outside the U.S. if a 2024 appropriations bill passed by the House Friday becomes law. The language in the appropriations package that funds the Department of Defense and several other agencies would extend the […]

A new cost and schedule estimate for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s new factory for nuclear weapon secondary stages will be done “soon” and will not change the scope of the project, the secretary of energy said this week in congressional testimony. The “baseline change proposal” for the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National […]

Michael Moulin-Ramsden, a former Veolia Nuclear Solutions manager, joined Alpha Safety last month as its director of business development for the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, according to a LinkedIn post. Moulin-Ramsden, who spent about eight years with Veolia in business development roles, is also a founding director of a consulting firm, Haslam Advisory Ltd. Alpha, […]

The White House this week requested about $25 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, more than $860 million, or 3.6%, above the 2024 appropriation signed into law late last week. The agency also said in the budget request that the cost of a planned South Carolina facility to make the nuclear-weapon first-stage cores called […]