Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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 […]

The Department of the Air Force’s $217.5 billion fiscal 2025 budget includes $3.7 billion for the planned LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM as the department looks for cost savings and faces possible delays to address a Nunn-McCurdy breach.Such breaches occur when programs exceed 25% program acquisition unit cost growth.In January, the Air Force informed Congress of a […]

Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) led 24 Democrats who introduced a bill Wednesday that supports the continued value of arms control and condemns Russia for suspending the bilateral New START nuclear arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington. The bill, which was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, calls for the administration of President Joe […]

PHOENIX — The Savannah River Site could send as many as 40 shipments of diluted surplus plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2024, a manager at the Savannah River Site said here. Or maybe half that many, Lee Sims, K Area Facility Manager at Savannah River for the site’s Fluor-led prime contractor, Savannah […]

PHOENIX — The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is about 20% to its goal of adding 600 electric vehicles over the next few years, an executive with the site’s prime contractor said here Tuesday. The site currently has 116 electric vehicles and will add another 44 this year, Mike Swain, executive […]

Leaders of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee said Tuesday they are working on dueling bills to sanction either all, or parts, of Russia’s state-owned nuclear-energy corporation. “I am in the process of drafting a tough sanctions bill that would mandate the administration decouple the U.S. and our allies from Rosatom,” Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) said […]

The Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would extend and expand the federal legislation that financially compensates people harmed by radioactive material used to build the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The measure passed 69-30 with one senator not voting. President Joe Biden (D) on Tuesday said he would sign the bill. “The President believes we have […]

Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), spoke this week at the Second International Symposium on Insider Threat Mitigation in Brussels, which the nuclear-weapons agency co-hosted with the Belgian Federal Agency for Nuclear Control. The NNSA posted Hruby’s prepared remarks online.   During the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors’ meeting […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board continues without a quorum for its role as federal safety watchdog for Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities, and the current chair’s term expires this fall. Designed as a five-person panel, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) still has only two members. A Senate committee has approved a White House […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration wants to hear from entities interested in building a massive, 2,000-acre clean-energy farm to help power the Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas. In an 18-page request for qualifications published Friday, the NNSA said it will choose one or more companies to develop and construct a facility capable of […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration stands to see its roughly $24 billion budget request fulfilled under the compromise funding agreement reached by Congress this week.   The House approved the bill on Wednesday by a vote of 339 to 85, the Senate was still debating the measure at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, […]

The NNSA intends to grant SHINE Technologies cost-share funding to build and operate a new facility for producing the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) without the use of highly-enriched uranium, according to a March 4 filing in the Federal Register. The agency filed an unpublished version of the decision last week. SHINE received a construction permit for […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration stands to see its roughly $24 billion budget request fulfilled under the compromise funding agreement reached by Congress this week.   The bill includes just over $19 billion for NNSA weapons activities and includes a requirement that the agency work with the scientific advisory group JASON to “conduct an assessment of […]

This week, almost halfway through the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, congressional appropriators announced they would pass a final 2024 budget for the Department of Energy and other agencies next week. In the meantime, to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday, when funding for DOE and other agencies was set to expire, Congress […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin is again threatening the use of nuclear weapons – this time overtly – after suggestions from European leaders that Western troops could be deployed to Ukraine in non-combat roles.  During his annual State of the Nation address to the country’s Federal Assembly on Thursday, Putin warned NATO countries that Russia would […]

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) this week implored fellow lawmakers to renew a program to compensate victims of Manhattan Project-era radiation exposure.  In a letter dated Feb. 26, Hawley asked his Senate colleagues to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which he said is “critical funding,” without which citizens exposed to radioactive materials during […]

Nuclear Naval reactor maker BWX Technologies is out of the submarine missile tube building business after completing its contracted work for the U.S. Navy and allied fleets in 2023, the company’s chief executive said on Feb. 27.  BWXT makes Common Missile Compartment tubes at its factory in Mount Vernon, Ind. The tubes are designed to […]

Congressional delay in funding legacy cleanup from nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands — covered in a recent Government Accountability Office report —hurts relations between the United States and the strategically-located Pacific nation, the president of the Marshall Islands told a U.K. newspaper this week. U.S. lawmakers are dragging their feet in funding a […]