Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration is shopping around for a new Nevada Field Office headquarters in greater Las Vegas, a federal advisory board heard Wednesday evening. Jill Hruby, who heads DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, is slated to meet with Las Vegas officials next week in Washington, D.C., to discuss a […]

A bill that would have let New Mexico and Los Alamos County tax production of plutonium pits died quietly in the New Mexico legislature after a committee of jurisdiction declined to take up the measure. This week, when the legislative session ended, the bill was still waiting for action in the New Mexico House of […]

Honeywell this month marked its 75th year of work at what is now the Kansas City National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo. Run by the National Nuclear Security Administration today, the campus relocated in 2014 from the old Bannister Federal Complex, portions of which were scheduled for transfer to the Department of Energy’s Office […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority extended a contract for defense uranium processing with BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services, the company announced Wednesday. Under the two year, $122-million extension, Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., will continue converting highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium for use in National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons programs until June […]

The House of Representatives was in no rush this week to consider a Ukraine aid package that would also provide an infusion of funds for monitoring radiological threats in Ukraine combat zones, the Speaker of the House said. “We are not going to be forced into action by the Senate,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the […]

“Downwind” producers said this week their 2023 documentary about the aftermath of decades of nuclear testing at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, can be seen on Peacock, the same platform where the Oscar-nominated blockbuster “Oppenheimer” is available for streaming this weekend. According to a press release, “Downwind” can help the public understand […]

Police in Bellevue, Wash., last month got an alarming call from an Air Force Museum in Ohio, alerting them that a town resident had offered to donate a pre-Vietnam unguided nuclear rocket.  The department’s bomb squad responded to find the remains of an AIR-2 Genie Rocket, produced until 1962. The unguided air-to-air rocket would have […]

The Senate on Thursday cleared a hurdle to vote on a bill that would bolster the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget for monitoring potential radiological threats in Ukrainian combat zones. Senators on Thursday voted 67-32 to end debate on the bill, clearing the way for a final floor vote that was not scheduled at deadline […]

With the Department of Energy still unable to provide needed storage containers, Centrus Energy will not be able to deliver 900 kilograms of high-assay, low-enriched uranium to the U.S. government this year, the company said Friday. The company can make the material, Chief Executive Officer Amir Vexler said Friday on an earnings call with investors […]

Earnings rose at Jacobs, Dallas, in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, which the global engineering, procurement and construction company attributed partly to international infrastructure projects. Tuesday’s press release marked the first earnings results from Jacobs since the company’s Nov. 20 announcement of a plan to merge its government contracting and cyber business lines with Virginia-based Amentum. […]

Mission Support and Test Services is under investigation for two incidents in the summer of 2023 in which falling rock injured employees at the deep-underground explosive testing facility it is building in Nevada for the National Nuclear Security Administration.  The enforcement arm of NNSA’s Office of Enterprise Assessments notified Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS) […]

WASHINGTON — U.S. Strategic Command may accelerate and increase its buys of Raytheon-made AGM-181 Long Range Standoff Weapon cruise missiles beyond the 1,087 now planned, commander Gen. Anthony Cotton said here on Feb. 2. Asked if the command was examining those options, given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s posturing about using low-yield nuclear weapons after his […]

Los Alamos glovebox fire sprinklers could cause criticality, safety watchdog says Los Alamos National Laboratory is trying to prevent accidental criticalities caused when fires inside gloveboxes trigger a building’s sprinkler system, which might allow water to touch fissile material, according to a federal safety watchdog. In a report dated Jan. 19, the National Nuclear Security […]

To account for inflation, the National Nuclear Security Administration has petitioned Congress and been approved to bump up the threshold for minor construction projects to $34 million.  That is up from a $30 million threshold set by the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA also provided the NNSA with “pilot authority” to […]

WASHINGTON — A three-year slip for a new x-ray imager will not necessarily result in a bigger, more massive W93 nuclear warhead, senior officials from Los Alamos National Laboratory said here Thursday. That was a slight change in tune compared with an appraisal one of these people made last year. For the last three years, […]

WASHINGTON — A tech-industry downturn and a federal permission to boost worker compensation helped with hiring at U.S. nuclear-weapons labs, but hanging on to recruits is still tough, the lab directors said here Wednesday. “We’re actually in quite a good place right now,” Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, […]

Departing officers of an advisory board for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said this week they are feeling less anxious about the National Nuclear Security Administration taking over the 310-square-mile property on Oct. 1. That’s when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) , a semi-autonomous branch of DOE, is scheduled […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission found BWX Technologies violated safety protocols in the runup to a fatal 2020 flash fire sparked by exposed wires and alcohol-soaked rags. However, the commission will not fine the company, which has already paid a separate penalty to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an NRC spokesperson […]

The prime contractor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is being investigated for an April incident in which radioactive contamination from the nuclear weapons lab was found on and off-site. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Enterprise Assessments announced its intent to investigate Lawrence Livermore National Security on Jan. 26. Anthony Pierpoint, director […]

WASHINGTON — The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plan to produce 30 nuclear weapon cores annually by 2028 satisfies current military needs, the head of U.S. Strategic Command said here Friday. That date, given earlier in the summit by the head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, “meets my needs in that regard for W87-1” Gen. […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration will extend the Bechtel National-led prime contractor at Y-12 National Security Complex that builds nuclear weapon secondary stages in Tennessee through September 2027, the head of the agency said here Thursday. The agency also plans to extend Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies at the Kansas City National Security […]

WASHINGTON — A three-year slip for a new x-ray imager will not necessarily result in a bigger, more massive W93 nuclear warhead, senior officials from Los Alamos National Laboratory said here Thursday. That was a slight change in tune compared with an appraisal one of these people made last year. For the last three years, […]

About two years after it released a draft of the document, the National Nuclear Security Administration published a final environmental review of its plant to dispose of dozens of tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium. The nuclear weapons agency published its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program (SPDP) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on […]

The annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit, hosted by the Exchange Monitor, kicks off in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday with more than 60 speakers from the top ranks of the U.S.  nuclear security enterprise.  Expect much discussion of the National Nuclear Security Administration striving to produce at least 80 plutonium pits for use in modernizing nuclear weapons […]

Russia has reportedly developed a nuclear war simulator, including blast and mushroom cloud effects, to train troops for fighting after an exchange of nuclear weapons with an adversary. The report comes from state-controlled media outlet Tass and was repeated in U.S. publications including Stars and Stripes. The Tass report comes on the heels of the […]

Senators call out Sentinel delays, overruns in WSJ op-edTwo Republican Senators, both senior members of influential defense committees, on Friday published an op-ed airing concerns that U.S. nuclear modernization is lagging behind its adversaries, particularly the LGM-35 Sentinel. Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), and Deb Fischer […]