Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Current and former nuclear weapons workers in the Greater Denver area are invited by the Department of Labor to show up at a Sept. 12 information session on federal occupational illness benefits. Labor Department representatives will be on hand at the Arvada, Colo., session to help attendees with filing new claims or assisting with existing […]

Bill Richardson, a secretary of energy during the Bill Clinton administration who at various points of his career was a Democratic congressman and New Mexico governor, and became something of a specialist in international hostage negotiation, died Sept. 1 at age 75, according to major media accounts. Richardson was first elected to Congress in 1982 and represented New Mexico’s […]

U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command and the U.S. Space Force’s 30th Space Launch Delta Guardians launched an unarmed Boeing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with three test re-entry vehicles on Sept. 6 from Vandenberg Space Force Base. “The ICBM’s reentry vehicle traveled approximately 4,200 miles to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands,” […]

President Joe Biden recently nominated the reliably anti-nuclear appropriator Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) as one of this year’s U.S. representatives to the United Nations from Congress. If confirmed by the Senate, Lee would represent the U.S. during the 78th U.N. General Assembly, which opened Sept. 5. High-level meetings among world leaders are scheduled for Sept. […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security said Tuesday it is looking for construction contractors to split a multiple award task order contract at the Pantex Plant in Texas that could be worth up to $600 million over 10 years. The contract includes a five-year base period worth $300 million and five one-year options worth $60 million each, according […]

Sen. Roger Wicker, (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers, (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, on Friday sent a letter to Strategic Command (STRATCOM), “demanding a full accounting of why an Iranian propagandist and former regime official participated as a keynote speaker in a STRATCOM-sponsored event.” […]

Nuclear reactor maker BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., this week pulled in a potentially $100-plus million contract to process unusable, government-owned material into uranium reactor fuel.  The new contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration, with $47 million of guaranteed money and worth $116.5 million with options, will allow the company, which builds nuclear propulsion systems […]

The three members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recently visited the Savannah River National Security Site to examine personnel safety controls for a planned facility expected to churn out at least 50 nuclear warhead cores annually next decade. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) “has been reviewing the design of the Savannah […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration mismanaged development of two machines used to measure the explosive power of nuclear weapons, leading to program delays and cost overruns, the Government Accountability Office found in a recent report.  To continue its long-running program to test the effectiveness of nuclear weapons without actually detonating one, the NNSA established the […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Processing Facility is structurally sound enough to withstand potential seismic events, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board found in a recent study of the building.  The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has worked with the Department of Energy on the seismic safety of PF-4 and Los Alamos since […]

Linda Bauer, former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory deputy director, will lead a new effort to write a “blueprint” for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s production and science & technology infrastructure.  NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby announced the campaign to “keep pace with the dynamic global environment” in an internal email seen by the Exchange Monitor on […]

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will be not be published on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023 and Friday, Aug. 25, 2023, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess.

Consolidated Nuclear Security set up a reliable fire suppression system and procedures at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., according to a recent assessment by the Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. The Bechtel National-led site prime contractor “has established a comprehensive sitewide [fire protection program] and policy to ensure the […]

Construction continues around the clock on the High Explosives Science and Engineering facility at the Pantex Plant in Texas, where the first of three massive concrete slabs were recently poured during an all-night construction binge. Crews recently placed the first of three 2-foot-thick concrete mat slabs at the High Explosives Science and Engineering (HESE) project’s […]

A federal judge will rule on a request from Consolidated Nuclear Security to throw out a suit brought by employees who allege, in a suit that has ground on for three years amid the plaintiffs’ failure to retain a lawyer, that the contractor improperly withheld wages from workers in Tennessee. Judge Katherine Crytzer did not […]

A National Nuclear Security Administration facility in Albuquerque, N.M., received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a first for any of the agency’s roughly 1,000 buildings. The John A. Gordon Albuquerque Complex Facility, a satellite campus that provides high-performance computing, research and engineering capabilities to nearby Los […]

After almost four years on the job, Philip Strawbridge on Aug. 4 announced he would retire as Centrus Energy Corp.’s chief financial officer by the end of the month. Strawbridge, who was 64 when he took the job, has served as a senior vice president, chief financial officer, chief administrative officer and treasurer of Centrus since […]

Personnal at Ukraine’s besieged Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant continued to power down some of the plant’s reactors this week when a water leak was detected from a steam generator and amidst continued threats to the facility’s external power supply. Plant personnel this week began transferring the facility’s unit 4 reactor from hot shutdown to cold […]

Earnings fell at Jacobs, Dallas, in the third quarter of its fiscal 2023 year as the international engineer company continued to move toward a sale of its government contracting business. Net earnings for the quarter ended June 30 were $164 million, or $1.29 a share, down from net earnings of $196 million or $1.52 a […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 2 automatically shut down for a little less than a day-and-a-half last week because of low steam levels, the authority confirmed this week. The quasi governmental company confirmed the outage to the Exchange Monitor after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday reported that Unit 2, which […]

In a statement Monday from State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, the U.S. reaffirmed its commitment to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. “For more than fifty years, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has endured as the foundation of a system built on nuclear restraint,” Miller said. “The challenges we […]

Earnings fell at Fluor, Irving, Texas, in the second quarter, which the Department of Energy contractor attributed partly to a $34 million charge cost and schedule issues in its Energy Solutions sector. Net earnings for the second quarter ended June 30 were $61 million, or $0.35 a share, down from $66 million, or $0.38 a […]

Earnings fell at BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., in the second quarter, but the nuclear services company sees support with the U.S. Navy’s long-term shipbuilding plan, the AUKUS trilateral security agreement between the U.S., U.K. and Australia paying dividends in the future. The company is currently negotiating the next two-year pricing agreement for nuclear naval reactors […]

Earnings were down year-over-year for Centrus Energy in the second quarter of 2023, despite the uranium broker and enrichment-technology developer receiving the go-ahead from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to produce High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium this year.  The Bethesda, Md., company reported $12.7 million in net income, or $0.84 a share, in the second quarter on $98.4 […]

The W87-1 warhead modification program recently moved into development engineering, also called Phase 6.3, following approval from the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Defense and the Nuclear Weapons Council.  During this phase of the nuclear weapons lifecycle process, NNSA will continue to work closely with the Defense Department to conduct experiments, tests and […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News, Va., reported lower earnings in the quarter ended June 30 but called out revenue growth in shipbuilding and the Mission Technologies segment, which handles business with the Department of Energy. Net earnings for the quarter ended June 30 were $130 million, or $3.27 a share, down from $178 million or […]