Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) have reintroduced the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act to prohibit the U.S. President from launching a nuclear strike without prior authorization from Congress.  The legislation, filed Friday, would also institute safeguards to prevent the […]

Residents of Boston need not fear the silver-and-blue helicopters flying low and slowly over the city this weekend. They are there to test the air for unnatural levels of radiation ahead of the Boston Marathon.  The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST, helicopters routinely overfly cities hosting major events to monitor […]

Understanding the cradle-to-grave requirements of modern nuclear weapons will require significantly more powerful computing capacity than the U.S. nuclear enterprise plans to develop, the National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “needs to fundamentally rethink the strategy for its next generation of high-performance computing” in order to achieve “post exascale” […]

U.S. Strategic Command kicked off its annual nuclear command and control training and readiness exercise, Global Thunder, on Tuesday. As in previous years, Global Thunder 23 (GT23) includes an increase in bomber aircraft flights throughout the exercise, centered at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska but involving all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad. […]

Chad Stott, who joined the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on Monday, has been named resident inspector at the Pantex Plant in Panhandle, Texas. As a resident inspector at Pantex, Stott will advise the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) on overall safety conditions at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s central nuclear-weapons maintenance facility and […]

At the Department of Energy’s request, bidders on major nuclear cleanup contracts at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have agreed to keep their bids on the table for 60 days longer than planned, industry sources said this week. Within the past week, DOE procurement officials asked […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Monday awarded Nuclear Fuel Services, a subsidiary of naval nuclear reactor manufacturer BWX Technologies, a five-year, $428-million contract to provide purification and conversion services for highly enriched uranium .  Located in Erwin, Tenn., Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) is one of only two category I nuclear facilities licensed by the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s new Plutonium Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will not be up and running until 2032 at the earliest, according to the contractor who manages the site.  Stuart MacVean, president and CEO of Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, said Wednesday that the new Savannah River Plutonium […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has established the Advisory Committee for Nuclear Security to advise senior agency leaders. Formerly known as the Defense Programs Advisory Committee, the new Advisory Committee for Nuclear Security (ACNS) enlists experts with knowledge that spans the full range of the NNSA missions to provide independent advice and recommendations to NNSA […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security is seeking qualified licensed electrical contractors to replace and upgrade various aging electrical systems at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.  The company, contracted to manage both Y-12 and the Pantex Plant in Panhandle, Texas, on behalf of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will hire multiple contractors under […]

Some parallel efforts by the National Nuclear Security Administration and Defense Department to secure nuclear materials around the globe may be redundant if their individual mission goals are not more clearly defined, the Government Accountability Office found in a new report.  The GAO looked into 23 separate NNSA and DoD programs and found that “some […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is hiring for senior acquisition and construction management professionals with imminent application deadlines.  Through Monday, the NNSA is accepting applications for a deputy associate administrator for partnership and acquisition services in Washington. Applications for this and other NNSA positions can be submitted through the federal government’s job site, USAjobs.gov. Last […]

An employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory was blown off a ladder and severely burned in 2015 after spraying cleaning solutions on parts of a power substation that turned out to be electrified, according to a report on the incident published last week. After the resulting arc-flash, nine employees were sent to Los Alamos Medical […]

National Nuclear Security Administration leader Jill Hruby, recently visited a Westinghouse nuclear power plant in Västerås, Sweden. Hruby met with Patrick Fragman, president and chief executive officer of Westinghouse Electric Company, to tour Westinghouse’s Västerås fuel fabrication facility, which both produces energy and serves as a new source of nuclear fuel for legacy Soviet reactors […]

Though the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to dramatically ramp up plutonium pit production around the time a key arms control treaty expires in 2026, there are no plans to test fire any weapons, agency Administrator Jill Hruby said Monday in New Mexico. Hruby sat through two hours of questioning – and occasional haranguing – […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, will have a new manager as of May 21. Jason Armstrong, currently manager of the NNSA’s Savannah River Field Office, will take over as manager of the Pantex manager for the production office beginning May 21st. This does not include leadership of […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments enforcement office is launching an investigation into the amputation of a worker’s finger at the Savannah River Site on Dec. 1, according to a letter sent to site President and CEO Stuart MacVean.  Dated March 23 but posted online on Tuesday, the letter says DoE will investigate […]

The Biden Administration’s desire to cancel a new lower-yield nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile still doesn’t sit well with the leadership of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.  Both subcommittee Chair Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and ranking member Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) support a submarine launched cruise missile tipped with a nuke, called SLCM-N, at […]

A labor shortage initially blamed on COVID-19, but which has outlasted the nationwide response to the pandemic, hamstrung construction of new nuclear weapons factories and forced a construction triage at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency’s administrator told lawmakers Tuesday. The construction or “craft” labor shortages at various sites contributed to several program delays, […]

Centrus plans to introduce uranium hexafluoride into its new high assay, low enriched uranium cascade in Ohio around May 22, according to a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from the company.  The commission published the letter online Tuesday. The missive was dated March 23 and was signed by Mathew Snider, enrichment operations plant manager […]

After several years of planning, the initial discard of uranium solution from the new Accelerated Basin De-inventory program at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., was successfully transferred to the SRS liquid waste program from the H Canyon Chemical Separations Facility, the Department of Energy said last week. The newly implemented Accelerated Basin De-inventory […]

Belgium can use low-enriched uranium to produce a valuable medical isotope instead of the highly-enriched uranium it used to import from the United States for that purpose, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Tuesday. Converting Belgium’s National Institute of Radioelements medical isotope production to low-enriched uranium was marked as a major nuclear non-proliferations milestone. More […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still looking for a successor to its first executive director of operations, who left in August, the board said in a recent report to Congress. “The board is actively recruiting to fill that vacancy in 2023,” according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s 33rd Annual Report to […]

Lawyers representing employees who accuse Consolidated Nuclear Security, manager of the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge Tenn., of withholding wages have withdrawn from a proposed class action lawsuit against the contractor.  The motion to withdraw as counsel was granted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Knoxville on Monday. Justin […]

Australian leaders are concerned about the nuclear waste the country’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet, which the country will buy and then build under the AUKUS deal with the U.S. and U.K.  AUKUS also poses complicated questions of compliance for Australia, which is treaty-bound to neither produce or possess nuclear weapons or materials that could be used […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s longest-serving associate administrator Jeffrey Johnson, the chief of nuclear security, announced his retirement on Monday.  Johnson served eight years at NNSA following a 20-year career in uniform and seven years as a civilian employee with the U.S. Marine Corps, according to a statement from the NNSA. The NNSA did not […]