Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Conversion of 400 LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM silos to accommodate Northrop Grumman’s Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles will draw lessons from recent work by the company’s team in Utah. Parsons Corp., an original designer of the Minuteman silos, is a subcontractor to Northrop Grumman on the conversion of the Minuteman III silos for the Sentinel program. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday sought industry input on the looming competition for a contract that will split management of the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, from the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. The agency expects to award the contract by March 2024 after a competition that it estimates will begin on […]

Feds at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina are busy planning to transfer responsibility for the complex to DOE’s nuclear weapons office from the cleanup branch in fiscal 2025, a top local boss said Monday. “As we discussed before, we have been charged to come up with a plan by June […]

Akima Systems Engineering, Herndon, Va., protested the award of a potentially $340-million operations and maintenance contract at the Department of Energy’s National Training Center in Albuquerque, N.M., which the agency in December awarded to Eagle Harbor, Manassas, Va. Akima lodged the protest on Jan. 17, just shy of a month after DOE awarded Eagle Harbor the work on […]

Citing “unprecedented danger” arising from Russia’s nearly year-long war against Ukraine, the peace-advocating Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on Tuesday set its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds until midnight. It is the closest the long-running, metaphorical clock — a consensus gut-check among dove-like experts — has ever been to the symbolic midnight hour that marks the […]

Three employees who claim Consolidated Nuclear Security illegally withheld more than $10 million in wages from a big group of employees need new lawyers after their attorneys quit last week, citing a conflict of interest. “Due to a conflict that has arisen, Plaintiffs’ counsel, attorneys [Justin] Gilbert and [Ron] Rayson, have no choice but seek […]

In a demonstration of its largest domestic program to reduce stocks of weaponizable nuclear material, the National Nuclear Security Administration in December shipped deweaponized plutonium out of South Carolina for permanent disposal, the agency said recently. It was a proof-of-concept run for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, which began as a post-Cold-War plowshares effort with […]

Russia has manufactured the nuclear munitions for its Poseidon nuclear torpedo and planned to deliver them soon to a Belgorod-class nuclear submarine, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, media including Reuters reported. Poseidon torpedoes are meant to create radioactive ocean swells that can wash over and contaminate coastal cities and ports, Moscow has said. […]

In a little less than a month, the Department of Energy will start doling out fines for the unauthorized sharing of nuclear technology and know-how overseas, the agency said last week. On Thursday, the agency published its final rule in the Federal Register for implementing those penalties. They will go into effect Feb. 13, DOE said. The […]

Sandia National Laboratories’ Ion Beam Laboratory reopened late Wednesday after tritium levels spiked inside a glove bag on Monday and prompted an evacuation, the Albuquerque, N.M.-based lab said. “On Monday, Jan. 16, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories were performing work to characterize tritium samples inside of a confinement glovebag at the Ion Beam Laboratory. Workers […]

A woman who aided her husband’s attempt to sell nuclear-submarine secrets cannot appeal her conviction because she traded her right to appeal for a lighter sentence, the federal government said in court papers this week. While Diana Toebbe’s motive for appealing November’s verdict was not known as of Thursday — she had not yet filed […]

Incumbent Centerra Group has been awarded a new Security Services contract, potentially worth $1 billion over 10 years, at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The award, announced in a Thursday press release, is not a surprise. The DOE has been saying for many months it plans “corrective action” to its […]

Russian hackers targeted three Department of Energy laboratories, including the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, in a password-stealing scam, Reuters reported last week. The news service said the attempts involved Russian hackers creating fake login pages for each lab and then emailing lab employees with invitations to log in to the fake sites. DOE […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration backdated letters to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and claimed its own safety rules actually permitted safety deficiencies the rules were supposed to prevent, the board said. In a letter late last year to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, the board complained about “the recent practice of the National […]

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), a dependable ally of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex, is in the mix to lead the influential appropriations committee that writes the first drafts of DOE’s annual budget, a source said. Fleischmann, who since 2011 has represented Tennessee’s largely rural third district […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans by Oct. 31 to have permanent leadership for the three new procurement- and infrastructure-focused offices it created last year when it broke up the former Office of Acquisition and Project Management, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Tuesday. The agency “will establish specific outcome-oriented goals and performance […]

Amid the winter rainstorms pounding California, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has temporarily curtailed all but essential activity at its experimental test site in the San Francisco Bay Area, a spokesperson said this week. “Site 300 was in minimum safe configuration this week due to infrastructure conditions on roadways leading to the site,” a lab […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is adding about $10 million of work to the first phase of Nuclear Fuel Services’ contract to purify uranium for the secondary stages of nuclear weapons, according to a procurement note published Monday. The new work, which the nuclear-weapons agency did not describe in Monday’s sole source justification, brings the […]

Local officials this week voted to express formal concerns about the Department of Energy’s plan to ship weapon-usable plutonium through the Santa Fe, New Mexico area as part of long-planned materials-disposal effort. On Tuesday, all five Santa Fe county commissioners approved comments to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) about the agency’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to have a detailed cost and schedule estimate for producing new nuclear weapon cores for the first time since the Cold War by Sept. 30, 2025, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday. That’s the date by which the agency planned to advance its two planned plutonium […]

Minority-serving and Tribal Community and Junior colleges have a little more than a month to apply for a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) grant to improve programs that train students in disciplines potentially useful for nuclear weapons work, the nuclear-weapons agency’s Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program wrote in a press release this week. The NNSA […]

The 118th Congress that began this week was set to bring with it a few changes to Congressional representation for the states, regions and cities hosting Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites. In the Senate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), an author with no political experience and an avowed ally of former President Donald Trump (R) succeeded […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to award Converdyn a five-year, sole-source contract to convert triuranium octoxide into uranium hexafluoride as part of a new federal uranium stockpiling program. Converdyn, a Metropolis, Ill., partnership of Honeywell and General atomics, operates the only U.S.-based conversion facility capable of turning triuranium octoxide into uranium hexafluoride, the National […]

Lynchburg, Va., -based BWX Technologies said Wednesday it has promoted Ronald (Chip) Whitford, Jr., to a senior vice president post succeeding Thomas McCabe, who will retire from the nuclear company this summer. Separately, the company has promoted Omar Meguid to chief digital officer, a new executive role that reports directly to CEO Rex Geveden, according […]

In a majority opinion, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found President Joe Biden overstepped his authority by using the Procurement Act to require virtually all federal contract workers be vaccinated against COVID-19. “The President asks this Court to ratify an exercise of proprietary authority that would […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration begins 2023 in search of a new industry partner at the Pantex Plant in Texas and the competition for that contract will be the first since the agency pledged to overhaul the structure of its major site-management accords. The agency can bake into the new standalone contract to manage the […]