Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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 […]

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not publish on Friday, Dec. 30, 2022 in observance of the New Year’s holiday. Happy holidays to everyone!

Inching forward with plans to dispose of surplus plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans public hearings after New Year’s on its just-released draft environmental review of the project, the agency said recently. The nuclear-weapons agency on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement about its planned Surplus Plutonium […]

Right in time for Christmas, the National Nuclear Security Administration put Nuclear Fuel Services under contract to produce uranium metal for nuclear weapons programs, according to a procurement note published Monday. The agency’s announcement Monday moves Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS), a BWX Technologies subsidiary in Erwin, Tenn., into new work on the sole-source contract the […]

The New Mexico Environment Department on Tuesday kicked off a 60-day comment period on a 10-year permit renewal for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, with the state fighting the federal government’s attempt to keep the mine’s closure date open-ended. The DOE has said it needs the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) to […]

The story “Pantex building returning to explosive testing after years of semi-retirement” [Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Vol. 26, No. 48] should have said that a recently reactivated facility at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, will not be used for nuclear weapons production.

Civilian nuclear weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration will almost all get year-over-year raises in excess of what the White House requested under an omnibus 2023 spending proposal poised to become law this week. The Senate voted 68-to-29 Thursday to  adopt the full-year appropriations bill, which then went to the House for a […]

Two of the three shots in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Nimble series of subcritical experiments should fire by early fiscal year 2024, with the third and final to follow not more than two years after, a lab spokesperson said this week. “It is anticipated that two shots, Twin Peaks and Nob Hill, will be […]

A communications outage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that began over the weekend was unresolved at portions of the lab as late as early Monday morning, according to the lab. “The Laboratory experiences a communications outage over the weekend due to a fiber-optic cable cut near Santa Fe which impacted cellular and internet services […]

The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used its bank of high-powered lasers on Dec. 5 to ignite a fusion reaction that produced more energy from a small pellet than the lasers put into the pellet, the lab said. The long-hoped for achievement marked “a new chapter in NNSA’s [National Nuclear Security […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security is in the early stages of returning a facility at the NNSA’s Pantex Plant in Texas to active explosive testing. In October, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board noted the effort to reclaim the facility after 30 years of inactivity following a contamination event. Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) spokesman Jason Bohne confirmed […]

Congress passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act and a short-term spending bill this week, clearing the way for a long-term 2023 appropriations bill that would give Department of Energy nuclear programs budget stability through October. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) just passed tees up the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for a budget […]

Diana Tobbe, one of two conspirators charged with trying to sell nuclear-submarine secrets to a foreign government, was being transported to a federal prison this week and has retained a lawyer married to a Navy officer to represent her during an appeal. Tobbe said the Nov. 9 judgment against her in the U.S. District Court […]

Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton on Friday assumed command of the interagency forces that carry U.S. nuclear weapons. Cotton, previously commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, took over from Admiral Charles Richard, who has led U.S. Strategic Command since November 2019. Richard will retire from active duty, Strategic Command said. The change of command […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration extended Los Alamos National Laboratory management and operations contractor Triad National Security for five more years, through Nov. 1, 2028, the agency announced this week. In the third such mass-extension this year for a nuclear-weapons site contractor, the agency picked up five one-year options on Triad’s contract simultaneously. Triad includes […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is poised to move beyond what its administrator recently characterized as an outmoded system of requiring the contractors who manage major nuclear-weapon sites to earn extensions one year at a time. “[T]he one-year contract for award terms were incredibly destabilizing at our labs, plants and sites because they couldn’t keep […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch should not see a significant near-term decrease in its budget for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina because control of the federal complex is being transferred to the National Nuclear Security Administration, a budget and planning official said last week. “Most of our funding is for liquid […]

A building slated to become a key cog in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit-production complex is taking longer than expected to be authorized to hold enough plutonium for its new mission, a spokesperson said this week. The Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) should be recategorized as a hazard category 3 nuclear facility by March […]