Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Jacobs, the Dallas-based leader and member of various Department of Energy nuclear contractors, had a good fiscal 2022, with revenue and profit each rising for the year, the company reported Monday. In a call with investors shortly after the earnings report, Jacobs executives said they planned to ride a surge of interest in nuclear power, […]

Suzy Sterner was promoted to senior vice president and chief corporate affairs officer at BWX Technologies, the company announced recently. Sterner, who joined BWX Technologies (BWXT) in 2019, was already leading the Lynchburg, Va., company’s communications and government relations operations at the time of her latest promotion, according to a BWXT LinkedIn post. She’ll now […]

Wise Services paid about $300,000 to the federal government to settle allegations that the company billed the government for non-existent construction materials at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., the Justice Department said Monday. The Dayton, Ohio-based company was a subcontractor to CB&I MOX Services, which was building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s latest mask mandate lasted only three days, after which COVID-19 community transmission rates dropped below high, according to a lab memo. The New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory let employees take the masks off Nov. 18 after briefly making face coverings mandatory again on Nov. 15, according to an internal email, […]

Local childcare providers near the Los Alamos National Laboratory are complaining that lab management is undercutting their business with a planned offsite daycare center for lab employees, according to an anonymous note circulated by the city chamber of commerce to local media including the local Los Alamos Reporter. The lab “made no effort to work […]

The Department of Energy awarded a subsidiary of Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., a potentially 10-year, $1-billion contract to operate a new uranium enrichment cascade the company built at the agency’s Portsmouth site near Piketon, Ohio. The competition was notionally open to all U.S.-controlled companies, but with two of the biggest uranium enrichment companies in […]

By Dan Parsons Engineers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory continue to upgrade the ventilation system at the plutonium pit production facility after two separate incidents where the system failed to blow contaminated air away from clean rooms where employees were working.  The most recent failure occurred on Aug. 22, when ventilation in the Plutonium […]

A former Navy employee and his wife will go to prison for more than 19 and more than 21 years, respectively, for conspiring to sell nuclear-submarine secrets to a nation reported to be Brazil, a federal judge ordered recently. Jonathan Toebbe, 44, a former Q-cleared Naval Reactors employee who smuggled technical data about Virginia-class attack […]

Local residents must retain a voice in what goes on at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina after federal responsibility for the complex shifts  to the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration in 2025, the head of the Citizens Advisory Board said Monday. Last month, DOE confirmed its Office of Environmental Management […]

Starting after Thanksgiving, citizens of the city of Aiken, S.C., can give the city council their two cents about how to spend $25 million in federal settlement money the city got because of a federal lawsuit involving the Department of Energy’s canceled plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site, local media reported Monday. Aiken […]

Pit production will continue to share space at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility with other missions for the foreseeable future, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration told a federal safety agency on Wednesday. The semi autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency is upgrading PF-4 to produce multiple war-ready pits some […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory again ordered employees and visitors to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 after transmission rates in the area rose, according to an internal lab message. “COVID-19 community levels have moved to high in Los Alamos and Santa Fe Counties,” reads the message, the text of which the Exchange Monitor read. […]

The Department of Energy on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement covering the next 15 years of operations at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The public may comment on the draft through Jan. 03, according to a Federal Register notice. For the period spanning 2023-2035, the DOE has proposed 75 projects at the younger […]

Department of Energy small business contractor Boston Government Services, Oak Ridge, Tenn., was acquired in October by a private equity fund, according to someone familiar with the deal. Bernhard Capital Partners, Baton Rouge, La., was the buyer for Boston Government Services (BGS), according to this person. Harry Boston, founder and president of BGS, did not […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority was in the process of securing approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to increase production of tritium for nuclear weapons in one of the company’s reactors by November 2024, according to its latest annual earnings report. That date, disclosed in the authority’s latest 10-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrows […]

Alutiiq Logistics & Maintenance Services failed to comply with contractual obligations to provide certain services at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Albuqeruqe complex in New Mexico, the Department of Energy Inspector General said. The Department of Energy’s Inspector General substantiated eight allegations of contractual noncompliance by Alutiiq Logistics & Maintenance Services, the facility and maintenance […]

The Department of Energy could award a contract to operate a small, Centrus Energy-built uranium enrichment cascade at the agency’s Portsmouth site in Ohio this month, the company’s CEO said Wednesday on a quarterly earnings call. “The Department has indicated in a recent industry briefing that a decision could come as early as this month,” […]

In federal elections, stability often prevails in the mostly rural areas that are home to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s major labs, plants and sites. The 2022 midterm elections this week largely continued the trend, with all of one new face among the mostly unaffiliated contingent of lawmakers who represent the states and districts that […]

People placed on leave from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for refusing a COVID-19 vaccinations will get no help from the courts in ongoing arbitration proceedings with the lab, a federal judge in New Mexico said recently. The decision dropped Halloween night in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico, where Judge Kea Riggs told […]

Earnings rose at BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., in the third quarter, which the nuclear contractor attributed during a Monday earnings report to growth throughout its naval, weapons cleanup and commercial power lines. Net earnings for the 2022 third quarter were $61.6 million, or $0.67 a share, up from $60.2 million, or $0.63 a share, in […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration late last week was still preparing to explain to Congress what caused construction of the agency’s next-generation uranium manufacturing hub in Tennessee to fall two years behind schedule, the agency’s head said here. “We’re not ready for public statements” about the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) Jill Hruby, administrator […]

A federal magistrate judge has ruled a scientist fired by a Honeywell-owned prime contractor for Sandia National Laboratories need not litigate his wrongful termination case in U.S. District Court. U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephan Vidmar ruled Oct. 20 that National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia has not proven the lawsuit brought by Carlsbad, N.M., -based […]

Critical-decision 2 for a new plutonium pit production plant at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is now expected in fiscal 2025, a state panel heard last week from the National Nuclear Security Administration. Also, site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has contracted a local affiliate of Toronto-based Aecon to handle […]

Fluor chair and CEO David Constable is happy to see a joint venture led by his company remain as prime at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina for at least four more years, and said Fluor teams will aggressively pursue two big National Nuclear Security Administration contracts. In an earnings call […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — The Navy and the National Nuclear Security Administration will make their design choices about the W93 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead next year, an admiral said here at an industry conference Tuesday. “Next year most likely we will do the downselect to understand what are the key military requirements that [U.S. Strategic Command] […]

The Navy plans to buy five Columbia-class nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines in a block buy after the first two vessels and little margin remains to get the first vessel on patrol by the early 2030s, an admiral said Tuesday. “For long range planning and to signal the industrial base…our plan will be to buy the […]

The Joe Biden Administration will maintain all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, which need to be modernized to remain relevant, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday. “At least in this current moment, in the current security environment, and again validated all the way up to the President … we needed to retain the […]