Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Principal Deputy Administrator Frank Rose visited Tajikistan in early October, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency wrote in a statement this week. Rose participated in a ribbon cutting at the Fotehobod automobile border-crossing point in the Mastchoh district of Tajikstan’s Sogd region, near the country’s western border with Uzbekistan. […]

In the nine months just ended, renationalization of the U.K. nuclear weapons complex cost Lockheed Martin’s Space segment more than three quarters of a billion dollars, the company reported Tuesday. Bringing the British weapons program fully back into the government’s arms dropped sales in Lockheed Space by some $865 million over the past nine months, […]

The nuclear-powered submarines Australia wants will likely include U.S.-built nuclear reactors and be preceded by a joint U.S.-Australian command of a Virginia-class attack submarine, a member of the House Armed Services Committee said in a recent virtual event. “I think the way to do that is to just say that BWXT will produce those reactors, they’ll […]

There is a changing at the guard in upper management ranks of Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based Navarro Research & Engineering as Ryan Overton, formerly of GEM Technologies, becoming executive vice president, gradually takes over the role from industry vet Cathy Hickey who plans to retire from the company next year. “Ryan is fabulous,” Hickey said in […]

In an amendment to the Senate’s biggest defense bill of the year, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wants to force another debate about whether Congress should authorize the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Navy to build a nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile. Van Hollen’s amendment would bar development of the missile, citing the cost. President […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy is considering the purchase of up to 25 metric tons annually of high-assay low enriched uranium, the office said Thursday in a request that solicited both information about and sources of the material. The office envisions at least a six-year contract for the material, to begin “as […]

The U.S. national security strategy released Wednesday did not contain the Joe Biden Administration’s unclassified nuclear posture review or call for extreme changes to the nation’s nuclear-weapons philosophy. “Nuclear deterrence remains a top priority for the Nation,” reads the 48-page, 23,000-word national security strategy, which devotes roughly 400 words to nuclear weapons. “The United States […]

The Pantex Plant could soon rid itself of plutonium sent to the Amarillo, Texas, nuclear weapons depot from the Savannah River Site, the government’s independent nuclear safety agency said recently. In late August, according to a report published this week by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Pantex prime contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) demonstrated […]

The prime contractor at the Savannah River Site last week signed a project labor agreement with a consortium of 19 labor unions for construction of the larger of the National Nuclear Security Administration plutonium pit plants. The Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and the Augusta Building and Construction Trades Council inked the accord in Augusta, […]

During her ongoing travel overseas this week, Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, visited the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan: a former nuclear test site for the Soviet Union.  The NNSA shared a few photos from the visit on Twitter.   John Clauser, a physicist who spent time at Department of Energy […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to start work on a competition for a pair of new contracts to manage its main nuclear-weapon sites in 2023 and 2024, the agency said this week. In the meantime, Oct. 1 marked the official start of big-money extensions to Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the Bechtel National-led incumbent at […]

The Senate will hold its next votes on Nov. 14, leadership announced Thursday, meaning the upper chamber won’t consider its version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act until after the midterm elections. However, debate will begin on the annual, must-pass defense-policy bill on on Oct. 11, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration picked up Westinghouse Government Service’s next 10-year option to manufacture tritium producing burnable absorber rods at a South Carolina factory. The rods are the source of tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons. Westinghouse has a sole-source contract to produce tritium producing burnable absorber rods, which the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory designed. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration will take over the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by 2025, and the transition has started, the Department of Energy confirmed Tuesday. The former plutonium production site is currently the responsibility of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the part of the agency responsible for cleaning up shuttered Manhattan […]

Subcontractors could begin building a planned plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Dec. 31, the site’s prime contractor said Monday in a press release. “Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year,” the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in the release. “Approximately 2,500 skilled craft […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN – Revitalizing decaying buildings, decoupling future contracts for two nuclear weapons plants and assessing the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Uranium Processing Facility are among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s key concerns nowadays, officials said here Wednesday. The pandemic has had a ripple effect across the economy and the Uranium […]

The House on Friday passed a stopgap budget that would hold the National Nuclear Security Administration to its fiscal year 2022 budget through Dec. 19 and allow work to continue on pit production plants, the B83 gravity bomb and a nuclear, sea-launched cruise-missile warhead. The continuing resolution will put a crunch on the semiautonomous Department […]

Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, admitted last week to all hands at the California nuclear-weapons design lab that she had been arrested for driving under the influence and speeding. Budil, the first woman to run Livermore, has been director of the younger of the two U.S. weapon-design labs for about a […]

Organizations within the National Nuclear Security Administration bureaucracy are reviewing a draft cybersecurity directive the agency wrote after a third-party review, the weapons steward told the Government Accountability Office last week. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency planned to issue a final supplemental directive, titled Baseline Cybersecurity Program, by April 30, according to the […]

Due primarily to COVID-19, Los Alamos National  Laboratory believed it could take a year longer than expected for the the lab to casting 10 plutonium pits annually in New Mexico, according to an internal document. A redacted copy of the Los Alamos-authored document, dated September 2021 and released by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm led a large Department of Energy delegation to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 66th general conference in Vienna, Austria this week. Senior officials from the DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attended. In a speech during the plenary session, Granholm said the U.S. is “working […]

The Maryland couple whose shoddy spycraft got them arrested for trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign power again pleaded guilty for their alleged crimes on Tuesday, deciding not to face a jury after a federal judge threw out their first plea deal. The Washington Post reported that both Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana […]

Dr. Kimberly Budil broke the law and put herself and others in danger by driving under the influence and speeding, but she also did what a leader should do and admitted her mistake to all hands at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Budil, who has been the director at the California lab for about a […]

As expected, the Department of Energy has signed a potential five-year, multibillion-dollar extension with the Fluor-led management and operations manager for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the company said late Thursday.  The extension could keep Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on as the prime contractor through September 2027 and be worth $12 billion […]

ROCKVILLE, MD. — BWX Technologies executives appeared here before Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff Thursday seeking leniency for a fatal — and according to the company, preventable — workplace accident two years ago in Lynchburg, Va. On the morning of June 19, 2020, a BWX Technologies employee died in a flash fire in the Lynchburg plant’s […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration removed a tranche of weapon useable plutonium from the Nevada National Security Site after a roughly three-year layover, Nevada’s senior U.S. Senator said Friday. The nuclear weapons agency moved the plutonium to the test site in 2018 after the state of South Carolina successfully sued the government for keeping the […]