Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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 […]

ARLINGTON, VA — Talks about the contractual future of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, ongoing for years between the Office of Environmental Management and the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, could bear fruit within three months, the head of the cleanup office said here Thursday. William (Ike) White made the remark Thursday during […]

Ex-government officials this week urged the Senate Armed Services Committee to support continued modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons and production infrastructure in the face of a rising China and a hostile Russia. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the committee that sets policy for defense agencies including the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Tuesday […]

ARLINGTON, VA —A Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee predicted here Thursday there will be a continuing budget resolution to keep the Department of Energy and the other federal agencies running beyond the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. “We are not going to shut the government down,” Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) said […]

Senate leadership is planning for the upper chamber to remain in session in October and take up the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday at a press conference A recess had been expected in the early part of October to allow Senators to leave Washington and campaign […]

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Sentinel, the next nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile, is a “real program,” a senior executive with the rocket’s prime contractor said here Wednesday at an industry conference. “Just yesterday we announced … the casting for the first and the second stage [Sentinel rocket] motors,” James Kowalski, vice president of government programs at […]

Dallas-based Jacobs announced Thursday that Steve Demetriou, the CEO of the international engineering, construction and procurement company for seven years, is stepping down from the top job in January but will stay with the company as executive chair of the board. Jacobs current president and chief operating officer Bob Pragada will succeed Demetriou as CEO […]

In a new lawsuit, the anti-nuclear group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Santa Fe, demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) turn over “full and complete Performance Evaluation Reports” for the contractors managing the agency’s nuclear-weapon sites.  The group, which has tried the tactic before, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico. […]

Robert Raines, the former National Nuclear Security Administration procurement boss of 10 years, went to work for Atkins Nuclear Services, the company said this month in a press release. Raines “ joined the organization supporting strategic business development, performance assurance and governance of large programs,” Atkins wrote in a press release dated Sept. 1. Raines […]

Ongoing problems moving goods from one place to another has affected schedules across the Department of Defense and nuclear-weapon programs have been hit especially hard, the nominee to lead U.S. nuclear forces told Senators Thursday. Even in the face of what he called “herculean efforts” by defense contractors, “what we are now finding is the […]

A draft site-wide environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory should appear in the summer or fall of 2023, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week during public scoping meetings about the extensive environmental review of the nuclear weapons lab. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency took public comment on Tuesday […]

The South Carolina factory that serves as one of the pillars of U.S. nuclear weapons maintenance received a 40-year license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency said Monday. The Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility, whose main business is making uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors, was cleared to operate through Sept. 12, 2062. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to hold a predecisional enforcement conference at agency headquarters in Rockville, Md., on Sept. 22 as part of a continuing investigation of a fatal fire BWX Technologies’ Lynchburg, Va., facility in 2020. The commission announced the planned meeting in a notice dated Monday and posted online. No one from BWX […]