Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Joe Biden administration overstepped its authority by utilizing the Procurement Act to impose a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most employees of government contractors, a federal appeals court said recently. However, a federal district judge in Georgia went too far in issuing a nationwide injunction against the contractor vaccine mandate, the panel of judges for […]

An air-launched cruise missile warhead was not the only major civilian nuclear-weapons program slowed by COVID-19 supply chain snafus, but it was the only one drastically affected by the pandemic response, a senior government official said Tuesday. “I wouldn’t say it was the only one that was impacted,” said Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser, principal […]

A lawsuit against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, filed by about 80 employees who objected to its COVID-19 vaccination policy, was dismissed. The plaintiffs, led by Shawn Phillip Rhoades, and defendant Savannah River Nuclear Solutions filed a joint motion for dismissal dated Thursday in the U.S. […]

Japan and the United States have removed all highly enriched uranium from a research reactor at Kyoto University and shipped the material to the U.S, according to a press release from the National Nuclear Security Administration. Transfer of the material began three years ago and ended with all 45 kilograms of the fissile isotope to […]

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not be published on Aug. 19, 2022 or Aug. 26, 2022, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022.

Workers claiming Consolidated Nuclear Security shorted a slew of employees out of a paycheck’s worth of work are taking the management and operations contractor for two major nuclear-weapons production sites to trial next summer, according to a recent scheduling notice. The trial will begin on June 13, 2023, according to a scheduling order signed last week by […]

Russia said this week that it would not accede to U.S. requests to restore access to nuclear-weapon and related sites subject to inspection under the bilateral New START nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry blamed logistical difficulties stemming from U.S. sanctions against Russia, which Washington levied […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to add protective services to its prime contract with the Nevada National Security Site’s Honeywell-led prime contract, according to a procurement note posted online recently. SOC is the incumbent security services provider at the former Nevada Test Site under a five-year deal, worth about $200-million, that began on March 1, […]

Bids were due Monday on a DOE contract to produce energy-dense uranium fuel using a cascade that Centrus Energy Corp. has nearly finished building at the agency’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. The potentially 10-year contract, officially opened to all bidders in June, calls for production of a much larger volume of high assay, low-enriched […]

While it has fixed the bad welds that plagued the program last decade, BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., is still having trouble manufacturing common missile compartment tubes for Columbia-, Virginia– and Dreadnought-class submarines, the company’s CEO said this week. “[W]e continue to have some struggles with the missile tubes program,” Rex Geveden, BWX Technologies’ (BWXT) chief […]

In remarks at the 10th review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine and Iran’s race to uranium enrichment, touted a 90% reduction in U.S. nuclear arms since the height of the Cold War and defended the U.S. decision to cancel scheduled […]

Second-quarter profits rose sharply at nuclear-fuel broker Centrus Energy, Bethesda, Md., as Russia’s war against Ukraine made uranium more expensive and spooked some buyers into locking in the current price, the company’s CEO said Friday. “There’s an advantage to buying sooner if it’s going to be cheaper,” Daniel Poneman, Centrus’ CEO, said Friday during a […]

The South Carolina plant that puts together the rods that help the National Nuclear Security Administration top off the tritium reservoirs of U.S. nuclear weapons cleared an environmental hurdle last week that sets the facility up to operate for another 40 years. The extension, recommended July 29 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, would more than […]

The final tab for getting the Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear generator back in shape to produce power for homes and businesses and irradiate tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons will be about $600 million, the Tennessee Valley Authority said Monday in a regulatory filing. On July 1, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) finished installing four […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration this week split its two headquarters-based procurement offices into three, the head of the agency said. Effective Monday, the agency’s Washington-based procurement bureaucracy comprises: the Office of Partnership Services; the Office of Infrastructure; and the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health. Peter Rodrik is the acting associate administrator for partnership […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration now expects to produce the proof-of-concept article for the refurbished W80 nuclear cruise-missile warhead by the end of fiscal year 2027, roughly two years later than planned. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency will turn out the W80-4 first production unit by Sept. 30, 2027 instead of some […]

In the wake of three such incidents reported over the last year, Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, asked all hands to report racist acts and threats at nuclear-weapon sites. In an email dated Wednesday, Hruby slammed the acts as “offensive,” “inappropriate” and warned that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would […]

The Government Accountability Office is urging the Department of Energy to provide more details on how its nuclear weapons and cleanup programs handle federal funds carried over from prior-year budgets. At the end of fiscal 2021 DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had about $10.9 billion in total carryover balances and the Office of Environmental […]

The inventory of defense-related transuranic waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico amounts to more than 3,300 containers, but most are not “ready to ship” to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office manager said last week. In Technical Area 55, Triad National Security, the National Nuclear […]

With the retirement of a top executive, Sharon Smoot will step in as president of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group effective Aug. 1, the company said in a press release Wednesday morning. In her new role, Smoot will be responsible for the operations group’s complete range of nuclear components and services, “including the manufacture of […]

U.S. District Judge Julianna Michelle Childs, who presided over a number of Department of Energy nuclear cases in South Carolina, and who was publicly discussed as a contender for a U.S. Supreme vacancy, has won confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Childs was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in a […]

Congress should enact legislation to clarify the Department of Energy’s authority to sell depleted uranium to private entities, the Government Accountability Office said this week, because such a move could curb the $7.2 billion cost to dispose of the material. As of September 2021, the feds estimate it could cost DOE $7.2 billion to convert […]

Northrop Grumman’s top executive on Thursday rejected any government concerns that the company isn’t complying with a consent order it agreed to in 2018 when it acquired Orbital ATK to ensure it remains a fair supplier of solid rocket motors to competitors in the aerospace and defense industries. The company has disclosed in its quarterly […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday unveiled the year’s most generous 2023 budget proposal for Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs, beating the White House’s ask by almost $700 million and agreeing with authorizers’ plans to pile unrequested money into plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site. As the House of Representatives did in […]

Northern New Mexico Integrated Security, a joint venture between incumbent Centerra Group and Tsay Construction and Services, a small business with tribal ownership, won a five-year security services contract at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the lab announced Wednesday. Triad National Security, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s management contractor for Los Alamos, […]

Vendors who want to sell uranium to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for the agency’s planned uranium reserve need not have produced the uranium themselves, so long as they have operated a domestic uranium facility at some point since 2009, the agency clarified this week. Furthermore, in the amendment posted Wednesday to its solicitation […]