Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Continuing the U.S. campaign to inshore production of Molybdenum-99, the Secretary of Energy this week announced she cleared the way to provide upstart domestic manufacturers of the medical isotope with up to 750 kilograms of high assay, low enriched uranium annually. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set up the annual transfer to industry on April […]

BWX Technologies Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., will begin producing purified uranium metal for nuclear weapons under a sole-source award announced Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration. “The purification and conversion capabilities provided by the Contractor shall allow for HEU [highly enriched uranium] materials of various forms (such as metal and oxide) to be […]

After the government won a key legal battle last week, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday that the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should allow it to enforce a presidential executive order requiring federal employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. On April 7 the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit overturned a nationwide preliminary injunction […]

Thanks to more than a quarter-billion dollars of congressional funds since 2018, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is tearing down some of the most contaminated facilities in the weapons complex and “making bad things go away,” a manager at the California nuclear-weapons design lab said recently. Much progress has happened since the […]

John (Jack) William Crawford, Jr., a Navy captain who served on the staff of Admiral Hyman Rickover prior to stints with the Atomic Energy Commission and later the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, has died, the board announced in a press release last week. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) was created by Congress in 1988 […]

The New Mexico-based Los Alamos Study Group filed suit this week against the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, D.C., claiming the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency is violating the Freedom of Information Act when it comes to plans for expanded plutonium pit production. The Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group has made 65 requests under the […]

In congressional testimony in the House and Senate this week, the top-ranked U.S. general again touted his support for the low-yield, nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile the Joe Biden administration wants to cancel. The U.S. has “lots of options” and a “significant nuclear capability” even without the missile endorsed in 2018 by the Donald Trump administration, […]

The Department of the Air Force has designated the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent next generation intercontinental ballistic missile under development by Northrop Grumman the LGM-35A Sentinel. “The name Sentinel recognizes the mindset that thousands of airmen, past and present, have brought to the deterrence mission, and will serve as a reminder for those who operate, […]

Parts of Centrus’ high assay, low-enriched uranium cascade at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio were ready to operate as specified in a sole-source contract with the Department of Energy, the company said Wednesday. The 16-machine AC100M cascade was ready to start up by March 31, a company spokesperson said in an email Wednesday, except […]

The Joe Biden administration fiscal year 2023 budget request of $41 million for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board would be an increase of $5 million over $36 million from the 2022 omnibus passed in early March. That 2023 request is about a 14% year-over-year increase for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). It […]

The Senate late Wednesday confirmed Marvin Adams to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s office of defense programs, clearing the way for the Texas A&M professor and longtime weapons-labs consultant to enter federal service for the first time. Adams had a whirlwind trip through the Senate, where lawmakers confirmed him Wednesday after the body’s Armed […]

National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby spent some time at the Nevada National Security Site this week, according to a series of posts on official agency Twitter accounts. Hruby visited the site along with members of the NNSA Council, which includes representatives of several nuclear-weapon sites.   The NNSA said this week it […]

By Dan Parsons The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation, or NA-80, recently embarked the second and final phase of a refresh for its Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) air fleet: airplanes and helicopters the agency uses to gather data about nuclear accidents, incidents and potential radiological terror attacks. This week, […]

The story “Fed review of RLUOB recategorization in May” [Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Vol. 26, No. 11] should have said the Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building can legally accept just under 40 grams of plutonium at once.

Centrus Energy was to have its new enrichment cascade for high assay low-enriched uranium ready to start up by Thursday, according to recent regulatory filings by the Bethesda, Md., company. The uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology developer appended a letter contract with the Department of Energy to its latest 10-K filing with the Securities […]

A one-page Department of Defense fact sheet issued this week appeared to confirm that President Joe Biden would not declare a no-first use of nuclear weapons policy. “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners,” reads the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has requested a roughly 60% increase in fiscal year 2023 for the part of its budget that funds the rebuilding of critical nuclear-weapons production infrastructure including plutonium pits, a Department of Energy document published Tuesday shows. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency seeks some $4.6 billion for Production Modernization in fiscal […]

The Wall St. Journal reported Friday that President Joe Biden’s nuclear posture review will call for canceling both a planned nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile slated to use a modified W80-4 warhead and a life extension program for the megaton-capable B83 gravity bomb.  The Journal also reported that the Biden posture review would not declare that […]

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Nuclear Security Administration stopped keeping track of active cases of the disease among personnel who don’t report to work regularly at the agency’s labs, plants or sites. The change left the agency with 59 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 among employees working on site, a spokesperson at […]

In a confirmation hearing Tuesday morning, the Joe Biden administration’s nominee to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons programs from headquarters in Washington pledged his support for the agency’s program of record and agreed to review the agency’s plan to produce new plutonium pits if confirmed. The nominee, Marvin Adams, a professor of nuclear […]

A regulatory domino fell Thursday at the plant where Westinghouse fabricates tritium producing burnable absorber rods for the National Nuclear Security Administration, clearing the way for cleanup of contaminated disposal lagoons on the South Carolina property. On Thursday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued an exemption to commission regulations clearing U.S. Ecology to accept waste from […]

Many full-timers working directly for the Los Alamos National Laboratory Laboratory received a modest raise earlier this month as part of broad retention efforts by the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to a letter from the lab’s director. “We are pleased that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has granted this increase,” Thomas Mason, director […]

As the nuclear-weapons production complex began a shift into overdrive, non-essential personnel at the Pantex site were asked to delay their arrival early this week, starting with the graveyard shift on Monday after a late-season ice storm moved in over the Texas panhandle. Only a day after the spring equinox, the system dropped a wintery […]

Personnel at DOE headquarters in Washington completed their “reentry” to the work place after two years of maximum telework during the COVID-19 pandemic, a spokesperson said Thursday, though headquarters had not yet tallied the exact number of people who returned to their pre-pandemic work stations. “On Monday, DOE completed its formal reentry process at most […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security will officially remain the management and operations contractor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two main weapons production sites through September, the agency confirmed Friday. As it attempts to address a controversy about a follow-on award to manage the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s five-year Enterprise Construction Management Services contract is up for bids and interested small businesses have just over a week to ask questions about the quick-turnaround bid request and just over two weeks to get quotes in. The winner of the contract that went up for grabs last week will provide […]