Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Emergency Support team took one of its radiation-sniffing Bell 412 helicopters out for what figures to be one of the last pre-Super Bowl patrols before the fleet trades up to new models, the agency said this week. The pregame, daytime-only flights in the vicinity of Los Angeles’ SoFi stadium, […]

Unlike many other federal agencies, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board did not receive any supplemental funding during fiscal 2021 to ensure emergency operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a finnancial report released this week. While the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) kept running without money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration took a step toward forging another link in the nuclear-weapon supply chain of the 21st century late last year when it sought industry input about producing new quantities of high explosives for weapons. The agency has long foreseen the need for fresh nuclear-weapon-usable triaminotrinitrobenzene-based (TATB) energetics, and in October issued […]

Northrop Grumman’s 2021 revenue showed a $1-billion bump from the ramp-up of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent nuclear-tipped, intercontinental ballistic missile program, the company reported this week in its latest annual 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On the whole, the sale of the company’s IT business in February depressed sales and earnings, […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory this week promoted a new article in Nature that detailed some of the foundational work at the National Ignition Facility over the last two years that paved the way for August’s record-setting energy output at the facility, the California weapons lab wrote in a press release. Achieving a burning plasma […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina should be ready to start shipping certain transuranic waste from downblended plutonium to its underground disposal site in New Mexico by the end of the summer, an agency official told the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board Tuesday. The Savannah River Site (SRS) goal is […]

The first of multiple bottom-loading furnaces designed to reclaim uranium scraps from the manufacture of nuclear-weapon components at the Y-12 National Security Site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is scheduled to start up in September 2026, an independent federal nuclear watchdog said recently. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to install four direct chip melt […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s counterterrorism office planned to replace its Bell-made helicopters with a pair of Leonardo-made aircraft, according to a contract award posted online this week. The roughly $35.5-million award covers “two (2) each Rotary Wing Aircraft in support of the [National Nuclear Security Administration] NNSA Office of Nuclear Incident Response” from  AgustaWestland […]

A worker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium facility needed “outpatient treatment” after internal exposure to radiation following an apparent glovebox breach at the lab’s PF-4 plutonium facility on Friday, the lab said this week. The employee was one of six members of the Los Alamos’ Materials Recovery and Recycle Aqueous Chloride Team who […]

After state lawmakers broke up his district, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), the chair of the Armed Forces panel that writes the first drafts of nuclear-weapon policy each year, will retire from Congress when his term ends in January 2023, he said this week. “There’s no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but […]

The Department of Energy did not reject any information requests from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for the six-months ending Dec. 31, the safety watchdog told Congress this month, which amounts to zero refusals during the first year of the Joe Biden administration. “The Board has no denials of access to information to report […]

Progressive leading lights in both houses of Congress led a letter-writing campaign urging President Joe Biden this week to use his imminent Nuclear Posture Review to cancel deployed and planned low-yield nukes. Canceling the planned low-yield, sea-launched nuclear-tipped cruise missile and shelving the W76-2 low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead “would further signal that the United […]

Losing Britain’s nuclear weapons business took a small bite out of Lockheed Martin’s 2021 earnings, which fell overall for the year, despite underlying signs of strength in operations, the company reported this week. Despite the renationalization of the United Kingdom’s nuclear-weapons complex in July 2021, segment sales and operating profits at Lockheed’s Space segment — […]

Civilian reactors in Tennessee notionally will sharply increase their output of tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons by the fall of 2024 to help the National Nuclear Security Administration produce its desired 2,800 grams of tritium annually during the government fiscal year that begins around that time, officials said this week. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission […]

Troy Wade, a Reagan-era assistant secretary of energy for defense programs and a fixture for decades at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site, died Jan. 16 at his home in Nevada, according to local media and the site. He was 87. Scott Wade, Troy’s son, confirmed his father’s death to the local […]

Less than a week after moving to get ahead of allegations that its award of a multi-billion-dollar sites operations contract was tainted by conflicts of interest and impropriety, the National Nuclear Security Administration had made no sudden moves to restart the year-long competition to find the next manager of its two main nuclear-weapon manufacturing plants. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) this week announced it approved the start of construction on the decontamination and decommissioning subproject at the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project. The effort, approval of which the Exchange Monitor reported in November, involves removing unneeded equipment from the building that will become the lab’s plutonium pit factory. […]

Alone among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s major nuclear-weapon sites, only the Los Alamos National Laboratory still requires employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, according to an Exchange Monitor survey of the site. The Nevada National Security Site and the Sandia National Laboratories paused enforcement of their mandates in January, the latest to do so […]

Most staffers with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board don’t need to return to their pre-pandemic workplaces this month, a spokesperson with the federal safety watchdog said this week. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is no longer requiring a return to work on Jan. 24, as earlier scheduled, “but is giving the staff the […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security has nearly installed all the glove boxes for a new uranium purification process at the Y-12 National Security Complex and hot commissioning should start early next year, a spokesperson said recently. Site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) put the electrorefining glove boxes and related equipment into Building 9215 last year, though installation […]

The White House this week officially nominated Marvin Adams to succeed Charles Verdon as the top weapons official at National Nuclear Security Administration headquarters in Washington, according to a press release. The White House sent Adams’ nomination to the Senate nearly a month after announcing its intention to make him the next deputy administrator for defense […]

The last railcar in a proposed spent nuclear fuel rail transport system is en route to Colorado this week for testing, the Department of Energy said in a press release. The Rail Escort Vehicle (REV) will undergo multiple-car testing at a site near Pueblo, Colo., DOE said in its Monday statement. The railcar is set to […]

With the omicron variant of COVID-19 driving a national spike in cases, the National Nuclear Security Administration reported a record number of active infections across the nuclear security enterprise on Friday. There were 1,265 active cases across the enterprise as of Friday, a spokesperson at National Nuclear Security Security (NNSA) headquarters wrote in an email. […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., signed contracts with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to support the company’s initiative to domestically manufacture a medical isotope without highly enriched uranium, according to a DOE press release. In an email this week, a spokesperson for SHINE said the grant the […]

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is the new top Republican on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first drafts of policies touching on defense nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, the panel’s GOP leadership said this week. Lamborn slid into the leadership role after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former strategic […]

The Sandia National Laboratories have temporarily dropped a requirement that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving only a pair of National Nuclear Security Administration-owned sites that require vaccination. While Sandia’s mandate is paused, “the discipline process for those employees who are unvaccinated, and processing of religious and medical accommodations are on hold,” a labs […]

Big nuclear weapons programs could be delayed if the government cannot agree on a 2022 budget and instead stretches last year’s budgets through the rest of the current fiscal year, the Air Force’s chief of staff said Wednesday in congressional testimony. Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff, said the service could lose […]