Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

A former Naval Reactors employee from Maryland will spend at least 12-and-a-half years in federal prison after his amateur spycraft got him pinched last year by an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign buyer of U.S. nuclear-propulsion secrets, the Justice Department said. Jonathan Toebbe, 43, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to communicate […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Depending on when the National Nuclear Security Administration can “really” manufacture new plutonium pits, and depending on what “the real capacity” to make pits is, the Navy might be locked out of certain design choices for a planned new warhead, an admiral said here Wednesday. “[I]f we can’t get the requisite number […]

Below is Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s annual digest of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) performance evaluation summaries: the agency’s report cards for its big contracts, which explain how much management and operations entities earned for their performance. The Monitor has provided links to NNSA source documents. For fiscal year 2021, which began Oct. […]

The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday approved a three-week stopgap funding plan to keep the federal government open through March 11 after the current continuing resolution expires on Feb. 18. The full House voted Tuesday evening  272-to-162 to approve the short-term extension while appropriators continue to work on a spending plan to carry the government […]

Confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 across the National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise have tripled since January and are also three times higher than this time last year, according to data from agency headquarters. The civilian nuclear weapons steward also reported five confirmed COVID-19-related deaths since the first week of January, spokespersons from headquarters in Washington […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — A mining and construction project at the Nevada National Security Site critical to the next generation of non-explosive, nuclear-stockpile testing should have its cost and schedule set in June, the head of the site’s management contractor said here Tuesday. An independent cost estimate of the U1a Complex Enhancements Project’s (UCEP) Infrastructure and […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA — The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to reassess the priorities of its Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, senior administration officials said here this week. The review, which had yet to start as of Wednesday, will “reexamine the priorities and missions” of the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN) “in light of the […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — Maybe by March, the National Nuclear Security Administration will understand the extent to which COVID-19 has delayed modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons, the agency’s top Washington-based weapons official said here Tuesday. Programs under review include the W80-4 air-launched cruise missile warhead, which the agency said last year looked to be affected by […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With transition to a follow-on contract derailed for now, the National Nuclear Security Administration planned to extend the existing site-management contract for two of its main nuclear-weapons production sites for up to a year, people familiar with the plans said this week. Incumbent Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), a team led by Bechtel […]

The Exchange Monitor was on Feb. 7 to host its Nuclear Deterrence Summit, an annual, three-day gathering near Washington of industry professionals and government officials working on civilian nuclear-weapons programs. The summit was scheduled to run from Monday morning through Wednesday afternoon at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City near the Pentagon. Jill Hruby, the administrator […]

Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s nuclear-weapons acquisition czar in the Donald Trump administration, was appointed to fill one of four slots on a new commission charged with scrutinizing the Defense Department’s budgeting process, according to a congressional press release. The leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees each were allowed to nominate one person […]

In recent public statements, the two South Carolina Republicans in the Senate sounded receptive to the idea of President Joe Biden nominating a federal judge from their state, U.S. District Court Judge Michelle Childs, to the U.S. Supreme Court.   At the same time, however, some labor unions told The Washington Post recently Childs is not […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration this week laid groundwork to start competition on a contract for trucking tritium for nuclear weapons to the Savannah River Site from nuclear power plants in Tennessee.  At the very least, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency may need someone to make two trips over two years to […]

Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), who has taken an active interest in Department of Energy facilities in New Mexico, has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke, but should make a full recovery, his office staff said this week in a statement. Lujan’s office said he would make a full recovery, though media subsequently reported he […]

Editor’s note: this story corrects errors about the cost and schedule estimates for the Y-12 National Security Complex’s direct melt bottom-loading furnaces published in the January 29 edition of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor [Vol. 26, No. 4], “New Uranium Reclamation Furnace at Y-12 Starting Up in 2026, Defense Board Says.”    Bottom-loading furnaces at […]

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 […]