Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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 […]

For now, top management at the Department of Energy still plans a phased return to onsite work for employees and contractors starting on Tuesday, Jan. 18. “Per DOE’s COVID-19 Workplace Safety and Reentry Framework, employees who are designated site critical will return to the worksite on Jan. 18,” a DOE headquarters spokesperson said in a […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm visited the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Thursday. Granholm praised the lab for its work on “biosecurity. Defense. Nonproliferation.”   Nonproliferation policy pro Laura Holgate on Tuesday returned as an ambassador to the U.S. Mission to Vienna, the State Department said. The Senate in October approved Holgate’s nomination as the […]

Confirmed active cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled across the National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise compared with early December, a spokesperson for agency headquarters in Washington said Friday.  The increase in active cases, the only number the semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency reports, occurred with the highly contagious but reportedly less severe omicron variant of the virus spreading […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management published draft solicitations this week for a potentially 10-year, $2-billion contract that includes processing depleted uranium tetrafluoride for National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapon programs. The work would be part of the cleanup branch’s Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Contract, the meat of […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration hopes its efforts to boost the domestic industry for Molybdenum-99 will result in commercial-scale availability of the medical isotope a couple years from now, according to an annual nonproliferation report the agency released before the holidays. Under its partnership with four U.S. companies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “aims […]

The five major nuclear-weapon states this week released a new statement about the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the bedrock international accord that promotes the peaceful use of nuclear technology and a philosophy of defensive use of nuclear weapons. “We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.  […]

James McConnell is the new No. 3 and top career civil servant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said before New Year’s. McConnell was appointed associate principal deputy administrator in December, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website. In that role he would backstop the agency’s […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to meet in January to discuss increasing production of tritium for nuclear weapons in civilian reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to a notice posted online this week. “The purpose of this informational meeting between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is […]

On the heels of the arrival of the New Year, here’s a look at what to expect in 2022 at the National Nuclear Security Administration, its sites and its partners. Production Office Protest A bigger deal for industry perhaps than the Joe Biden administration’s imminent nuclear posture review — a type of review that in […]

The Senate this week passed the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), approving a larger-than-requested budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that would not phase in until Congress reconciles competing appropriations bills produced by the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee, neither of which provides the amount authorized by the […]

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not publish on Dec. 24 in observance of the Christmas holiday or on Dec. 31 in observance of the New Year’s holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Monday, Jan. 3. Happy holidays!