Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Radiological contamination was found on four workers at the Y-12 National Security Complex in recent weeks, including one person who tracked material into a facility housing enriched and depleted uranium operations, according to a report from a federal group that monitors Department of Energy sites. The four incidents stemmed from routine operations and maintenance, according […]

Ignoring the ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee’s plea for probation, a federal judge in New Mexico sentenced Joshua Cordova to nearly two years in prison for the four counts of fraud to which he admitted earlier this year. Cordova worked at the Albuquerque-based labs network from 2011 to 2019, instructing military and law enforcement personnel how […]

Citing COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions on the agency’s end, the Department of Energy has cancelled plans for Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., to operate a new uranium enrichment centrifuge at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, next year, the company disclosed Friday. Under a DOE contract awarded in 2019, Centrus subsidiary American Centrifuge Operating was […]

An Aug. 8 experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility that dazzled scientists, weapons-focused and otherwise, has the National Nuclear Security Administration rethinking plans to focus the facility more strictly on nuclear-weapons work. The experiment did not create a sustained nuclear fusion reaction, but it did set a new record for energy output […]

Groups led by BWX Technologies and Bechtel National have protested the National Nuclear Security Administration’s decision to award management and operations of the agency’s two main nuclear-weapons production sites to the Fluor-led Nuclear Production One. The Government Accountability Office filed notices online Monday that Strategic Nuclear Operators — which web searches show shares an address in Lynchburg, Va., with […]

Editor’s note: the following was adapted from remarks delivered Wednesday by retired Air Force Gen. Frank Klotz, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from 2014 to 2018, in a virtual forum organized by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center. The Exchange Monitor has abridged Klotz’s remarks and edited […]

The Joe Biden administration will nominate Texas A&M nuclear engineering professor Marvin Adams to be deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the White House announced Wednesday. Adams, if approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee and confirmed by the full Senate, will replace Charlie Verdon, the last senior appointee left from […]

Sources said the management and operations contractor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two big nuclear-weapons production sites suspended its employee COVID-19 vaccine mandate this week after a federal judge in Georgia blocked the Joe Biden administration’s mandate for all federal contractors. A pair of other nuclear-weapon sites, however, said they would keep mandates in […]

Niowave, Lansing, Mich., will get $13 million from the National Nuclear Security Administration, under a cooperative agreement, to support  domestic production of the Molybdenum-99 medical isotope, the agency announced Dec. 3. This is the fourth and final round of congressionally mandated funding established by law in 2012 as part of the federal government’s efforts to […]

Two years into the pandemic, the Department of Energy could see most of its federal employees return to their pre-COVID-19 work locations by mid-February, according to a recent email message from agency leadership. The current “maximum telework” policy for DOE’s federal workforce will be phased out starting Jan. 18, Tarak Shah, chief of staff to […]

The National Nuclear Safety Administration announced this week Corey Hinderstein was sworn in as deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Senate unanimously confirmed Hinderstein Nov. 30. With her swearing in, the NNSA returns to its full complement of three Senate-confirmed senior managers. The swearing in was announced by National […]

With virtually all federal employees mandated to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board envisions a staff return-to-workplace date of Jan. 24, a spokesperson for the board said this week. “[P]lans may change, but this is our current plan,” Tara Tadlock, the associate director for board operations at the Defense Nuclear Facilities […]

A compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, passed Tuesday by the House and awaiting a vote in the Senate, would authorize funding for Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs at or above the requested level for fiscal year 2022. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DOE’s semi-autonomous nuclear-weapons agency, would get $20.3 billion: […]

The Air Force’s F-35A variant should still be certified to carry a pair of B61-12 bombs by fiscal year 2026 and the first flight test of a non-nuclear W87-0 warhead mockup should still fly on a Ground Based Strategic Deterrent missile in December 2023, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command said Thursday. And […]

A compromise stopgap budget bill signed Friday averted a government shutdown and kept Department of Energy nuclear weapons and waste budgets at 2021 levels past Valentine’s Day. President Joe Biden signed the measure Friday after the House and Senate swiftly passed it on Thursday. In the Senate 19 Republicans crossed party lines to approve the […]

Confirmed, active cases of COVID-19 across the National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise jumped after the Thanksgiving holiday but remained about 70% lower than they were at this time last year, according to the latest agency data. There were 277 confirmed active cases across the agency’s labs, plants and sites, a spokesperson at National Nuclear Security […]

Plutonium pits, tank waste and contractor oversight again topped the Department of Energy inspector general’s list of the agency’s biggest management challenge, according to the latest edition, released before Thanksgiving. The most recent in the rolling series of special reports, “Management Challenges at the Department of Energy,” also assigned the same top priority to DOE’s […]

An ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee who racked up fraudulent charges of thousands of dollars or more on his company credit card is trying to stay out of prison, according to a sentencing memo filed before Thanksgiving. “If sentenced to pay a fine and be placed on probation for a period of five years, Mr. [Joshua] […]

The Senate this week unanimously confirmed Corey Hinderstein to be deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Security Administration. A think-tanker with a previous detail to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under her belt, Hinderstein was on the Senate’s executive calendar for 40 days after clearing the Senate Armed Services […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration said Thursday it put together the first war-ready B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb on Nov. 23, paving the way to create an estimated 480 of the weapons, which will homogenize four existing variants of the bomb.  The agency “anticipates starting full-scale production in May 2022 and completing all needed production in […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration was scheduled to brief losing bidders next week about the agency’s decision to entrust a team led by Fluor, Irving, Texas, with management of the country’s two main nuclear-weapon production sites, sources said this week. The winning team, Nuclear Production One (NPOne) — which also includes junior partner Amentum, Germantown, […]

National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby continued her tour of the nuclear security enterprise this week, with the joint Pentagon-Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Council riding along, the agency tweeted. Hruby, sworn in in July, has been checking in with each of the NNSA’s big plants and sites throughout the summer and the […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — The head of Naval Reactors this week invited defense industry executives here to think about how they’d contribute to a three-way effort to transfer nuclear submarine propulsion to Australia — but he didn’t invite any contributions. “We have 18 months to go and figure out how to deliver a platform, a capability, […]

Australia is not planning to create a domestic nuclear industry to support the highly enriched uranium-powered submarines the country hopes to build using U.S. and U.K. technology, Canberra’s ambassador said this week. “The subs will be using HEU [highly enriched uranium] and we’re just working out now the arrangements for what that will mean in […]

A Sandia National Laboratories building that hosts the labs’ power sources technology programs has mostly reopened after being damaged by a fire last month, though the room where the fire started remained closed as of Wednesday, a spokesperson said. The Oct. 11 fire involved a lithium battery and forced the evacuation of the aging Building […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is almost finished with a proof-of-concept unit that will kick off mass production of the homogenized version of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, an agency spokesperson said this week. “The B61-12 program is nearing the completion of the FPU [first production unit] milestone, and we expect to make an announcement […]

President Biden on Wednesday announced his intention to nominate Dimitri Kusnezov, a scientist and Energy Department official helping with international partnerships on artificial intelligence at the department, to head the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security. Kathryn Coulter Mitchell is the current acting under secretary for Science and Technology (S&T) at […]