Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Leidos, the lead team member on the Hanford Site’s support services contractor, is offering employees who don’t want to take a COVID-19 vaccination the option of moving over to the commercial side of the business, CEO Roger Krone said this week on a conference call. Based on vaccination cards turned into the company, Krone said […]

The Pentagon expects China to have an arsenal of at least 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, according to a new report, with the U.S.’ top military official this week calling the pacing threat of Beijing a “really significant” challenge for the next 10 to 20 years.  The projected nuclear stockpile detailed in the department’s latest […]

The parties to the Iran nuclear deal that traded sanctions relief for constraints on Tehran’s fissile materials program were to gather in Vienna on Nov. 29 for a seventh round of talks about bringing the U.S. and the Islamic Republic back into the deal, diplomats from some of those countries said Wednesday. Ali Bagheri Kani […]

David Huizenga, the Department of Energy’s defense-nuclear do-it-all, is stepping aside as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top career civil servant to become a senior advisor to the nuclear-weapons sub-agency’s administrator, initially focusing on negotiations to return the U.S. to the Iran Nuclear Deal, according to an internal email. Huizenga will assume his new role […]

Maryland-based Amentum, a major player in the Department of Energy’s weapons complex, announced this week it is buying another federal contractor, Virginia-based PAE in a cash transaction valued at $1.9-billion. The acquisition, which includes Amentum’s assumption of some debt, was approved by PAE’s board of directors, according to the release. As a publicly-traded company, PAE […]

Lockheed Martin on this week reported lower sales in its third quarter and reduced its outlook for revenue for 2021 with further declines expected in 2022 before rebounding to growth beginning in 2023. Combined with the depressed sales outlook at least through 2022 and a cut to the forecast for operating cash flow this year, […]

Environmental groups from California, New Mexico and South Carolina are fighting to keep their lawsuit to slow plutonium-pit production from being thrown out of court and claimed this week that Congress’ mandate to produce pits does not prevent further environmental review of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s planned pit complex. “[T]his lawsuit involves more than […]

Crews finished building the structure of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s next-generation, secondary-stage factory in September and the compound’s electrical hub is scheduled to be completed in around January, the site prime contractor said recently. The milestone for the Main Process Building, where the most important weapons work at the Y-12 National Security Site will […]

A former Sandia National Laboratories employee’s maneuvering for a lighter prison sentence has the government wondering whether the ex-Sandian should receive any sentencing leniency at all, according to a Friday court filing. Joshua Cordova has acted “shamelessly” since reading a plea agreement with the government, claiming that tens of thousands of dollars worth personal items […]

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) has introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to prevent unvaccinated federal workers and contractors from being fired if they provide proof of COVID–19 antibodies. Newhouse, whose congressional district includes the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, announced the introduction of the Options Over Terminations Act Tuesday. “Federal employees who have opted […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has maxed out the options on Consolidated Nuclear Security’s short-term extension to run the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security complex, keeping the short-timer incumbent on the job through March while the agency finalizes the award of a follow-on deal. With an expected four-month transition period to the next […]

Eight Los Alamos employees who refused to get a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination have sued the lab’s operations contractor in federal court asked a judge Friday to put the mandate on hold, court papers filed this week show. All eight of the plaintiffs received a religious exemption to Los Alamos’s vaccine mandate, which called for anyone […]

The roughly 250 confirmed, active COVID-19 cases across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s complex at the end of October was only a little higher than the number the agency recorded for the corresponding week of 2020 but down by about half from the summer’s high. Also, as of late this month, the National Nuclear Security […]

The Secretary of State used a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to talk tough on Iran this week, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee approved a couple of nuclear-nonproliferation nominees at State. Secretary Anthony Blinken’s Monday meeting with Rafael Grossi, director general of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), happened […]

Non-executive board chair John Fees will end a 43-year career with BWX Technologies and its predecessor companies on May 3, the Lynchburg, Va.-based naval nuclear reactor provider, fuel fabricator and defense-nuclear site-manager announced this week in a regulatory filing. Fees, who has been the non-executive chairman since 2018, will retire after the company’s board of directors […]

Sister Megan Rice, a peace activist whose 2012 break-in to the Y-12 National Security Complex spurred an overhaul of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s physical security apparatus, died Oct. 10 at 91, her order said. Rise was born in 1930 and joined the Society of Holy Child Jesus in 1947. After breaking into Y-12 at age […]

A three-way partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines “is not designed in any way to be exclusive,” the U.K. military’s highest-ranking uniformed officer said this week. The trilateral deal, called AUKUS, was “a first step in terms of industrial development between like-minded partners,” Gen. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is “targeting” fiscal year 2026 as the startup date for a new facility at the Savannah River Site that will process 34 metric tons of surplus weapon usable plutonium for disposal in New Mexico, an agency official told advisors to South Carolina’s governor this week. That’s two years earlier than […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., got $35 million through a cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to help produce the molybdenum-99 medical isotope in the U.S. without relying on highly enriched uranium, the agency announced this week. This was the third of four agreements planned under a funding opportunity Congress ordered the National Nuclear […]

Corey Hinderstein, the Joe Biden administration’s nominee to run the National Nuclear Security Administration’s defense nuclear nonproliferation office, cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by a voice vote. The full Senate had not scheduled a confirmation vote for Hinderstein at deadline Friday. If confirmed, she would lead a roughly $2-billion-a-year portfolio that includes […]

Most National Nuclear Security Administration sites have given employees until Dec. 8 to get vaccinated, but some people at labs in New Mexico have already been terminated for refusing to at least begin a vaccine course.  At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the northern part of the state, nearly 300 people have left the […]

Funeral services were scheduled for Nov. 9 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., for a submarine officer who had a second career in the civilian nuclear world as a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staffer for most of the last decade. Captain John Pasko (Ret.) died Sept. 7, according to a memorial post published […]

While no details were provided, a Department of Energy spokesperson officially confirmed last week that Centerra will continue at least in the short term as security contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. “Yes, they’ll be extended,” the spokesperson said. The most recent extension for Centerra, provider of security services […]

A government employee and his wife were arrested last week for attempting this summer to sell classified information about the Virginia-class attack submarine’s nuclear reactor to a foreign government, according to an unsealed criminal complaint dated Oct. 8. Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana Toebbe, were in federal custody by Saturday, according to a filing […]

A decommissioned U.K. cargo vessel that once helped ship weapon-usable plutonium to the U.S. from Sweden has been completely recycled, ship operator Nuclear Transport Solutions announced this week. The INF3-class Oceanic Pintail, a 3,865 metric-ton (4,260 U.S. tons) vessel, was decommissioned in Scotland by Dales Marine Services of Leith near Edinburgh, Scotland, said Nuclear Transport Solutions, a […]

The proposed nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile might yet survive the Joe Biden administration’s nuclear posture review thanks among other things to the reported discovery of new Chinese missile silos, the official who coordinated the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review said Wednesday. “I thought perhaps at the beginning of this process that this particular weapon […]

A former Sandia employee who pleaded guilty to ripping off the labs for tens of thousands of dollars or more worth of merchandise is still fighting with the government over the exact value of the ill-gotten goods — a figure that could mean an extra two months in prison, or not, court papers show. Joshua […]