Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

COVID-19 cases and deaths surged across the National Nuclear Security Administration complex in summer’s final month, with active infections hitting levels not seen since November and the agency confirming three new fatalities this week alone. At deadline, 25 people at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) labs, plants and sites were confirmed to have died […]

In an announcement with implications for a wide cross section of nuclear policy professionals and the nuclear industry, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that Australia will acquire nuclear attack submarines — of origin and fuel type yet to be determined — as part of a new trilateral accord with the U.S. and the U.K. After […]

ARLINGTON, Va. — A new poll commissioned in August by the Mitchell Institute here shows that a bipartisan group of U.S. voters favored acquisition of a new ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile fleet. The online poll, conducted in August 2021 by Washington-based communications firm Seven Letter, sampled 2,150 people who voted in the 2020 election. The […]

Recent federal employee forms show 90% of workers at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board have been vaccinated against coronavirus infection, a spokesperson for the board said this week. All Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) personnel have submitted the recently-required forms to attest to their COVID-19 vaccination status, said Tara Tadlock, associate director for […]

In a move necessary to produce hundreds of kilograms of energy-dense, U.S.-origin uranium fuel for DOE, Centrus Energy Corp. extended a lease on Department of Energy buildings at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio for three years, through 2025. The buildings support the 16-machine cascade Centrus, Bethesda, Md., is building for DOE under a $115 […]

The Department of Energy redentlydefended a 2020 update to a key nuclear safety management regulation but said the agency will work with a federal nuclear watchdog over its “technical concerns” with the final rule — including as it relates to aging nuclear facilities. The DOE “continues to conclude that its current regulatory framework, as revised […]

The current trillion-dollar nuclear modernization regime is based on obsolete thinking that fails to consider the emerging nuclear danger posed by China, the head of U.S. Strategic Command said this week at the virtual STATCOM Nuclear Deterrence Symposium. The U.S. is modernizing against “old requirements” developed with the assumption that China is a “lesser included case” in the nuclear […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was to lead the U.S. delegation to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency’s 65th General Conference, the formalities of which were scheduled to begin Monday with an opening plenary session. Granholm and her entourage will arrive in Vienna, Austria, only days after the U.S. announced that it and the United […]

New nuclear arms-control agreements should focus on all Russian nuclear weapons, including those unrestricted by the New START treaty, and “pursue new risk reduction measures” with China to address Beijing’s “rapid and opaque nuclear buildup,” the new U.S. under secretary of state for arms control and international security said this week. Bonnie Jenkins, confirmed to […]

Mark Anthony will move to New Mexico from Lund, Sweden, where he directed construction of a multibillion neutron source, to lead the new plutonium infrastructure directorate at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the lab said this week. Anthony’s appointment, effective Nov. 1, follows a four-month search for someone to head the plutonium infrastructure directorate, which […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Uranium Processing Facility will start up in August 2025, almost a year later than once anticipated but with months of margin to spare to reach full operational capability by the long-promised date of December 2025. That’s according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s DNFSB latest Oak Ridge site report. […]

Six weeks after telling unvaccinated feds and contractors to wear masks and be tested regularly for COVID-19, President Joe Biden on Thursday took things a step further and said such workers must either take the vaccine or find another job.   “If you want to work with the federal government, do business with us, get vaccinated,” […]

In a legal settlement announced this week in a regulatory filing, uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology developer Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., said it got the millions of dollars it was seeking from the Department of Energy for the old U.S. Enrichment Corp.’s pension fund this week. Centrus will collect about $43.5 million from […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration in August confirmed that four more employees of the nuclear security enterprise died of COVID-19 during an explosive summer case surge, even as some federal contractors took their most forceful workforce vaccination measures to date. In the final week of August, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had 419 confirmed, […]

The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved about $425 million in funding above the president’s request for nuclear-weapons infrastructure in fiscal year 2022 — money that corresponding appropriations bills would not yet allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to spend. The authorized funding came from an amendment to the committee’s 2022 National Defense Authorization […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration would have to report to Congress about the benefits of competitively awarding management and operations contracts for nuclear weapons sites by March 1, if the House’s version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who holds the seat recently vacated by longtime Armed Services […]

Construction of plutonium pit factories should continue more or less as planned for another year-and-a-half, until the Joe Biden administration wraps up a nuclear posture review and the Savannah River Site delivers a baseline cost estimate for a pit factory there, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. “We are sort of […]

The House Armed Services Committee wants the Air Force to review its approach to the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, to include identifying potential steps for reducing costs and introducing more opportunities for competition in the operation and maintenance phase. The panel approved its version of the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) […]

NorthStar Medical technologies, Beloit, Wis., inked a $37-million cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to produce the medical isotope Molybdenum-99, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency announced Aug. 27. NorthStar, which had to put up matching funds to get the $37 million from the agency, will use the cash to produce the isotope […]

Jill Hruby, the new administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) continued her tour of the nuclear security enterprise last week, dropping by both the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. A resident of New Mexico at the time when she was confirmed to lead […]

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not be published on Aug. 27, 2021 while the Exchange Monitor takes its annual August recess. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021.

Centrus Energy Corp. has identified about $9 million worth of pandemic-related expenses at  its new enrichment cascade in Ohio and wants the Department of Energy to help defray the costs, the company in a regulatory filing. “[W]e plan to seek additional funding commitments from DOE for the additional costs,” Centrus wrote Aug. 13 in its latest […]

An ad hoc committee of the South Carolina legislature was scheduled to discuss on Aug. 24 which of the counties surrounding the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., will share in a $600 million federal plutonium settlement. “I want to make sure our friends from Aiken understand that Aiken County is not the only consideration […]

Shortly after the House and Senate united to protect the Department of Energy’s inertial confinement fusion program from some proposed austerity next fiscal year, the program’s emblematic National Ignition Facility shattered its own record for neutron yield. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced the milestone this week, about a week after the Aug. 8 shot […]

Operations, including work supporting plutonium pit manufacturing, are back on at Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility following a 200-gallon flood precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet van system in the future pit factory. “After three weeks the positive pressure circulating chilled water (PPCCW) system has been restored, with all affected processes being operational […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has released a sources sought note seeking information about a new uranium reserve program that Congress earlier this year ordered the agency to establish. According to the note, the reserve would be a stockpile of uranium hexafluoride converted from newly produced, domestic natural uranium acquired from deposits at existing sites. […]