Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

After both the House of Representatives and Senate passed a stopgap funding plan Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the continuing budget resolution to keep the federal government open through Dec. 3. The action prevented the Department of Energy and other federal agencies from largely shutting down at midnight. The short-term funding bill will hold spending at […]

The minority leader of the South Carolina Senate this week made an opening bid in the statewide tug-of-war over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal money up for grabs from last year’s plutonium settlement with Columbia: $100 million for the state, $425 million for seven counties near the Savannah River Site. “That would […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessments office is opening an investigation into the flooding of Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility earlier this year, an event precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet vacuum. DOE’s internal watchdog notified lab director Thomas Mason of the impending investigation in a Sept. 23 letter posted online recently. In late […]

The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a June legal settlement between the state and the Department of Energy to prevent mislabeled radioactive waste shipments from again ending up at the Nevada National Security Site dominate the site’s just released 2020 environmental report. The settlement reached this summer calls upon DOE to increase the vetting and […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee has demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration come up with a “comprehensive strategy” for disposing of nuclear waste created by the ongoing 30-year refresh of U.S. nuclear weapons. The provision is part of the committee’s fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the full text of which the […]

Todays’ computing, modeling and simulation tools, plus the National Ignition Facility that unlocks physics “not accessible in the laboratory,” have given nuclear-weapon stewards capabilities unimaginable almost 30 years ago, when the U.S. ceased explosive tests, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said this week. “On all of those fronts, the capabilities we have […]

Workers who secure a religious exemption to the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will be barred from the lab and allowed only to go on vacation or take leave without pay until they quit their jobs or get vaccinated, according to an all-hands memo from lab Director Thomas Mason. “On October 15, staff […]

The Department of Energy missed its self-imposed target to issue a final request for proposals by Sept. 30 for the multibillion-dollar Savannah River Site Management and Operating Contract and now plans to put the deal on the street in October. The agency made the announcement in a procurement notice posted online Thursday. DOE’s Office of […]

The secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations announced four new flag officer assignments as part of a submarine acquisition restructuring as well as a new shipyard improvement position. Rear Adm. David Goggins is moving from program executive officer for submarines to program executive officer for attack submarines, which will consolidate and oversee […]

By Rich Abott Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday on Thursday said the effort to design, build, support and properly oversee Australia’s fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines under a new deal may take decades. Last week, the U.S., U.K. and Australia announced the new AUKUS partnership to help Australia pursue procurement of its first nuclear-powered attack […]

The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program to replace nuclear-tipped Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles should proceed as planned and the Joe Biden administration’s nuclear posture review will be “unlike any that went before it” because of China’s rise on the world stage, the chair of the Senate Armed Forces strategic forces subcommittee said this week. […]

A dispute about the magnitude of a former employee’s theft from Sandia National Laboratory prompted an assistant U.S. attorney to refuse a request from the defendant’s lawyers that the U.S. District court knock two months off the former lab hand’s potential jail sentence. Joshua Cordova’s lawyers were seeking a 10-month sentence, on the basis that […]

The full House this week passed a stopgap spending bill that would essentially freeze federal spending, including at the Department of Energy, at 2021 levels until Dec. 3. It was a party-line vote in the Democratic-majority chamber: 220-211, with one member not voting. The stopgap budget now heads to the Senate, where Republican leaders have […]

A service life extension would be authorized for the B83 megaton gravity bomb in 2022 and every new president would have to review U.S. nuclear force posture, if a Senate committee’s version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) behind […]

The USS Wyoming ballistic missile submarine launched a pair of Trident II D5LE missiles from the Eastern Test Range near Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday, Sept. 17, the Navy announced in a press release over the weekend.  The launch of the unarmed missiles were part of Demonstration and Shakedown Operation DASO-31, the Navy wrote in […]

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. […]