Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

“The bow wave has arrived” for the civilian nuclear-weapons budget, the Government Accountability Office warned Wednesday in a report that, amid recommendations for streamlining budget and project organization, made room for a we-told-you-so about the effects of deferring upgrades for nuclear weapons and their production infrastructure. “DOE’s appropriation for fiscal year 2021 includes a 23 […]

Rear Adm. John Mitchell (ret), whose decade-plus, post-Navy career with Bechtel National took him on a tour of senior leadership posts at defense-nuclear sites and Yucca Mountain, died June 1. He was 79. That is according to a short memorial post online that indicated Mitchell’s final arrangements would be handled by a funeral home in Alexandria, Va., […]

It will take about a month longer than previously thought for personnel at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to certify that a key component of the site’s planned plutonium pit factory can safely accept the higher volumes fissile material required to support the pit mission. The Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) will be recategorized as a […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration cannot meet a legal requirement to make at least 80 new plutonium cores for intercontinental ballistic missile warheads in 2030, the agency’s acting boss told lawmakers Thursday. With the planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SPPPF) up to five years behind scheduled, “based on our latest information we assess that […]

Personnel at the Pantex Plant are building the first production unit for a major alteration of the larger of the Navy’s two submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads, the acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration told a House Armed Services panel Thursday. “I’m happy to report that as we speak today, the system first production […]

Among the highlights of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s detailed fiscal year 2022 budget request: it will cost more than double what the agency once estimated to convert a plutonium recycling plant in South Carolina into a factory for nuclear-weapon triggers; planned air- and sea-launched cruise missiles will share a nuclear tip; next year’s costs […]

Thanks to an easy victory this week’s special election, the Democratic Party maintains control of Mexico’s 1st Congressional District seat vacated in March when Deb Haaland resigned to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of interior. Democrat Melanie Ann Stansbury, a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, won 60% of Tuesday’s vote to defeat […]

The Department of Energy spending request put forward Friday by the Joe Biden administration for fiscal 2022 would increase funding for environmental cleanup of past weapons work at several National Nuclear Security Administration sites. The DOE Office of Environmental Management budget for physical cleanup of this legacy contamination would rise by about a third, to […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., shipped low-level waste to the Nevada National Security Site in May for the first time in nearly two years after the desert site reinstated a certification that was yanked in 2019 following disclosure that Y-12 had sent 32 containers worth of improperly labelled waste to the […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security will remain on the job at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two big production sites at least two months longer than planned and possibly as many as six, the agency announced Tuesday. The Bechtel National-led prime for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, […]

The head of Air Force Global Strike Command is not concerned that the next-generation warhead for the next-generation nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile will be delayed because of a projected delay with one of the two plutonium pit-production plants that will supply the new warhead’s core. In a webcast address to the public and press Thursday […]

A planned pit factory to be built at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., might take five years longer than the National Nuclear Security Administration wanted to produce its full load of war-ready nuclear weapon cores, the Joe Biden administration’s nominee to lead the agency said Thursday. A slip at Savannah River, one of […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory has hired enough criticality safety personnel to support planned manufacturing of nuclear-weapon cores at the New Mexico laboratory, but staff churn among these crucial workers is more common than the lab believes, a new DOE review said. Lab management and operations contractor Triad National Security “has adequately managed the training and […]

Without much Republican support, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week favorably reported the Joe Biden administration’s nominee for the State Department’s top arms control post to the Senate floor. The Tuesday vote in the evenly divided committee was 12-10 on Bonnie Jenkins’ nomination for under secretary of state for arms control and international security. […]

Once again, the Congressional Budget Office’s biennial cost estimate for the 10 years of nuclear modernization spending arrived just in time for the yearly federal budget debate on Capitol Hill. The latest congressionally mandated report from the non-partisan office covers planned spending from 2021 through 2030, during which Pentagon and Department of Energy programs are […]

The Savannah River Site in February completed upgrades to tritium processing facilities at the site’s H-Area that will allow personnel to fill tritium reservoirs for the planned B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb life-extension program, the site said Tuesday. The upgrades doubled the capacity of one of the site’s tritium lines capacity, according to a press release, […]

National Engineering and Technology Solutions of Sandia, the Honeywell-owned prime for the Sandia National Laboratories, agreed to a $152,000 settlement with the Department of Energy over the unauthorized disclosure of classified information at the lab some time around 2019. The fine was not the only penalty Sandia paid, but other details of the enforcement were […]

A regional group to promote communities around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has decided to close up shop. “We are looking toward officially dissolving by June 30,” Darien Fernandez, the Taos Town Council member and chair of the Regional Coalition  of LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] Communities, said by […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management plans to relocate some transuranic waste from the Nevada National Security Site to the Idaho National Laboratory where it will be prepared for eventual shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The transuranic material is what “we refer to as the Nevada spheres,” Robert […]

As part of a roughly $20 billion 2022 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Joe Biden administration on Friday sought about 12% less for civilian nuclear weapons programs than the Donald Trump administration forecast would be necessary for the coming fiscal year. Overall, the 2022 spending request for the National Nuclear Security […]

Confirmed active cases of COVID-19 were well below the one-month acreage across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s federal and contractor workforce this week, falling to 87, or about 40% lower than a month ago, the agency said Friday. Although that’s over four times as many active cases as the civilian nuclear weapon steward reported heading […]

A three-day New Mexico Environment Department hearing on the need for a new underground shaft for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant kicked off this week with a lawyer for DOE saying the case is not about a life extension for the transuranic waste disposal site. The hearing is about efforts to “restore […]

In a budget hearing that was mostly a best-of, a couple Senators asked the acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration about alternative means of meeting the mission objectives of the day, including by producing pits at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or buying, instead of enriching, uranium needed to produce weapons-tritium in the […]

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), a reliable vote against the nuclear-modernization status quo in the House Armed Services Committee, told disarmament advocates this week that the Joe Biden administration should pause development of the next U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile. It was one of two steps Garamendi said Biden should take as part of the administration’s nuclear […]

Bechtel, Reston, Va., and Fluor, Irving, Texas, are leading separate bids for the potentially $10-year, $21.5 billion management and operations contract for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, people familiar with the competitive landscape said this week. Amentum, Germantown, Md., is also in the mix as a partner, one of these people said. The […]

The planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility will wrap up its critical decision 1 review in “mid-June,” the acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor this week. Acting Administrator Charles Verdon fine-tuned the date of the big milestone for the planned plutonium pit factory in the halls of […]

COVID vaccination levels climbed at the Sandia National Laboratories this week and appeared to be headed toward a plateau at National Nuclear Security Administration production sites and the Nevada National Security Site, according to agency data. Across the agency’s federal and contractor workforce, confirmed active cases of COVID-19 — the viral disease caused by the […]