Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor, which began producing tritium for nuclear weapons on Nov. 19, will irradiate a bit more than half as many tritium-producing rods as hoped in fiscal year 2021, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency had aimed to irradiate […]

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has improved oversight of contracts and operations since last year, but the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency could stand to do more, the Government Accountability Office said this week in its annual update on high-dollar, “high-risk” issues. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “has continued to show leadership […]

Progressive lawmakers Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) this week urged  President Joe Biden to scale back nuclear modernization efforts, including pausing development of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program and canceling new and planned low-yield weapons. In a letter sent Tuesday to Biden, Markey and Khanna raised concerns on the “unsustainable rate of […]

Nuclear hawks lit into Colin Kahl, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Pentagon’s top policy post, after Kahl declined to offer unconditional support for key missile modernization programs during a Thursday hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) all tried, but all they got […]

Kim Budil took over as the 13th director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California this week. The younger of the two nuclear weapons design laboratories announced the change at top in late January. Budil replaced William Goldstein, who retired after six years as director and 36 years at Livermore. Budil takes over with […]

Karen Skelton has been named a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, DOE announced this week in a press release. Skelton comes to the Joe Biden administration from California, where she spent the last decade as the CEO and founder of Skelton Strategies, a policy and political consulting firm working on energy, climate, technology  […]

Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., received a long-expected $57-million contract to design and demonstrate highly enriched uranium conversion and purification for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency announced this week. If the BWX Technologies subsidiary’s pilot meets the agency’s goals, the company could earn a follow-on contract to perform some of the uranium work […]

Active confirmed COVID-19 cases among civilian nuclear weapons workers declined for a sixth straight week, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s tally of cases among its federal and contractor personnel. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency had received reports of 43 new confirmed cases this week, a spokesperson said Friday, with active […]

Flight tests for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent missile, the planned successor to the nuclear-tipped Minuteman III, are scheduled to start in fiscal year 2024, according to a Pentagon environmental review of the new weapons. The service proposes four Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) flight tests from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in fiscal […]

Germantown, Md.-based Amentum recently marked its first full year as a privately-held company after being spun off by Los Angeles-based AECOM. On Jan. 31, 2020, AEMCOM closed on the $2.4 billion sale of its AECOM Management Services division to affiliates of New York-based investment firms Lindsay Goldberg and American Securities LLC. The new owners re-christened the company […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons assembly hub in Texas was scheduled for more or less back to normal operations this week after asking non-essential personnel to remain home for most of last week during Texas’ disastrous deep freeze. “Pantex operations are back to normal schedule today,” a spokesperson for the Bechtel National-led plant […]

The Department of Energy and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection are hammering out some type of legal settlement over shipments of mislabeled radioactive waste sent from the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee to the Nevada National Security Site, according to minutes of an advisory committee meeting posted online. “Progress has been made on […]

U.S. nuclear modernization is nothing like Russian or Chinese nuclear modernization, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), chair of the subcommittee that writes the first draft of the annual military policy bill for defense-nuclear programs, said Tuesday in a hearing. “When we use the term ‘modernization’ for our nuclear weapons, that leads to the possibility of false […]

SOC, a Day & Zimmermann security company, this week protested the Department of Energy’s recently-announced award of a $1-billion Savannah River Site security services award to a Securitas-led team. The bid protest, dated Monday Feb. 22, matched the DOE solicitation number for the Security Services Contract at Savannah River awarded Feb. 12 to the SRS Critical Infrastructure […]

BWX Technologies, the Lynchburg, Va.-based nuclear contractor for the Department of Energy and the Pentagon, on Monday posted a record $557 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020, up 11% from the $501 million in the 2019 period. In addition, BWXT’s net income for the fourth quarter was $65.7 million, or $0.69 per […]

The U.S. and Iran planned no meeting at deadline about whether to let Washington back in to the politically binding Iran nuclear deal, though U.N. inspectors did clinch a last-minute technical understanding with the Islamic Republic to preserve some record keeping about Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. On Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the […]

Jennifer Granholm was sworn in Thursday as secretary of energy after the Senate confirmed her by a wide, bipartisan margin to lead the Department of Energy and the almost $30-billion-a-year worth of nuclear weapons and waste programs that make up more than half the agency’s budget. “DOE’s core missions — promoting scientific discovery, maintaining the […]

It was a down earnings period for Texas-based Fluor in the 4th quarter, which the government contractor largely attributed to delayed spending due to the COVID-19 pandemic along with winding down low-profit infrastructure projects. For both the quarter and the year, the company winnowed its year-over-year losses as revenue fell, according to an earnings release […]

Someone at the Y-12 National Security Complex died from complications related to COVID-19 this week, casting a pall over the continuing downward trend of new confirmed cases across the civilian nuclear enterprise. The fatality brings the total of confirmed fatal cases at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) during the roughly year-long global pandemic to […]

A story in last week’s issue of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor (“Jacobs’ Profits Edge Up in Q1; Revenue Stable,” Vol. 25 No. 06) should have said that Jacobs’ profits increased in the first quarter of 2021 on both an adjusted and unadjusted basis. The story was also updated with the correct earnings figures for […]

In what could be one of the final motions in the case before it heads toward a trial, the ex-chief financial officer of Mission Support and Tests Services repeated his argument that a federal anti-corruption law aimed at public companies applies to the private contractor, and that he filed whistleblower disclosures about financial impropriety at […]

A Tennessee environmental group is not planning to sue the National Nuclear Security Administration again over the Uranium Processing Facility, despite reserving the right to do so in a recent court filing. “[W]e have no plans at the current time to file additional litigation,” Ralph Hutchison,  coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, wrote […]

President Joe Biden’s nomination of David Turk to be the deputy secretary of energy remained in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee at deadline Friday, with no hearing scheduled. A deputy assistant secretary of energy for international climate and technology during the administration of former President Barack Obama, Turk is currently deputy executive director of […]

The Senate Armed Services strategic forces committee will retain some of its nuclear backbone in the 117th Congress with Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who has a major nuclear constituency in the form of the Triad’s land-based leg, retaining her leadership role. That’s less nuclear leadership than the panel, which writes policy for nuclear forces and […]

The Joe Biden administration ought to look at undoing the legal deadlines the National Nuclear Security Administration faces to begin production of new nuclear weapon triggers, a former senior official with the agency said this week. “I think the administration needs to look at how those statutory timelines really line up to the programmatically driven […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management selected Hendon, Va.-based SRS Critical Infrastructure Security as the winner of the new Security Services Contract, potentially worth $1 billion over 10 years, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. SRS Critical Infrastructure Security, or SCIS, is composed of Securitas CIS, K2 Solutions, Spectra Tech, Inc. […]

Northrop Grumman “successfully conducted its first major design review” for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent engineering and manufacturing development baseline last November, the company announced this week. Northrop touted the milestone as the new Joe Biden administration prepares its first federal budget request and Congress continues its work confirming Biden’s nominees to top Pentagon posts. […]