Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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. […]

A building that handles high explosives at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, briefly shut down earlier this month after a worker’s dosimeter showed up with an unusually high dose — after it was “inadvertently lost” in the facility by its wearer, a spokesperson for the plant said Tuesday. “It is believed that the employee’s […]

By April, both of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s next-generation plutonium-pit factories should reach the critical decision 1 milestone that solidifies the long-conceptualized designs of the facilities intended to manufacture new nuclear-weapon cores for most of this century. The semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency is planning the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project at the Los […]

In a stark reminder that the pandemic is not over, even with confirmed cases falling across the nuclear security enterprise, two more National Nuclear Security Administration personnel died from COVID-19 this week. The two fatalities, one at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., and the other at the Nevada National Security Site, brought total […]

After winter weather crippled many parts of Texas’ electricity grid, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons maintenance hub near Amarillo, Texas, decided to keep some personnel home during the first four days of this week. “In order to reduce energy consumption during the unprecedented winter storm impacting the Amarillo area, Pantex cancelled day, swing, […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory signed a 10-year lease on an office building in downtown Santa Fe, N.M., about 35 miles southeast by road from the main laboratory campus.  As many as 75 people could occupy the office space, which includes the first-floor of the Dorothy McKibbin Conference Center. The leased space will support the […]

President Joe Biden plans to nominate David Turk as the deputy secretary of energy, according to a Wednesday White House news release. Turk, a member of Biden’s Department of Energy transition team, is currently deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), where he has worked since 2016 after leaving the Barack Obama administration. […]

Amentum, Apex Systems and Leidos on Wednesday said they have formed Integrated ICBM Support Services, LLC, a joint venture aimed at capturing the Air Force’s next support contract for its current and future ICBM force. BAE Systems currently supports the ICBM Integration Support Contract (ISC), which is managed by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center […]

As of Tuesday, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Department of Energy are still tinkering with a draft memorandum of understanding about sharing information at nuclear-weapon sites while a Donald Trump administration order limiting DOE interactions with the board remains in effect. That’s according to a spokesperson for the independent federal board, which […]

The former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration is one of the hundreds of people who will be caught up in the Joe Biden administration’s purge of Pentagon advisory boards this month. Ex-Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty got a spot on the Defense Policy Board during the eleventh hour of the Donald Trump administration, shortly after then-Secretary of […]

Jacobs Engineering, the Dallas-based parent of multiple nuclear-cleanup and nuclear-weapon site contractors, saw profits rise about $20 million in the first quarter of 2021, while revenue stayed flat, the company reported this week.  That accounts for adjustments related to the 2019 sale of the company’s Energy, Chemicals and Resources division to Australia’s Worley, and other […]

Although it picked up 101 new cases this week, COVID-19 recoveries continued to exceed new infections at the National Nuclear Security Administration as sites continued vaccinating personnel, an agency spokesperson said. There were 503 active COVID-19 cases among the nuclear-weapons agency’s contractors and federal personnel this week, down 75 from the prior week. Recoveries have […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration still has not awarded Nuclear Fuel Services a contract to purify uranium for nuclear weapons programs, but the City of Oak Ridge this week repeated its opposition to the move, which it continued to paint as a job-killer for the region. “The logistics and costs that would be required to […]

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) will leave the Senate Armed Services Committee and join the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, keeping intact an important legislative shield for nuclear sites in the Land of Enchantment. I’m looking forward to serving as Vice Chair of the Joint Economic Committee as well as a member of the Appropriations Committee. I’ll also […]