Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration barely rated as a blip this week in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s hearing to examine President Biden’s nomination of Jennifer Granholm as Secretary of Energy. In her written testimony, Granholm said enhancing American security through DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and “clean-up of our Cold War […]

Attorneys for the Nevada National Security Site’s prime contractor want a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit from the company’s disgruntled ex-finance chief, who is trying to prove that the privately held contractor is subject to federal law that protects whistleblowers who expose financial misconduct at publicly traded companies. In 2019, ex-Chief Financial Officer […]

A Democratic House staffer who has worked the nuclear weapons and strategic systems portfolio for the House Armed Services Committee for a decade has taken a Pentagon post with a similar bailiwick in the Joe Biden administration. Leonor Tomero will be deputy assistant director for nuclear and missile defense programs after inauguration day, the administration […]

Adding another hash mark to the record of winter disruptions on the hill, the Los Alamos National Laboratory opened late on Monday, advising essential personnel needed for national security work inside the fence to wait out some heavy snow before reporting in. That means the roughly 20% of Los Alamos’ workforce still on site amid […]

President Joe Biden wants to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia for five years, his press secretary confirmed Thursday.  “The United States intends to seek a five-year extension of New START,” Biden’s press secretary, Jennifer Psaki, said during a Thursday briefing at the White House. “The president has […]

In his Senate nomination hearing this week, Secretary of Defense designate Lloyd Austin, since approved for a floor vote in the upper chamber, would not commit outright to supporting the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to build two factories to produce new plutonium pits. The Senate confirmed Biden to lead the Pentagon on Friday. “Maintaining […]

Vaccinations have started at some National Nuclear Security Administration sites, which as a group racked up more than 150 new COVID-19 cases this week, with recoveries outpacing new confirmed infections, according to agency data. The labs that received vaccines did not reply to questions about how many workers they had vaccinated, at deadline. The Nevada […]

Donald Trump appointee Charles Verdon has taken over as acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency confirmed Friday. Meanwhile, David Huizenga, No. 3 at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its top career official, will take over as acting Secretary of Energy until the Senate […]

The story “NNSA Contractor Scorecards for Pandemic Fiscal Year Show Headaches for Pits, Non-nuclear Components, Nevada Test Instruments” (Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, (Vol. 25, No. 02) should have said that Savannah River Nuclear Solutions earned $31.4 million of a possible $35.3 million for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) work at the Savannah River Site […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies this week appointed Rob Smith as its president of government operations, which is a newly-created post. In that role, Smith will lead the company’s nuclear operations and nuclear services segments. This includes work for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Naval Nuclear […]

William Bookless will resign as acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration on inauguration day, Jan. 20, setting up career civil servant David Huizenga to shepherd the nuclear-weapons agency through the early days of the Joe Biden administration. Bookless announced his impending departure Monday in an all-hands memo to National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

Jamie Shimek will remain clerk of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, providing a modicum of stability for Washington nuke watchers scrambling to update their contacts list ahead of the transition to the Joe Biden administration. Shimek joined the committee that writes each year’s first draft of the Department of Energy annual budget bill […]

A pair of think-tanks are pushing a combination of machine learning and open-source data as a way to generate more leads on potential nuclear proliferation and said Tuesday that a recent pilot project shows the technique “could save hundreds of analyst hours” if put into practice by the government. That was the claim in a […]

With the National Nuclear Security Administration’s capacity to manufacture new nuclear weapon cores still a question mark, the Navy is studying whether the recently funded W93 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead needs a brand new plutonium pit, the admiral in charge of the service’s nuclear weapon systems said Thursday. “We are, in the [Department of Defense], […]

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall is officially headed to the National Security Council, ending for now any prospects of a return to the Department of Energy, where the nonproliferation and weapons-of-mass-destruction policy hand was second-in-command during the Obama administration. The Biden transition team officially announced the move Wednesday, which media had reported earlier. Sherwood-Randall will be homeland security […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has scheduled another virtual job fair, with the next in the series scheduled for Jan. 27, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency announced. The agency said it has “more than 2,000 NNSA federal and contractor positions” to fill, “including engineers, policy experts, and physical scientists, throughout the country.” Those interested […]

Despite headaches that touch, in one way or another, almost every major nuclear weapons refurbishment underway at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency’s big contractors generally got good reviews in the pandemic-beleaguered 2020 fiscal year, according to agency’s annual scorecards. Below is Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s annual digest of the National Nuclear Security […]

Three more National Nuclear Security Administration employees have died from COVID-19, an agency spokesperson said this week, as active cases across the enterprise tricked down, despite more than 400 new cases cropping up. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said, some National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites are starting to […]

On Thursday, a day after violent supporters of President Donald Trump broke into the United States Capitol, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette called for condemnation of politically motivated violence, urged civil discourse in politics, supported a peaceful transition to the administration of President-elect Joe Biden and promised to stay on as energy secretary until inauguration […]

A federal judge declined to give the former prime contractor of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility any relief from federal fraud claims, even though the company argued it had already paid back some of the money the government sued to recover, according to a recent filing in the U.S. District Court for South Carolina. […]

The commander of U.S. nuclear forces, who met with President-elect Joe Biden’s (D) transition team recently, worried this week that the civilian nuclear weapons complex faces problems bigger than a potential slip in plutonium-pit production. Under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act passed into law this month over President Donald Trump’s veto, U.S. Strategic Command […]

Time appears to have run out on the nomination of Matthew Moury to be a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. As of Jan. 3, the nomination to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) was officially returned by the Senate to President Donald Trump after the nomination never advanced to the full […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada National Security Site are resetting the underground U1a facility at the former Nevada Test Site for the second in three planned Nightshade subcritical experiments. Nightshade B is scheduled to fire in “spring 2021,” a spokesperson for the Los Alamos National Laboratory told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor […]

The Sandia National Laboratories split its Nuclear Deterrence division into two new organizations and brought in a former Raytheon executive to oversee them, the Albuquerque, N.M.-based labs network announced this week. Sandia rolled out the changes internally in November, a labs spokesperson wrote in an email to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. A major cog […]

Maggie Oliver will not run for Congress next year to represent the district that includes the Sandia National Laboratory, the New Mexico’s secretary of state tweeted before the holidays.  Oliver, a Democrat in Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s (D) administration, was seen as a possible candidate to replace Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) who is leaving Congress […]

In the omnibus spending bill signed this week, Congress appropriated $30 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration to continue cleaning up a downtown Seattle building that has been vacant for more than a year after an agency contractor botched the removal of a cesium-137 blood irradiator from the premises and contaminated the facility. Together […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration got its big requested budget increase under the omnibus spending bill signed into law just before New Year’s, jumpstarting key nuclear-weapons programs even as the incoming Joe Biden administration squares up the ongoing U.S. modernization regimen for possible cuts. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will get $19.7 billion, which […]