Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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 […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory has finished technical preparations to vent the headspace of some tritium-bearing waste drums that cannot be disposed of until they’re depressurized, but the operation is on hold until after the winter, pending the approval of the state of New Mexico. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and lab contractor Triad […]

Like other federal agencies, the Department of Energy may continue to reimburse contractors for paid leave related to COVID-19 through March 31, under the combination omnibus budget bill and coronavirus relief package signed into law last week. The paid-leave reimbursement became law this summer in section 3610 of the CARES act, an early COVID-19 stimulus […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration had about 1,000 active, confirmed COVID-19 cases across its national network for most of December and closed out 2020 with about 3,500 cumulative cases, of which seven were fatal. That is according to data provided Friday by a spokesperson for the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency. Including the first […]

The former finance chief of Mission Support and Test Services LLC, who alleges he was fired last year for exposing financial misconduct at the Nevada National Security Site by company president Mark Martinez, has less than two weeks to revise his lawsuit before a federal judge throws it out for good. Ex-Chief Financial Officer Stephen […]

House Armed Services chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) again railed against the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to turn Savannah River into a plutonium pit factory, saying the “idiotic” and “dangerous,” plan might leave the U.S. without the means to modernize its nuclear weapons on time and on budget. “I am highly skeptical of the level […]

There will not be a new director at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for another few months at least, a spokesperson for the younger of the two U.S. nuclear-weapon design labs said Tuesday. “We are not expecting a new director to be named until February at the earliest,” the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) spokesperson […]

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) to be Secretary of Energy, media reported this week. Granholm, who is deeply familiar with U.S. auto-making, will be a key ambassador to industry when Biden enlists the DOE’s help bolstering his agenda to fight climate change, outlets reported, citing people familiar with the […]

The Department of Energy should designate someone as a sort of crisis-response czar in case of another national emergency such as COVID-19, according to an agency report on the pandemic published this week. DOE should revise existing crisis response plans to, among other things, “[p]rovide the Secretary with latitude to designate a director or ‘person […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is preparing a final environmental review for its new plutonium disposal program at the Savannah River Site, but not the thorough review a National Academies panel recommended earlier this year, the agency announced Wednesday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency published its notice of intent to do an environmental […]

New COVID-19 cases continued to rise week-to-week in some National Nuclear Security Administration host regions this week, but growth flattened in a few locales and the agency itself saw recoveries outpace new infections for the first time in more than a month. Even so, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon steward tracked a record 350 […]

Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor will not publish next week in observance of the Christmas holiday, nor the week after, in observance of New Year’s Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Jan. 8. Happy holidays!

If, with a herculean effort, you put the COVID-19 pandemic to one side, the biggest story of 2020 at the National Nuclear Security Administration was how semi-autonomous it really is from the Department of Energy, and how much control the Department of Defense should have over it. The debate is in a sense older than […]

At deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Congress was still debating an extension of federal budgets beyond midnight on Friday, when a continuing resolution that extended 2020 budgets through today was set to expire.

House Armed Services chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) again railed against the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to turn Savannah River into a plutonium pit factory, saying the “idiotic” and “dangerous,” plan might leave the U.S. without the means to modernize its nuclear weapons on time and on budget. “I am highly skeptical of the level […]

The story “Compromise NDAA Also a Compromise on DOE, Pentagon Control Over Civilian Nuke Budget” (Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor Vol. 24. No. 46) should have said that, under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, if the Nuclear Weapons Council determines the secretary of energy’s proposed budget for the NNSA is inadequate, the White House […]