Publications: Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

Lame-duck budget negotiations are officially underway, and the Senate’s opening gambit for the National Nuclear Security Administration was to give the agency the roughly $20 billion it sought for 2021: over $1 billion more than what the House of Representatives recommended. That’s according to a bill and an accompanying report the Senate Armed Services Committee released […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette kept close tabs on then-National Nuclear Security Administration boss Lisa Gordon-Hagerty for months, sending chaperones to her meetings with Congress and monitoring her personal calendar before abruptly demanding her resignation last week, a source told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. It was a dramatic end to a year of strife between the […]

Former National Nuclear Security Administration No. 2 Madelyn Creedon is part of President Elect Joe Biden’s (D) transition team, the Biden camp announced Wednesday. Creedon is one of 19 people on Biden’s Department of Energy beachhead team, which is led by Arun Majumdar: currently a professor at Stanford University’s department of mechanical engineering in California, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission slapped a $900,000 fine on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee, issuing five violations related to a “substantial safety culture issue” at the plant during the fall of 2015 and early 2016. Tennessee Valley Authority uses Watts Bar Unit 1 to produce tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration recorded over 200 new cases of COVID-19 among its federal employees and contractors this week, and more than half those cases were still active at deadline Friday, an agency spokesperson said. With cases of the illness caused by the novel coronavirus spiking across the county, confirmed cases at the semi-autonomous […]

Here’s this week’s collection of quick-hit news about, and with implications for, U.S. nuclear security. Like almost everything else, support for a B61-12 flight test from an F-35A had to go virtual this year, according to a press release from Sandia National Laboratories.  Sandia helped train Air Force personnel virtually in preparation for an April […]

A former Lawrence Livermore senior manager joined General Atomics this week as the senior vice president of the San Diego-based company’s energy group. Anantha Krishnan had been Livermore’s Associate Laboratory Director for Engineering for about six years before making the jump to the private sector, according to his LinkedIn profile. General Atomics announced the hire […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies hauled in $520 million in revenue during the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, which is up 3% from the $506 million it took in during the same period a year ago, the company reported this week. Its net income for the quarter dipped a bit, however, as BWXT took in […]

Among the many subplots of the still-undecided White House contest between President Donald Trump (R) and former vice president Joe Biden (D) is the makeup of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Matthew Moury, the Department of Energy’s associate undersecretary for environment, health, safety, and security, was nominated to a post on the maximum-five-member Defense Nuclear […]

Most congressional incumbents hung on this election, as they typically do, but a few open seats in a few districts and states that host National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites means there are a few new faces representing the neighbors of the nuclear security enterprise — or in the case of a New Mexico congressman […]

The United States says the contractor for a cancelled plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site still owes the feds millions of dollars because of allegedly fraudulent billing and called the company’s claim that it already paid back the sum smoke and mirrors, according to a new court filing. “MOX Services did make a […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday formalized a decision to make at least 50 nuclear-weapon cores a year at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., and environmental groups immediately raised the prospects of a lawsuit if the agency does not review the plan again. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency made its long-expected […]

The Navy this week awarded General Dynamics’ Electric Boat a $9.47 billion contract modification on Thursday for full construction of the first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN-826) and continuing advanced construction for the second vessel. Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts told reporters Thursday on a conference call that […]

The United Kingdom announced this week it will nationalizing operations of its Atomic Weapons Establishment next June after letting contractors run the shop for nearly three decades. The Atomic Weapons Establishment will become a wholly-owned, arms-length body controlled by the Ministry of Defence, which will take over the heart of the U.K. nuclear weapons complex […]

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty resigned as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration after two years, eight months and 22 days as the head of the U.S. civilian nuclear weapons program, the agency announced Friday. The official statement gave no reason for the departure, which happened days after the still-unsettled U.S. election. At deadline, Democratic nominee Joe […]

COVID-19 is surging across the country, with the rate of new cases at most major National Nuclear Security Administration host sites eclipsing their week-ago totals, and the agency cumulative racking up more than 100 new cases for the fourth week in a row. Mixing in 40 recoveries this week, that made for 303 confirmed cases […]

Next week, the National Nuclear Security Administration will host a second virtual meeting with the public to discuss a planned release of tritium from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a notice posted online. The second virtual meeting about venting flanged tritium waste containers is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 5, from 5 p.m. to […]

By early next year, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Department of Energy could sign a memorandum of understanding about how to share information under a two year-old DOE order that limits interactions between the federal agencies. On Tuesday, the board — a roughly $30-million-a-year agency with a staff of around 100 full-timers […]

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham (D) wants the Department of Energy to explain how its plan to dispose of some seven metric tons of diluted, weapon-usable plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant complies with environmental law, according to a recent letter. The tranche is part of the 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium that […]

Amid the public whipsaw of New START nuclear-arms negotiations between Washington and Moscow, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, offered to limit deployment of land-based intermediate range missiles near the European border. Putin on Monday morning offered refrain from deploying the 9M729 missile near Europe if the U.S. would agree to reciprocal steps, including allowing inspections […]

Here’s this week’s collection of quick-hit news about, and with implications for, U.S. nuclear security and the nuclear security enterprise. The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments will soon investigate “the introduction of unauthorized electronic equipment (Panasonic pan-tilt-zoom cameras) into security areas for over two years and the potential unauthorized disclosure of classified information […]

If Joe Biden wins the White House in the Nov. 3 election, his administration will consider backing off the U.S. nuclear buildup set in place by the Obama administration in 2016, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee predicted Thursday. “China’s philosophy has been very simple: we’re going to build a reliable nuclear arsenal […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration still had not at deadline released the final solicitation for the potentially $28-billion, $10-year contract to manage its two big nuclear-weapons production sites, but more information is percolating up through industry about the players interested in the deal. With the envisioned start of the transition from the Bechtel-led incumbent, Consolidated […]

At deadline Friday, winter weather had finally blown over New Mexico and Texas after an early-week barrage that gave all the nuclear-weapons sites in those states at one snow day. Non-essential dayshift employees at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, were most affected by an early winter storm that crusted the panhandle counties of Potter […]

A third National Nuclear Security Administration employee has died from COVID-19, and the agency recorded more than 100 new cases among its workforce for the second consecutive week, a spokesperson said Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency declined to identify the person who died, but did say they worked at the Nevada […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory wrapped up equipment installation at the site’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility 10 months ahead of schedule, the weapons lab said this week in press release. This now-completed phase, officially, Plutonium Facility Equipment Installation-Phase 1, is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMMR) project. […]

The Department of Energy on Sunday finalized changes to its rule about nuclear safety management that, according to the government’s independent nuclear health and safety watchdog, could encourage contractors to unsafely increase radioactive hazards in old buildings. After about two years of deliberation, the agency published its changes to  Title 10, Part 830 of the Code of […]