Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Department of Energy’s legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico should finish its “readiness assessment” by the end of March for slicing up corrugated metal pipes, a spokesperson said Thursday. After that, a required federal readiness assessment will start, the spokesperson said in an email to Exchange Monitor. “Corrugated […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory will install by 2030 the equipment needed to make at least 30 plutonium pits annually, according to a Jan. 19 memo from the deputy secretary of energy. Formally known as the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project 30 Base Equipment Installation subproject, the installation will provide the lab with “the […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory will install by 2030 the equipment needed to make at least 30 plutonium pits annually, according to a Jan. 19 memo from the deputy secretary of energy. Formally known as the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project 30 Base Equipment Installation subproject, the installation will provide the lab with “the […]

Roughly a quarter of the way through fiscal 2023 the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has received 107 shipments of transuranic waste, about on pace for meeting its 400-shipment target for the fiscal year ending in September, DOE and its contractor told New Mexico lawmakers Tuesday. There have been 107 shipments to the […]

Roughly a quarter of the way through fiscal 2023 the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has received 107 shipments of transuranic waste, about on pace for meeting its 400-shipment target for the fiscal year ending in September, DOE and its contractor told New Mexico lawmakers Tuesday. There have been 107 shipments to the […]

Due to winter weather, onsite employees at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were allowed to come in late a couple of days this week, according to the lab webpage. Workers were allowed to report to work later than normal on Tuesday and Wednesday, due to snowy weather. The Wednesday […]

Due to winter weather, onsite employees at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico should plan to arrive between 10 a.m. and noon local time, according to a notice posted this morning on the laboratory’s webpage. Workers could also call a laboratory hotline for more details, according to the notice. The […]

New Mexico and the Department of Energy are close to resolving the state’s lawsuit about cleanup rules for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a federal judge Thursday granted the parties another 90 days to negotiate. Lawyers for the state and the Department of Justice told the U.S. District Court for New Mexico that the […]

Local officials this week voted to express formal concerns about the Department of Energy’s plan to ship weapon-usable plutonium through the Santa Fe, New Mexico area as part of long-planned materials-disposal effort. On Tuesday, all five Santa Fe county commissioners approved comments to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) about the agency’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to have a detailed cost and schedule estimate for producing new nuclear weapon cores for the first time since the Cold War by Sept. 30, 2025, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday. That’s the date by which the agency planned to advance its two planned plutonium […]

New Mexico and the Department of Energy are close to resolving the state’s lawsuit about cleanup rules for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and asked a federal judge Wednesday for another 90 days to negotiate. Lawyers for the state and the Department of Justice told the U.S. District Court for New Mexico that the two […]

The legacy cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico won 70% of its subjective fee and 77% of its overall fee during fiscal 2022. Newport News Nuclear BWXT (N3B) won about $7.2 million out of a potential $9.3 million for the 12-month period ended Sept. 30. The DOE […]

The New Mexico Environment Department on Tuesday kicked off a 60-day comment period on a 10-year permit renewal for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, with the state fighting the federal government’s attempt to keep the mine’s closure date open-ended. The DOE has said it needs the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) to […]

Inching forward with plans to dispose of surplus plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans public hearings after New Year’s on its just-released draft environmental review of the project, the agency said Friday. The nuclear-weapons agency on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement about its planned Surplus Plutonium […]

A communications outage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that began over the weekend was unresolved at portions of the lab as late as early Monday morning, according to the lab. “The Laboratory experiences a communications outage over the weekend due to a fiber-optic cable cut near Santa Fe which impacted cellular and internet services […]

A communications outage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that began over the weekend was unresolved at portions of the lab as late as early Monday morning, according to the lab.  “The Laboratory experiences a communications outage over the weekend due to a fiber-optic cable cut near Santa Fe which impacted cellular and internet services […]

A building slated to become a key cog in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit-production complex is taking longer than expected to be authorized to hold enough plutonium for its new mission, a spokesperson said this week. The Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) should be recategorized as a hazard category 3 nuclear facility by March […]

A building slated to become a key cog in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit-production complex is taking longer than expected to be authorized to hold enough plutonium for its new mission, a spokesperson said Tuesday. The Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) should be recategorized as a hazard category 3 nuclear facility by March 2023, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration extended Los Alamos National Laboratory management and operations contractor Triad National Security for five more years, through Nov. 1, 2028, the agency announced Tuesday. In the third such mass-extension this year for a nuclear-weapons site contractor, the agency picked up five one-year options on Triad’s contract simultaneously.  Triad includes team […]

The Department of Energy will apply a little extra scrutiny to a worker’s heat exhaustion during legacy nuclear waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments said recently. The worker “experienced heat exhaustion while supporting corrugated metal pipe retrieval operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on September 8, […]

A New Mexico judge who worked for more than a decade at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was apparently murdered by her husband, who then killed himself, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said Saturday. “Eric Pinkerton is believed to have shot his wife and several animals in the house before shooting himself,” the sheriff’s office […]

The Department of Energy will apply a little extra scrutiny to a worker’s heat exhaustion during legacy nuclear waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments said recently. The worker “experienced heat exhaustion while supporting corrugated metal pipe retrieval operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on September 8, […]

The West Valley Demonstration Project in Cattaraugus County, N.Y., experienced a cold and snowy weekend sufficient to delay start of work on Monday, but avoided the worst of the mega-storm that dumped several feet of snow 35 miles to the north in Buffalo, N.Y. “The site is in a two-hour delay, to allow employees who […]

Many sites within the Department of Energy’s weapons complex have at least some level of exposure to certain human-made chemicals drawing increasing attention from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a report released Tuesday. The DOE rolled out its “Initial Assessment of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances PFAS” at 53 properties, including sites run by […]

Barring some legal reversal, a Bechtel affiliate and subcontractor Los Alamos Technical Associates should take the reins at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico around Feb. 9.  Also, as of the day before Thanksgiving, three major opportunities for new business remained across the old weapons complex and three contractors awaited […]

On Nov. 17, the legacy cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico lifted a month-long stop work order issued after a steady drip of small mishaps, a spokesperson said Tuesday. Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) fully lifted the “self-imposed stop work order” last week after allowing some […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s latest mask mandate lasted only three days, after which COVID-19 community transmission rates dropped below high, according to a lab memo. The New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory let employees take the masks off Nov. 18 after briefly making face coverings mandatory again on Nov. 15, according to an internal email, […]

Advanced reactor developer NuScale Power Corp. is still losing money but is otherwise in excellent financial shape, with a $ 268.6 million war chest, short-term investments of $50 million and no debt, NuScale CEO John Hopkins and CFO Chris Colbert said in a teleconference with analysts.  In the third quarter of 2022 that ended Sept. […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup field office at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, set up in 2015, and its remediation contractor still face staff shortages, a federal safety watchdog heard Wednesday. Michael Mikolanis, who heads the DOE Office of Environmental Management field office at Los Alamos, told the Defense Nuclear Facilities […]

Pit production will continue to share space at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility with other missions for the foreseeable future, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration told a federal safety agency on Wednesday. The semi autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency is upgrading PF-4 to produce multiple war-ready pits some […]