Los Alamos National Laboratory

With the United States probing the possibility of thawing the social freeze from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories plan to start slowly ramping up on-site work this month. Los Alamos has been in a mission-critical operations posture since March, limiting on-site work to what Director Thomas […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina might have to revisit the schedule for operation of the Salt Waste Processing Facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a spokesperson said Thursday. Eight cases of infection by the novel coronavirus 2019 have been confirmed at Savannah River. That is more than half of the 14 […]

With the United States probing the possibility of thawing the social freeze from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories plan to start slowly ramping up on-site work this month. Los Alamos for now remains in a mission-critical operations posture, limiting on-site work to what Director Thomas Mason […]

The Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories started offering limited COVID-19 tests for its employees last week, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory could start testing this week, according to a senior state official. Sandia is for now only testing federal employees, contractors, and subcontractors at its Albuquerque campus, a spokesperson for the weapons-engineering lab […]

Federal and industry sources said this week they don’t foresee major environmental or public safety concerns emerging if the current level of reduced staffing at Energy Department nuclear cleanup sites due to COVID-19 lingers for months. Nearly all of the 16 remediation sites overseen by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management have temporarily reduced their workforce […]

International Isotopes said Tuesday it would no longer provide radiological field services for the Department of Energy, after the federal agency put a hold on all existing contracts in the wake of a cesium-137 spill last May during a job in Seattle. “Regardless of the DOE’s future plans for field service contracts, it is unlikely […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapon sites are modifying confinement vessels for planned underground subcritical plutonium experiments, after one such vessel blew a leak last year. A confinement vessel is designed to contain an explosive compression of plutonium metal, which is rigged to bring the material to the brink of a fission chain reaction. Observing that […]

The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina, like its planned counterpart in New Mexico, would be able to handle the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) planned plutonium pit production mission on its own if needed, according to an environmental document released Thursday. The NNSA draft environmental impact statement also examines the effects of […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is studying two options for permanent disposition of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that has been stored for years at a privately held facility in Texas. The Energy Department could either technically confirm the radioactive waste can be safely shipped straight to […]

Energy Department contractors are eager to tap into a portion of the $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill signed into law a week ago to provide paid leave to employees who cannot telecommute. The federal contractor authority provision of the “CARES Act” empowers the energy secretary to ensure that contract employees whose work requires them to […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is studying two options for removing leftover Los Alamos National Laboratory transuranic waste from a privately held facility in Texas. The Energy Department could either technically confirm the waste can be safely shipped straight to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, or send it back […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapon sites are modifying confinement vessels for planned underground subcritical plutonium experiments, after one such vessel blew a leak last year. A confinement vessel is designed to contain an explosive compression of plutonium metal, which is rigged to bring the material to the brink of a fission chain reaction. Observing that […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Nevada have agreed in principle to settle a 2018 state lawsuit contesting the shipment of 500 kilograms of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site. “The parties are currently working diligently to finalize the necessary documents and to obtain final government settlement approvals,” attorneys for the state […]

A subcontractor for the legacy environmental remediation vendor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has tested positive for COVID-19. The subcontractor for Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) is self-isolating at home and will not return to work until cleared by a medical provider, laboratory Director Thom Mason said in a […]

The containment vessel that blew a leak during a subcritical nuclear test last year in Nevada was not properly designed or procured, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory concluded in a final report about the accident. The independent federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) summarized the lab’s unreleased report in a recent monthly review […]

While only a handful of COVID-19 cases have been confirmed to date across the Energy Department nuclear complex, most nuclear remediation sites are dramatically scaling back operations as the pandemic expands. That finding is based on conversations with sources who work with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, public websites and social media posts, and stay-at-home […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on Tuesday followed its sister site, the Lawrence Livermore lab in California, into minimum safe operations amid the worsening the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Tuesday evening, there were no confirmed cases of the viral disease at either facility.  On Monday, Los Alamos posted a memo from Director Thom […]

The containment vessel that blew a leak during a subcritical nuclear test last year in Nevada was not properly designed or procured, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory concluded in a final report about the accident. The independent federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) summarized the lab’s unreleased report in a recent […]

The Department of Energy’s three nuclear weapons laboratories had all widely expanded teleworking Friday due to COVID-19, with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California taking drastic measures as its host county went into lockdown. After lagging behind the other two labs, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said Tuesday it had implemented […]

Los Alamos County, N.M., is calling on the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to take responsibility for remediation of radioactive waste discovered last month off the property of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Debris contaminated by uranium and plutonium was discovered Feb. 14 by a county contractor doing sewer line excavation for a planned low-income […]

Los Alamos County, N.M., is calling on the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to take responsibility for remediation of radioactive waste discovered last month off the property of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Debris contaminated by uranium and plutonium was discovered Feb. 14 by a county contractor doing sewer line excavation for a planned low-income […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is transitioning to minimum-safe operations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a move that by next Monday will sharply shrink staffing levels and curtail some scientific activity at the Department of Energy nuclear weapons facility. Livermore Director William Goldstein made the announcement Monday night after the government of […]

Confirming what appeared intuitively obvious, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Tuesday the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will have to manufacture 80 nuclear-weapon cores a year by itself in 2030, if a planned facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is not ready by then. Planned upgrades for Los Alamos’s […]

PHOENIX –The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is still drafting its response to a Texas state agency on plans for removal of potentially combustible drums of radioactive material from Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in Andrews County. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) wants a federal plan by the end of this month for removal […]

A facility planned for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico could produce more nuclear-warhead cores while generating less transuranic waste than the plutonium pit factory planned at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to environmental documents published this year by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The agency aims to manufacture […]

PHOENIX — As time goes by, the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico could increasingly dispose of transuranic material from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a top nuclear cleanup official said here Monday. The Idaho National Laboratory is far and away the No. 1 shipper of defense-related transuranic waste to the […]

Confirming what appeared intuitively obvious, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Tuesday the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will have to manufacture 80 nuclear-weapon cores a year by itself in 2030, if a planned facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is not ready by then. Planned upgrades for Los […]

PHOENIX –The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is still drafting its response to a Texas state agency on plans for removal of potentially combustible drums of radioactive material from Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in Andrews County. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) wants a federal plan by the end of this month for removal […]

Amid the continuing spread of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus disease, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapon-design laboratories have canceled the unclassified 2020 Strategic Weapons in the 21st Century summit scheduled for Thursday in Washington, D.C. This would have been the 13th year for the annual summit, co-hosted by the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national […]

As budget hearing season ramps up in Washington, D.C., hearings of a different kind are scheduled elsewhere in two court cases touching the nuclear security enterprise: one involving a former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who pleaded guilty to lying about ties to China, another involving weapon-usable plutonium sent to Nevada for safekeeping. First, Turab […]