National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) on Tuesday canceled a planned March 19 open hearing in Aiken, S.C., about the future of the Savannah River Site. The independent federal nuclear health and safety watchdog called off the event because of witness availability, a board spokesperson said.  The DNFSB had proposed witnesses including: William (Ike) […]

PHOENIX – The Department of Energy manager for the Savannah River Site said Tuesday he would not be surprised if the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) one day assumes ownership of the operations contract for the South Carolina complex. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapon steward is already funding more of the work at Savannah River, SRS […]

The administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration should serve a fixed term, a National Academies panel said Monday in an interim report on a four-and-a-half-year study into nuclear security governance. The National Academies panel did not say how long the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should serve, but the group did […]

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 […]

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told senators on March 5 industry is ready for and able to build two Virginia-class attack submarines (SSNs) in fiscal 2021, while the administration’s budget request funded only one. The Navy is under a Block V multiyear procurement contract that covers nine vessels with an option for a 10th. […]

Someone at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was exposed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in 2019, local media reported last week. A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) employee exposed to someone with the disease is now self-monitoring at home, along with more than a dozen other […]

While the Department of Energy is not yet restricting travel inside the United States in response to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), it is encouraging offices to “begin reducing non-essential domestic travel, as appropriate,” according to a Friday memo. “We will look at this issue and provide additional guidance as needed,” the agency […]

WASHINGTON — Some new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles might be deployed into silos with warheads from their predecessor, the Minuteman III, a senior National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) official said here this week. The fleet of next-generation missiles will use about a 50-50 mix of old W87-0 warheads, used on Minuteman III today, […]

Jury selection and trial are slated for late June in a $75,000 negligence lawsuit against the management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. According to a scheduling order filed Friday, Henry Bradley’s case against Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) will head to trial on or after June […]

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 […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is contemplating ways to cope with further spread of the novel coronavirus that broke out in China last year, potentially including postponing conferences and other events, a spokesperson said Thursday. The agency “has established a Unified Coordination Group from throughout the agency to assess the potential effect of a […]

Future efforts to secure Russian nuclear material left after from the Cold War are likely to bear little resemblance to the gold-standard programs of the past, if any get off the ground in the current era of significantly worsened relations between Washington and Moscow, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a recent report. “[T]he […]

Two of the Senate’s reliable nuclear skeptics last week asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the budget increase the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is seeking for the 2021 fiscal year. Among other things, the GAO should determine why the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency’s Weapons Activities budget needs a much greater increase […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is selling its own version of a funding skirmish within the Department of Energy that ended in January with President  Donald Trump approving a much larger raise for the civilian nuclear-weapons agency than expected — and they’re getting buy-in on Capitol Hill. The NNSA’s $19.8 billion budget request for […]

WASHINGTON — In the second week of 2021 budget hearings on Capitol Hill, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) eye-popping $20-billion request bled into a hearing about another agency and tractor-beamed appropriations leaders into subcommittees they sometimes ignore, lending credence to one lawmaker’s prediction that nuclear modernization will be “the most contentious issue” of Congress’ […]

The John Wood Group said Wednesday it expects later this month to complete the sale of its nuclear business to Jacobs, following regulatory approval in the United Kingdom. The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority has signed off on the deal, the Scotland-based energy services multinational said in a brief press release. “Wood and Jacobs continue […]

The Air Force will not be affected in fiscal 2021 if Congress approves the White House’s plan to short the Pentagon budget by $2.5 billion to increase spending at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) by 25%, the service’s chief of staff said Wednesday. “The $2.5 [billion] didn’t have an impact on the Air Force, ” […]

WASHINGTON — Some new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles might be deployed into silos with warheads from their predecessor, the Minuteman III, a senior National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) official said here Wednesday. The fleet of next-generation missiles will use about a 50-50 mix of old W87-0 warheads, used on Minuteman III today, and […]

The John Wood Group said Wednesday it expects later this month to complete the sale of its nuclear business to Jacobs, following regulatory approval in the United Kingdom. The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority has signed off on the deal, the Scotland-based energy services multinational said in a brief press release. “Wood and Jacobs continue […]

WASHINGTON — The W93 warhead will notionally be based on previously deployed nuclear-explosive components, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said here Tuesday.  The W93, a planned submarine-launched warhead and the first U.S. nuclear weapon since the Cold War that isn’t a copy or iteration of an existing weapon, has been a […]

WASHINGTON — The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee predicted Monday that nuclear-arsenal modernization will be “the most contentious issue” in the 2021 defense-spending debates beginning now on Capitol Hill. “[T]his is an enormous challenge,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said in response to moderator questions during a morning talk at the Brookings Institute. […]

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 […]

Future efforts to secure Russian nuclear material left after from the Cold War are likely to bear little resemblance to the gold-standard programs of the past, if any get off the ground in the current era of significantly worsened relations between Washington and Moscow, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report last week. […]

President Donald Trump intends to nominate a Democratic Party staffer on the Senate Appropriations Committee to fill a vacancy on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the White House announced Friday. There was no word from the White House regarding the schedule for the formal nomination of Christopher Hanson. Hanson said by email Friday he had no […]

Two of the Senate’s reliable nuclear skeptics last week asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the budget increase the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is seeking for the 2021 fiscal year. Among other things, the pair want the GAO to determine why the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency’s Weapons Activities budget needs a […]

WASHINGTON — The commander of U.S. nuclear forces would not be drawn into a discussion on details of the planned W93 sea-based warhead in an open hearing Thursday, stoically deflecting questions from a curious lawmaker and declaring the planned weapon makes him “proud to be an American.” “I think that is one of those things […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration would not be able to spend the $20 billion it requested for fiscal 2021, and so will have to make do with a more “realistic” budget, the House of Representatives’ lead appropriator for the Department of Energy said Thursday. “On the nuclear weapons side, you don’t choke a government agency by […]

As the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) seeks a larger-than-expected budget increase for 2021, another branch of the Department of Energy is seeking much less funding for cleanup of excess nuclear-weapon production sites The Office of Environmental Management (EM) is requesting about $200 million for remediation at NNSA-owned facilities in the budget year beginning Oct. 1, […]

Complications with two nuclear-weapon refurbishment programs might delay production of new intercontinental ballistic missile fuses at the Kansas City National Security Campus by more than a year, Pentagon budget documents show. The Air Force will need 10 months longer than expected, 41 months total, to purchase long-lead parts for the the ICBM Fuze Modernization program: […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Tuesday it plans to soon start work on a South Carolina plutonium disposal project — operations that will consume about one-third of the amount Congress appropriated for the project in the current 2020 federal budget year. This site preparation work for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project at the […]