National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

The White House wants $65 million in fiscal 2019 for the Department of Energy to start work on the low-yield ballistic-missile warhead called for in the latest Nuclear Posture Review: a weapon Congress must authorize before the agency can start building it. The Donald Trump administration made the funding request official Friday in proposed amendments […]

The Department of Energy relied on a flawed reading of a contract to justify its 2016 decision to take back some $20 million in fees from CB&I AREVA MOX Services, the company argued in the latest legal volley on an over-budget plutonium disposal plant being built in South Carolina. In a 2016 lawsuit filed in […]

Parts of the Pantex Plant, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility, are expected to shut down today as part of an emergency drill, the contractor running the site announced. Personnel across the Amarillo, Texas, site will participate in the exercise, Pantex prime Consolidated Nuclear Security said in a press release […]

Whether it’s law enforcement, water lines, or hiring practices, the Energy Department and its cleanup contractors are intertwined with their host communities in many ways. This was the overriding theme from last Thursday’s Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Manager Mark Watson once received a permit request to […]

John Sarrao will replace Alan Bishop as principal assistant director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Science, Technology, and Engineering branch, a lab spokesperson said Monday. In his new role, Sarrao will run the lab’s fundamental science programs, which include research applicable to nuclear weapons, among other things. The directorate’s four sub-branches are: chemistry, life, […]

The Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration are seeking bids on a new series of exascale supercomputers, including one at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that would cost up to $600 million and switch on early next decade, according to a request for proposals released Monday. Funding for the proposed Livermore […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions will stay on the job for another year as the management and operations contractor of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Department of Energy wrote in a procurement note earlier this month. The agency announced the extension April 4, ahead of the July 31 expiration of the contract held […]

Purdue University on April 6 confirmed it teamed with Bechtel National, of Reston, Va., on a bid to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — a teaming arrangement first reported by Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor in February. The confirmation came Friday from Mitch Daniels, president of the Indiana-based university. Daniels spoke to the […]

The Environmental Protection Agency told an official South Carolina nuclear-advisory body there is nothing the federal agency can do, for now, to prevent the Department of Energy from proceeding with its plan to cancel a multibillion-dollar nonproliferation project at the Savannah River Site in the state. That is according to a letter dated April 2 […]

The ranking Democrat on the Senate panel that writes the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) annual funding bill said this week she would not vote for a budget that keeps the B83 nuclear gravity bomb in service. Meanwhile, New Mexico’s senior senator laid into the Energy Department subagency’s top official about plans to move production […]

The ranking Democrat on the Senate panel that writes the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) annual funding bill said Wednesday she would not vote for a budget that keeps the B83 nuclear gravity bomb in service. Meanwhile, New Mexico’s senior senator laid into the Energy Department subagency’s top official about plans to move production of nuclear-weapon cores […]

The Environmental Protection Agency told an official South Carolina nuclear-advisory body there is nothing the federal agency can do, for now, to prevent the Department of Energy from proceeding with its plan to cancel a multibillion-dollar nonproliferation project at the Savannah River Site in the state. That is according to a letter dated April 2 […]

The Department of Energy has removed the fuel, but not the salt, from the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge, Tenn. An article in the April 10 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the situation. Also, an article in April 9 Morning Briefing should have noted that a current procurement at the Y-12 National Security […]

John Sarrao will replace Alan Bishop as principal assistant director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Science, Technology and Engineering branch, a lab spokesperson said Monday. In his new role, Sarrao will run the lab’s fundamental science programs, which include research applicable to nuclear weapons, among other things. The directorate’s four sub-branches are: chemistry, life […]

The Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration are seeking bids on a new series of exascale supercomputers, including one at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that would cost up to $600 million and switch on early next decade, according to a request for proposals released Monday. Funding for the proposed Livermore […]

Purdue University on Friday confirmed it teamed with Bechtel National, Reston, Va., on a bid to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — a teaming arrangement first reported by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing’s sister publication in February. The confirmation came Friday from Mitch Daniels, president of Indiana-based Purdue University. Daniels spoke to […]

With an industry pre-proposal site tour set for Tuesday, the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility contract solicitation In Oak Ridge, Tenn., is already drawing a lot of questions from prospective bidders. Fourteen questions and answers were posted on the solicitation website April 6. They cover everything from conflict of interest, to weight limits for dump […]

The House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee will hold a hearing on the Department of Energy’s fiscal-year 2019 budget request on Thursday. The subcommittee is a Department of Energy (DOE) policy overseer and does not write the agency’s annual budget bills. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time and will be webcast from […]

Laying out the annual weapons budget for some of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) major sites over the last decade yields little in the way of surprise: generally, the weapons budget is going up. Source: DOE Congressional Budget Requests (Laboratory Tables). Link: Interactive Version of Chart. Figuratively speaking, these trends were written on […]

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday formally opened a new building to house a host of administrative and support functions at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) attended a ribbon-cutting for the John C. Drummond Center, named for the longest-serving manager for the nuclear-weapon […]

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC) should require the Department of Energy to pay South Carolina $200 million in their dispute over plutonium disposal at the federal Savannah River Site, rather than allowing the lawsuit to go to trial, the state said in a March 30 motion. Specifically, the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office […]

The Department of Energy says it should get to keep around $20 million in fees it clawed back from a contractor that failed to build a major nuclear-nonproliferation project in South Carolina on time. The federal agency’s filing in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims last week was the latest turn in one of the two slow-simmering […]

More than a week after the Senate confirmed him for the job, Brent Park was sworn in Tuesday as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top nonproliferation official. Park will be deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation: the roughly $2 billion-a-year stovepipe charged with controlling the spread of weaponizable nuclear material while encourage peaceful atomic programs. […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory contracted out just shy of 60 percent of its total procurement dollars to small businesses in fiscal 2017, handily exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for the nation’s oldest nuclear-weapon lab. In the penultimate year of Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) management and operations contract, the northern New Mexico weapons […]

The former head of an advocacy group for communities around the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said Tuesday she has repaid $800 in questioned expenses in an effort to resolve a public dispute that marred the end of her tenure. The contract between Andrea Romero Consulting and the Regional Coalition of […]

Days after the Department of Energy (DOE) gave the go-ahead to start building key parts of a $6.5 billion facility to process uranium for U.S. defense programs, a federal judge ordered a venue change in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the plant’s construction. Three environmental groups and four individuals filed suit in July 2017 in […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex had not cast any enriched uranium for national defense programs for about a week as of Friday, after an unspecified quantity of the fissile material leaked into casting machinery at the National Nuclear Security Administration plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Casting furnaces at Y-12’s 9212 building — operated by the […]

Phil Breidenbach, former president and project manager for the contractor that manages the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has been named chief engineer for the current liquid waste manager at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Breidenbach is a vice president at AECOM, lead partner at Savannah River Remediation, along […]

Laying out the annual weapons budget for some of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) major sites over the last decade yields little in the way of surprise: generally, the weapons budget is going up. Source: DOE Congressional Budget Requests (Laboratory Tables). Link: Interactive Version of Chart. Figuratively speaking, these trends were written on […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory contracted out just shy of 60 percent of its total procurement dollars to small businesses in fiscal 2017, handily exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for the nation’s oldest nuclear-weapon lab. In the penultimate year of Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) management and operations contract, the northern New Mexico weapons […]