National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

“Downwind” producers said this week their 2023 documentary about the aftermath of decades of nuclear testing at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, can be seen on Peacock, the same platform where the Oscar-nominated blockbuster “Oppenheimer” is available for streaming this weekend. According to a press release, “Downwind” can help the public understand […]

A bill that would have let New Mexico and Los Alamos County tax production of plutonium pits died quietly in the New Mexico legislature after a committee of jurisdiction declined to take up the measure. On Wednesday, with only one more scheduled day in the state’s legislative session, the bill was still waiting for action […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority extended a contract for defense uranium processing with BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services, the company announced Wednesday. Under the two year, $122-million extension, Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., will continue converting highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium for use in National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons programs until June […]

The Senate on Tuesday passed a national security appropriations package that would boost the Department of Energy’s radiological safety efforts in Ukraine and seed a new commercial uranium refining industry. The bill includes $2.7 billion for DOE contracts that could help the federal government acquire high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), plus about $150 million for […]

Police in Bellevue, Wash., last month got an alarming call from an Air Force Museum in Ohio, alerting them that a town resident had offered to donate a pre-Vietnam unguided nuclear rocket.  The department’s bomb squad responded to find the remains of an AIR-2 Genie Rocket, produced until 1962. The unguided air-to-air rocket would have […]

Earnings rose at Jacobs, Dallas, in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, which the global engineering, procurement and construction company attributed partly to international infrastructure projects. Tuesday’s press release marked the first earnings results from Jacobs since the company’s Nov. 20 announcement of a plan to merge its government contracting and cyber business lines with Virginia-based Amentum. […]

Mission Support and Test Services is under investigation for two incidents in the summer of 2023 in which falling rock injured employees at the deep-underground explosive testing facility it is building in Nevada for the National Nuclear Security Administration.  The enforcement arm of NNSA’s Office of Enterprise Assessments notified Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS) […]

To account for inflation, the National Nuclear Security Administration has petitioned Congress and been approved to bump up the threshold for minor construction projects to $34 million.  That is up from a $30 million threshold set by the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA also provided the NNSA with “pilot authority” to […]

The Senate on Thursday cleared a hurdle to vote on a bill that would fund the Department of Energy’s planned jumpstart of a new commercial uranium refining industry. Senators on Thursday voted 67-32 to end debate on the bill, clearing the way for a final floor vote that had not been scheduled as of Friday […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory is trying to prevent accidental criticalities caused when fires inside gloveboxes trigger a building’s sprinkler system, which might allow water to touch fissile material, according to a federal safety watchdog. In a report dated Jan. 19, the National Nuclear Security Administration said it provided formal comments on a plan to limit […]

A bipartisan border control bill published by the Senate over the weekend would provide $2.7 billion to jumpstart a new domestic, commercial uranium enrichment and fuel-making industry. In a statement posted Sunday to the website X, Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the bill would not pass his chamber. Aside from the […]

WASHINGTON — A three-year slip for a new x-ray imager will not necessarily result in a bigger, more massive W93 nuclear warhead, senior officials from Los Alamos National Laboratory said here Thursday. That was a slight change in tune compared with an appraisal one of these people made last year. For the last three years, […]

WASHINGTON — A tech-industry downturn and a federal permission to boost worker compensation helped with hiring at U.S. nuclear-weapons labs, but hanging on to recruits is still tough, the lab directors said here Wednesday. “We’re actually in quite a good place right now,” Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, […]

Departing officers of an advisory board for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said this week they are feeling less anxious about the National Nuclear Security Administration taking over the 310-square-mile property on Oct. 1. That’s when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) , a semi-autonomous branch of DOE, is scheduled […]

The prime contractor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is being investigated for an April incident in which radioactive contamination from the nuclear weapons lab was found on and off-site. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Enterprise Assessments announced its intent to investigate Lawrence Livermore National Security on Jan. 26. Anthony Pierpoint, director […]

WASHINGTON — The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plan to produce 30 nuclear weapon cores annually by 2028 satisfies current military needs, the head of U.S. Strategic Command said here Friday. That date, given earlier in the summit by the head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, “meets my needs in that regard for W87-1” Gen. […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration will extend the Bechtel National-led prime contractor at Y-12 National Security Complex that builds nuclear weapon secondary stages in Tennessee through September 2027, the head of the agency said here Thursday. The agency also plans to extend Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies at the Kansas City National Security […]

WASHINGTON — A three-year slip for a new x-ray imager will not necessarily result in a bigger, more massive W93 nuclear warhead, senior officials from Los Alamos National Laboratory said here Thursday. That was a slight change in tune compared with an appraisal one of these people made last year. For the last three years, […]

WASHINGTON — A tech-industry downturn and a federal permission to boost worker compensation helped with hiring at U.S. nuclear-weapons labs, but hanging on to recruits is still tough, the lab directors said here Wednesday. “We’re actually in quite a good place right now,” Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, […]

WASHINGTON — The Los Alamos National Laboratory should be able to produce 30 nuclear weapon cores annually by 2028, the lab’s director said here Wednesday. “At the moment the plan we’re working to is 2028,” Thomas Mason, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, told the Exchange Monitor here on the sidelines of the Monitor’s […]

Departing officers of an advisory board for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said this week they are feeling less anxious about the National Nuclear Security Administration taking over the 310-square-mile property on Oct. 1. That’s when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) , a semi-autonomous branch of DOE, is scheduled […]

The prime contractor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is being investigated for an April incident in which radioactive contamination from the nuclear weapons lab was found on and off-site.  The NNSA’s Office of Enterprise Assessments announced its intent to investigate Lawrence Livermore National Security on Jan. 26. Anthony Pierpoint, director of the Office of […]

About two years after it released a draft of the document, the National Nuclear Security Administration published a final environmental review of its plant to dispose of dozens of tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium. The nuclear weapons agency published its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program (SPDP) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on […]

The annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit, hosted by the Exchange Monitor, kicks off in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday with more than 60 speakers from the top ranks of the U.S.  nuclear security enterprise.  Expect much discussion of the National Nuclear Security Administration striving to produce at least 80 plutonium pits for use in modernizing nuclear weapons […]

The Kansas City National Security Campus in Missouri, which manufactures most of the non-nuclear components of U.S. nuclear weapons celebrates its diamond anniversary next month. Initially dedicated by then-Senator Harry Truman in 1942, what began as a Pratt & Whitney plant building Double Wasp radial engines for a variety of World War II aircraft, the […]

National Nuclear Security Administration program offices do not consistently monitor performance of minor construction projects of fewer than $30 million in total cost, the Government Accountability Office found in a recent audit. From fiscal year 2019 through July 2023, NNSA offices undertook 414 minor construction projects that cost an estimated total of about $3 billion, […]

About a year after it released a draft of the document, the National Nuclear Security Administration published a final environmental review of its plant to dispose of dozens of tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium. The nuclear weapons agency published its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program (SPDP) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on […]

The annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit, hosted by the Exchange Monitor, kicks off in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday with more than 60 speakers from the top ranks of the U.S.  nuclear security enterprise.  Expect much discussion of the National Nuclear Security Administration striving to produce at least 80 plutonium pits for use in modernizing nuclear weapons […]

Two Republican Senators, both senior members of influential defense committees, on Friday published an op-ed airing concerns that U.S. nuclear modernization is lagging behind its adversaries, particularly the LGM-35 Sentinel. Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) the top Republican on the SASC Strategic […]

About a year after it released a draft of the document, the National Nuclear Security Administration published a final environmental review of its plant to dispose of dozens of tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium. The nuclear weapons agency published its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program (SPDP) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on […]