National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

A scientist who claims his questioning of key safety data related to underground disposal of transuranic waste in New Mexico cost him a permanent job with a Sandia National Laboratories contractor will have his case heard by a federal magistrate. Plaintiff Charles Oakes agreed in an April 7 filing in U.S. District Court in New […]

The W93 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, the first in decades that is not a refurbishment of a weapon already sailing the seas, will be in line for a big budget increase if Congress goes along with the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal year 2023 budget request. W93, led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, would see […]

An internal panel of National Nuclear Security Administration personnel have started their headquarters-led review of the agency’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Office and expects to wrap up the work sometime in 2022, an agency spokesperson said Monday. “The independent strategic review of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation’s (DNN) mission space is beginning its work and conversations with DNN […]

A turkey flew into an overhead powerline and tripped a circuit breaker at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., last month, blacking out buildings on the west side of the site and very briefly affected critical safety systems in facilities that produce key nuclear-weapon components, federal officials said this week. “The outage […]

Continuing the U.S. campaign to inshore production of Molybdenum-99, the Secretary of Energy this week announced she cleared the way to provide upstart domestic manufacturers of the medical isotope with up to 750 kilograms of high assay, low enriched uranium annually. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set up the annual transfer to industry on April […]

BWX Technologies Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., will begin producing purified uranium metal for nuclear weapons under a sole-source award announced Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration. “The purification and conversion capabilities provided by the Contractor shall allow for HEU [highly enriched uranium] materials of various forms (such as metal and oxide) to be […]

A scientist who claims his questioning of key safety data related to underground disposal of transuranic waste in New Mexico cost him a permanent job with a Sandia National Laboratories contractor will have his case heard by a federal magistrate.  Plaintiff Charles Oakes agreed in an April 7 filing in U.S. District Court in New […]

BWX Technologies Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., will begin producing purified uranium metal for nuclear weapons under a sole-source award announced Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration. “The purification and conversion capabilities provided by the Contractor shall allow for HEU [highly enriched uranium] materials of various forms (such as metal and oxide) to be […]

The W93 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, the first in decades that is not a refurbishment of a weapon already sailing the seas, will be in line for a big budget increase if Congress goes along with the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal year 2023 budget request. W93, led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, would see […]

An internal panel of National Nuclear Security Administration personnel have started their headquarters-led review of the agency’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Office and expects to wrap up the work sometime in 2022, an agency spokesperson said Monday. “The independent strategic review of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation’s (DNN) mission space is beginning its work and conversations with DNN […]

Marvin Adams on Monday officially became the deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, sworn in by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm over video conference five days after the Senate unanimously confirmed him for the job. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency announced the swearing-in in a press release. This marks Adams’ […]

A turkey flew into an overhead powerline and tripped a circuit breaker at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., last month, blacking out buildings on the west side of the site and very briefly affected critical safety systems in facilities that produce key nuclear-weapon components, federal officials said this week. “The outage […]

Continuing the U.S. campaign to inshore production of Molybdenum-99, the Secretary of Energy this week announced she cleared the way to provide upstart domestic manufacturers of the medical isotope with up to 750 kilograms of high assay, low enriched uranium annually. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set up the annual transfer to industry on April […]

Cases of COVID-19 within the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management remained low during the past week, with 27 active confirmed cases of the virus reported, a spokesperson said in a Thursday email. That is up six from the prior week total of 21 but far below the hundreds being recorded weekly during the […]

Thanks to more than a quarter-billion dollars of congressional funds since 2018, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is tearing down some of the most contaminated facilities in the weapons complex and “making bad things go away,” a manager at the California nuclear-weapons design lab said recently. Much progress has happened since the […]

The New Mexico-based Los Alamos Study Group filed suit this week against the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, D.C., claiming the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency is violating the Freedom of Information Act when it comes to plans for expanded plutonium pit production. The Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group has made 65 requests under the […]

The Senate late Wednesday confirmed Marvin Adams to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s office of defense programs, clearing the way for the Texas A&M professor and longtime weapons-labs consultant to enter federal service for the first time. Adams had a whirlwind trip through the Senate, where lawmakers confirmed him Wednesday after the body’s Armed […]

The New Mexico-based Los Alamos Study Group filed suit Wednesday against the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, D.C., claiming the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency is violating the Freedom of Information Act when it comes to plans for expanded plutonium pit production. The Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group has made 65 requests under the […]

The Senate late Wednesday confirmed Marvin Adams to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s office of defense programs, clearing the way for the Texas A&M professor and longtime weapons-labs consultant to enter federal service for the first time. Adams had a whirlwind trip through the Senate, where lawmakers confirmed him Wednesday after the body’s Armed […]

The top-ranked U.S. general again touted his support for the low-yield, nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile the Joe Biden administration wants to cancel, this time at the invitation of House Republicans during Tuesday’s Armed Services Committee hearing. Gen. Mark Milley’s position on the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, SLCM-N, “has not changed,” the chairman of the Joint […]

The Joe Biden administration’s nominee to lead nuclear weapons programs at National Nuclear Security Administration headquarters was one of four nominees approved unanimously on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Marvin Adams got the nod from the committee just under four months after the White House announced Biden’s intent to install the Texas A&M […]

Marvin Adams, the Joe Biden administration’s to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s defense programs from agency headquarters, has the support of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s powerful Republican ranking member.  Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) “expects to support this nomination when the committee votes,” a spokesperson for committee Republicans wrote Monday in an email.  Adams, […]

By Dan Parsons The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation, or NA-80, recently embarked the second and final phase of a refresh for its Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) air fleet: airplanes and helicopters the agency uses to gather data about nuclear accidents, incidents and potential radiological terror attacks. This week, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has requested a roughly 60% increase in fiscal year 2023 for the part of its budget that funds the rebuilding of critical nuclear-weapons production infrastructure including plutonium pits, a Department of Energy document published Tuesday shows. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency seeks some $4.6 billion for Production Modernization in fiscal […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation, or NA-80, recently embarked on the second and final phase of a refresh for its Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) air fleet: planes and helicopters the agency uses domestically to gather data about potential or suspected nuclear accidents, incidents and — in a worst […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has requested a roughly 60% increase in fiscal year 2023 for the part of its budget that funds the rebuilding of critical nuclear-weapons production infrastructure including plutonium pits, a Department of Energy document published Tuesday shows. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency seeks some $4.6 billion for Production Modernization in fiscal […]

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Nuclear Security Administration stopped keeping track of active cases of the disease among personnel who don’t report to work regularly at the agency’s labs, plants or sites. The change left the agency with 59 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 among employees working on site, a spokesperson at […]

In a confirmation hearing Tuesday morning, the Joe Biden administration’s nominee to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons programs from headquarters in Washington pledged his support for the agency’s program of record and agreed to review the agency’s plan to produce new plutonium pits if confirmed. The nominee, Marvin Adams, a professor of nuclear […]

A regulatory domino fell Thursday at the plant where Westinghouse fabricates tritium producing burnable absorber rods for the National Nuclear Security Administration, clearing the way for cleanup of contaminated disposal lagoons on the South Carolina property. On Thursday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued an exemption to commission regulations clearing U.S. Ecology to accept waste from […]

Many full-timers working directly for the Los Alamos National Laboratory Laboratory received a modest raise earlier this month as part of broad retention efforts by the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to a letter from the lab’s director. “We are pleased that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has granted this increase,” Thomas Mason, director […]