National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to address a perceived conflict of interest, raised by a Bechtel National-led team, about the agency’s November award of a potentially decade-long sites-management contract to a Fluor-led team, according to a letter from the Government Accountability Office. On Friday, at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) request, a source […]

The White House this week officially nominated Marvin Adams to succeed Charles Verdon as the top weapons official at National Nuclear Security Administration headquarters in Washington, according to a press release. The White House sent Adams’ nomination to the Senate nearly a month after announcing its intention to make him the next deputy administrator for defense […]

The last railcar in a proposed spent nuclear fuel rail transport system is en route to Colorado this week for testing, the Department of Energy said in a press release. The Rail Escort Vehicle (REV) will undergo multiple-car testing at a site near Pueblo, Colo., DOE said in its Monday statement. The railcar is set to […]

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) wants Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to provide details about a Department of Energy plan to bury certain nuclear waste, now at the Idaho National Laboratory, at the Nevada National Security Site. Titus said she was caught off guard by federal plans for the shipments from Idaho to the Nevada National […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., signed contracts with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to support the company’s initiative to domestically manufacture a medical isotope without highly enriched uranium, according to a DOE press release. In an email this week, a spokesperson for SHINE said the grant the […]

The Sandia National Laboratories have temporarily dropped a requirement that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving only a pair of National Nuclear Security Administration-owned sites that require vaccination. While Sandia’s mandate is paused, “the discipline process for those employees who are unvaccinated, and processing of religious and medical accommodations are on hold,” a labs […]

For now, top management at the Department of Energy still plans a phased return to onsite work for employees and contractors starting on Tuesday, Jan. 18. “Per DOE’s COVID-19 Workplace Safety and Reentry Framework, employees who are designated site critical will return to the worksite on Jan. 18,” a DOE headquarters spokesperson said in a […]

The Sandia National Laboratories have temporarily dropped a requirement that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving only a pair of National Nuclear Security Administration-owned sites that require vaccination. While Sandia’s mandate is paused, “the discipline process for those employees who are unvaccinated, and processing of religious and medical accommodations are on hold,” a labs […]

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) wants Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to provide details about a Department of Energy plan to bury certain nuclear waste, now at the Idaho National Laboratory, at the Nevada National Security Site. Titus said she was caught off guard by federal plans for the shipments from Idaho to the Nevada National […]

The White House on Tuesday officially nominated Marvin Adams to succeed Charles Verdon as the top weapons official at National Nuclear Security Administration headquarters in Washington, according to an evening press release. The White House sent Adams’ nomination to the Senate nearly a month after announcing its intention to make him the next deputy administrator […]

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is the new top Republican on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first drafts of policies touching on defense nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, the panel’s GOP leadership said Monday. Lamborn slid into the leadership role after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former strategic forces […]

Three of the four major National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear-weapon sites still have active COVID-19 vaccine mandates in spite of a federal judge’s December order that barred enforcement of the government’s federal contractor mandate. The prime contractors for these sites mostly have not said why they chose to keep the mandates in place, though one […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., signed contracts with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to support the company’s initiative to domestically manufacture a medical isotope without highly enriched uranium, according to a DOE press release. The release did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, or the […]

Eventual winners of new multibillion-dollar contracts at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky are expected to use small businesses to perform work worth 15% to 20% of contract value, not counting the 120-day transition period. That is according to a detailed presentation on the $ 5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning […]

Confirmed active cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled across the National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise compared with early December, a spokesperson for agency headquarters in Washington said Friday.  The increase in active cases, the only number the semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency reports, occurred with the highly contagious but reportedly less severe omicron variant of the virus spreading […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management published draft solicitations this week for a potentially 10-year, $2-billion contract that includes processing depleted uranium tetrafluoride for National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapon programs. The work would be part of the cleanup branch’s Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Contract, the meat of […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration hopes its efforts to boost the domestic industry for Molybdenum-99 will result in commercial-scale availability of the medical isotope a couple years from now, according to an annual nonproliferation report the agency released before the holidays. Under its partnership with four U.S. companies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “aims […]

James McConnell is the new No. 3 and top career civil servant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said before New Year’s. McConnell was appointed associate principal deputy administrator in December, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website. In that role he would backstop the agency’s […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to meet in January to discuss increasing production of tritium for nuclear weapons in civilian reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to a notice posted online this week. “The purpose of this informational meeting between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is […]

On the heels of the arrival of the New Year, here’s a look at what to expect in 2022 at the National Nuclear Security Administration, its sites and its partners. Production Office Protest A bigger deal for industry perhaps than the Joe Biden administration’s imminent nuclear posture review — a type of review that in […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to meet in January to discuss increasing production of tritium for nuclear weapons in civilian reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to a notice posted online Tuesday. “The purpose of this informational meeting between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is to […]

James McConnell is the new No. 3 and top career civil servant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said before New Year’s. McConnell was appointed associate principal deputy administrator in December, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website. In that role he would backstop the agency’s […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration hopes its efforts to boost the domestic industry for Molybdenum-99 will result in commercial-scale availability of the medical isotope a couple years from now, according to an annual nonproliferation report the agency released before the holidays. Under its partnership with four U.S. companies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “aims […]

A National Nuclear Security Administration helicopter will sweep the Las Vegas strip through Dec. 31 to measure background radiation levels ahead of planned New Year’s Eve celebrations, the agency announced this week. Flights were scheduled to begin Dec. 29 and continue through Dec. 31. The agency’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team regularly takes background radiation measurements […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration received the approval, though not the appropriation, to spend some $500 million more than requested for fiscal year 2022, under the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law Monday. Aside from allowing the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons agency to spend more than $20 billion — a sum House and […]

A half-dozen employees suing the operator of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate have asked a federal court in Knoxville for two more weeks, until Jan. 4, 2022, to file their amended complaint. The plaintiffs filed their motion for the extension in the U.S. District Court […]

The U.S. will cease exporting highly enriched uranium to overseas producers of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 in January, the federal government announced Monday. In the release, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said they jointly certified that there is enough molybdenum-99 (Mo-99)  in the world […]

Radiological contamination was found on four workers at the Y-12 National Security Complex in recent weeks, including one person who tracked material into a facility housing enriched and depleted uranium operations, according to a report from a federal group that monitors Department of Energy sites. The four incidents stemmed from routine operations and maintenance, according […]

Ignoring the ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee’s plea for probation, a federal judge in New Mexico sentenced Joshua Cordova to nearly two years in prison for the four counts of fraud to which he admitted earlier this year. Cordova worked at the Albuquerque-based labs network from 2011 to 2019, instructing military and law enforcement personnel how […]

An Aug. 8 experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility that dazzled scientists, weapons-focused and otherwise, has the National Nuclear Security Administration rethinking plans to focus the facility more strictly on nuclear-weapons work. The experiment did not create a sustained nuclear fusion reaction, but it did set a new record for energy output […]