National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Eight Los Alamos employees who refused to get a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination have sued the lab’s operations contractor in federal court asked a judge Friday to put the mandate on hold, court papers filed this week show. All eight of the plaintiffs received a religious exemption to Los Alamos’s vaccine mandate, which called for anyone […]

The roughly 250 confirmed, active COVID-19 cases across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s complex at the end of October was only a little higher than the number the agency recorded for the corresponding week of 2020 but down by about half from the summer’s high. Also, as of late this month, the National Nuclear Security […]

Crews finished building the structure of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s next-generation, secondary-stage factory in September and the compound’s electrical hub is scheduled to be completed in around January, the site prime contractor said recently. The milestone for the Main Process Building, where the most important weapons work at the Y-12 National Security Site will […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has maxed out the options on Consolidated Nuclear Security’s short-term extension to run the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security complex, keeping the short-timer incumbent on the job through March while the agency finalizes the award of a follow-on deal. With an expected four-month transition period to the next […]

Environmentalist groups from California, New Mexico and South Carolina are fighting to keep their lawsuit to slow plutonium-pit production from being thrown out of court and claimed this week that Congress’ mandate to produce pits does not prevent further environmental review of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s planned pit complex.  “[T]his lawsuit involves more than […]

The Department of Energy said in an online notice Tuesday it is awarding the new remediation contract at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee to an Amentum-Jacobs team called United Cleanup Oak Ridge LLC in a deal potentially worth $8.3 billion over a 10-year ordering period. United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), won the Oak Ridge […]

Eight Los Alamos employees who refused to get a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination have sued the lab’s operations contractor in federal court and will get their chance at stopping the mandate in a hearing scheduled for Friday, court papers filed Tuesday show. All eight of the plaintiffs received a religious exemption to Los Alamos’s vaccine mandate, […]

David Huizenga, the Department of Energy’s defense-nuclear do-it-all, is stepping aside as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top career civil servant to become a senior advisor to the nuclear-weapons sub-agency’s administrator, initially focusing on negotiations to return the U.S. to the Iran Nuclear Deal, according to an internal email.  Huizenga will assume his new role […]

A former Sandia National Laboratories employee’s maneuvering for a lighter prison sentence has the government wondering whether the ex-Sandian should receive any sentencing leniency at all, according to a Friday court filing. Joshua Cordova has acted “shamelessly” since reading a plea agreement with the government, claiming that tens of thousands of dollars worth personal items […]

Non-executive board chair John Fees will end a 43-year career with BWX Technologies and its predecessor companies on May 3, the Lynchburg, Va.-based naval nuclear reactor provider, fuel fabricator and defense-nuclear site-manager announced this week in a regulatory filing. Fees, who has been the non-executive chairman since 2018, will retire after the company’s board of directors […]

Sister Megan Rice, a peace activist whose 2012 break-in to the Y-12 National Security Complex spurred an overhaul of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s physical security apparatus, died Oct. 10 at 91, her order said. Rise was born in 1930 and joined the Society of Holy Child Jesus in 1947. After breaking into Y-12 at age […]

A three-way partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines “is not designed in any way to be exclusive,” the U.K. military’s highest-ranking uniformed officer said this week. The trilateral deal, called AUKUS, was “a first step in terms of industrial development between like-minded partners,” Gen. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is “targeting” fiscal year 2026 as the startup date for a new facility at the Savannah River Site that will process 34 metric tons of surplus weapon usable plutonium for disposal in New Mexico, an agency official told advisors to South Carolina’s governor this week. That’s two years earlier than […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., got $35 million through a cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to help produce the molybdenum-99 medical isotope in the U.S. without relying on highly enriched uranium, the agency announced this week. This was the third of four agreements planned under a funding opportunity Congress ordered the National Nuclear […]

Most National Nuclear Security Administration sites have given employees until Dec. 8 to get vaccinated, but some people at labs in New Mexico have already been terminated for refusing to at least begin a vaccine course.  At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the northern part of the state, nearly 300 people have left the […]

Non-executive board chair John Fees will end a 43-year career with BWX Technologies and its predecessor companies on May 3, the Lynchburg, Va.-based naval nuclear reactor provider, fuel fabricator and defense-nuclear site-manager announced Wednesday in a regulatory filing. Fees, who has been the non-executive chairman since 2018, will retire after the company’s board of directors […]

After ordering a temporary halt to a few COVID-19 vaccine-related firings at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory last week, a federal judge was scheduled to hear arguments next week about whether to extend the firing moratorium, according to court papers. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley in the Eastern District of Tennessee issued a temporary restraining […]

Four Republicans in the House of Representatives want Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to examine potential “unintended impacts” of staff losses at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where some employees plan to leave the site rather than get a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. The lawmakers’ question if DOE has thought through […]

The Secretary of State used a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to talk tough on Iran this week, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee approved a couple of nuclear-nonproliferation nominees at State. Secretary Anthony Blinken’s Monday meeting with Rafael Grossi, director general of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), happened […]

Sister Megan Rice, a peace activist whose 2012 break-in to the Y-12 National Security Complex spurred an overhaul of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s physical security apparatus, died Oct. 10 at 91, her order said.  Rise was born in 1930 and joined the Society of Holy Child Jesus in 1947. After breaking into Y-12 at […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is “targeting” fiscal year 2026 as the startup date for a new facility at the Savannah River Site that will process 34 metric tons of surplus weapon usable plutonium for disposal in New Mexico, an agency official told advisors to South Carolina’s governor on Monday. That’s two years earlier than […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., got $35 million through a cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to help produce the molybdenum-99 medical isotope in the U.S. without relying on highly enriched uranium, the agency announced Monday. This was the third of four agreements planned under a funding opportunity Congress ordered the National Nuclear Security […]

Vaccination holdouts at two of the first Department of Energy contractors to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations filed lawsuits against their employers, pleas are being made to elected officials on behalf of those who don’t want the shot and labor unions are wrangling with management at nuclear sites about mandate implementation. Those are a few highlights from […]

While no details were provided, a Department of Energy spokesperson officially confirmed last week that Centerra will continue at least in the short term as security contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. “Yes, they’ll be extended,” the spokesperson said. The most recent extension for Centerra, provider of security services […]

A decommissioned U.K. cargo vessel that once helped ship weapon-usable plutonium to the U.S. from Sweden has been completely recycled, ship operator Nuclear Transport Solutions announced this week. The INF3-class Oceanic Pintail, a 3,865 metric-ton (4,260 U.S. tons) vessel, was decommissioned in Scotland by Dales Marine Services of Leith near Edinburgh, Scotland, said Nuclear Transport Solutions, a […]

The proposed nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile might yet survive the Joe Biden administration’s nuclear posture review thanks among other things to the reported discovery of new Chinese missile silos, the official who coordinated the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review said Wednesday. “I thought perhaps at the beginning of this process that this particular weapon […]

A former Sandia employee who pleaded guilty to ripping off the labs for tens of thousands of dollars or more worth of merchandise is still fighting with the government over the exact value of the ill-gotten goods — a figure that could mean an extra two months in prison, or not, court papers show. Joshua […]

Personnel at the Savannah River Site should wrap up commissioning of transuranic waste characterization equipment by March, in time to get a shipment of proliferation-resistant plutonium-oxide mixture shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant next summer, a site spokesperson said Wednesday. Testing and certification of the transuranic waste-characterization equipment at the site’s recently completed K-Area […]

As two more nuclear-weapon sites prepared to mandate COVID-19 vaccines, small groups of vaccine refusers at sites in New Mexico and South Carolina sued in state courts to prevent their expected firings on Friday. In emails, spokespersons for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico said vaccines […]

Personnel at the Savannah River Site should wrap up commissioning of transuranic waste characterization equipment by March, in time to get a shipment of proliferation-resistant plutonium-oxide mixture shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant next summer, a site spokesperson said Wednesday. Testing and certification of the transuranic waste-characterization equipment at the site’s recently completed K-Area […]