National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Todays’ computing, modeling and simulation tools, plus the National Ignition Facility that unlocks physics “not accessible in the laboratory,” have given nuclear-weapon stewards capabilities unimaginable almost 30 years ago, when the U.S. ceased explosive tests, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said Tuesday. “On all of those fronts, the capabilities we have in […]

The minority leader of the South Carolina Senate on Tuesday made an opening bid in the statewide tug-of-war over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal money up for grabs from last year’s plutonium settlement with Columbia: $100 million for the state, $425 million for seven counties near the Savannah River Site. “That would […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessments office is opening an investigation into the flooding of Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility earlier this year, an event precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet vacuum.  DOE’s internal watchdog notified lab director Thomas Mason of the impending investigation in a Sept. 23 letter posted online recently.  In […]

Nuclear Weapons laboratories are outpacing production sites when it comes to vaccinating their workforces, according to the most recent data shared by National Nuclear Security Administration labs, plants and sites. At the Sandia National Laboratories, which has one of the largest workforces in the nuclear security enterprise, about 84% of the workforce had been vaccinated […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee has demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration come up with a “comprehensive strategy” for disposing of nuclear waste created by the ongoing 30-year refresh of U.S. nuclear weapons. The provision is part of the committee’s fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the full text of which the […]

A dispute about the magnitude of a former employee’s theft from Sandia National Laboratory prompted an assistant U.S. attorney to refuse a request from the defendant’s lawyers that the U.S. District court knock two months off the former lab hand’s potential jail sentence. Joshua Cordova’s lawyers were seeking a 10-month sentence, on the basis that […]

The full House this week passed a stopgap spending bill that would essentially freeze federal spending, including at the Department of Energy, at 2021 levels until Dec. 3. It was a party-line vote in the Democratic-majority chamber: 220-211, with one member not voting. The stopgap budget now heads to the Senate, where Republican leaders have […]

A service life extension would be authorized for the B83 megaton gravity bomb in 2022 and every new president would have to review U.S. nuclear force posture, if a Senate committee’s version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) behind […]

COVID-19 cases and deaths surged across the National Nuclear Security Administration complex in summer’s final month, with active infections hitting levels not seen since November and the agency confirming three new fatalities this week alone. At deadline, 25 people at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) labs, plants and sites were confirmed to have died […]

The Department of Energy wants its employees fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before Thanksgiving, which means they have until Nov. 8 to receive their final injection, according to a memo from the agency’s chief of staff. The memo, dated Tuesday from DOE’s chief of staff Tarak Shah and viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, does not […]

A dispute about the magnitude of a former employee’s theft from Sandia National Laboratory prompted an assistant U.S. attorney to refuse a request from the defendant’s lawyers that the U.S. District court knock two months off the former lab hand’s potential jail sentence. Joshua Cordova’s lawyers were seeking a 10-month sentence, on the basis that […]

In an announcement with implications for a wide cross section of nuclear policy professionals and the nuclear industry, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that Australia will acquire nuclear attack submarines — of origin and fuel type yet to be determined — as part of a new trilateral accord with the U.S. and the U.K. After […]

In the end, most if not all big Department of Energy contractors will fall in line behind a federal requirement for workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, although some workers will quit rather than taking the shot, based on conversations with five industry sources this week. Most of these people, whom Weapons Complex Monitor granted […]

A second draft of the Department of Energy’s Record of Decision to build a new on-site landfill for low-level radioactive waste at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is now expected in mid-October, the agency said late recently. Originally slated to appear this week, publication of the updated draft has been pushed back until mid-October […]

Construction of a plant to treat mercury-laden water stemming from building demolition at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is more than a third complete, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. Construction of the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility by a joint venture of Louisiana-based APTIM and Idaho-based North Wind is about 35% […]

In a move necessary to produce hundreds of kilograms of energy-dense, U.S.-origin uranium fuel for DOE, Centrus Energy Corp. extended a lease on Department of Energy buildings at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio for three years, through 2025. The buildings support the 16-machine cascade Centrus, Bethesda, Md., is building for DOE under a $115 […]

Construction of a plant to treat mercury-laden water stemming from building demolition at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is more than a third complete, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. Construction of the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility by a joint venture of Louisiana-based APTIM and Idaho-based North Wind is about 35% […]

A second draft of the Department of Energy’s Record of Decision to build a new on-site landfill for low-level radioactive waste at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is now expected in mid-October, the agency said late last week. Originally slated to appear this week, publication of the updated draft has been pushed back until […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Uranium Processing Facility will start up in August 2025, almost a year later than once anticipated but with months of margin to spare to reach full operational capability by the long-promised date of December 2025. That’s according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s DNFSB latest Oak Ridge site report. […]

Six weeks after telling unvaccinated feds and contractors to wear masks and be tested regularly for COVID-19, President Joe Biden on Thursday took things a step further and said such workers must either take the vaccine or find another job.   “If you want to work with the federal government, do business with us, get vaccinated,” […]

In a legal settlement announced this week in a regulatory filing, uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology developer Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., said it got the millions of dollars it was seeking from the Department of Energy for the old U.S. Enrichment Corp.’s pension fund this week. Centrus will collect about $43.5 million from […]

Mark Anthony will move to New Mexico from Lund, Sweden, where he directed construction of a multibillion neutron source, to lead the new plutonium infrastructure directorate at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the lab said this week. Anthony’s appointment, effective Nov. 1, follows a four-month search for someone to head the plutonium infrastructure directorate, which […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Uranium Processing Facility will start up in August 2025, almost a year later than once anticipated but with months of margin to spare to reach full operational capability by the long-promised date of December 2025. That’s according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s DNFSB latest Oak Ridge site report.  […]

With two major Department of Energy nuclear site contractors having already announced plans to mandate worker vaccination against COVID-19, don’t be surprised to see others follow in coming days, sources told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. One industry source said Friday there is a good chance at least one more major limited liability corporation at a […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration in August confirmed that four more employees of the nuclear security enterprise died of COVID-19 during an explosive summer case surge, even as some federal contractors took their most forceful workforce vaccination measures to date. In the final week of August, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had 419 confirmed, […]

The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved about $425 million in funding above the president’s request for nuclear-weapons infrastructure in fiscal year 2022 — money that corresponding appropriations bills would not yet allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to spend. The authorized funding came from an amendment to the committee’s 2022 National Defense Authorization […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration would have to report to Congress about the benefits of competitively awarding management and operations contracts for nuclear weapons sites by March 1, if the House’s version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who holds the seat recently vacated by longtime Armed Services […]

Construction of plutonium pit factories should continue more or less as planned for another year-and-a-half, until the Joe Biden administration wraps up a nuclear posture review and the Savannah River Site delivers a baseline cost estimate for a pit factory there, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. “We are sort of […]

NorthStar Medical technologies, Beloit, Wis., inked a $37-million cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to produce the medical isotope Molybdenum-99, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency announced Aug. 27. NorthStar, which had to put up matching funds to get the $37 million from the agency, will use the cash to produce the isotope […]

Jill Hruby, the new administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) continued her tour of the nuclear security enterprise last week, dropping by both the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. A resident of New Mexico at the time when she was confirmed to lead […]