National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Palantir, the intelligence community software vendor with a name ripped from the pages of The Lord of the Rings, has notched its first contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Denver-based company said Monday. Palantir’s pact to serve as the software platform for the agency’s Safety Analytics, Forecasting, and Evaluation Reporting (SAFER) project is […]

A lawsuit filed by the disgruntled ex-chief financial officer of the Nevada National Security Site’s prime contractor remained in mediation this week, with both the company and its chief executive again denying that the former finance chief was fired for protected whistleblowing. In the latest filings in the case, Mark Martinez, chief executive officer of […]

A special congressional election is set for June 1 in New Mexico to fill the vacancy in the district that includes the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories facilities in Albuquerque. The open seat was created March 16 when then-Rep. Debra Haaland (D) resigned to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of interior after being confirmed in a […]

The Department of Energy plans to retain a Atkins-led joint venture that runs depleted uranium conversion at former gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky for 14 more months, until March 31, 2023, in part to help a defense project stay on track. The DOE announced its intention to extend the contract for Mid-America Conversion […]

Lack of communications between the Sandia National Laboratories and the Kansas City National Security Campus resulted in some improperly manufactured flex cables, and separately in the Missouri manufacturing facility accepting other flex cables that failed  post-manufacturing tests, the Department of Energy’s inspector general reported recently. Someone who tipped off the IG in 2019 about the […]

The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico has halted transuranic waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s contractor for the Los Alamos National Laboratory after sparks from a waste drum prompted evacuations at both the lab and the disposal site. That is according to a […]

The Government Accountability Office shot down a bid protest from a small business that missed out, by around $100,000, on a security contract for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Albuquerque site. Losing bidder ISS Action, Jamaica, NY., one of seven small businesses that bucked for the work, protested the award to locals Montech Inc., Albuquerque, […]

A lawsuit filed by the disgruntled ex-chief financial officer of the Nevada National Security Site’s prime contractor remained in mediation this week, with both the company and its chief executive again denying that the former finance chief was fired for protected whistleblowing. In the latest filings in the case, Mark Martinez, chief executive officer of […]

Lack of communications between the Sandia National Laboratories and the Kansas City National Security Campus resulted in some improperly manufactured flex cables, and separately in the Missouri manufacturing facility accepting other flex cables that failed  post-manufacturing tests, the Department of Energy’s inspector general reported recently. Someone who tipped off the IG in 2019 about the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration was scheduled to host its latest online job fair on Wednesday, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said. The civilian weapons steward has 3,000 openings across the nuclear-security enterprise, according to the press release about the agency’s latest hiring drive. Anyone interested in the jobs, which are mostly contractor […]

A former director of the Sandia National Laboratories has floated toward the top of the Joe Biden administration’s list of candidates to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration and its roughly $20-billion-a-year civilian nuclear weapons program, according to a source familiar with the administration’s thinking. Jill Hruby led Sandia for about two years in the […]

Nuclear weapons are one of a trilogy of high-spend programs likely to affect defense budgeting decisions for years, the chair of a House Appropriations panel said this week in an online hearing. “Cyber security, nuclear modernization and overseas contingency operations funding sound like they’re three unrelated topics,” Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chair of the House […]

A COVID-19 fatality at the Sandia National Laboratories brought the confirmed count of fatal cases across the National Nuclear Security Administration complex to 16 during the ongoing pandemic, as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at last got a delivery of vaccines. This was the second confirmed fatal case at Sandia, a spokesperson at the National […]

A former director of the Sandia National Laboratories has floated toward the top of the Joe Biden administration’s list of candidates to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration and its roughly $20-billion-a-year civilian nuclear weapons program, according to a source familiar with the administration’s thinking. Jill Hruby led Sandia for about two years in the […]

The Department of Energy is gathering information on firms interested in providing support services to the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee, an organization of 20 federally-recognized tribes touched by shipments of nuclear waste. The request for information notice was posted Tuesday on a federal procurement website by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy’s Office of Integrated […]

Nuclear weapons are one of a trilogy of high-spend programs likely to affect defense spending decisions for years, the chair of a House Appropriations panel said Tuesday in an online hearing. “Cyber security, nuclear modernization and overseas contingency operations funding sound like they’re three unrelated topics,” Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chair of the House Appropriations […]

Non-nuclear weapons programs should be prepared to pay the bills for the nuclear programs, if it comes to that, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), one of the biggest nuclear weapons stakeholders left on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday. “Nuclear deterrence is the number one mission of the Department of Defense,” Fischer said in an […]

The U.S. Senate Monday voted 51-to-40 to confirm Rep. Debra Haaland (D-N.M.) as secretary of interior, which will create a vacancy in the congressional district that includes the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories facilities in Albuquerque. An Associated Press article Tuesday in the San Antonio Express-News reported Tuesday former State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn […]

A Pentagon official pulled out of a scheduled public briefing about plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site this week because of a gag order imposed by a Biden Administration review, a group advising the South Carolina government on nuclear matters said. Drew Walter, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, was […]

It can happen on submarines, it can happen in the mail and it can happen if you fly a lot: a dose big enough to keep you out of radiological areas for a while. At the Pantex Plant earlier this year, it happened because someone left their dosimeter near a linear accelerator. That’s according to […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has logged about 60 new COVID-19 cases a week, give or take, over the last month, which marks the third since multiple major nuclear weapons sites started vaccinations on premises. Since January, when most major civilian nuclear weapon sites started administering vaccines inside the fence, confirmed COVID transmission rates at […]

Changing requirements and the COVID-19 pandemic mean the National Nuclear Security Administration will wait until fiscal year 2023 to begin producing high-purity depleted uranium metal for nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapon steward previously wanted to get its depleted uranium tetrafluoride (DUF4) […]

It can happen on submarines, it can happen in the mail and it can happen if you fly a lot: a dose big enough to keep you out of radiological areas for a while. At the Pantex Plant earlier this year, it happened because someone left their dosimeter near a linear accelerator. That’s according to […]

The United Kingdom officially announced Tuesday that it will raise the cap on its nuclear arsenal to 260 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warheads from the previous target of 180 warheads. “In 2010 the Government stated an intent to reduce our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling from not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the […]

A Pentagon official pulled out of a scheduled public briefing about plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site on Monday because of a gag order imposed by a Biden Administration review, a group advising the South Carolina government on nuclear matters said. Drew Walter, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, was […]

The former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission joined the University of Michigan as an adjunct professor, according to a press release. The university’s Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Science (NERS) department announced that Kristine Svinicki joined the faculty in a March 8 statement. Svinicki will help to “define the new directions for twenty-first-century nuclear engineering” […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could go offline for a major ventilation upgrade right around the time the Los Alamos National Laboratory starts casting new nuclear weapon cores and generating a slew of new defense transuranic waste, a lab official said Wednesday at the online Waste Management Symposia conference. “As we progress in our nuclear […]

Paul Kreitz, who has helped manage planning and construction of pit production infrastructure at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the past two years or so, is leaving lab manager Triad National Security in late April, a lab official said this week. Kreitz was not one of Triad National Security’s key personnel. Before Los Alamos, […]

Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based RSI Services is the winner of a potential five-year, $22-million small business contract to remediate Naval Reactors sites overseen by the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration in West Milton, N.Y. The set-aside cleanup contract for the Kesselring Site was announced Tuesday by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. Under the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration this week formalized a decision to immobilize some 350 kilograms of plutonium used in a Japanese research facility into glass-like cylinders at the Savannah River Site rather than sending the material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency put the official stamp on […]