National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

For the first time in 15 years, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is making shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a lab spokesman said this week. Three shipments left Lawrence Livermore for WIPP during the week of Sept. 21, one week after a […]

The competitive landscape for the potentially 10-year, $28-billion contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two big nuclear weapons production sites is starting to come into focus, now that the agency has hosted hopefuls for site visits and one-on-one meetings. Following tours of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the […]

Not that it ever stopped, but the National Nuclear Security Administration this week officially reaffirmed its decision to continue building the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The long-expected news, delivered Wednesday in an amended record of decision filed in the Federal Register, was presaged in June, when […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration picked up nearly 40 new confirmed COVID-19 cases this week, but recoveries well outstripped new infections, leaving the nuclear-weapon steward with six fewer active cases, at deadline Friday. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency was tracking 87 active cases among its federal and contractor workforce Friday, making for a total […]

Not that it ever stopped, but the National Nuclear Security Administration on Wednesday officially reaffirmed its decision to continue building the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The long-expected news, delivered in an amended record of decision filed in the Federal Register, was pressaged in June, when the […]

The competitive landscape for the potentially 10-year, $28-billion contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two big nuclear weapons production sites is starting to come into focus, now that the agency has hosted hopefuls for site visits and one-on-one meetings. Following tours of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is making shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a lab spokesman said Monday.  Three shipments left Lawrence Livermore for WIPP during the week of Sept. 21, Livermore spokesman Nolan O’Brien wrote in an email. Livermore crews expect to […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory confirmed a pair of COVID-19 cases among its workforce last week, during which the lab performed nearly 400 tests for the viral disease, a spokesperson said late Friday. That brings the total number of confirmed cases at the lab since the start of the outbreak to 59, the spokesperson for […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is consulting with Norway on a study about whether the nordic nation can downblend its own stock of highly enriched uranium and thorium, U.S. and Norwegian officials announced this week. In 2020, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency expects to spend only about $50,000 on the effort, which […]

A two-university team is offering its services to prospective bidders on a potentially 10-year contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two major nuclear-weapons manufacturing sites, but it had not hooked on with any industry partners this week. “The University of Tennessee System and the Texas A&M University System have announced a strategic alliance […]

Expect the Department of Energy to issue the long-anticipated paramilitary security contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina within the next few months, a federal official said Monday. Michael Budney, the head of the department’s Savannah River Site’s (SRS) operations office, made the assessment during Monday’s online meeting of the Savannah River Site’s […]

Gene Sievers is taking over as manager of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., backfilling a position left vacant after his predecessor was promoted as part of the leadership shuffle that ensued when Morgan Smith retired as head of the outgoing nuclear-weapons production-site prime. Sievers, most recently vice president of the Bechtel […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration finished an environmental review that will could the civilian nuclear-weapons agency to formalize a decision to make plutonium pits in South Carolina within about a month. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency approved the final site-specific environmental impact statement this week and published it Friday. A formal record of decision […]

At deadline Friday, Congress appeared on track to pass a just-in-time stopgap budget that will force the National Nuclear Security Administration to operate for nearly three months with a budget that’s about $3 billion a year less than what the agency says it needs to keep nuclear maintenance and modernization programs on time. The Senate […]

Active cases of COVID-19 among the National Nuclear Security Administration contractors and civil servants rose by 15 week to week, a spokesperson with the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency said Friday.  That left the agency with a total of 93 active cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, at deadline for Nuclear Security & […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration will soon finish an environmental review that will allow the civilian nuclear-weapons agency to formalize a decision to make plutonium pits in South Carolina, a source said Wednesday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency had approved the final site-specific environmental impact statement this week and could publish it any day, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is consulting with Norway on a study about whether the nordic nation can downblend its own stock of highly enriched uranium and thorium, U.S. and Norwegian officials announced this week. In 2020, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency expects to spend only about $50,000 on the effort, which […]

Gene Sievers is taking over as manager of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., backfilling a position left vacant after his predecessor was promoted as part of the leadership shuffle that ensued when Morgan Smith retired as head of the outgoing nuclear-weapons production-site prime. Sievers, most recently vice president of the Bechtel […]

According to a recently declassified report, the National Nuclear Security Administration thinks it will cost some $14.8 billion to build W87-1 warheads for the Ground Based Strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles planned to replace Minuteman III as the land-based leg of the nuclear triad starting around 2030.  That could make W87-1 — a newly manufactured copy […]

A two-university team is offering its services to prospective bidders on a potentially 10-year contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two major nuclear-weapons manufacturing sites, but it had not hooked on with any industry partners as of Tuesday, a spokesperson said. “The University of Tennessee System and the Texas A&M University System have […]

Sandia National Laboratories was preparing Tuesday to reopen its MO285 office space after deep-cleaning the area after an employee there tested positive for COVID-19, the nuclear-weapons engineering hub said. Only one employee working at MO285 tested positive, the labs network wrote in a statement Monday, when it began the deep cleaning that typically allows work […]

The Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories combined picked up less than a handful of new confirmed COVID-19 cases last week, the New Mexico nuke sites reported late last week after the ExchangeMonitor’s weekly deadline. Sandia’s cumulative case count rose to 63 from 60, with all three new cases logged at the lab network’s main […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved retired Army Gen. Lucas Polakowski to be assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, and staff director of the joint civil-military group that coordinates nuclear weapons acquisition. Polakowski was one of six civilian nominations the Committee advanced in a meeting Tuesday, held just over a […]

A House-passed 2021 spending bill, which would provide the $816 million the National Nuclear Security Administration requested for its B61-12 life-extension program, would “impair” the government’s ability to deliver that refurbished nuclear bomb on time, a senior Pentagon official told Congress Thursday. “It might not be intuitively obvious how that would affect certain programs because […]

The paperwork went through this week to officially extend Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies for another year as the management and operations contractor of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear-weapons components hub. A notice about the modification that picked up the Honeywell subsidiary’s option appeared Monday on the federal government’s online hub for acquisition and procurement documents, […]

Congress’ fight over the National Nuclear Security Administration’s 2021 budget poses “challenges” for rolling out new nuclear delivery systems and carrier vehicles that already are poised to debut “just barely in time,” the vice chair of the joint chiefs of staff said Thursday morning. “If you’ve been in the acquisition business in this building very […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration finished building a non-nuclear prototype of the B61-12, a refurbished version of the oldest deployed U.S. nuclear weapon that will homogenize four existing versions of the nuclear gravity bomb. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear weapons agency announced the milestone late last week in a press release. Personnel assembled the B61-12 first production […]

A congressional appropriator predicted this week there will be a short-term continuing resolution passed to keep the Energy Department and other federal agencies running from Oct. 1 into December. “We will not have a budget shutdown,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann said during the virtual National Cleanup Workshop hosted by the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) in cooperation […]

“Individuals from the Department of Energy” collaborated with House Democrats to destroy the National Nuclear Security Administration’s autonomy within the DOE, and cut the Pentagon out of civilian nuclear-weapons budget planning entirely, Sen. James Inhofe said Thursday. “I suppose we should have expected this sort of political maneuvering to continue after what happened earlier this […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration said it finished construction of a new 15 kilovolt electrical distribution system that will provide redundant power supply for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In a press release Tuesday, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency said the Expand Electrical Distribution System hit its CD-4 milestone — DOE project […]