National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

There is just one National Nuclear Security Administration, but it has numerous locations with their own ways of doing business, the administrator of the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency told an advisory group this week. The 16-member Secretary of Energy Advisory Board was chartered in 2018 to provide independent advice to the secretary of energy […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)  still plans to produce the first copy of a refurbished Navy submarine warhead in 2021, and the first copy of a refurbished nuclear gravity bomb for the Air Force in 2022, a senior official with the civilian nuclear-weapon agency said Wednesday. Those were the new dates, announced in February, […]

There were 15 fewer active cases of COVID-19 this week than last among National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees, marking the first week in July that recoveries outpaced new infections in the complex, according to an agency spokesperson. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency was tracking 114 active cases at deadline Friday, down […]

The House of Representatives on Friday passed a $1.3 trillion “minibus” appropriations package that would give the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) $2 billion less than it requested for fiscal 2021, even as the Senate has yet to release any spending bills and remains tangled up in controversy over a new COVID-19 relief bill. Congress […]

The management prime at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has resumed downblending plutonium at the K Area after operations were suspended in October 2019. Workers for site manager Savannah River Nuclear Solutions started downblending 6 metric tons (MT) of surplus plutonium in the K Area in 2017, but the operations were […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is preparing to release another tranche of funding for companies working to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 without use of weapon-grade uranium. The semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy said it received $35 million from Congress for this work in the current 2020 federal budget year. The agency […]

International Isotopes has agreed to a pre-decisional enforcement conference with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over apparent breaches of federal regulations and its license in connection with the May 2019 spill of cesium-137 at a hospital research building in Seattle. The teleconference is scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon Central time on Tuesday, Aug. 4. The […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is preparing to release another tranche of funding for companies working to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 without use of weapon-grade uranium. The semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy said it received $35 million from Congress for this work in the current 2020 federal budget year. The agency […]

As part of a package of spending bills set to hit the floor late this week, the House of Representatives will debate the merits of temporarily freezing the Pentagon out of internal Department of Energy nuclear-weapon budget debates. The debate will take about 10 minutes of floor time, which the House Rules Committee granted in […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)  still plans to produce the first copy of a refurbished Navy submarine warhead in 2021, and the first copy of a refurbished nuclear gravity bomb for the Air Force in 2022, a senior official with the civilian nuclear-weapon agency said Wednesday. Those were the new dates, announced in February, […]

“Many” of the nearly 250 National Nuclear Security Administration employees confirmed to have caught COVID-19 are believed to have been infected while teleworking, the head of the Department of Energy nuclear-weapon agency said Tuesday. While NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty did not say how many of the confirmed cases involved transmissions outside of an agency site, each […]

An estimated 750-acre wildfire on the Nevada National Security Site was reported close to “100 percent containment” late Tuesday, after burning for at least two days. “No injuries reported, and no impact to mission facilities or assets,” according to a Twitter post for the Department of Energy nuclear-weapon complex. The site first acknowledged the fire […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should either delay by a year its promised delivery date for the proof-of-concept unit of the next-generation nuclear cruise-missile warhead, or justify why it won’t, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Citing congressional requirements and Pentagon schedule demands, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency promised to […]

The House of Representatives is scheduled this week to debate its $49.6 billion energy and water appropriations legislation as part of a larger seven-bill spending “minibus” for fiscal 2021. The House’s posted floor schedule for the week does not provide the specific schedule for debate on H.R. 7617, the Defense, CJS, Energy and Water, Financial […]

Air Force Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser has joined the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as principal assistant deputy administrator for military application in the Office of Defense Programs, where she will oversee weapons modernization and testing, and serve as the military’s point of contact for these civilian-run programs. Huser will run “stockpile management activities, […]

The House and Senate approved their respective versions of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act with bipartisan votes this week, supporting the Trump administration’s requested funding for nuclear-weapon operations at the Department of Energy. However, President Donald Trump threatened to veto the measure over provisions including production of plutonium warhead cores and removing Confederate iconography […]

In a revised order, the Department of Energy has relaxed the firewall it attempted to erect between personnel at nuclear-weapon sites and the federal agency responsible for sniffing out potential threats to public safety from those operations. The Energy Department shared a draft of the revised Order 140.1 with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) in […]

The lawyers for a disgraced former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who pleaded guilty to lying about his involvement with a Chinese talent-recruiting program said his client should not be sentenced to prison on the technical grounds that the deception did not amount to perjury, which under federal sentencing guidelines could carry harsher penalties than […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week finalized environmental paperwork that completes a court-ordered re-review of earthquake risks at the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. — but environmental groups with a live lawsuit over the plan are complaining that the agency’s second look was not adequate. The finalized supplement analysis, published July […]

Active cases of COVID-19 at civilian nuclear-weapon sites jumped by 34 this week in the largest week-over-week increase the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has acknowledged since it began sharing data about confirmed infections. That makes for a total of 129 active cases among federal employees and contractors at the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear […]

The Energy Department has agreed to a contract extension lasting as long as two years for the incumbent remediation vendor at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced Monday it will exercise a one-year extension to keep URS/CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) on the job thorough July 2021. That would […]

In a revised order, the Department of Energy has relaxed the firewall it attempted to erect between personnel at nuclear-weapon sites and the federal agency responsible for sniffing out potential threats to public safety from those operations. The Energy Department shared a draft of the revised Order 140.1 with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board […]

The lawyer for a disgraced former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who pleaded guilty to lying about his involvement with a Chinese talent-recruiting program said his client should not be sentenced to prison on the technical grounds that his deception did not amount to perjury, which under federal sentencing guidelines could carry harsher penalties than […]

A pair of buildings at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico mostly reopened Tuesday after deep cleanings that followed one confirmed case of COVID-19 among regular facilities users. The one-day closure affected Building 983, which hosts the Z Pulsed Power Facility high-energy density physics operation, and Building MO321, an office trailer. Building 983’s High […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries said Tuesday its operations for the Department of Energy would not be affected by the newly announced merging of two business groups. The corporate parent of Newport News Shipbuilding is combining two business lines within its Technical Solutions division: The previous Fleet Support and Mission Driven Innovative Solutions (MDIS) groups are becoming […]

Air Force Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser has joined the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as principal assistant deputy administrator for military application in the Office of Defense Programs, where she will oversee weapons modernization and testing, and serve as the military’s point of contact for these civilian-run programs. Huser will run “stockpile management activities, […]

The Energy Department has agreed to a contract extension lasting as long as two years for the incumbent remediation vendor at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced Monday it will exercise a one-year extension to keep URS/CH2M Hill Oak Ridge (UCOR) on the job thorough July 2021. That […]

After some logistical and regulatory road bumps, an Atlanta-area small business has shipped nearly a quarter-million respirator masks to U.S. nuclear weapons sites, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). “All 225,000 masks have been shipped and are in transit to their respective NNSA facilities,” a spokesperson for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week finalized environmental paperwork that completes a court-ordered re-review of earthquake risks at the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. — but environmental groups with a live lawsuit over the plan are complaining that the agency’s second look was not adequate. The finalized supplement analysis, published July […]

A Texas congressman wants to grant the Energy Department authority to dispose of certain foreign-generated radioactive material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Rep. Pete Olson (R) is proposing an amendment to the House of Representatives’ fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to allow disposal of americium-241 in the WIPP […]