Two businessmen with companies doing work for the Department of Energy’s Kansas City National Security Campus allegedly carried out a kickback scheme involving nuclear weapons parts, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Michael Clinesmith, 67, of Kansas, allegedly sought and received kickbacks and bribes over at least a decade from Richard Mueller, 63, of Missouri, in exchange for steering subcontracts from Clinesmith’s employer to Mueller’s company, according an unsealed indictment, Justice said in the release. Clinesmith, is a longtime employee of a major engineering firm, identified as “Company 1” working at the facility managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Clinesmith allegedly used his position at Company 1 to steer subcontracts to for gauges designed to measure the components for nuclear weapons to “Subcontractor 1,” in exchange for Mueller paying him over $1 million, Justice said. Both individuals are charged with multiple counts of wire fraud and if convicted could face 20 or more years in prison.
“[I]n my time in this job, I have come to the realization that humankind faces two existential threats for the first time in modern history,” Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said last week at a dinner and reception hosted by the Washington-based Council on Strategic Risks’ Commission on Nuclear Energy and Climate Security. “One is climate change and the other, a holdover from the last century that isn’t going away, is nuclear weapons.”
The NNSA posted Hruby’s full remarks online.
This week, the NNSA and Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), management and operations contractor for Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Lithium Production Facility.
Frank Rose, the NNSA principal deputy administrator, was on hand for the event, according to a CNS press release. Construction will begin in 2025 and be complete in 2030, CNS said. The facility will cost a little more than $1.6 billion to build, according to the NNSA’s 2024 budget request. Nuclear weapons use lithium to increase their destructive power.
Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, received an Inspire Award from the San Francisco Business Times, the Bay Area nuclear weapons design lab said this month.
Budil was one of four awardees, according to a Livermore press release.
