Nevada National Security Site prime Mission Support and Test Services said it has hired Jose Sinibaldi, a subcritical experimentalist formerly of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as its chief scientist.
Sinibaldi now will be in charge of creating a strategic plan for the former Nevada Test Site’s future subcritical plutonium experiments, which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) uses to ensure in the absence of explosive-yield testing that aging nuclear weapons retain their destructive power.
Sinibaldi joined the Nevada site in November after two-and-a-half years as a science adviser to the NNSA, the Department of Energy’s semiautonmomous nuclear weapons branch. He also served through November as group leader for experimental design at Livermore in California: a position he had held since 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has a master’s degree and doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan — also the alma mater of NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty.
Sinibaldi joins Mission Support and Test Services with the NNSA on the cusp of a major buildout at the Nevada National Security Site .
The weapons labs and the test site are pouring money into the sprawling desert campus — which once hosted atmospheric and, in far greater number, underground yield tests — including by mining out additional space in the underground U1a complex, and developing a new billion-dollar X-ray camera to observe future subcritical plutonium experiments. Any overall numbers for NNSA spending increases at Nevada? The NNSA plans to establish a baseline cost and schedule for the U1a mineout in March.
The X-ray device, which will observe subcritical explosive tests, will be crucial for the W80-4 and W87-1 programs: respectively, efforts to refurbish warheads for nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles. Both of the weapons are slated to be deployed around 2030.
