Vendors who want to sell uranium to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for the agency’s planned uranium reserve need not have produced the uranium themselves, so long as they have operated a domestic uranium facility at some point since 2009, the agency clarified this week.
Furthermore, in the amendment posted Wednesday to its solicitation for vendors, NNSA said companies can sell the government uranium purchased from other companies even if that company has not operated a domestic uranium facility at some point since 2009. Bids are due Aug. 1.
In a report this week, the Government Accountability Office said it used “shell companies fraudulent licenses” to skirt the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and purchase radioactive material that could be used in a radioactive dispersal advice — a dirty bomb.
The office purchased a total of two shipments of radioactive material from two separate vendors: enough to qualify as a category three quantity of material. The sting operation shows how “a bad actor may have been able to accumulate a category 2 quantity by purchasing multiple category 3 quantities from multiple vendors,” the congressional investigator wrote in the report. The office did not identify the material it purchased. Category three radioactive sources, according to the commission “could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them or was otherwise in contact with them for hours.”
Only a week after telling its employees to put their masks back on because of rising COVID-19 cases in New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has given the all-clear to take the masks back off, a spokesperson said this week.
The COVID-19 community rate for Los Alamos County returned to “medium” on Friday July 15, after being “high” days earlier, the DOE spokesperson said by email. “In accordance with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), masks are no longer required indoors at the Laboratory,” the spokesperson said. The county transmission rate in Los Alamos was still medium as of Thursday, according to the latest data available at deadline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Department of Energy intends to extend its existing paramilitary security contract with a Centerra company at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for up to two years, according to a recent notice.
The Savannah River Operations Office could keep on longtime security provider Centerra until Oct. 7, 2024, DOE said in a notice published Wednesday, July 13. DOE did not disclose the value of the potential 24-month extension. Centerra has provided Security Services for Safeguard of Special Nuclear Material at the site since October 2009.
Australia’s defense minister said recently he hopes the AUKUS agreement will create a “seamless” defense industrial base among the U.S., U.K. and Australia as the first two countries work to help the third acquire nuclear propulsion technology for attack submarines.
In meetings with U.S. officials “we’ve been specifically talking about how we can have our defense industrial bases operate in a more seamless way,” Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Australia Richard Marles told reporters during a Defense Writers Group event on July 14. Marles visited Washington during his first official trip as defense minister for Australia’s new left-leaning Labor government, which took over from the right-leaning Liberal-National Coalition following Federal Parliament elections in May.
New Mexico’s traditional summertime monsoon rain season has dramatically lowered the risk of wildfires around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory lately, a federal safety board said in a recent update.
“Recent monsoonal rain events have increased moisture levels and lowered the wildland fire risk,” the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said in a regular staff report dated June 24. Triad National Security, which operates the lab for DOE, lowered its fire restrictions on laboratory property from Stage III to the less prohibitive Stage II, on June 23, DNFSB said. This came a week after the DNFSB reported that the Cerro Pelado wildfire west of the laboratory “is now 100% contained,” and the Los Alamos Emergency Operations Center exited monitoring mode.
