National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby continued her tour of the nuclear security enterprise this week, with the joint Pentagon-Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Council riding along, the agency tweeted.
Hruby, sworn in in July, has been checking in with each of the NNSA’s big plants and sites throughout the summer and the fall. In mid-October, she attended the ribbon cutting at the Kansas City National Security Campus’ Kansas City East building: part of the site’s drive to boost manufacturing throughput as the NNSA stares down the barrel of the biggest series of nuclear weapons refurbishments since the end of the Cold War.
The Senate on Friday cleared a procedural hurdle that could clear the way for the upper chamber to pass its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) after Thanksgiving. The annual defense policy bill, which also sets ceilings for 2022 defense budgets, stalled this week amid partisan disagreement about amendments mostly unrelated to defense nuclear matters.
The bill would authorize about the requested $20 billion or so for the NNSA in fiscal year 2022. While the Senate’s bill authorizes a B83 gravity bomb life extension, the House’s version of the NDAA does not. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden said this week that he does not want the NDAA to prohibit reductions in the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile fleet. The House version of the 2022 NDAA already includes such a force-reduction ban. An amendment proposed in the Senate would add the same ban to that version of the bill.
The Department of Energy and the NNSA each should provide more training for and certification of acquisitions personnel, the Government Accountability Office reported this week.
Congress’ investigative arm — which was ordered to look into the issue as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act — recommended in the report that DOE and NNSA consider giving their chief acquisition officer and senior procurement executives “specific roles” in any acquisitions workforce planning that happens within the Department of Energy Acqusition Council.
Kevin Harrill will be Centrus Energy Corp.’s new controller and chief accounting officer, the Bethesda, Md.-based uranium broker and centrifuge developer said this week in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Harrill’s appointment will be effective Jan. 1, the company wrote in the filing. He will replace John Dorrian, who planned to retire.
