By Jay Coghlan, The Santa Fe Reporter | sfreporter.com Cover, March 13: “The Foilies” THE GREATEST FOILIE OF ALL The Reporter should stick around in its own back yard for the “The Foilies: Recognizing the worst in government transparency.” IMHO, it’s all small potatoes compared to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL ..read more

Arms Race Accelerates with MIRVed Warheads Los Alamos Lab Cleanup Cut Ironically the day after the film Oppenheimer was awarded multiple Oscars, the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) asked Congress for its biggest nuclear weapons budget ever. NNSA’s FY 2025 request for “Total Weapons Activities” is $19.8 billion, $700 million above ..read more

FEDERAL BUDGET NEWS Release of federal FY 2025 budget expected March 11 (it will initially be just topline numbers). Meanwhile on the FY 2024 budget: House and Senate Armed Services Committee authorized funding exceeding Biden’s request, including money for the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile and nuclear warhead (reminder: that the President doesn’t want), plus adding ..read more

By Jay Coghlan Texas wildfires live updates: Blaze grows to 500k acres, leading to power outages, evacuations across the map nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/texas-wildfires-live-updates-huge-blaze-covers-300000-acres-forcing-ev  The 2000 Cerro Grande Fire burned 3,500 acres of Los Alamos National Lab property and more than 250 homes in the Los Alamos townsite (I could see the bursts of propane tanks from ..read more

Some DOE/NNSA budget numbers from FY 2024 Energy and Water Agreement https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20240304/FY24%20EW%20Conference%20JES%20scan.pdf President must sign by Friday March 8 to avoid a partial government shutdown, including DOE and NNSA. Lowlights: •     Total funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) $24.135B (+8.9%) •     $19.1 billion for NNSA’s Total Weapons Activities (+11.6% over FY 23) •     $35M for the ..read more

Published 2/8/24 in the Federal Register at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-02-08/pdf/2024-02513.pdf Pre-published at: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2024-02513.pdf Page numbers below are from that. All excerpts are verbatim. DNFSB Recommendation 2003-01 Onsite Transportation Safety [TSD = “Transportation Safety Document” MAR = “Materials at Risk”, typically plutonium] Page 2: however, more work is necessary to ensure the LANL TSD appropriately identifies all hazards, analyzes ..read more

FEDERAL BUDGET NEWS Half of the federal budget (including Energy and Water appropriations which funds DOE) shuts down January 19 and the other half February 2 if a Continuing Resolution (CR) is not reached. House Speaker Johnson agreed to a previous funding agreement with the Biden Administration but the so-called Freedom Caucus is now in ..read more

Sen. Heinrich is so proud of all of the nuclear weapons money in New Mexico. He is one of the chief congressional architects of expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores and sits on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee from where he can direct $$billions to the Sandia and Los Alamos Labs. But ..read more

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has just released cursory two or three page summaries of contractors’ performance paid for by the American taxpayer. For the just ended fiscal year 2023, NNSA gave nothing less than grades of “Excellent” or “Very Good” in six broad mission goals for its major contractors. This is despite the ..read more

Nuclear weapons issues New bomb: The Pentagon has announced a new nuclear bomb, the B61-13. The B61-12 is now in production and will be forward deployed in Europe. But it has a dial-a-yield that maxes out at 50 kilotons. The new B61-13 will max out at 360 kt to get at hardened deeply buried targets ..read more