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A fresh hire within President Biden’s Department of Energy previously wrote an op-ed about “queering nuclear weapons” — in which she argued that “queer theory” was crucial to US nuclear policy. Sneha Nair co-authored the article just months before she was hired in February as a special assistant at the DOE’s nuclear security wing, the National Nuclear Security Administration, noted Fox News, which first reported on it. In the wide-ranging piece, Nair argued that queer theory could “help change how nuclear practitioners, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons” as she touched on the sprawling diversity, equity and inclusion...

Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons. An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.” The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning. Some...

The National Nuclear Security Administration is “a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and militarily effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.” Such important tasks require the best personnel, but the people have cause to wonder. In February, the Biden-Harris administration announced five new NNSA...

FIRST ON FOX – A recent hire at the nuclear security wing of the Department of Energy has previously called for disarmament policies – which reduce or eliminate nuclear weapons – arguing that advancing "queer theory" was essential to that agenda as well as important to America's national security. The Biden-Harris administration announced Sneha Nair had been appointed as special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration in February 2024. Nair believes in eradicating purported "White supremacy" in the nuclear field as well as "queering nuclear weapons" as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion push she believes is essential...

A nuclear policy expert appointed to the Department of Energy under the Biden administration in February 2024 previously co-authored an article entitled "queering nuclear weapons" which argued "queer theory" should be used to inform American nuclear policy. Sneha Nair works as a special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency responsible for maintaining the safety and security of America's extensive arsenal of nuclear weapons. On Wednesday Beijing said it was "seriously concerned" after President Biden updated America's Nuclear Employment Guidance to focus on the threat from China, according to The New York Times. Nair co-authored a piece titled...

In Florida trial involving classified documents, Donald Trump’s lawyers are seeking more information about a Department of Energy clearance list Former president Donald Trump’s lawyers say they may use evidence suggesting that Trump had a high-level security clearance as recently as last year to bolster their defense that the former president was acting in “good-faith and non-criminal states of mind” when he took sensitive documents from the White House to his Florida residence after leaving office. The revelation came in a legal filing late Tuesday night in which Trump’s attorneys urged Judge Aileen M. Cannon — who is overseeing Trump’s...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) will conduct low-altitude helicopter flights over downtown Boston and the Boston Marathon race route, Friday, Oct. 8, through Monday, Oct. 11. NNSA’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) aircraft will measure naturally occurring background radiation as part of standard preparations to protect public health and safety on the day of the event. The aerial surveys are in support of the 2021 Boston Marathon. The public may see NNSA’s twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, which is equipped with radiation sensing technology. The helicopter will fly in a grid pattern over the areas at...

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE.They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office...

The Trump administration fired the heads of three federal agencies after the election, prompting one to claim he was retaliated against for disagreeing with some policy. The heads of the agencies that oversee the nuclear weapons stockpile, electricity and natural gas regulation and overseas aid were sent packing, NPR reported. The sudden departures included Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, who was forced to resign Friday. She was the first woman to oversee the agency in charge of the nuclear stockpile. Last year, she was on the president’s short list as a possible replacement for former National...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - They’re members of a prestigious academic panel with top-secret clearances who’ve advised the Pentagon on some of America’s most vexing national security issues since the Cold War. Over 60 years, they’ve won 11 Nobel prizes and conducted hundreds of government studies. The advisory group, known as Jason, is a team of some 60 of America’s top physicists and scientists who spend each summer in La Jolla, California, conducting studies commissioned by the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies. On March 28, Trump appointee Michael Griffin – the Pentagon’s chief technology officer – unexpectedly moved to terminate...

<p>MERCURY, Nev. (AP) — Authorities shot and killed a man who entered a secured federal site north of Las Vegas where the government used to test nuclear bombs.</p> <p>A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration says the man failed to stop at the security gate on Monday at the Nevada National Security Site. Darwin Morgan says the man drove for about 8 miles before he parked, got out of his car and approached security officials.</p>

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (DOE/NNSA) will conduct a low-altitude helicopter flight over portions of the Arlington, Va., area July 22 to measure naturally occurring background radiation. Officials from NNSA announced that the radiation assessment will cover approximately three square miles. A twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, operated by the Remote Sensing Laboratory Aerial Measuring System from Joint Base Andrews, will be equipped with radiation sensing technology. The helicopter will fly in a grid pattern over the area at 150 feet (or higher) above the ground surface, at a speed of approximately 80 miles...

Managers at one of the nation’s premier federal laboratories improperly used taxpayer funds to influence members of Congress and other officials as part of an effort to extend the lab’s $2.4 billion management contract, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General said in a report Wednesday. A review of documents determined that Sandia National Laboratories formed a team and worked with consultants beginning in 2009 to develop a plan for securing a contract extension without having to go through a competitive process. That plan called for lobbying Congress, trying to influence key advisers to then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu...

Virtually every major project under the National Nuclear Security Administration’s oversight is behind schedule and over budget—the result, watchdogs and government auditors say, of years of lax accountability and nearly automatic annual budget increases for the agency responsible for maintaining the nation’s nuclear stockpile. The NNSA has racked up $16 billion in cost overruns on 10 major projects that are a combined 38 years behind schedule, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reports. Other projects have been canceled or suspended, despite hundreds of millions of dollars already spent, because they grew too bloated. …

A U.S. supercomputer has won back the crown in the never-ending battle for the world's most powerful supercomputer. Its victory is the latest milestone marking the steady climb of computing power all across the globe. The Top500 industry list gave its No. 1 ranking to the Sequoia supercomputer housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California — a spot earned by Sequoia's ability to crunch 16.32 quadrillion calculations per second (16.32 petaflops/s). Such supercomputing power is used by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration to simulate nuclear weapons tests for older weapons that have been sitting in the U.S. arsenal....

The nation's chief nuclear response team has deployed its experts to Japan to assess dangers posed by the nuclear crisis in the wake of the devastating magnitude 9 earthquake. A team from the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that protects America's nuclear weapons, left from Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas on Monday, an NNSA spokesman confirmed to FoxNews.com

Press Release NNSA Announces Completion of first B83 Dismantlement at Y-12 Jan 20, 2011 Program required development of new equipment and training program WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that its Y-12 National Security Complex has completed the dismantlement of the first secondary from a retired B83, one of the biggest weapon systems ever built. The B83 was introduced into the U.S. nuclear stockpile in 1983. While the B83 remains in service, some of its components have been replaced and some retired B83s have been removed from the stockpile. “Dismantlement of the first B83 secondary...

Minute Man II missile with a "replica" nuclear warhead was successfully launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, officials said. The National Nuclear Security Administration conducted the test in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force, an NNSA release said Thursday. The test was to evaluate the overall performance of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic weapon system, NNSA said. "This successful JTA (warhead) test illustrates NNSA's commitment to ensuring that all weapon systems perform as designed," said Brig. Gen. Garrett Harencak, NNSA Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Application. "The continued strong cooperation between the NNSA and (the Department of Defense) is...

The government is upgrading the X-ray technology that detects flaws in its nuclear weapons stockpile. The new machine, called the Confined Large Optical Scintillator Screen and Imaging System, or CoLOSSIS, uses thousands of 2D X-ray images to produce one 3D image depicting the inside of a nuclear weapon — the same way CT scanners generate 3D images of the inside of a human body. Developers say the new system will pick up more defects in the nuclear stockpile than the current 2D sensors and will eliminate the need to disassemble weapons to search for problems, which is a process that...

Japan and the United States will launch working-level talks in February aimed at promoting cooperation in the field of nuclear forensics, a sophisticated process to analyze the composition of nuclear materials, Kyodo News reported on Nan. 30 quoting sources of both governments as having said . Representatives of Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, an organization under the Department of Energy, will attend the talks. It would be the first intergovernmental consultation on nuclear forensics between Japan and the United States. Nuclear forensics focuses on analyzing the nature, use and...