Los Alamos National Laboratory Director George P. Nanos shut down the
entire laboratory in July, 2004, citing "egregious" security and safety
violations at LANL as the reason. Seven months later, parts of the lab
still had not restarted operations. The results of the shutdown
include a cost to the taxpayer of approximately $850 million[1], an
outward migration of highly talented staff members, and the loss of
untold millions of dollars of funding from customers who have taken
their business elsewhere. The managers of the LANL newspaper, "The
NewsBulletin" began censoring letters to the editor shortly after the
shutdown started. Nothing critical of LANL management was permitted to
be published. As a result, that venue of discussion has all but dried
up. Surprisingly, the NewsBulletin recently decided to open up
their forum somewhat starting in mid January, 2005. A few
submissions have made it to press without the imposed 6-week
delay. In
the mean time, however, this blog was created.
On May 6, 2005 Director Nanos announced his resignation.
The purpose of this blog
is to provide an uncensored forum where
those concerned about the future of LANL may express their views. The
focus is now on damage control: identifying problems at LANL and
providing solutions to those problems. A running list of
activities that have been identified as counter-productive or wasteful
is being maintained by contributers to this blog. This list can
be found under the Sidebar Link "Running List of Wasteful Activities at
LANL", http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/2005/04/running-list-of-wasteful-activities-at.html
Post submissions should be emailed to lanlblog@parrot-farm.net.
Please indicate if you wish the posting to be made anonymously.
This blog was produced and is maintained on my own time, using my own
resources and
those of blogger.com.
--Doug Roberts
lanlblog@parrot-farm.net
[1] There has not been an exact
accounting of costs for the shutdown, nor is it likely that there will
ever be. The LANL Director's office estimated the shutdown cost
at approximately $100 million in February, 2005, NNSA estimated
the cost at $367 million in March, 2005, and POGO (Project On
Government Oversight) estimates the costs at $1 billion.