LANL: The Real Story

Several of the posts below received comments today in which name-calling, personal attacks, profanity, and general immaturity were featured. They have been deleted. This blog only has two guidelines: The topics discussed must pertain to LANL and its future, and submissions must be professional. Take your trash elsewhere, please.

--Doug

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
Management and Operating (M&O)
Contract Competition

http://www.doeal.gov/LANLContractRecompete/Reports.htm

From Anonymous:

You know, given the miserable performance of UC during the past 9 months, if LockMart has an equivalent benefits package I will welcome them with open arms as the new owner of LANL.

Dynes, Foley: do not worry, you will not be missed.

Oh, and thanks for Nanos.

Dear Doug,

I thought a lot of people would be interested in this question and the semi-answer. Since my name is embedded in the messages, it need not be posted anonymously. Yours, George Baker

From: John Birely
To: Ron Nelson
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 03:58:33 -0800
Subject: UCRP Query

Ron,

During a meeting with los alamos employees yesterday, george baker asked if
uc fails to win the los alamos management contract, is it the university's
position that all the lab's employees are terminated from uc employment and
the vested members automatically become inactive members of ucrp unless they
retire or do something else. I did not feel competent to answer this one, so
please advise.

Thanks, john

From: Ron Nelson
To: John Birely
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 20:20:30 -0800
Subject: Re: UCRP Query

If the University no longer holds the contract it has no economic means of
continuing employment of the workforce. Based on economic necessity
employees would be terminated as funding for them is ended. That may or may
not be on the same date depending on the transition plan that NNSA approves.

What you have recounted is a correct statement of what normally occurs as
individuals leave UC employment either through retirement or through
voluntary or involuntary termination. Where, as may occur at Los Alamos, all
employees are terminated based on contract expiration there may be
additional terms offered to some or all of the terminating employees if NNSA
determines that it is appropriate. Should that become the case it will be
communicated to employees as a consequence of the RFP or during the
transition period between contractors.

Regents determined to bid on Los Alamos lab

Final decision on bid might be made in April.

California Aggie (UC Davis)…Brian Chen

March 31, 2005

Los Angeles -- Despite recent security and safety issues that have placed the University of California under scrutiny, the UC Board of Regents expressed its determination to continue its management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory during its meeting held Mar. 13 at UCLA.

Under the management of the UC, LANL faced 45 nuclear safety violations from September 2003 to October 2004; the most noted accident involved an intern being zapped in the eye with a laser during the summer of 2004.

For the 2004 fiscal year, the UC received $2.9 million for managing the lab rather than the $8.7 million it could have received -- a penalty of nearly $6 million.

"It's very important to the regents that ... errors that were committed in the past have been corrected, and we are proceeding ahead with an arrangement [to ensure] that these mistakes will not occur again," Regent Gerald Parsky said during the meeting.

In his presentation of the lab, Robert Foley, vice president of UC laboratory administration, emphasized that the UC's involvement with the lab is necessary if it wishes to remain competitive in science and technology.

"The only way to assure that we have good science and tech is to have active involvement with the laboratories, and I think that's something that the university must embrace as it moves forward," he said.

Saying he previously had a "wait and see" attitude about whether to continue the UC's management of the lab, Regent Norman Pattiz said his recent visit to the lab cleared his skepticism.

"There's no question that the university needs to make sure that the university's interests and responsibilities are protected in any kind of an arrangement we can make," he said. "It's also very clear to me that the work being done [at the lab] is crucial, essential and beyond the scope of what's important to the university."

The decision to vote on bidding for the lab is still "a number of months away," Parsky said, and he made a "generous estimation" that a decision could be reached by early April.

Earlier at the meeting, Jennifer Lilla, president of the UC Student Association, gave a presentation on university-related issues in the form of a pop quiz.

One question related to the recent UCSA Lobby Day at the State Capitol in Sacramento during February, where students presented thousands of fake checks to the governor representing the amount that students were in debt.

Later, Vice President Winston Doby led a discussion on campus-based student fees, underscoring their importance to the university.

"The enrichment that campus-based fees brings to campuses greatly strengthens [the UC's] competitiveness with our public and private sectors," he said.

He noted that campus-based fees at UC Davis are $1,200, as opposed to $200 at UC Berkeley. However, he said the total cost of attending Berkeley, which includes living expenses, is about $23,000, whereas the total cost of attendance at UCD is $22,500.

Outside the building where the meeting was held, UCLA service workers, students and faculty members gathered in a rally protesting for UC service workers' wages.


BRIAN CHEN can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

UTexas, Lockheed teaming up for LANL race?

POGO is hearing rumors that Lockheed Martin will be teaming up with the University of Texas System to compete for management of Los Alamos National Laboratory. You may remember that Lockheed bowed out of the competition citing costs last summer, but re-entered the competition as reported yesterday. UT backed out this January. Now it looks like they've been talking behind closed doors.

MORE: A reader posted this quote from a UT System statement released in response to LockMart rejoining the race:

"The UT System welcomes further discussions and dialogue about ways to build on our contribution to the science and security of our nation at the national laboratories, consistent with our core competencies of research and education," the UT system said in a prepared statement."

POGO couldn't find the full statement on the UT System site, but reader IH hooked us up. We've posted it after the jump...

Lockheed Martin's Reentry in to Bid for Los Alamos National Laboratory Contract

The University of Texas System recently learned that Lockheed Martin has announced its interest in submitting a proposal for the management and operations contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lockheed Martin's record as manager of Sandia National Laboratories is outstanding and has appropriately received widespread praise.

The University of Texas System has several partnerships with Lockheed Martin including a recent agreement between us and Sandia National Laboratories that will be signed in early April in Washington, D.C. That agreement provides that UT System will be responsible for assessing the quality of unclassified science and engineering research, collaborate on research projects, and cooperate on joint educational initiatives. We view this agreement between UT System and Sandia as a model of university/industrial partnerships with a national laboratory.

The UT System welcomes further discussions and dialogue about ways to build on our contribution to the science and security of our nation at the national laboratories, consistent with our core competencies of research and education.

END

From Anonymous:

One of the reasons that Nanos, and many other retired military folks, love to come to, and screw up, LANL is the "double dipping" opportunity. Spending 10 years at LANL, from 50 to 60, yields 25% of your base. What a plum. The Sandia plan offers no such bait. It is clear that the re-treads gain a lot from this arrangement; but what do LANL, and the taxpayers, gain? The military is not known for their science, or management. Mostly, these ex officers are hired to lobby with their buddies who are still in the military, who will look for soft billets in their turn. This rather smells of corruption, doesn't it?
Can we imagine UC hiring all these retired officers for the campuses? Hardly! Admiral Foley, of UCOP, doesn't count... he's part of lab "oversight", or should we say lab "cover up".
Interesting that John Birely referred to UC "passivity" toward the Lab management. As four different UC Academic Senate reports , going back to the 1970 Zinner Report, have found; the UC "management" is a fraud, a pretense.
You can find the Zinner Report, and others, in the Study Center. The current Lab Admin Office, at UCOP, of which John is part, is a continuing fraud. They are a lobby, not a management team.
There has been no UC "management" at LANL for 63 years, simply a pretense. Given that management is capable of making a positive contribution to an organization, perhaps its time to try some at LANL. Its unclear that UC even understands the concept.

From Anomymous:

One now begins to get the sense that we have entered the end-game here at LANL. The present Director, George P. Nanos, has sufficiently alienated the majority of his staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory that his ability to be a leader is generally recognized to have diminished to nil. Similarly, his masters at the University of California can only be wishing to see his backside rapidly retreating, what with the $5.8 million dollar penalty Nanos earned them as a result of his hasty and ill thought-out decision to shut the entire laboratory down last July. On a third front, Director Nanos has a congressional committee pressuring him to produce accurate cost estimates of the shutdown.

The waiting game is on. Will an interim director be appointed as an attempt to reduce the exodus of talent and expertise now leaving LANL for more amenable work environments? If so, when? This interim director will need to be quite a salesman. His task will be to try to hold LANL together long enough for the the winner of the new contract to operate LANL to have enough of a staff base remaining to justify keeping the place open. He will need to be able to convince the scientists that still remain that LANL has a future; that it will once again become a good place to work; an institution in which one could again take pride.

There is not much time left before the flood gates open wide, and the mass exodus begins. The departure rate seen to date is a trickle compared to what we will see if UC tries to stay the course with its current choice for LANL director.

From Anonymous:

From Anonymous:

When our Pete got in on the act 
All our best upper hands got sacked 
He was truly berserk 
To keep us from work 
Seven months to be exact! 

Now the town’s really started hummin’ 
Over a company name of Grumman 
We all like UC 
With its very low fee 
Without them we’ll surely be bummin’ 

I guess UC’s fee was too little 
And it’s truly a puzzling riddle 
Why they’ll pay so much more 
Then go on to ignore 
That our work will become second fiddle 

The Ambassador who we call Brooks 
Has one point which he overlooks 
If you fine them so much 
Over barcodes and such 
Why expect more than just dirty looks? 

Now Congress wants hundreds of millions 
Or even perhaps in the billions 
For one big cl*** 
Who shut us down 
When we should be run by civilians 

Just today I read Lockheed Martin
After deciding that they'd be departin'
Is back in the ring
Over one little thing
One more reason for us to be smartin'

But if Cheney gets in it’s for certain 
We’re really going to be hurtin’ 
They’ll dream up their ploys 
And send in their boys 
Our bosses will be Halliburton 

 

From Anonymous:

One item has not been mentioned in most of the material about the safety situation at LANL and other DOE labs. Around the time that the laser safety incident occurred at LANL, there were two fatal accidents at other DOE facilities (Hanford and Savannah River). While an accident involving serious loss of vision is very serious, fatal accidents are also serious. The LANL accident received international news coverage, but the two fatal accidents at other facilities were featured only in the news in the local area. This points to the continued need for safety consciousness for all hazardous activities.


From the http://www.nukeworker.com/forum/index.php/topic,2590.0.html
This is a story that appeared in local newspapers in the Savannah River area (South Carolina):
A worker who died after being crushed under a tractor hoe at Savannah River Site on Monday afternoon has been identified as 30-year-old Christopher McZilkey, of Thomson.
Barnwell County Coroner Lloyd Ward said Mr. McZilkey died of loss of blood after his femur and pelvis were crushed under the weight of the heavy equipment workers were trying to move onto a flatbed truck.
The accident occurred at about 3:30 p.m. Monday, and Mr. McZilkey was pronounced dead at the Medical College of Georgia at 6:16 p.m., Mr. Ward said.
Mr. McZilkey was employed by Thomson-based Gunther Grading and Hauling, a contractor at the site, Mr. Ward said. The death has been ruled accidental.
Posted July 29, 2004, 01:51:53 PM

This is a story that appeared in the local Hanford papers.
Posted: Thursday, July 29, 2004 23:17
TRI-CITY HERALD
Benton City man dies in fall at Hanford
This story was published Friday, July 16th, 2004
By Jeff St. John Herald staff writer
A Benton City man died Thursday morning after apparently falling while he was moving a mobile office from Hanford's 200 Area, the U.S. Department of Energy reported.
Doug I. Paine, 47, was an employee of All Mobile Transporting and Repairs, a Kennewick business that had been hired to remove the surplus trailer from the area, said DOE spokeswoman Colleen Clark.
Clark said All Mobile owner Gary Orr was working with Paine when he found him unconscious after calling out for him and receiving no answer.
Paine was taken to Kadlec Medical Center in Richland, where he was pronounced dead at 12:36 p.m., said Larry Duncan, Benton County deputy coroner.
"It's unclear whether he was on a ladder at the time or on top of the trailer," DOE's Clark said. DOE is investigating Paine's death, she said.
Duncan said the coroner's office plans an autopsy today, and that the Benton County Sheriff's Office was investigating the death.
Paine had begun working for All Mobile Transporting and Repairs for only three days, said his mother, Winnie Paine. He was not married and had no children, and lived with her and his father, she said. The family has lived in the Tri-City area since 1974, she said.
Winnie Paine said her son had been taking medication earlier in the week that had caused him to collapse, but she believed he had stopped taking the medication prior to Thursday's accident. She did not say what the medication was for.
All Mobile owner Orr said his company had been hired by another local business to break down and move the mobile office. The office had been bought through the Tri-City Asset Reinvestment Co., an economic development program used to transfer surplus DOE equipment to the private sector.
The last fatal accident on the Hanford site was in 1993, when Louis Beatty, 40, of Richland, was scalded when a steam pipe ruptured in a pit where he was doing routine maintenance, DOE spokesman Connie Eckard said. Beatty died of his injuries a week after the accident.

Board cites new lab incidents, improvements

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

Safety issues continue to devil Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to the only independent federal observers with access to classified operations.

There have been incidents of concern, said a representative of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in a telephone interview this morning, but the laboratory is making visible progress in its safety program.

"It's a long road ahead," said DNFSB Site Representative Charles Keilers, "But from the beginning of January to now, some things are really on the upswing, including management attention and management awareness of operational issues."

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board reported earlier this month that two workers were exposed for an hour to unexpectedly high levels of airborne contamination while working at the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility at Technical Area 50.

Although they were wearing protective equipment, the workers might have been exposed to plutonium uptake, depending on the level of protection afforded by their respirators.

High measurements were found after they exited from a vault where they were cleaning an old leak, the March 11 report said.

About a year-and-a-half-ago, a tank that was meant to hold caustic waste from the nearby Plutonium Facility developed a leak.

While waiting to replace the tank, a temporary work-around called for the waste to be pumped through the tank more frequently so that only the lower half of the tank below the leak was used.

The replacement plan called for the underground vault to be decontaminated and repainted before the new tank was installed

The incident occurred after the workers had started cleaning up paint chips in the underground vault, wearing equipment appropriate to the ambient radioactivity previously sampled for the room.

Two accidents involving students in the Radiochemistry Laboratory at Technical Area 48 were reported by the DFNSB in January.

One involved a broken vial containing a low-level radioactive liquid combined with a hazardous chemical. The other occurred when a 19-year-old student dropped a wrench and caused an arc on an uninterruptible power supply.

Another problem was reported by DNFSB at the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility in January, after an operator was sprayed by treated wastewater.

With the exception of the possible plutonium uptake - which awaits further test results - none of the incidents has caused personal harm.

Keilers said they afford educational opportunities for fixing the shortcomings in the laboratory's safety program that still needed improvement.

The laboratory's non-essential operations were suspended in July, after a false alarm from a security incident was followed by an eye-blinding laser accident involving an intern.

Activities gradually resumed over a seven-month period after rigorous safety reviews, assessments, training and safety management adjustments.

An article on the laboratory's website this morning announced approval earlier in the month of a plan for a new Operational Efficiency Program related to the continuing safety project.

"Operational Efficiency is the institutional commitment and get-well plan to address areas of high risk," Laboratory Director Peter Nanos described the project, which is designed to fix secondary problems that were not addressed during the laboratory shutdown.

A DNSFB report from February noted that managers who are responsible for plutonium, tritium and radiography operations had started a series of classes developed by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations for nuclear power plant managers.

The training acknowledges human imperfection and the importance of learning and strengthening the organization in response to individual human errors.

"People make mistakes, but safety nets can keep something bad from happening," Keilers said. "If you work in an environment heavy on blame, you won't get people to be forthcoming and may miss the chance to fix the institution in a way that could catch the next event before it happens again."

Albuquerque Journal North
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Lockheed Martin Rejoins Lab Contest

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced on Tuesday that it is rejoining the competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory, with its $2 billion nuclear weapons budget, after the Department of Energy made changes to the bidding criteria.

Lockheed, which manages Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment in London, among other government contracts, had previously withdrawn from the competition in early August, citing concerns that a LANL bid would be too expensive.

"Our business people said it just wasn't a good business decision," explained Lockheed spokesman Don Carson.

At the time, Lockheed was widely viewed as a front-runner to manage or co-manage LANL in a partnership with a large research university.

Then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham decided in April 2003 to put the LANL contract up for competitive bid following a series of management failures by the University of California, the lab's current manager. The university's contract to manage LANL expires at the end of September.

Carson said Lockheed officials changed their minds about competing for LANL's contract after reviewing changes made to the proposed contract in February by the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

"Our people look at Los Alamos as one of the national treasures," he said.

"Lockheed Martin didn't think the contract was structured to make it successful, they didn't think they could bring in the resources and people enough to make the contract successful," Carson said. "With the new contract they feel that they can."

The two primary factors that swayed Lockheed's decision were DOE's move to require a stand-alone pension plan and the creation of a separate corporate entity to directly manage the lab, he said.

"Those are the things that made Lockheed Martin go back and look at the contract," Carson said, adding that the changes made the competition more fair and open.

DOE and NNSA received numerous comments in December and January from interested bidders concerned that liabilities associated with running the nation's largest nuclear weapons research facility outweighed the benefits.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, wrote Energy Secretary Sam Bodman in February to say the original contract competition seemed to favor LANL's current manager, the University of California, which has operated the laboratory since 1943.

He specifically cited the university's well-funded pension plan, which competitors would have to match, because the pension is "disproportionately generous compared to any other government contract."

Hobson wrote that bidders should be given the "financial flexibility to propose the most competitive" benefits packages for their proposal.

In response to concerns, DOE lengthened the contract term from five years to seven, increased the potential management fee from a proposed $30 million to $60 million— about seven times the $8 million management fee that the University of California currently receives— and proposed requiring a stand-alone pension plan.

DOE and NNSA made the changes to encourage competition after several top bidders backed out, including Lockheed, Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University.
Lockheed's Carson said the increase in the management fee was also one of the factors that prompted the company to rejoin the contract competition.

Prior to withdrawing from the competition, Lockheed had been in talks with the University of California about forming a partnership to compete for LANL.

Carson said the company is once again considering potential partners.

As a commenter to the http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-director.html post notes, Hobson's delegation has supposedly spent the day of Tuesday, March 29 in Los Alamos politely asking, "How much did the shutdown _really_ cost us, Dr. Cobb?"

Several questions do pop to mind, such as: "Where was Director Nanos during this mini-inquisition?" "Why was there yet another LANL Public Affairs Office blackout on this event?" "How much did the shutdown *really* cost? "Why was there a shutdown in the first place?"

And so on.

Other questions occur: what purpose does trying to cover up this meeting, held "in absentia" of the primary culprit serve? Does anybody think that the secret meetings were a secret? Oh, and where _was_ Nanos today, anyhow?

All:

Blogger.com is badly broken again. Perhaps the Blogger.com support staff just need to hear from more people about problems with Blogger.com. Like, for example, how it has not been possible to submit comments for most of the day, as has been reported to me.

Send bug reports to support@blogger.com

--Doug

Letters to and from Senator Bingaman


21 February 2005
Senator Jeff Bingaman
United States Senate
110 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
FAX 202-224-2852

Senator Bingaman:
I am a 15-year scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. We need your help to save this institution from demise at the hands of its own management. The situation is very serious and the intervention of the New Mexico congressional delegation may be the only option for recovery.

We now know that all of the reasons given for the lab-wide shutdown in July 2004 are baseless. The Los Alamos staff has always worked to improve safety and security and will continue to do so, but the charges that safety and security performance were dramatically worse than the other weapons laboratories are now known to be erroneous charges. An opinion piece in Physics Today (December 2004) showed that safety at LANL is NOT substantially worse than other DOE labs. Information that emerged in the last few weeks shows that security is NOT substantially worse than the other labs. Here are numbers of serious security incidents at the three weapons labs for the last three years:

Number of security incidents, by site and calendar year (source: NNSA Public Affairs)
CY2002 CY2003 CY2004
LANL 45 42 16
LLNL 11 53 23
SNL/CA 14 13 15
SNL/NM 69 44 47

We now know that the CREM incident of July 2004 was known within days of NNSA notification to be most likely a clerical error. The laser accident of July 2004 was serious, but similar accidents have occurred at nearly every DOE facility that makes extensive use of these research instruments, and no other lab director felt compelled to shut down those labs. The technical staff of Los Alamos will continue to work very hard to improve safety and security, but we cannot do so in an atmosphere of recrimination and threats.

It has become clear that Director Pete Nanos is not exercising good judgment on important matters at LANL. He has not been a leader who garners support. He does not take input from the scientific staff, and his attitude toward us has been one of dismissal, ridicule, and contempt. He has done some good things, but these have been overshadowed by his colossal mistakes. While all previous LANL directors have been criticized, nothing compares with the present. There is unprecedented mistrust and animosity between the Director and the scientific staff.
The past several months have made it clear that neither the NNSA nor the UC are capable of digging out of the current situation. Both organizations are blinded to the distortions that the current LANL management resorts to in describing operations at the lab. Both are apparently too busy “looking tough” to recognize that creativity and innovation in defense technology are the casualties of the onslaught of the absurdly caustic and uninformed rhetoric on the floor of Congress. It is time for the New Mexico congressional delegation to act to force an overhaul of the management. If you do not, the impacts will be felt throughout northern New Mexico for years to come. The careers of hundreds of scientists and technicians will be irreparably damaged. Ultimately, United States national security will suffer.

Sincerely,


Bernard R. Foy
Santa Fe, NM



March 16, 2005
Mr. Bernard R. Foy
Santa Fe, NM

Dear Bernard:

Thank you for writing me regarding the current state of affairs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). I appreciate your taking the time to write.

I understand your concerns about the current situation at LANL. I remain concerned about the low morale and the impact that the stand-down at LANL has had on New Mexico’s economy and LANL employees, especially the low and mid-career scientists. When I met last year with Linton Brooks, Director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, I asked him to consider the long-term repercussions of keeping LANL closed for such a long period of time and urged him to have LANL resume unclassified operations as soon as possible. I believe that the work performed by individuals, like yourself, at LANL on a daily basis is very important to the country, and I am proud that our national labs play such a key role in helping our country meet its energy and national security needs.

It is my hope that Director Nanos and the employees at LANL can work collaboratively to ensure the safety and a quick resumption of all work activities at LANL without decreasing morale. That said, I am aware of the recent reports that many of the security lapses at LANL were in fact due to clerical errors, such as the disappearance of two Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM) disks that in fact never existed. Safety at LANL should be of the utmost concern for the sake of national security and LANL employees. But I also believe the employees have worked very hard to ensure the highest level of safety at the LANL, and they must be recognized for their efforts. As I monitor the situation at LANL, I want to assure you that I will continue to keep the interests of the Los Alamos employees in mind.

Again, thank you for your letter. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future regarding any other matters of importance to you and your community.

Sincerely,
Jeff Bingaman
United States Senator

Does LANL spend in New Mexico?

Dear Editor,

I would like to thank Bruce Norman for his very well-written letter (Sunday, March 20, 2005). It is important for the business community to acknowledge how the last almost three years have affected all LANL employees, be they UC or contractor. However, it is also important for the business community to describe the effects on them.

It is interesting that, after several posts to http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com that reference how little LANL is spending in northern New Mexico, LANL is now extolling how they are supporting northern New Mexico businesses to the tune of $398.5 million. However, that includes labor contracts with KSL, PTLA, the bodyshop contractors, the task order contractors whose offices are spread throughout prime retail space downtown, construction, etc.

All PC and Mac desktop computer purchases come from Just-in-Time (JIT) contracted Albuquerque companies. All printer purchases come from a JIt-contracted company in Albuquerque. All stationary comes from a JIT-contracted company in Albuquerque. Most book purchases are done online.

Many computer and printer repairs go to a contracted company. Small northern New Mexico companies are no longer awarded contracts such as air conditioner maintenance after they have gone to the expense of getting Q clearances for employees unless those contracts are over $500K. KSL gets first bid on the contracts as well as the first right of refusal, and if they refuse a contract, it's placed with a company made up of all-union members, not a small non-union northern New Mexico company.

What's wrong with this picture? Probably computers, printers, books, and stationary comprise a fairly large percentage of the goods purchased by LANL. Right now the stationary stores in Los Alamos have higher prices than WalMart, Office Depot, etc. because they sell so little and have higher markups. If they sold more to LANL, LAPS, the county and LAMC, the markups would be less, and folks would purchase more locally. The same reasoning can be applied to computers, printers and their supplies and books.

Now LANL is trying to figure out how to set up procurement contracts with multiple companies. And some of those companies are concerned that if these contracts are established, they still will not get any business. And, of course, they can't compete because they are small; they have been driven out of the marketplace by LANL's exclusive JIT contracts just as Mom and Pop stores have been driven out by Wal-Mart, Sam's, Office Depot, etc.

One way to help out northern New Mexico is to allow competition between KSL and companies that provide electrical work, air conditioner maintenance, etc. because that will put more purchasing power in the hands of the small companies' employees. Second, LANL should make it very easy for folks to purchase computers, printers, books, etc. from whoever offers the the best prices and service. Purchase stationary from local stores in northern New Mexico. Open up the market, rather than artificially manipulating it, and let everyone compete.

Patricia Max

Los Alamos

From Anonymous:

From Anonymous:

There has been a lot of complaining on this blog about how terrible
everyone else is - the management, the DoE, UC, Congress, etc - and
how hostile some groups and people have become to LANL. It's always
easy to blame everyone else (and in truth there has been a good
deal of lousy management all around), but in fact these attitudes
didn't arise without some cause.  If it is going to survive, LANL
has got to get real and come to grips with the fact that some of
the other national labs do just fine with the same DoE and the same
Congress -- so the hostility to LANL just might possibly have
something to do with LANL's own attitudes and ways of doing things.

That's not to say that there aren't real problems elsewhere, but
frankly the only thing LANL can change in this equation is itself,
its own attitudes, its own expectations, and its own ways of
dealing with the world. So while it certainly is cathartic to bitch
about the situation, it might be more fruitful for discussion to
focus on what isn't working at LANL and how it might be fixed, on
just why the outside world sees LANL as arrogant and how that might
be changed, on just where LANL research really ranks in the world
and how it might be improved.

From Anonymous:


Doug -

This might be interesting to post....I think this is the group that was invited to come to LANL by Nanos at the last whitewash in DC...my point here is that it is blatantly obvious why these folks are coming, yet protocol bills it as to review the Weapons Program.....only 1 hour on the agenda. Also, Pete is not here??

OFFICIAL DISTRIBUTION OF FINAL AGENDA: Dwight H. Cates, Professional Staff Member, Christopher Knauer, Minority Investigator, House Committee on Energy and Commerce

On Tuesday, March 29, 2005, Dwight H. Cates, Professional Staff Member, Christopher Knauer, Minority Investigator, House Committee on Energy and Commerce will visit Los Alamos National Laboratory. The purpose of the visit is to review the Laboratory's Weapons Program.

HOUSE JOINT MEMORIAL 10
47th LEGISLATURE - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - FIRST SESSION, 2005
INTRODUCED BY
Rep. Jeannette O. Wallace

A JOINT MEMORIAL
REQUESTING THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY TO COMPLETE A NEW CONTRACT WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA TO OPERATE LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY.

WHEREAS, for sixty-two years, the University of California has been synonymous with Los Alamos national laboratory as the University has managed the prestigious scientific research center under a contract with the United States department of energy; and WHEREAS, the laboratory has been a significant source of employment, economic stability and educational enrichment for generations of New Mexicans; and

WHEREAS, the state of New Mexico recognizes the outstanding contributions of the University of California and stands ready to do its part to strengthen the relationship and contribute to a vision that will make all New Mexicans proud of the partnership among the University, the laboratory and the department of energy; and

WHEREAS, the laboratory and University have made significant contributions to national security, global threat reduction and advancements in science and technology throughout the world; and

WHEREAS, the current contract between the United States department of energy and the University of California to operate Los Alamos national laboratory ends on September 30, 2005;
NOW. THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the United States department of energy be requested to enter into a new contract with the University of California to operate Los Alamos national laboratory; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the United States secretary of energy, the president pro tempore of the senate of the state of California, the president of the University of California and the director of Los Alamos national laboratory .

Lifted from the http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/2005/03/lanl-staff-made-too-much-money.html post:

The class warfare between Feds (DoE overseers) and the contractors (UC) is an old story, and certainly the source of much of the animosity from NNSA towards LANL. In fact, the lab has a salary process that is owned by UC HR, and is based on regional competition. The numbers for the various job titles are vetted against high tech companies and SNL. An independent analysis by NNSA decided that LANL is over paid by 1.1% at the end of FY 04. Hardly the numbers of scandal, but nevertheless, it has not stopped some mid-level bureaucrats (like Ed Wilmot) for deciding LANL is grossly overpaid. This is the same thinking about our pension plan – even though it SAVES the nation money, the Feds hate that theirs is not as “generous”.

Some analysis:
(1) On average, the TSM salaries for starting PhDs and post doc conversions at LANL is 10 percent higher than elsewhere in the UC system.
(2) On average, the TSM salaries for mid-career PhDs (15 years experience) at LANL is 12 percent lower than elsewhere in the UC system.
(3) On average, the TSM salaries for late-career PhDs (20 plus years experience) at LANL is 19 percent lower than elsewhere in the UC system.
(4) If group leaders are considered to be equivalent to Department heads in the UC system, then they are underpaid by about 5 percent at LANL.
(5) If the Director is considered equivalent to University president, or a business unit in BNI, then the director is underpaid by almost 50% (I know, even a dollar would be too high a price to pay for the present director!).

It is difficult to make comparisons for Tech series. The Admin series shows salaries within a few percent across the board with UC. If you only do a LANL-LLNL comparison, LANL is about 9 percent behind LLNL.

Unfortunately, NNSA will always view contractors as a waste of money because they [NNSA] get paid less. However, they have other benefits, and in fact, the jobs are so different the comparison is worthless.

Albuquerque Journal North
Sunday, March 27, 2005

Lab Partnership Proposal Timely

EDITORIAL: After several years of successive scandals at Los Alamos National Laboratory— possible espionage, missing classified data, embezzlement— the federal government decided to put the lab management contract out to bid for the first time in more than 60 years. Many think that without the historic lab manager, the University of California, in charge, the lab will suffer a decline in prestige and scientific competitiveness.

It remains to be seen whether anybody besides UC is actually interested in running the lab. In the meantime, however, UC officials seem to have awakened to the fact that they're going to have to take a fresh approach if they want to continue in charge.

With that in mind, UC and New Mexico's premier universities announced last week that they intended to work closely with LANL to create more research opportunities for New Mexico graduate students, win more scientific research funding and keep it working in-state. The University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and New Mexico Tech announced that they would partner with UC to form an Institute of Advanced Studies in Los Alamos if UC wins the new contract. Cynics might view the announcement as just more UC maneuvering to make sure it does win the bidding. But even if that's the proximate cause of the institute proposal, that doesn't make it a bad idea. (The proposal may be as much the brainchild of UNM president Louis Caldera, himself a veteran of the much-admired California state university system and an accomplished politician— he served three terms in the California Assembly.)

This kind of collaboration is arguably long overdue. The state, and especially northern New Mexico, would have benefited if a closer intellectual partnership between UNM, other state universities and LANL had developed somewhere nearer the beginning of the massive federal investment in science here. Even if UC doesn't win the contract, New Mexico universities should figure some way to keep the institute idea alive.

Los Alamos Monitor
Sunday, March 27, 2005


UC, LANL team joined by state Universities

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

A trio of New Mexico Universities will participate in a new Institute for Advanced Studies in affiliation with Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The announcement by the University of California Thursday named the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology as potential partners should the UC Board of Regents decide to compete for the contract to manage LANL.

The arrangement recognizes the universities, to be known as the New Mexico Consortium, as the first academic partners UC intends to include on its management team. The partnership is contingent upon UC winning the contract award.

Gov. Bill Richardson said in a release the collaboration was something he has encouraged.

"(F)or too long academic institutions in New Mexico were on the outside looking in at educational partnerships and opportunities at Los Alamos National Laboratory," he said in an announcement Thursday. "I applaud the University of California for recognizing the research potential that these fine institutions have to offer the lab and the nation."

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, also praised the arrangement.

"Our New Mexico universities have evolved into reputable research institutions and have plenty to offer to advance LANL research missions," Domenici said in a statement.

"I see their collaboration with the University of California as evidence that UC is actively working to present a reconfigured and competitive bid to remain the contractor at LANL. I only wish UC didn't tie this sort of effort to winning the contract and would, instead, pursue them as a matter of course."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, also agreed.

"UNM, NMSU, and New Mexico Tech are top-notch scientific research institutions, and together they would be a tremendous asset to Los Alamos National Laboratory," Bingaman said in a statement. "I applaud their efforts to join forces to assist the lab."

The selection of the next manager of the laboratory is expected by the end of September this year, for a contract that would begin next April.

The three institutions of higher learning have all signed Memoranda of Understanding with the University of California and LANL in the last year.

The Institute for Advanced Studies would become a research and education center where New Mexico students could take part in fundamental and applied research activities in association with the laboratory.

Fields of collaboration could include astronomy, biology, computational science, environmental science, energetic materials, materials science, optics, quantum computing, water and radioisotopes, among others to be considered.

From Anonymous:

Every manager of complex facilities, especially ones that have exceeded their design life by a decade or more, knows that he or she has problems in maintenance and operations. These problems are found in inspections and self-assessments and are appropriately documented. Every manager I know submits this list for funding and is told to prioritize them. In medicine this would be comparable to triage. Coming up with this prioritized list obviously involves a great deal of conjecture. The manager submits his or her prioritized list up the management chain and, in almost 100% of the time, even some of the prioritized items are not funded. Yet when something happens like the laser injury, only the parties that denied funding to cover identified shortfalls escape reprimands and punishment. (Chemistry Division managers had requested and been denied funding by the Laboratory Director for a person to help oversee and enforce safety compliance.)

On the other hand, a division manager threatened to lock down TA-18 a few years ago and have his people abandon the site if money to operate the site safely was not promptly provided. Strangely, the money came post haste from DOE/NNSA and the facility continued to operate safely (and securely) in spite of the fact that it was one of oldest facilities on site.

However, hardball tactics can only be used sparingly and in healthy organizations driven by principle and not "inane arbitrariness to reduce overheads" they are needed even less. Worrying about overheads seems particularly inane considering that our senior management seems to have wasted $1B by some estimates on overhead processes of dubious long term value.

As a manager today I keep asking myself, where would my facilities and those in the rest of Laboratory be if that same $IB had been used to correct specific things that we already knew about and had documented instead wasting hours finding out what we already knew and creating mountains of useless SYA paperwork?

Albuquerque Journal North
Saturday, March 26, 2005

Politics Loom Over LANL Deal

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer

One of the more vocal proponents of the competition for Los Alamos National Laboratory is also a major recipient of political donations from companies interested in becoming the next operator of the $2 billion LANL contract.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, received close to $70,000 in campaign donations in 2003-2004 from political action committees or individual donors associated with nine different companies interested in running LANL, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"It would be shocking if anyone wasn't giving him contributions," said Danielle Brian, director of Washington, D.C.,-based Project on Government Oversight. "You have to be careful (not) to read too much into it. He is in this incredibly powerful position in Congress— every pork barrel project comes through his subcommittee."

Brian said Hobson's motivations for a fair and open competition for the LANL contract seem genuine and that antagonism toward the University of California is a growing bipartisan trend among lawmakers.

Calls to Hobson's office were not returned.

The growing influence of politics in the LANL competition is a trend University of California officials are watching carefully and with concern.

"The University of California has consistently said that it manages Los Alamos as a public service, and the reason we believe that is because we believe politics should not enter into it," said Scott Sudduth, the school's vice president for governmental relations. "It is increasingly troublesome to the university that politics may trump public service."

Hobson's top contributor— the Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute— donated $29,250 through its political action committees and employees in the last year, but recently backed out of the competition for LANL.

Officials with Battelle, which already runs five Department of Energy national laboratories, have said running LANL would stretch their resources thin, but gave no specific reason for pulling out of the competition.

Political action committees for Bechtel, Fluor and Washington Group, none of which had previously donated money to Hobson, contributed a total of $15,000 to the congressman from 2003 to 2004. All three are major DOE contractors and have been cited as potential LANL co-managers.

CH2M Hill, Jacobs Engineering, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Computer Sciences Corp. contributed a total of more than $25,000 to Hobson through their political action committees, all of which are or had been potential LANL bidders and have also contributed to Hobson in the past.

As chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Hobson holds a powerful position that approves funding for the DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversee LANL and its contract competition.

In a Feb. 8 letter to Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, Hobson criticized the contract competition for favoring the University of California in many respects and for restricting competition.

He wrote of his concern that Battelle, Lockheed Martin and the University of Texas had decided to withdraw from the competition.

"I interpret their business decisions to avoid this contract as very strong evidence that the (request for proposals) is flawed," Hobson wrote.

He noted that the ability to do "world-class science," the top-valued criterion for determining the next LANL manager and top strength of the University of California, "does not provide an objective measure of a contractor's performance."

"Given that the problems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are primarily issues of management and industrial practices, potential bidders are reading the RFP's focus on world class science as an effort by the Department (of Energy) to maximize the strength of the incumbent contractor and minimize the management strengths of potential competitors," Hobson wrote.

Hobson also urged Bodman to increase the performance management fee for operating LANL and to drop the requirement that "the winning proposal has to maintain the current pension benefit package" for lab employees, even though proposed pension plans are not part of the evaluation criteria for determining the next LANL manager.

If steps weren't taken to attract more bidders to compete for the LANL contract, Hobson warned, "I will direct the Department to revise the RFP in a manner designed to encourage rather than discourage competition."

Within 10 days, NNSA released a series of amendments to its draft request for proposals, which included many of the changes urged by Hobson, as well as potential bidders, including doubling the performance management fee to $60 million a year and requiring the winning bidder to create a stand-alone pension benefit plan.

Asked about the political influence of Hobson, potential bidders and other lawmakers on the competition process, Tyler Przybylek, NNSA's chairman of the evaluation board overseeing the competition, said he and the board have "tried to make ourselves extraordinarily accessible to anyone who had views."

He said he's met with employees, neighboring pueblos, community groups, potential bidders and lawmakers "and we are taking all of that into account."

But Przybylek said the input will stop once the final criteria are released toward the end of April.
"I take very seriously the idea that everybody involved in this process has to believe that it is impartial and there aren't any influences on the board," he said.

From Anonymous:

It seems to be the management style today. Walk off the street into a functioning and vital organization. Find a few off normal situations to complain about and use them as bludgeons to beat your staff into submission. If you cannot find real off normal situations, fabricate them. Use your findings to further weaken the organization. Call a news conference and soundly condemn the cowboys and buttheads that are responsible for destroying the organization. Be cheered by simpletons and Members of Congress for your insight.

The president has chosen a new NASA administrator, a young dynamic rocket scientist named Mike Griffin. I wish him well, but have a message. Most of my NASA engineer friends tell me they're worn out. The way they see it, the agency has become a grindstone where the dreams and careers of engineers are crushed into dust. This has got to change or NASA is heading toward extinction. My advice to Dr. Griffin is to take two steps: Put the Space Shuttle in the museum where it belongs and implement with urgency the design, construction and flight of a new crewed space vehicle before every good engineer you've got walks away in disgust.

I left NASA in 1998 to pursue a writing career. I'm glad I did, because I could no longer stand to work on the Space Shuttle: 24 years after it first flew, what was once a magnificent example of engineering has become an old and dangerous contraption. It has killed 14 people and will probably kill more if it continues to be launched. It has also wasted a generation of engineers trying to keep it flying on schedule and safe. [emphasis added] Frankly, that's just not possible and most NASA engineers in the trenches know it. Einstein reputedly defined insanity as repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. The Shuttle program is a prime example of this.

I hope Dr. Griffin recognizes that his job is to protect his engineers and give them something new and productive to build. [emphasis added] After bringing the Shuttle program to a rapid end (tomorrow would be good), he should implement the design and construction of the new Crew Exploration Vehicle that President Bush announced with fanfare last year. The CEV is a higher-tech version of the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon. I know NASA engineers would love to design, build, and fly such a vehicle. Most of them have never worked on a program that produced a spacecraft. Never! Can you imagine being an aerospace engineer and spending an entire career designing and designing again, but never being allowed to actually build and fly anything?

The CEV will need some nurturing. There are powerful forces within NASA which will protect the Shuttle with religious ferocity. If I were in charge, I'd do my best to convert if possible, or subvert if necessary, this Shuttle cult. It won't be easy: They're entrenched up and down the NASA organizational chart. Ultimately, Dr. Griffin may have to ask President Bush to step in and pull the plug on the Shuttle. I'll hold his coat.

As of right now, NASA says the CEV won't be ready to fly until 2014. That's nuts. Putting it off until then is like saying you're not going to build it at all. And if our tech edge is so dull we're not actually capable of building it, then let's just give up and buy the Chinese version. That's not a serious recommendation, by the way, but it is a wake-up call. Chinese engineers are doing cutting-edge work in space. In contrast, our engineers slave over the tired old Shuttle, or do paperwork exercises, thus proving Einstein was correct, not only about physics but insanity, too.

Mr. Hickam is the author, most recently, of "The Ambassador's Son" (St. Martin's, 2004).
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111145768028885951,00.html

New Mexico universities join UC in possible bid for Los Alamos contract

HEATHER CLARK

Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The University of New Mexico will lead a consortium to collaborate on research with Los Alamos National Laboratory that could give the University of California a boost in a possible bid to manage the lab.

The New Mexico Consortium - consisting of UNM, New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology in Socorro - could join UC to form the Institute for Advanced Studies, the partners announced Thursday.

The institute would be created if UC wins the contract to manage the nuclear weapons lab. The UC Board of Regents haven't voted on whether to bid for the Los Alamos job, but have told staff to prepare as though they will bid.

UNM President Louis Caldera called the agreement historic.

"We're just excited. We think it's a great partnership," he said.

He said the universities are interested in collaborating on scientific research and educational programs with the lab.

"It makes UC a more formidable bidder to have the New Mexico universities and (Gov. Bill Richardson) and the congressional delegation effectively supporting their position in the rebid," Caldera said.

The New Mexico Consortium would not take over day-to-day management of the lab, which was effectively shut down last summer after two classified disks were reported missing. They were later found never to have existed.

Management would be left to UC, which has run the lab since it was formed during World War II to develop the atomic bomb.

"We're not trying to take on the headaches of the management aspect," Caldera said. "We're trying to have a seat at the table about how the science that is occurring there can strengthen our research."

UC spokesman Chris Harrington said joining with the New Mexico universities does not preclude private industrial partners being added to the UC team. He also did not rule out partnerships with other institutions of higher education.

Terry Yates, UNM's Vice President for Research and Economic Development, said the universities' location would be a "huge asset" for UC in the bidding.

"Because of our geographical proximity, that opens up a lot of opportunities for collaboration on education and research," he said.

UNM officials said the joint work between the lab and the universities includes nanotechnology, cancer research, astronomy, quantum computing, materials science and environmental sciences.

The consortium also would help UC recruit and retain qualified scientists, engineers and staff, Yates said.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark welcomed the increased pool of students and postdoctoral candidates that could come from New Mexico universities as part of the consortium.

"The more (students) from New Mexico universities, the happier we are," he said.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said Thursday that UC's effort to reach out to New Mexico institutions is one advantage of putting the Los Alamos lab contract out for bid.

"I only wish UC didn't tie this sort of effort to winning the contract and would, instead, pursue them as a matter of course," he said in a news release.

The federal government's final specifications for the Los Alamos contract may be released in early April; the bidding deadline will be 90 days after the release.

The UC regents may vote on whether or not to bid in late spring.

The consortium strengthens existing agreements between New Mexico's universities, the lab and UC.

"It solidifies those relationships and takes them to the next level," Roark said.

Caldera, a former vice chancellor in the California State University system and California lawmaker, said discussions about collaboration between state universities and the lab have been going on for the past two years.

Should the UC decline to bid on the Los Alamos contract, Caldera said the New Mexico Consortium would remain intact.

He said UNM has been approached by as many as a dozen private companies and other universities interested in joining forces in the competition for the lab contract.

"Many people recognized that it would be a coup to their bid to have New Mexico universities as partners in this process," he said.

From Anonymous:

Lawmakers Say California University Should Share Los Alamos Stand-Down Cost
March 18, 2005


WASHINGTON - A multi-million-dollar tab to the taxpayers is the cost of bad management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and key members of Congress are starting to wonder if the lead contractor - the University of California - shouldn't share the bill.

"It just seems to me that the University of California was hired to do a job and they didn't do it," said U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., at a hearing on Friday. "It resulted in a stand-down that may cost taxpayers maybe upward of $360 million. The University of California should have to pay something in this process. It's just outrageous."

Walden was among several participants at a hearing convened by U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Representatives expressed concern over mismanagement at the nation's nuclear labs, focusing on the issues that led to last year's stand-down at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory (LANL).

"You have to do things right or take some responsibility," added U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak from Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee. "In this case these costs should be paid by the university, not the taxpayer."

The stand-down was a result of the then-apparent loss of several removable disks and a lab employee's injury related to improper use of one of the facility's lasers.

Pete Nanos, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, says the stand-down was the right decision, as it highlight other problems at the lab. During the shutdown, the lab identified more than 3,000 issues that needed to be addressed, 350 of which needed to be addressed prior to ending the stand-down.

"The NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) also exercised its right to hold the university accountable for the incident. LANL received an 'unsatisfactory' performance rating in the 'operations' area of the annual performance assessment," Nanos said. "As a result, in January 2005, NNSA withheld 67 percent of the UC management fee, with a penalty assessment of $5.8 million our of a possible $8.7 million performance fee pool. This represents the largest DOE-directed management fee cut in history."

The full Energy and Commerce Committee's chairman, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, also has said the university is liable.

"I supported the stand-down because of the severity of the security and safety problems at Los Alamos," Barton, R-Texas, said earlier. "However, the necessity for the stand-down and its duration are the direct result of recurring mismanagement by the University of California, and I believe UC should pay at least some of the stand-down costs.

"In my opinion, it is just not fair to continue asking the taxpayers to pick up the tab for the university's ineptitude," Barton said. "Probably the only real opportunity to begin to solve the problems at Los Alamos is to hire a new contractor, and I support DOE's decision to re-compete the Los Alamos contract."

Several committee members also expressed concern about the pace of implementing additional security initiatives, saying that the Department of Energy was not moving fast enough.

Whitfield, R-Ky., welcomed the Department of Energy's changes to its security policy regarding protection at its nuclear security sites. However, Whitfield is concerned that the implementation of the 14-point initiative is moving too slowly.

"I really want to know how - and how quickly - each DOE and NNSA site will comply with these extensive new requirements," Whitfield said. "These upgrades will be expensive, and they could take years to implement."

####

The Committee on Energy and Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2927

LANL retirements this year to spike
By Bill Dupuy, KSFR

SANTA FE (2005-03-24) - Retirements are going up at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Laboratory spokesman James Rickman tells KSFR the projection for retirements this fiscal year is 50 percent greater than the prior year and 60 percent more than the year before that. He says the projection is for 379 people to retire this year. That compares with actual retirements of 251 in 2004 and 235 in 2003.

He says one factor contributing to the increase is the number of people at or near retirement age. The average age of staff scientists, known as technical staff members, is 47. Of that group of people, 39 percent are between the ages of 50 and 60-plus.

But Rickman confirms another factor leading to the increase in retirements as being the uncertainty over the contract to manage the lab. More than 8,000 of the lab's total workforce of some 12,000 are employees of the University of California, which hasn't yet said whether it will compete for the contract it has held uncontested for more than six decades.

Unsigned editorial:

Answering the questions at LANL

In his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos told the representatives he had found justification in the large number of problems that had to be fixed before operations could be resumed, plus 10 times that number of problems that needed to be worked on in the future.

He was asked about the morale issues and just who he thought should pay for costs incurred by the lengthy suspension of operations at the laboratory.

No matter what you think about Director Nanos or the lab, the critical item that faces Los Alamos County and those who live and work here is that LANL is beyond being critical to life here.

Are the problems at the lab all caused by the director - as some say - or is a large part of the problem exactly what the director says, a matter of the culture having gone too far afield?

Nanos told the panel it takes years to change the culture of such a large organization. And he is just beginning.

And that seems to bring us back to the crux of the problem - many at the lab don't seem to think a change of culture is needed.

Who's right?

You can get all the data - granted it is never the complete story - you want from one side or the other fully explaining that they are completely right and the others are completely wrong.

Both can't be right.

But the reality is, they may be.

Anyone who has worked for a company or in some division for years becomes comfortable with the way things are, the way things are done. That is only natural. And when someone new shows up, talks change, talks reform, that talk is not welcomed.

Does it mean the new talk is right? Does it mean the way things have been done are necessarily wrong? Well, it's no to both. They are just different.

And the hardest thing in the world may be having seniority and accepting orders from the new boss.

But one must ask the question of the need for the shutdown - given the huge cost to taxpapers, the loss to UC in funds and the economic and emotional impact on Los Alamos. Granted, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes and may never know.

And while it is easy to second-guess and be an arm-chair quarterback, it is a different world when you are the one who must make the hard decisions.

But we think that we are owed some kind of explanation as to what happened. If for nothing else, to end the rumors and put people's mind at ease.

Report details wasting of water at LANL

Diana Heil
Santa Fe New Mexican
March 24, 2005

While everyday citizens caught rain in barrels, installed low-flow toilets and watched plants wither from drought in 2003, Los Alamos National Laboratory missed opportunities to reduce waste, limit water consumption and save taxpayer dollars.

According to a new U.S. Department of Energy Inspector General report, the lab could have saved 41 million gallons of water a year -- plus associated chemicals -- but didn't have the $60,000 necessary to design the filters to accomplish it. The filters, which would have removed sand from water, could have saved the lab $500,000 annually through improved operational efficiencies of its cooling towers.

What's more, the lab failed to replace leaking faucets and install low-flow shower heads because the projects weren't funded, according to the report. Combined, the projects would have cost $4,000 and saved an estimated $380,220.

"It's unconscionable for the lab to waste so much of New Mexico's most precious resource when it could have been easily prevented and could have also saved taxpayers' money," Scott Kovac, research director for the nonprofit Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, said. "The lab stated that these projects were not implemented because of insufficient funding. This is another example of lab management's pennywise and pound-foolish priorities."

Across the country, Energy Department sites should do more to reduce pollution in cost-effective ways, the report says. Some sites didn't research new opportunities to prevent and recycle waste; others didn't practice strategies they had identified as workable. In 2003 alone, Energy Department sites produced 1.2 million cubic meters of waste, including radioactive waste.

Some blame falls on Washington. "We found that the department did not always support and fund pollution prevention programs, nor did it establish performance measures to monitor waste reduction activities," the report says.

Los Alamos lab, however, is ready to put the past behind it.

In May, it will unveil a new, $4.5 million plant where sand will be removed from water before the water is used in cooling towers. This prevents sludge from building up inside the cooling towers and makes them more efficient. It's expected to save 21 million gallons of water a year at first, then 50 million gallons in future years, lab spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said. Currently, the lab consumes 400 million gallons of water annually.

Silica -- a white compound found in quartz, sand and flint -- is a huge problem in volcanic-rich soils. "Parts of Northern New Mexico are some of the worst in the country for the level of silica in water," said DeLucas, who has a problem with silica buildup in her hot-water heater at home.

Meanwhile, the faucet and shower projects are still under consideration, she said.

DeLucas noted the report does not cover more than 20 pollution-prevention projects the lab is doing. It focused on what wasn't done. In February, Los Alamos received more than half the Energy Department's pollution-prevention awards, though none of these had to do with water, she said.

After reading the report, Ron Curry, the state's environment secretary, said the waste is unfortunate. "Director (Pete) Nanos has made many positive changes at the lab, and I think this report opens the opportunity for him to make some more," Curry said.

From Anonymous:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In spite of a laboratory director who covers the anal
cleft on his scalp with a brand-new, ten-gallon hat;
belittling insults, berating criticism, and bald-face
lies from the same; endless misrepresentation in the
clueless media; a lab-wide standdown because of a
clerical error and falsified safety statistics; empty
threats of a future permanent shutdown if I "don't get
it"; an end to the semi-weekly emancipation provided
by the 9/80; an impending contract change with
guaranteed benefit reductions; the retirement and
exodus of mentors, friends, and colleagues to follow;
STOP training (soon to be followed by STOP caring and
STOP thinking); overall low morale with no end in
sight; a rapidly deteriorating working environment;
and upper-level managers with few scientific
credentials insisting that micromanagement, earned
value estimates, and gant charts will foster
scientific research; I still completed this work ...
under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy,
under contract W--7405--ENG--36 with the University of California.

From Anonymous:

Clarification of Nanos' IBM reference, and the analogy isn't too far off

I think that Director Nanos' reference in recent Congressional testimony to IBM's turnaround had nothing to do with the long-ago PC introduction, but actually refers to the much more recent transformation of IBM from a near-bankrupt bloated whale on the beach into a giant profit generator under the direction of Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. His book, "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance," is a fabulous read. When Gerstner left General Mills for IBM, after much arm-twisting, I wondered what a breakfast cereal guy could do in this firm, but he accomplished an amazing transformation. However, it required making many omelets (breaking eggs).

I imagine that the Director intended to compare LANL with IBM's former condition, and to compare his intentions for LANL with Gerstner's for IBM. There may be some interesting similarities between what Gerstner found at IBM and Nanos found at LANL in terms of insularities and fiefdoms. However, there are also disturbing similarities, e.g., IBM restructured its retirement program, and the LANL recompetition threatens to do the same.

IMHO, LANL is actually in a current state not that much different from IBM before Gerstner. What company could withstand what the lab has been through since last summer and, indeed, since 1999? It has been observed (but not on this forum, I think) that organizations approaching terminal collapse react by making everyone generate lots of happy-talk to bolster the corporate image.

This is happening in at least one LANL directorate. Each week, every project is expected to report up to line management something in the form of a "highlight" that can be boasted about further up the line, and back to the directorate to make everyone happy. Divisions in this directorate keep spreadsheets that account for how many pieces of happy-talk have been generated by each project. Objections that research projects simply don't work that way have been met with "Just give us nuggets in simple language and short sentences that anyone can understand."

The not-very-good movie "Office Space" pretty much captures the current LANL environment, and reflects the mood and morale of people I know who work at LANL. Truly idiotic management practices (see above) coupled with tons of petty and inscrutable rules are driving morale to new lows. I heard LANL people say long ago that "GI Jane" was their training film (Overcome Any Obstacle!), but "Office Space" is its replacement.

Expensive lessons: The story behind falsified vault records at Los Alamos By DIANA HEIL The New Mexican



A former supervisor of two vault keepers at Los Alamos National Laboratory says the confusion over computer disks last summer boils down to two untrained workers who took shortcuts and got scared when officials asked why the disks were missing.

“These people are not malicious at all,” Todd Kauppila, a fired supervisor, said in an interview Monday. “I know the people that did that, and they’re both very good people.”

All but the most essential work at the nuclear-weapons lab stopped in July after the disks, believed to contain secret information, could not be located. An FBI investigation later determined the disks never existed.

Last week, some members of Congress wondered if criminal charges were in order after hearing that the seven-month shutdown at Los Alamos National Laboratory might have cost as much as $367 million.

Three workers were fired — Kauppila and the unnamed vault keepers. But no one’s going to jail. The FBI concluded no criminal activity was involved.

The acts that led up to the security incident seem, on the surface, to be small departures from the rules. Twelve bar codes were entered into the lab’s tracking system, but only 10 disks were created. Workers signed the inventory sheet without checking the vault to make sure the same number of disks were in there. And soon enough, Los Alamos had a crisis on its hands.

Repeated attempts to contact the fired workers, both of Española Valley, have been unsuccessful. But lab Director Pete Nanos has said the confusion was caused by people not following the rules as well as records custodians being pressured by other employees to ignore security regulations.

The fired vault custodians, in their 50s, had earlier worked as secretaries at the lab. One had a few months of experience handling classified material and probably didn’t understand the rules, Kauppila said. The other worker was an alternate vault custodian, according to Kauppila, who said he believes she was put in the position without proper training.

Kauppila said the lab is much more diligent about training employees in security procedures now than it was then.

In June 2000, the U.S. Department of Energy set up an accountability system for computer disks and hard drives that contain secret information. Each piece must be tracked individually. The requirements were a reaction to missing hard drives at Los Alamos and the investigation into employee Wen Ho Lee.

Three years later, when the lab prepared removable zip disks containing secret information for a slide show, lab records listed 12 disks. But FBI and Energy Department investigators concluded the bar codes were put into the records before the devices were created.

This was just the first mistake. After the slide show, the disks were stored in a safe without the custodians verifying each disk against the inventory list, according to a report on the investigation.

In July 2004, a lab worker discovered that two disks listed in the inventory could not be located. Los Alamos searched 2,006 vaults, rooms and safes but turned up nothing, except more problems. Computer hard drives had been moved to a building against proper accounting procedures and a large amount of material was not properly tracked. As a result of widespread security weaknesses, Nanos suspended all classified work on July 14 and then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered other labs to do the same.

Other labs went quickly back to work, but Los Alamos, dealing with security and safety incidents, shut down all activities except for the most essential. Some activities did not restart until last month.

While the search for the missing disks was on, workers didn’t admit to their mistakes. “These two vault custodians were terrified they made a mistake and were terrified to say anything,” Kauppila said.

Kauppila said neither he nor John Horne — both punished in connection with the security incident — were accused of falsifying the inventory sheet or of failing to verify the inventory. “I had no responsibility to do that,” he said.

Horne, a lab technician working on secret nuclear weapons experiments, created the disks but he has told reporters that he didn’t realize how many bar codes the custodian entered into the accountability database. Kauppila was Horne’s supervisor.

After being investigated by the FBI, Horne got his job back.

Kauppila was fired Sept. 23, though he said he doesn’t understand why. He believes he was a scapegoat and has filed a formal grievance with the lab to clear his name.

From Anonymous:

From Anonymous:

It looks like retirements are running about 16 % ahead of last year with about a month to go before the real numbers start coming in. The significant numbers at the bottom are important because retirements on July 1 normally represent about 45 percent of the total retirements for the year.



Total Retirements FY05 to 3/21/05: 106, of which 50 were TSMs

Total Elections Pending FY05: 81, of which 46 are TSMs
(31 out of the 81 are from the three weapons directorates, mostly ADWP)

"PENDING" means the employee's retirement election letter has been sent to UC. Typically, only 2% of those "pending" later cancel their plans to retire. Those listed as pending have a retirement date within the next 3 months.

------------

BUT, in addition to retirements, people leave by other means. In January, there were 39 non-retirement terminations, the same number as retirements. This is 14 more retirements than January 2004 and more than any January in the past five years. Here are the complete numbers, as of Feb. 28:

Total terminations by employee choice: 78 (of which 37 are TSMs)
Total by Lab choice: 9 (1 TSM)
Total Medical: 11 (2 TSM)
No Data: 2 (both TSMs)
Regular retirement: 92 (44 TSM)
------------------------------------
Total terminations 10/1/04 to 2/28/05: 192 (86 TSMs)

(remember, the numbers at the top of the show the 14 additional regular retirements between March 1 and March 21.

AND THIS IS THE BASELINE TO USE WHEN THE JUNE NUMBERS START ROLLING IN.

Total retirements, FY 2004: 256 (152 of these are TSMs)
Total pending retirements, end FY 2004: 56 (30 TSMs)
Total retirements, FY 2003: 235

Retirements, June 1-July 1, 2004: 109 (6 plus 103 on 7/1/04)
Retirements June 1-July 1, 2003: 111 (22 plus 89 on 7/1/03)

From Anonymous:

To all the (especially outside) blog readers:
I am in one of the many LANL science groups, which has a variety of small to medium NNSA projects and some LDRD. (research grants). My coworkers at Los Alamos are the hardest-working people I have ever known. Los Alamos may not do everything right, but it has assembled a very bright and talented workforce.

Most of you would love to have a staff like this. Their dedication is remarkable; people stay late and work weekends. While on a 9/80 schedule, many came in routinely on their ‘Fridays off’. And our technicians, most not eligible for overtime, often put in long days voluntarily on 'their' science projects. You can’t buy this kind of energy- you get it by hiring good people and valuing their individual efforts. In current corporate lingo, motivational speakers call this buy-in. During the shutdown- my group jumped in on the hundred or so safety and security tasks with as much vigor as they routinely gave to their regular tasks. (I think ‘shutdown’ was a misnomer, as I worked my tail off...) We took the task quite seriously.

There has been a lot of discussion here about LANL’s culture. Let's not forget that culture's best feature is its truly dedicated workforce. I hope this gives visitors a better sense of what is right with Los Alamos Lab.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/21/opinion/schieffer/main681975.shtml

Employment Violations at LANL

From Anonymous:

=====================================================
Dear Doug,

As an outsider to LANL, I have found that the inability to follow the law extends from Group Leaders to the Director's Office. Specifically, Veterans Affirmative Action (VAA) is statutory law, fully regulated, and a required condition of the contract to operate LANL.

For ten years I have unsuccessfully tried to encourage Group Leaders to the Director's Office Program Administrator to read the regulations governing VAA. The LANL Human Resources Manual does have a VAA policy statement but not a single procedure.

[...]

Document

(Another noon-time post from the Los Alamos public library -- Doug)

From Anonymous:

And with this on-line letter posted in today's Los Alamos Monitor, I say we begin a campaign to hire Bruce Norman as the Laboratory's new PR Director. NO, WAIT ... New DIRECTOR, period!

Here's the post:

Monday, March 21, 2005
Letters
Nanos legacy looks bleak

Dear Editor,

In less than a month, I will celebrate 30 years of living in Los Alamos. I arrived with my two tennis racquets, the clothes on my back, less than $1,000 in my pocket and the dream of making a living as a tennis teacher in this beautiful community. I've been fortunate during my time here and after running several different businesses have sunk deep roots in Los Alamos. I have two wonderful boys at the High School and still love Los Alamos as much as the day I moved here. But this is not why I am writing this letter today. I'm writing to express my grave concern for what is happening to LANL, the heart and soul of Los Alamos. In particular, I am concerned about the leadership and the extreme negative effect it is having on our community and LANL's employees.

When Pete Nanos was first named director of the lab it seemed like a good decision. From my perspective, the lab needed some shaking up and he seemed like the man to do it. Now, however, I've heard too many stories to maintain that opinion. The picture my friends who work at LANL paint is that of someone who is rude, isolated and arrogant. Now, I've never met the man and perhaps everyone whose opinion I've solicited is wrong, but one thing is for sure, morale is at its lowest point in the 30 years I've lived here and it's largely due to Pete Nanos. Sure, the uncertainty due to the management contract being put out to competitive bid hovers overhead like a storm cloud, but I've never heard so many negative remarks about a LANL director.

The employees at LANL are by and large dedicated to their jobs and while not perfect, deserve a whole lot more respect than they have been shown. So please, Mr. Nanos, come down off your high horse and show some humor and humility. The next time someone comes up to you, introduces themselves to you and extends his or her hand, please smile, shake their hand and say, "Hello, so glad to meet you" instead of turning your back on them and walking away like you did to one of my friends. And while I am sure it would be difficult for you to do, I think an apology to LANL employees for possibly overacting in your "cowboys and butthead speech" and to the business community for the extremely adverse effect the lab's standdown has had on them would go a long way to strengthen your support. These are but small suggestions and more surely needs to be done on your part, but it would be a start. Otherwise, your legacy at the once-proud laboratory will be that of its most divisive director and of one who has led to its demise instead of its advancement and in the process did further damage to our community. This Admiral needs to steer his ship in a new direction before he runs her aground or faces a mutiny!

Bruce Norman
Los Alamos

From Anonymous:

This is not directly related to the UC contract but is an example of LANL's over-reaction to DOE audits. More spineless behavior! Of course some of the statements from the vendors are bullshit. I have made diligent attempts to procure things locally. BUT, the vendors are often either greedy or not competetive. In one case, an Espanola vendor bid on desktop computers. The vendor was 30% higher than DELL and could really not provide any warranty support. However, the LANL statement that $398.5M of procurements are placed in Northern New Mexico is misleading. That figure includes the labor contracts of KSL, PTLA, Butler, etc.

Albuquerque Journal North
Monday, March 21, 2005

Businesses Oppose Lab Purchase Proposal

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer
Los Alamos National Laboratory's proposed new guidelines for buying from small businesses have riled some local business owners.

Betty Jacques with Franks Supply of Los Alamos said the guidelines propose having several businesses selected as contract suppliers compete over price for nearly every catalog order.

"It is going to be a popularity contest," she said. "Companies from Española are worried they are going to spend money to compete to win a contract then be guaranteed nothing."

In the past, procurement contracts have been exclusive to single supplier for certain items. Under the proposed guidelines, there would multiple suppliers competing on price each time the lab went out for a purchase. Critics contend the new rules favor bigger companies who can take more risks to get LANL's business.

Lab officials, for now, are delaying the release of procurement bid requests for small business contracts due to a technical problem. They are gathering more comments on the proposed guidelines that have upset at least a few local business owners.

"We are going to look at those comments and suggestions very carefully before our (request for proposals) are issued," LANL spokesman James Rickman said.

Rich Marquez, LANL's associate director of administration, said he is going to have LANL's Business Advisory Council— made up of state business leaders, including some voicing concerns— review the request for proposals before they are issued.

"We may not be able to accommodate all of their concerns, but at least we will have reviewed them carefully," he said.

A few northern New Mexico business leaders criticized LANL's proposed procurement guidelines at a hearing earlier this month over concerns the guidelines created too much financial risk for small regional businesses, with no guarantees the lab will actually buy anything from the businesses which meet LANL requirements and qualify to compete.

"There are a lot of things on that list that say, hey, if you are a small business you have no business bidding on those contracts— you will lose your shirt," said J. R. Trujillo, an Española City Councilor and owner of Quick Fix Home Improvement Center.

"They don't have to buy squat from you," Trujillo said. "Are businesses in Española asking for a handout? No way. Nobody is asking for them to spend more dollars than they have to spend ... we're asking for an opportunity for a level playing field (against larger businesses)."

Jay Gould, Northern New Mexico Suppliers Alliance president, has also spoken out against the proposed guidelines.

Marquez said LANL probably won't be able to return to exclusive contracts, because the laboratory has made a priority of creating increased flexibility within its buying program to ensure scientists and procurement officers get what they need in a timely way and at a competitive price.

"If there are a few places we can make concessions, I think we ought to do that" without compromising LANL's fiscal priorities, he said.

Rickman said LANL officials went out to regional business leaders for input.

"We heard people saying that they wanted the opportunity for more people to compete for these catalog contracts, so we reduced the size of the contracts which makes more of them and also came up with this idea for multiple awards for certain contracts," he said. "The object of this is to enhance the laboratory's business in northern New Mexico, particularly with small businesses."

He said LANL has received few complaints to date, but that most of the complaints the lab did receive were from larger firms, concerned the guidelines unfairly favored smaller businesses.

"Catalog" contract purchases— items bought as needed on a quick turnaround— comprise about $60 million of LANL's procurement, Rickman said. Overall, LANL spent about $398.5 million in northern New Mexico in 2004 out of nearly $1 billion in procurement spending.

Rickman said LANL is hoping to spend about 81 percent of its catalog contract purchases with state businesses and 74 percent of that on northern New Mexico businesses. He also said LANL officials plan to more accurately determine whether businesses qualify as northern New Mexican.

Another proposal is to establish procurement contracts for a base of two years, with possible one-year extensions up to a maximum term of seven years. Previously, contract terms were five year lengths.

Rickman said he expects about 30 requests for proposals to be issued in about a week resulting in procurement contracts for between 30 to 50 small businesses or more. Comments should be sent to LANL within the next week to be considered, Rickman said.

From Anonymous:

Hey, Baghdad Bob! How very courageous of you to hide the fact that Nanos was going to testify before Congress last week until the fact of the event could not be kept from us any longer. Someone who did not know better might think upper LANL management might have been trying to cover up something of which they were ashamed.

But you, Bagdad, you are a good lackey, let no one say any different. You did your duty: you kept the truth from us once again, to the best of your ability. In so doing, you epitomized that which we despise in upper LANL management: dishonesty, lack of integrity, cowardice.

Good job!

In brief The Associated Press

LANL nuke delivery delayed until fall

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Additional shipments of weaponsgrade nuclear materials from New Mexico to the Nevada Test Site have been delayed until the end of the year.

The delay was caused by last summer’s shutdown of Los Alamos National Laboratory, said Linton Brooks, chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The lab was virtually shut down last July after reports two classified computer disks had disappeared. An investigation later determined they never existed. Some of the lab’s normal activities did not resume until February.

NNSA began shipping nuclear materials in September to the site’s underground Device Assembly Facility, which is considered far more secure than the current storage location at Los Alamos, which has endured recent highly publicized security breaches.

More shipments, which had been scheduled for September of this year, will be postponed until mid-November.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project On Government Oversight, accused Los Alamos officials of purposefully creating the delay and said nuclear material from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco also should be transferred to the underground Nevada facility.

From Anonymous:

A vital insight into Nanos' thinking presented itself during one of his all-hands' meetings when he invoked the Tailhook scandal as an analog to recent events at LANL. According to his retelling of it, the media frenzy over Tailhook was suddenly quenched by the suicide of Chief of Naval Operations Mike Boorda, a grotesquerie that drew attention away from the scandal long enough to let the vicious cycle feeding the story die.

The inspiration for the Lab shutdown, and attendant Cultural Revolution, may have come from this incident. Seeing an impending media crisis, the Director may have decided to force the story to a premature, if turgescent, ending by getting out ahead of the media in charging Lab employees with wrongdoing, thus seizing all the drama of the story for his own purposes. Instead of individual acts, the Director would accuse the entire organization of having a cowboy culture. Thus, instead of the problem having an institutional solution, such as improved infrastructure or the de-obfuscation of policy, Los Alamos' problems were total, requiring drastic measures -- measures Nanos assured Congress he was ready to undertake.

Unfortunately, you only get to use the "nuclear option" once, and you'd better win when you use it. Virtually every organizational failing has a cultural aspect, and promising to "clean up the culture" is all-inclusive. Nanos claims all safety incidents are preventable, if you inculcate the proper values. He claims we cannot ever fail to protect national security information, because we generated mountains of paperwork during our time of cultural reflection proving failure was impossible. From the time Nanos invoked culture to explain LANL's generation of news stories, the only acceptable output from Los Alamos was "flawless performance," a feat no one has yet achieved this side of the grave.

The failure of Nanos' gambit was only a matter of time. The next pinched finger, the next clerical error, or the next disgruntled ex-employee could bring questions no one would be in a position to answer. "Mr. Director, how did your vaunted culture change program fail to prevent this outcome?" When you get to this point, your only options are denial or total capitulation. You can see an example of the former in the Director's current "Nanobyte" analysis of the recent DX-3 accident: "Everything is okay. Someone may have been injured, but out of our new cultural awareness, we did everything right." Same failings, different spin.

Now, the media is back with another scandal, (fresh from the folks who brought you the forged National Guard memos), and this time, they are using the "culture" issue to pick up where Nanos left off. There is now nowhere for Nanos to go, no further issue to appeal to. Congressman Barton of Texas is suggesting the permanent closure of LANL, and anti-nuclear activists will be able to trumpet LANL's through-going "corruption."

All of this is causing the story in Washington and the reality in Los Alamos to look like they're from perpendicular universes. Perhaps, in a period of history characterized by the decline of scientific thinking and the resurgence of primitivism and irrationality, the fall of Los Alamos, a place dedicated to the non-ideological pursuit of fact, is inevitable. But still, I wonder, how might things have played out if we'd had a Director willing to defend us and our mission?

-dug (not Doug)

Troll \Troll\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Trolled; p. pr. & vb. n.
Trolling.] [OE. trollen to roll, F. tr[^o]ler, Of. troller
to drag about, to ramble; probably of Teutonic origin; cf. G.
trollen to roll, ramble, sich trollen to be gone; or perhaps
for trotler, fr. F. trotter to trot (cf. Trot.). Cf.
Trawl.]

4. To angle for with a trolling line, or with a hook drawn
along the surface of the water; hence, to allure.


I don't normally respond to trolls, but I will make an exception in this case. There have been a few comments to posts recently which (putting it politely) attacked my motivations for having created this blog. I would like to say a few words to those specific individuals.

My dad came to Los Alamos in 1949. I was born a year later and grew up there. I love the place, it's my home. I have worked at LANL for 20 years, where for most of that time I got to do what I loved: designing and implementing large complex computer simulations while working with people that I liked and respected. These were not just fun toys that we played with; most of the finished simulations are now being used to perform useful studies around our nation. The most recent of these simulations to be fielded, EpiSims, is an epidemiological simulation that is being used by several of our customers (DHS and NIH included) to study remediation approaches in the event of biological terrorist attacks against large urban areas in the United States.

When LANL effectively shut down the NewsBulletin, the one venue we all had to openly air and discuss important issues at LANL, I created this communications venue where people are allowed to discuss the current serious problems at LANL, openly and without fear of retribution. If there are individuals who think that by so doing I am attacking LANL, then perhaps those individuals are a part of the problem being addressed by the contributors of this blog, and should consider leaving.

--Doug Roberts

From Anonymous:

It's limerick time again.

When our Pete got in on the act
All our best upper hands got sacked
He was truly berserk
To keep us from work
Seven months to be exact!

Now the town’s really started hummin’
Over a company name of Grumman
We all like UC
With its very low fee
Without them we’ll surely be bummin’

I guess UC’s fee was too little
And it’s truly a puzzling riddle
Why they’ll pay so much more
Then go on to ignore
That our work will become second fiddle

The Ambassador who we call Brooks
Has one point which he overlooks
If you fine them so much
Over barcodes and such
Why expect more than just dirty looks?

Now Congress wants hundreds of millions
Or even perhaps in the billions
For one big cl***
Who shut us down
When we should be run by civilians

But if Cheney gets in it’s for certain
We’re really going to be hurtin’
They’ll dream up their ploys
And send in their boys
Our bosses will be Halliburton

Doug:

This blog has served as an exceptionally useful outlet for the unbelievable frustrations that loyal LANL staff members have felt ever since Director Nanos' unwarranted shutdown eight months ago. At that time, or possibly within a few days, the rumor sprang up that Nanos would be gone in two weeks. Like clockwork, that rumor has sprung up every two weeks, ever since.

I am now retired from LANL, not because I really wanted to do so this early in my career, but because I wanted to protect my 32.5 years invested in the UC retirement system. My years at LANL have had their ups and downs, but never such a down as the last eight months.

I got my doctorate at UC Berkeley, and I have, until the last half year, been proud of the University. Its present spineless response to Nanos' attack on that other institution that I care about--the Los Alamos Laboratory--has left me demoralized about the future. But only about the obstacles that daily mount to the Lab's recovery from the damage Nanos has done, not about the scientists and workers themselves.

I would call upon UC to read this blog and consider appointing an interim Director, who would have the moral authority to sweep out the sycophants in upper management, and set LANL back on a rational course. I would hope that someone (possibly even a former Lab Director) would respond to this crisis and serve the Lab and the nation between now and the awarding of the new contract. Such a move could possibly stem the tide of high quality people, who are presently contemplating leaving the Lab, one way or another.

The future of a truly scientific Laboratory may well be critical to the nation and the world in the next couple of years, and it would be a shame to hear people say, "Too bad LANL is so weak and wounded; we could have used them at their full strength."

It's also a shame that more people have not had the courage to step forward and truly serve the Lab and the nation, as has Doug Roberts with this blog.

Thanks, Doug.

-Brad Lee Holian, former LANL staff member

UC May Have to Chip In for Lab Closure

Energy Department and university differ on the cost of lost or delayed work at Los Alamos.

Los Angeles Times
March 19, 2005

By Sara Clarke, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress again criticized the University of California on Friday for its management of Los Alamos National Laboratory, saying the university should bear at least some of the financial burden of a lengthy shutdown at the nuclear weapons facility.

Los Alamos was the main focus of a hearing on security at the nation's nuclear sites held Friday by the investigations panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. UC has managed the New Mexico lab for the Energy Department for more than six decades.

Nearly all operations at Los Alamos were shut down in July after two incidents — the reported loss of two classified computer disks and a laser accident that injured an intern — prompted security and safety concerns. The lab did not fully reopen until late January, although many activities had resumed in previous months.

An official with the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department agency that oversees the lab, estimated Friday that the cost for lost or delayed work resulting from the shutdown could be as much as $367 million.

Los Alamos and UC officials, in contrast, put the figure at $119 million, and said the Energy Department figure included millions in costs not directly attributable to the closure. They said the UC estimate also took into account the gradual resumption of regular operations in many sections of the lab, while others remained shuttered.

Testifying before the panel, Los Alamos director G. Peter Nanos said that during the closure, the lab's employees still came to the facility and concentrated on such activities as management assessments and safety and security training. Such work should be funded because it was authorized under the university's contract, he said, adding: "We just normally don't do it in such heavy concentration."

Although an Energy Department investigation has determined that the computer disks originally believed to be missing never existed, Nanos said the lab had improved its handling of such classified materials and reduced the number of storage locations.

Still, the financial burden stemming from UC's lack of oversight should not be passed on to taxpayers, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), told Nanos.

"How are you going to change the culture, and get responsibility?" asked Stupak, who was among several lawmakers who said the university and those responsible for the problems had not been properly sanctioned.

Employees who were implicated in the security breaches and in falsifying records had been terminated, Nanos said.

Several members of the panel said UC should bear at least some of the costs. "The University of California was hired to do a job and they didn't do it," said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). Taking the university off the hook, he said, would be outrageous.

Linton F. Brooks, who heads the National Nuclear Security Administration, said two investigations had suggested that the closure costs would be allowed under UC's contract.

But the problems have not been without consequence for UC's reputation and the lab's finances, he said. In what it called the harshest financial penalty ever imposed on a national lab, the Energy Department in January penalized the university more than $5 million — two-thirds of its management fee for 2005. That penalty would not affect the university's other functions, UC officials said.

In addition, for the first time, the university's contract to run the lab has been opened to competition. The current contract expires in September.

UC regents will decide whether to bid for the contract after the department releases more specific information on the request for proposals this spring, said Chris Harrington, a university spokesman.

- Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Los Alamos security shutdown costly

Associated Press
Fri, Mar. 18, 2005


H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Disruptions caused by last year's security flap at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory may have cost as much as $367 million because activities were shifted away from the lab's normal work, members of Congress were told Friday.

Lab officials virtually shut down the facility last July after reports that two classified computer disks had disappeared. An investigation later determined they never existed. Some of the normal activities did not resume until last month.

The laboratory also disclosed Friday that the mystery about the disks might have been resolved quickly last summer if two employees had not falsified an inventory sheet showing the disks existed.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos said the inventory sheet was signed though no inventory had been taken. The two individuals were fired, but when pressed at a House hearing about whether they should be criminally prosecuted, Nanos said that was not for him to decide.

During the so-called "stand-down" at the lab in New Mexico, thousands of employees were told to stop their normal work and join the search for the disks, undergo security training and undertake other safety- and security-related activities. Many of the workers returned to their normal duties after a month.

Linton Brooks, the Energy Department's undersecretary for nuclear security, told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on investigations Friday that the $367 million figure "represents an upper limit" estimate of how much the security-related suspension may have cost the lab in lost or delayed activities.

The laboratory disagrees, putting the figure at $119 million. The Energy Department number includes tens of millions of dollars in indirect costs that should not be attributed specifically to the work stoppage, according to Nanos.

Whatever the figure, "the costs are significant," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., the chairman of the investigations subcommittee.

Several lawmakers questioned why the University of California, which manages the Los Alamos lab, shouldn't be charged for some of the costs since, they say, the work stoppage resulted from security failures related to poor management.

"The university was hired to do the job and they didn't do it," said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. He said letting the university off the hook was "outrageous."

But Brooks told the panel that in all likelihood the government would absorb the costs because activities related to the work suspension were covered by the Energy Department's contract with the university.

Nanos strongly defended the decision to suspend laboratory operations as "absolutely the right thing to do" and said the cost should not be viewed as lost money. During the stand-down more than 3,000 issues were found that raised safety or security concerns.

Nanos said the redirected dollars were an investment in the lab because the funds were refocused toward safety, security and compliance activities.

However, if the government were to determine the spending was not covered under its contract, the university would lose tens of millions of dollars it had expected to receive from the government under its contract.

Earlier this year, the Energy Department penalized the university $5.8 million because of the debacle surrounding the allegedly lost computer disks and other security and safety concerns at Los Alamos.

On a broader security issue, Brooks told the subcommittee that it will not be until fall 2008 that he expects the Energy Department's nuclear sites to meet the more stringent security levels demanded in a post-Sept. 11 era of heightened terror risks.

The tougher requirements were issued last October and the department previously had said implementation would take several years. Brooks said facilities where nuclear material is kept must submit by July implementation plans and a list of resource requirements to meet the new standards.

"Almost certainly additional resources will be required" to meet the new standard, he said, but it's too early to determine how costly the security improvements will be.

While there have been "significant security problems" at Los Alamos and some other sites where nuclear materials are kept, Brooks told the subcommittee "none of the vital national security assets - nuclear weapons, special nuclear material or classified material - are at risk anywhere within the nuclear weapons complex."

A watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, testified that some facilities such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California are unlikely to be able to meet the tougher standards and that the nuclear material, including plutonium, should be moved to a safer location.

Livermore officials have said they expect to be able to meet the new requirements.

---
On the Net:

Los Alamos: http://www.lanl.gov

WASHINGTON (AP) - Last year’s shutdown at Los Alamos National Laboratory may have cost the government up to $357 million.

That’s the figure Linton Brooks gave to Congress Friday. Brooks is the Energy Department’s undersecretary for nuclear security.

Research at the lab came to a halt last July after a report that two computer disks containing classified information disappeared. Thousands of employees were told to stop their normal work. A later report confirmed the disks never existed.

Some members of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on investigations questioned why the University of California, which runs the lab, was not charged for some of the losses.

Lab officials estimate the shutdown costs to be about a third of the energy department’s figure. Their estimate does not include the cost of work that was delayed because of the shutdown.

From Anonymous:

[Regarding Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos' testimony today before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee]

This was not a great day for representative democracy: The first softball regarding the minor cost overcharge on the tuff sheds set the tenor of the encounter. Considering the damage done by Dr. Nanos' stand down that line on inquiry was like a judge asking Saddam Hussein if he knew that he had an overdue book from the prison library.

Then there was that discrepancy on how much the stand down cost. Dr. Nanos (Note: only once was the title of Admiral used) gave the cost at $136M-- under oath mind you. Ambassador Brooks estimated the cost at $367M and glibly said the real answer is "somewhere in between." (Thank God that neither one of them is my banker and POGO, much closer to reality, put the figure at $1B.) Once upon a time, confessing such a discrepancy in cost before a congressional committee would have been like tossing red meat to hungry wolves. This morning opportunity to chew was fell upon toothless puppies who gummed the discrepancy and blamed it entirely on the University of California, the only party not represented at the table. In fact most of the morning was spend throwing darts at the UC. No voice came forcefully to the defense of the University including those of Dr. Nanos and Ambassador Brooks.

When Dan Brown's name was called out Dr. Nanos seemed to have leaped out to another planet. Maybe he was looking for Brown who was already there. In any case, Dr. Nanos should have had a point by point critique of the allegations Brown had raised. If one existed, he didn't seem to know about it. Then maybe Dr. Nanos thought the Congressman had said, John Browne (the "e" is silent like the defenders of the UC).

An interesting vignette transpired when Dr. Nanos was asked about his support at the Laboratory. Under oath he said, "I think that the majority of the people support what I am doing" (or something to that effect). The operative word is "think" because "thinking" erroneous thoughts can be done under oath.

Somehow Big Blue emerged as a point of discussion. Dr. Nanos said that it took seven years to change the culture of that behemoth from thinking mainframes to thinking PCs. We all know how successful the IBM cultural change has been. Almost all trolls have IBM PCs. Dr. Nanos promised to change the culture at Los Alamos in five. Similar results are expected here. He did say we are at the "tipping point." Maybe he actually meant the "breaking point."

Dr. Nanos' statement that the Laboratory would be back on schedule with its major programs, including missed stockpile tests, by the end of the month begged the obvious question: "Did the missed tests negatively impact the safety and reliability of the Nation's enduring nuclear stockpile?" Alas, again the silence was deafening.

Then there was a closed session down the hall where we can only assumed that ice creams, cookies, and punch were served.

From Anonymous:

In case you missed it, this aired tonight --

Congress Eyes Los Alamos
CBS News Link

Nanos defends lab shutdown

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos told representatives of Congress this morning that he did not believe the University of California should pay for the costs of a lengthy suspension of operations at the laboratory.

"I feel that all the work that we did during the stand down was authorized under the statement of work," Nanos said during a hearing of the investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this morning.

Nanos said the laboratory had largely resumed operations within the first month with its less risky operations after the stand down last July and the most risky operations were restarted by February.

The laboratory would be back on schedule with its major programs, including some missed stockpile tests by the end of the month, he said

He said the review had found justification in the large number of problems that had to be fixed before operations could be resumed, plus ten times that number of problems that needed to be worked on in the future.

Responding to a question, Nanos said changing culture at an institution like IBM had taken seven years.

"I'm two years into at least a five-year process," he said. "We're close to the tipping point."

Earlier in the hearing the nation's chief nuclear officer answered questions about the discrepancy between LANL's estimates on the costs of the shutdown, estimated at $136 million, and an estimate prepared by a National Nuclear Security Administration.

National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Linton Brooks said DOE's Albuquerque office had estimated costs up to $367 million because of what he included in the estimate. He said the laboratory's estimate was based on a formula for how employee's effort was charged to the stand down, and it was not auditable.

The higher figure also included indirect costs of administration and overhead.

Brooks said a final determination was pending and he thought it would fall somewhere between the two estimates.

Pressed by the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., Brooks said the University of California, which has managed the LANL contract since the inception of the laboratory, had been held responsible by penalties and a reduction in fee, as well as by having to face a competition for the contract.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., expressed incredulity that the issue of stand down-costs was not specifically addressed in the contract and objected to having those costs put back on the taxpayer.

Brooks said that opening the contract to competition was a response to the recent problems with UC, but explained to the representatives that the university has never profited from the work of the laboratory.

LANL was a focus of the subcommittee, as the subcommittee chairman asked, "How we can turn the tide on the bad news at LANL?" But the meeting also examined security issues in general throughout the nuclear complex.

Chairman Whitfield asked Brooks to report on steps that have been taken at each of the NNSA sites to upgrade security.

Stupak, the ranking minority member, sought answer to the questions of what was still vulnerable and why, as well as what still needs to be done.

Glenn Podonsky, DOE's director of security and safety performance assurance, shared the panel with Brooks and was asked if his efforts were duplicated by a similar function in the NNSA.

Podonsky acknowledged that the department does a lot of checking on itself without much improvement, but said his function was separate and independent.

"We don't want to fall into the same predicament as in past years - checkers checking checkers," he said. "I don't believe that's what Ambassador Brooks intends."

Brooks assured the committee that despite delays, nuclear material from LANL's vulnerable Technical Area 18 site would be moved by the end of this year.

The subcommittee also heard testimony from Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

POGO has been particularly concerned about the nuclear material that remains at Technical Area 18 at LANL. She expressed doubts that the new schedule could be met.

"In addition, much of the material will be stored at the Los Alamos Technical Area 55 for an unknown period of time," she said. "Security costs are beginning to mount, as the delays continue."

Nanos to testify

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos will be among the witnesses before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is meeting Friday morning in Washington, D.C.

The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., is reviewing security initiatives at DOE nuclear facilities.

National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Linton Brooks and Glenn Podonsky, Department of Energy director of security and safety performance assurance are scheduled to testify as well.

Following Nanos, Danielle Brian, Executive Director on Nuclear Security, The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C. public interest organization, will submit testimony.

Last Friday, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Whitfield sent a letter to Brooks, asking for more information about the "cost and reasonableness" of the suspension of operations at LANL that began in July last year.

The letter recounted the representatives' efforts to obtain follow-up information on the stand down, which began as a result of irregularities in accounting for classified information, followed by a serious laser injury involving a student working at the lab.

Nanos originally estimated the cost of the suspension at $100 million, but the letter to Brooks cited a report, dated Feb. 22, from the NNSA's field office in Albuquerque, which raised the estimate to $370 million.

"The amount is staggering, and we are concerned that it will continue to grow," wrote the two chairmen.

"However, the necessity for the stand down and its duration is the direct result of recurring mismanagement by the University of California (UC), and we believe UC should pay for a portion of the cost of the stand down," they added.

Chris Harrington, a spokesman for the University of California, said, "We've been asked to come before the committee and we'll provide the answers to the questions asked."

Harrington said safety and security were very important to the committee and to UC and LANL.

"We've taken very aggressive actions to improve safety and security throughout the laboratory," he said.

"And this is a chance for us to review those actions and efforts with the committee.

Beth Daley of POGO said in a telephone call this morning that Daniel would talk about the relationship between the laboratory's treatment of whistleblowers and congressional oversight.

"From our sources, the costs are up to a billion dollars," she said.

The investigations subcommittee was the arena in which LANL's property and financial management problems were aired two years ago.

You might have noticed that blogger.com has been slow lately. Here is a response to one of my problem reports to them.

FYI,

--Doug


Hi there,

Please let us apologize for the various problems Blogger has been going
through over the last week or so. All of us here depend on Blogger as much
as you do, so we completely understand the difficulties and frustration
these issues have caused.

We are currently putting a lot of focus and energy into improving the
performance of our databases. They have been under a considerable load
recently, which causes the long delays and occasional errors in navigating
the Blogger site. However, we added several new machines yesterday, and we
have more on the way. This should put less pressure on each individual
machine which will make Blogger more responsive.

This is an ongoing process, and we will probably have a few more ups and
downs before we get to a more consistently reliable state. We appreciate
your patience and understanding as we continue to work on this problem.

Thanks for using Blogger.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

P.S. Remember that you can keep an eye on our Status page for updates as
they become available:
http://status.blogger.com

We also had a post about this recently on Blogger Buzz:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2005/03/more-power.html

From the 3/18/2005 LANL NewsBulletin:

Feb. 25, 2005
Our third world economy

In some third world countries, basic goods and services can only be obtained by providing the appropriate bribe. This undermines the integrity of those societies, degrades the work ethic and hides the true cost of doing business.

Increasingly at the Laboratory, basic goods and services can only be obtained by paying an extra surcharge - not so different in some ways from how such third world countries operate. Apparently our recursive taxation system is insufficient to fully obscure the growing cost of doing business. We can more effectively hide our huge overhead from sponsors by invoking service fees for organizations to do their jobs. Dosimeter badges now require a monthly fee, and there are SM-30 delivery charges. There are fees for hiring employees and student. There’s even a new SCIF space charge. Oh, wait, you don’t actually have space in a SCIF? No problem, we can make that a people charge by taxing SCI clearances.

This fee-for-service approach is only going to grow. Can pay toilets and parking meters be far off?

I don’t want to be left behind, so I am hereby announcing my own fees for service as follows:

Preparing any approval form where writing for the justification or business purpose that, “The voices in my head made me do it” works fine: $18.

Preparing any approval form where the cost of preparing the form, obtaining necessary signatures, and filing the document exceeds the cost of the requested action or item by a factor of three: $40.

Preparing any approval form that has no chance of ever being disapproved: $20.

Preparing a conference attendance approval form for a conference with fewer than 30 total attendees so that the Department of Energy can be reassured than no more than 30 Lab personnel will attend: $100.

Reading a slick, glossy, full-color poster on any Lab bulletin board praising a project that is nowhere near complete, and that will probably ultimately fail miserably: $3. When that same poster has a photo of a person or persons standing around doing nothing: $5.

Responding to any panic corrective action, training, or compliance matter that requires me to get a new password: $20.

Each time the LDRD rules and timelines change: 5 cents.

Using any required training or Lab Web site that clearly hasn’t been alpha tested: $50.

Watching live LABNET video where the video bandwidth exceeds the useful information content by six orders of magnitude: $85/hour.

Reading a weekly log of the activities of a senior manager when nothing in there interests me: $10. Reading the same log when nothing in there could possibly interest anybody: $20.

Reading an account of a Lab retreat when the phrase “in full retreat” fails to appear: $10.

Installing software when the installation instructions for PCs exceeds two pages, while those for the Mac say, “Double click on the install icon”: $100.

Anytime I am forced to procure an item from a Just-Somewhere-in-Time (JIT) or other vendor that costs twice as much and takes 10 times longer to arrive than is available on the Internet: $9.

Being told the furniture salesperson (a.k.a. “designer”) who is required for all furniture purposes is there to save the Lab money: $155.

Being told that a rolling plastic lab cart is “furniture”: $3,000.

Reading a Public Affairs spin-doctor press quote that causes me to wince, groan, snicker, or blush, or that makes my stomach hurt: $20.

Providing a copy of this fee schedule: $2. Providing a copy of this fee schedule along with a slick, glossy poster showing me standing around doing nothing: $65.

I conservatively estimate this fee schedule should generate $22 million annually for me. Now, I don’t want to be greedy, so I am more than willing to make 6 percent of this available for LDRD projects. (Submit your proposals in 11 point Atlantis Scrawl font. The first paragraph on each page must be identical to the last paragraph on the previous page, and the proposal should be signed in orange ink by someone who is both forklift certified and a derivative classifier. No proposal will be considered that contains the word “irregardless” because the review committee doesn’t know what that means).

--Roger Johnston

From Anonymous:

The vice admiral is getting set up for a gluteal chewing tomorrow....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                        CONTACT: Lisa Miller
(Barton), 202-225-5735

Thursday, March 17, 2005                                        
           Jeff Miles (Whitfield), 202-225-3115

                                                                
         

Subcommittee Names Witnesses

For Nuclear Facilities Security Hearing

 

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Kentucky, chairman of the
House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations, has scheduled a hearing for Friday, March 18 at
10 a.m. in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building
entitled, "A Review of Security Initiatives at DOE Nuclear
Facilities."

 

Portions of this hearing are expected to be closed to the public.

 

The following witnesses are scheduled to testify: 

 
Panel 1
 

The Honorable Linton Brooks, Administrator, National Nuclear
Security Administration, Washington, D.C.

 

Glenn S. Podonsky, Director, Office of Security and Safety
Performance Assurance, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.

 

Panel 2
 

Peter Nanos, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los
Alamos, N.M.

 

Panel 3
 

Danielle Brian, Executive Director on Nuclear Security, The
Project on Government Oversight, Washington, D.C.

Two more employees protest CREM incident

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

Two more people who were disciplined in the wake of the zip drives, the ones that were not missing after all at Los Alamos National Laboratory, have spoken out, blaming management for mishandling the affair.

Along with a co-worker, John Horne, Todd Kauppila has decided to provide a public narration of the events before and after the classified material ap-peared to have vanished on July 6.

Kauppila was terminated on Sept. 23.

Horne was suspended from Dec. 20-31, after a review by a Case Review Board, despite having passed a lie-detector test on Nov. 10, the document said.

LANL spokesperson Kevin Roark said this morning that he was unable to comment on personnel actions.

"Our inquiry was exhaustive and the personnel actions were based solely on the facts that came out of those inquiries," he said.

Kauppila's statement was published Wednesday on the blog, LANL: The Real Story (lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/), which has attracted a rapidly growing audience of dissident readers and contributors at the laboratory.

Todd Kauppila worked in DX-3, the office from which two pieces of CREM (Classified Recordable Electronic Media) were reported missing. He related that not only was he fired without demonstrable cause, he was fired after helping to solve the mystery of how nonexistent disks were erroneously thought to be missing.

Kauppila wrote that he had been fired despite having having had only an incidental relationship with the CREM. He chaired an international conference at the lab for which the original disks had been recorded.

When he was asked to return from a vacation because of the crisis, he wrote, he discussed what he knew with his manager over a classified telephone line over the course of two days. His manager gave him permission to continue his vacation.

Later, he learned that his delay in returning "had enraged the director, who demanded that I be fired," Kauppila wrote. "It would take a few months for him to make good on his threat, but he clearly made up his mind that day, and all his actions since then point to that very plan."

Although Sen. Pete Domenici, in a visit to the laboratory on Aug. 9, already hinted at information that the disks might never have existed, several more months and a continuation of the total suspension of activities at the laboratory ensued.

On Jan. 28, the Department of Energy announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined that the most likely explanation for the missing disks was that a pair of barcodes had never been used.

Kauppila's statement offered an insight into the reasons for the mistake, the chaos of the recovery efforts, and how the mistake was found.

He confirmed a statement last year by a former custodian of classified matter and media at the laboratory, who said the laboratory itself was to blame for failing to support those who had responsibilities for the CREM.

Kauppila stated that there was a shortage of barcoding scanning equipment, forcing CREM handlers to read barcode numbers visually.

Additionally, he charged, CREM "were sometimes given blocks of barcode numbers to apply to generate CREM over some period of time."

Describing the search for the missing CREM, Kauppila described searches that "unfolded in a series of increasingly anxious efforts, in ever-widening circles and in all directions - up, down, and all around, canyons and ceiling tiles included."

Those engaged in the search were also under the greatest scrutiny and suspicion, Kauppila reported.

"Finally, a pattern began to develop with the periodic activity and inventory records that showed the two missing items being inventoried, but then being removed from the data base three times," he wrote.

The observed pattern turned out to be consistent with the ultimate explanation, which was that two pieces of CREM had never been bar-coded because they had not existed, nor fully accounted for in the previous inventories.

Kauppila said the theory was initially suppressed by laboratory managers.

From Anonymous:

From Anonymous:

So remind me again, please, why it is (besides the pension plan) we 
all hope UC gets to continue to manage the lab:

Is it because of the outstanding directors they have given us in 
recent years?

Is it because of the magnificent way UC has stood behind the lab 
against dumb DoE actions (can you imagine UC letting anyone close 
down their own campuses for a year, or making its professors fill 
out two days worth of paperwork just to pour a chemical from one 
beaker to another?)

Is it because of the great way UC has come to our support when the 
lab is attacked in the press or in Congress or by the FBI? (Would 
they meekly allow a Wen Ho Lee affair on a UC campus?)

Is it because we get to pretend to be UC faculty and staff (would 
UC allow any of its real faculty to be treated the way we get 
treated?)

Maybe I’m missing something here, but I just don’t see (besides the 
pensions) what has been so great about being part of UC…………

From Anonymous:

Doug,

I appreciate the blog as a place where all stories are recorded. This one in the New Mexican needs to be recognized also.


Continue the good work.

==========

News: Splash Page, LANL, Santa Fe / NM
Disgruntled Los Alamos workers share insights and gripes on blog

By HEATHER CLARK | Associated Press
March 15, 2005

NAMBE, N.M. - If loose lips sink ships, then what can a blog at a top-secret nuclear lab do?

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/11589.html

UC close to forming partnership for possible Los Alamos bid

MICHELLE LOCKE

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - The University of California is close to putting together a team of partners for a potential bid to hold on as managers of the Los Alamos nuclear lab.

Finding a partner would be a significant step in UC's bid preparations and comes at a time when a number of potential rivals have announced they won't pursue the contract.

"They're dropping by the wayside and part of it is because they can't come up with a suitable academic partner," UC Vice President Robert Foley said as he briefed the system's governing Board of Regents on the competition status Wednesday. "Nobody does science and technology like the University of California."

UC regents haven't voted on whether to bid for the Los Alamos job, but have told staff to prepare as though they will bid.

However, Foley told regents there are potential obstacles to a UC bid, especially recent changes to the government's draft specifications that would require UC to form a special corporation to manage the lab and create a stand-alone pension system.

Los Alamos employees, who currently are covered under UC's systemwide plan, are not happy about the pension proposal, and regents' chairman Gerald Parsky said that issue will have to be resolved to UC's satisfaction.

"The employees at Los Alamos are extremely important to us," Parsky said. "We are going to be paying very close attention to making sure that their retirement, their benefits will be protected in this or we won't bid."

The government's final specifications may be released in early April; the bidding deadline will be 90 days after the release and regents may be voting on whether to bid or not in late spring.

UC has run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico since it was formed during World War II to work on the atomic bomb. The university has also managed a second weapons lab, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California since it was established in 1952.

For decades, the government extended UC's contract as manager without competitive bids. But after a series of embarrassing management lapses at Los Alamos, the Department of Energy announced it would seek bids when the management contract expired this September.

Livermore's contract also expires this fall and is headed for the bid process, but the government has indicated it will extend that contract for two years.

UC regents voted in January to submit a bid for its third national lab, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Lawrence Berkeley conducts unclassified research and has been part of the UC system since the 1930s.

Foley said he expects a decision on the Lawrence Berkeley contract soon. He said the government won't say whether there are other competitors.

In the Los Alamos competition, Foley said it's likely there will be at least one bidder, probably a consortium of academic and industrial partners.

Well, for whatever reason, the anonymous posting regarding Susan Seestrom's postponed talk has been hopelessly polluted by childish, immature comments. Perhaps that was somebody's goal. As I see it, I have two choices: delete any comment in the post that is without value (which requires a value judgment) or delete the whole post. I choose to do the latter in this case, because there is not much there worth saving. So as soon as blogger, which is currently slower than [select your most appropriate metaphor here] will let me, that post will be gone.

Thanks to those who tried to impose some kind of order, Adios to the troller.

--Doug

From Anonymous:

600 jobs out of 4,000? ..... "build on the momentum" ? a year later and they are still doing early phases of "staff augmentation" ?

Staff-augmentation portion of Contingent Worker Project begins wrapping up

   To: 
   From: 
   Subject: Snow Days!
   Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 20:02:36 -0700
   Sender: 
   
   I thought I would pass along the thoughts we went
through during the last two mornings.
   
   Monday am we made the call about 4:20 to delay 2
hours.  I went over to the EOC and worked with the staff there.  We had one
roll over accident that closed the truck route before 8:00, about 8:10 we
had a van run off Pajarito Rd. and almost at the same time there was an
accident on Trinity at DP road.  As we were trying to decide whether to open
or delay we had all three routes into the lab closed or would be closed to
clean up accidents.  As I was getting ready to make the call to Ed Wilmot to
close, the State Police closed NM 502 due to a truck that had jack knifed.
At 8:30 am there was no way to get into Los Alamos.  We were also very
concerned about how to get people out of the lab as everything froze at
closing time.
   
   This am we made the call to delay 2 hours at about
4:00 am.  About 8:20 we made the decision to cancel due to the almost
impassable conditions on SR 30 from Espanola and the poor conditions on US
84/285 and the closure of I25.  At 8:30 we were also projecting we would
have less than 50% of the parking lots cleared and sanded by 10:00 am.
   
   As people ask about why we were closed given how
clear the roads were each afternoon please pass the word.

From Anonymous:

One of the issues facing Los Alamos from the beginning has been the cultural clash between science and military viewpoints (Groves vs. Oppenheimer). It’s obvious that a good cultural match will be critical to our success, and the LANL culture has proven very resistant to change. Looking forward, what we need to know is what corporate life might be like under the cultures of the various bidders. Is there anyone out there who has worked for these folks and can share some first-hand knowledge? Potential LANL bidders and partners include Bechtel Corp., CH2M Hill, Computer Science Corp., Northrop Grumman, Washington Group, BWXT Operating Services, General Atomics, and Teledyne Brown Engineering. Any other bidders on the list? Specifically, we need to know:
1. Who is currently interested or not interested?
2. Who would be a good cultural match for LANL?
3. Who would be terrible?
4. What changes would they bring? For example- safety, science, quality of worklife, benefits, RIFs.
5. Have any of you worked for these companies? What did you like/ not like?
6. Would they split our work force?
7. Are they fair or difficult to work for?

Please respond if you have any direct knowledge of these entities. i.e. You have worked for one of these, or you are working on a LANL proposal, or you work for one now & want to post a commercial... Any factual non-ranting info would be appreciated! Thanks

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

According to promises made by the Department of Energy, LANL employees will be able to keep their jobs and their pensions and benefits regardless of who is the next manager of the laboratory.

But according to DOE's written proposals, LANL employees still have nothing definite to count on.

DOE has another chance to settle the matter when it publishes the final version of its request for proposal for LANL, now running many months behind schedule.

And some at the Department of Energy's Hanford site say LANL employees have every reason to be concerned.

"DOE and its contractors at the Hanford site have been assaulting the pension benefits of the Hanford employees since 1996," said Glynn Stevens, who heads the Hanford Retirement Benefits Action Committee.

He said it was obvious during the recompete process that pensions would become a target.

As Stevens described it, the new contractor promptly divided the site between continuing Hanford employees, whose pensions and benefits were maintained, and a new category of enterprise employees who were shorn of their expectations.

DOE has already announced its intention to set up a separate contract at LANL beginning in FY 2007 for environmental management.

Stevens said the division is arbitrary and potentially costly for employees.

Most of the people in the enterprise category are still doing Hanford work and sitting next to someone working for the lab.

The two groups do comparable work, but one group still has the old pensions, including retirement health benefits. The other's pension has been frozen; their health benefit depends on the company where they work; and they've lost their retirement health benefit.

The nest egg they expected has been whittled away.

"My pension is 100 percent less in valuation," Stevens said, due to the loss of a provision that would have paid his pension for ten years certain. Under his former Hanford pension, even if he died, his heirs would have been recipients for at least ten years.

Now, if he dies during his first week of retirement, the pension dies with him. Pension retention has been a prominent issue in the private sector for more than a decade.

In California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for revising the state pension system, including the University of California Retirement Plan.

The state reform, opposed by teachers and other public employees, would substitute a "defined contribution plan" - similar to a 401(k) - for the current "defined benefits plan" - which specifies how much a retiree will make.

Under a defined contribution plan, a pension amounts to whatever has been built up in the individual's retirement account at retirement.

The UCRP was so successful during the '90s that it was earning enough money from investments to pay for its members' contributions. It was self-funded.

In defending the LANL pensions, New Mexico's senators have couched their support in terms of recruitment and retention of leading scientists on behalf of national security concerns.

At Hanford, Stevens said, contractors are under pressure to reduce their long-term liabilities - in other words, their pensions.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Los Alamos National Laboratory has gotten poor marks from the US Department of Energy.

The lab’s poor review was largely based on director Pete Nanos’ decision to shut down operations last July over classified computer disks that couldn’t be located. Lab operations slowly came back on line through January.

The lab developed new security procedures during the shutdown, but it also caused projects to miss crucial deadlines. Most of those projects were in weapons programs.

Lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold says high-risk operations are in the weapons program, and those are the ones most affected by the suspension of work.

The report card says many key facilities were not available for months because of the shutdown.

From Anonymous:

The continuing thread discussing both this message [Sue Seestrom's latest communicatations to ADWP] and the previous message from Seestrom amply demonstrate the impact that Nanos is having on the entire management chain. He is poisonous, his flaws and failures are dragging everyone down with them. The Blog is no exception. The attacks on otherwise good and decent people are driven by the overwhelmingly negative actions and resulting emotions that are running rampant at the Lab. Everything and anything that supports the Director is viewed as propaganda and a de-facto lie. This is because the Director almost completely lacks credibility within the rank-and-file of LANL.

Sue’s situation is particularly problematic because the DX-3 debacle happened in her directorate, under her watch. Thus, she is a co-conspirator in the destruction of a number of people’s lives and careers. When the opportunity arose to make amends for the over-reaction to the never-missing-CREM, Sue stood silent. It seems that she should have resigned rather than continue to take part in the continuing lie. Of course, Sue is just one of many who have de-facto allowed this situation to continue, but she’s the one who had line authority over DX-3. Blood is on her hands, that’s where some of the anger expressed in the Blog comes from. In my opinion the failure of Pete to admit fault in his actions when the facts became known was the final straw for him. Until that time Pete was just some incompetent ex-admiral who got in way over his head. After that he became a malicious force that threatens the existence of this institution. The truth probably is that he had already crossed the line a long time before. In looking at the actions taken during the stand-down, Pete understood fully how wrong he was early on and then engaged in a cover-up. The inflated “charges” against staff that resulting in their terminations was the tool used to cover-up his manifest incompetence.

A manager must choose to either follow their people or follow Pete. At the level of group leader, my experience is that most choose their staff, at the division level most choose duplicity and at the AD level and above it is Pete. This may simply reflect with whom the managers spend their time. The result is the corrosion of the coherence and honesty institution-wide. If one interacts with staff, supporting Pete is the path towards the loss of the Staff’s respect and being the laughing stock of those you are supposed to “lead”. At the AD level one has to tow the line, or Pete will take your head off (metaphorically of course!). The Division level is stuck in the middle.

The problem is that every time the management implements one of Pete’s edicts their credibility takes a hit. Each manager has a finite amount of credibility. You either earn it or spend it. Pete has spent all of his, he is in a severe deficit and he is borrowing it from the management chain. The ADs are out and now he’s tapping into the Division Office’s reserves. When he’s done there, it’s the group leaders. If this happens the wheels will come off of the entire institution.

The thing I don’t know is whether anyone in the upper part of the management chain actually realizes the depth of the crisis. If we could actually have an honest discussion with them, what would we hear?

From Anonymous:

Folks, in the last Nanos all-hands, after he turned off the recording, he told the story of him taking a third star to retire in order to secure his Navy pension to support his elderly mother and invalid wife. As much as most of us, uh, dislike, Nanos, I think it was one of the few things that he said that he actually meant: do what you have to do, and I respect you for it.

I think those near but not yet 50 may be the biggest "losers" in the rebid. Those hovering around 40 could probably take a hit; those close enough to 55 could probably retire. But those around 50: what to do?

With that said, I must say that I did not come here for the pension. Pension is a dying animal. Most Americans do not get a pension. Many large corporations are foregoing pension in lieu of matching contributions to the 401(k). You ought to be maxing out on the 403(b) instead of counting on a pension. Once that's taken care of, I don't waste time thinking about the pension at all.

I've known lots of people that have retired this year. I do not begrudge their desire to safeguard their pension. Many of these people have also said, however, that it's not just the contract: they are fed up with Nanos and with what's happening at the Lab, and they didn't want to bother with it anymore. More respect to them!

Finally, it's a popular belief that we are "owed" a pension because we cannot publish our work (and therefore we perish). I hope to never become so mediocre as to believe that someone owes me a job and a pension because of my particular career choices. I hope I will have the guts to move on, like so many of those that have retired before their time, when I've exhausted my usefulness, and not cling on until I turn 60 just to get "the pension that I am entitled to".

From Anonymous:

"World's Greatest Science Protecting America"

Want to find the single most visible indicator of the damage George P. Nanos has done during his short term as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory? Look no further than the motto that he mandated to be on all official laboratory correspondence, business cards, PowerPoint slides, and memoranda. Staff members despise the motto as arrogant, presumptive, and just plain wrong. Many staff, embarrassed by the bragging, swaggering nature of the motto have created their own customized versions of official LANL letterhead which leaves it off. Others refuse to get official business cards, because they are embarrassed to exchange cards with colleagues from other organizations when the offending claim is required to be on the card.

Greatness is not achieved by proclaiming greatness. In fact, if for some reason a person feels the need to bray to the world how great he is, then he probably isn't.

Albuquerque Journal North
Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Change at LANL Could Be Costly

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer

A change in management at Los Alamos National Laboratory will likely mean the new lab operator will have to pay some state gross receipts taxes, resulting in a significant increase to state revenue.

Billed by federal lawmakers as a means to reduce taxpayer costs and increase efficiencies, the competition for the LANL management contract so far looks like it will cost taxpayers more than if the University of California had continued to run the lab, as it has done for 60-plus years.

Federal officials have already upped the fee for running the nuclear weapons research facility from $8 million a year to a maximum potential of about $60 million a year, still short of what many industrial bidders deem optimal.

With the additional burden of a gross receipts tax, the increased taxpayer costs for LANL management could reach $100 million a year.

The management fee increase was proposed by federal officials as a way to bring in bidders for the LANL contract. Several top competitors, including Lockheed Martin, Batelle and the University of Texas System, among others, have dropped out because the financial risks were deemed too great.

Now, Jan Goodwin, Secretary of the state's Taxation and Revenue Department, is reminding federal officials that any new LANL management arrangement that includes a for-profit company means at least some state gross receipts taxes will have to be paid.

"Non-profit organizations that intend to partner with a for-profit entity for any part of the lab's operations should expect to pay New Mexico gross receipts tax, relative to the portion of the contract performed by the for-profit entity," she wrote federal officials in January.

She advised that "potential applicants, regardless of their corporate structure, should expect to have their tax status carefully monitored by the state of New Mexico."

Under state law, non-profit organizations such as the University of California, LANL's current manager, are exempt from paying gross receipts taxes, though LANL officials have said the laboratory indirectly pays about $30 million in gross receipts taxes through reimbursements to its for-profit contractors subject to the tax.

For years, state lawmakers have discussed the possibility of changing the tax-exempt status of non-profits as a way to increase state revenue. In LANL's case, gross receipts taxes on its $2 billion budget have been estimated at about $80 million a year or more.

Los Alamos County's gross receipts tax rate is 6.5625 percent.

How the additional costs of state gross receipts taxes will be factored into LANL's future budgets— whether into the lab's overall federal budget appropriation or by making the management team itself responsible for the costs— has not been announced.

How the tax would be levied against a limited liability corporation, which federal officials have proposed should be the legal structure of the next LANL manager, has not been determined either.

That a for-profit industrial partner will be part of LANL's next management mix is nearly a certainty, given Energy Department preference for privatization as a means to save money.

In years past, LANL officials have fought to prevent a change in the lab's tax status, asserting such a move would have a devastating ripple effect on the economy of northern New Mexico.

When state legislation was proposed in 2003 to make LANL liable for gross receipts taxes, LANL officials said such a move would result in at least 370 lost LANL jobs and the loss of another 750 jobs tied to LANL contractors.

For those of you who wish to read this blog with an RSS news reader, here is the link:

http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com/atom.xml

--Doug

From Anonymous:

I've been reading this blog for a while now, with great interest, I might add. I have been noticing that DOE also reads the blog, apparently with great interest as well, given the frequency and length of their visits throughout any given day. This caused me to wonder: does DOE think they have been as complicit in the horrible management of LANL under George P. Nanos as most of the other posters to the blog seem to feel? Then I had yet another thought (I was having a big day): under every other DOE secretary we have had the misfortune to have "leading" LANL, there was absolutely no hope of effective management direction, or, as in our present case, intercession from DOE.

Until now. I confess to have gotten a very favorable impression of Secretary Bodman. If there is _any_ hope that the absolutely unbelievable morass we have let ourselves be led into has a path out, it will in part be through the actions of a for-once strong, effective DOE leadership.

Secretary Bodman, I do believe we need your help.

-A LANL Staff Member

Anonymous sent me this. It was posted once before, but it's probably worth a repeat.

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-3/p10.html

From Anonymous:

The Pension is a BIG DEAL -

I have over 20 years service and the pension for me is a big deal. I
am not a scientist, overpaid manager or have my entire family working
here. I will be 55 years old this September and over the next five
years the monthly annuity increases by $300 per month/year = $1500 per
month increase at 60. If one was to take a lump sum it means a
difference/increase of $230,000 by age 60. I doubt that any new
contractor or UC privatized pension plan would be this generous. I
came to work here at the height of my career because I believed that
the work here was cutting edge and necessary for the defense of this
great country. The pension plan was a major part of my decision to
come here. Beautiful country here but its still out in the sticks. In
general if the pension plan is greatly diminshed as some are bent on
doing then I am afraid LANL will become a hollow shell of itself and
just another  government failure.

From Anonymous:

All:

Sue Seestrom, who received a bit of an unfair roasting on the blog a few weeks ago, has sent out another AWDP communications, complete with a wry reference to the blog. She was perhaps ill-advised last time to tell us all, via a somewhat smarmy allegory to "get our heads back in the game", but let's just chalk that up to inexperience on her part (unless she does it again). A couple of interesting tidbits below.

Dear Colleagues-

This is the ninth weekly update in my "irregular" communications to ADWP. I hope that this note conveys to you the importance I place upon communication. I see a large part of my job as enabling your work. I hope that my attempt at openness in communication will encourage you to communicate back - either through your management chain or directly to me. I am pleased that I have received a number of emails from people I had not spoken to before as a result of this message.

• CCS-Discrete Simulation Science - I spent a very interesting hour and a half with Jim Smith and Bill Feiereisen learning about the work of CCS-DSS. It was very impressive. Although this group (the former CCS-5) has lost some key staff this year, they have managed to add 5 new people to their projects. The work of this group really takes modeling of urban infrastructure to a level beyond what others do. I was really hit with the importance of foreign national scientists to their efforts. I want to say again how strongly I value the contributions of our foreign national colleagues, and my commitment to make life here as easy as possible for them.

• STOP Walk-around - I did my first mentored walk-around with the Director and John Immele this week. We visited LANSCE and the Weapons Neutron Research Facility. We had planned to observe the facility work connected to the repair of a major water leak that impacted both Lujan Center and WNR. Luckily, the incredible team work of the LANSCE/KSL/FMD people working the issue had already finished this work. Kudos to Floyd Gallegos and the entire team. We walked through the "other" Blue room (AKA Target 2) and got some points on safety observation - certainly a skill I could stand to improve. We walked through the Target Four South Yard and visited a neutron flight path where scientists from Intel were testing chips in the neutron beam; this mimics the dose chips receive from cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. The users seemed to think the LANSCE specific training they received took a lot of time, but they were able to get it done. That reminds me - one of the areas of focus for the Operational Efficiency Project is to improve Laboratory training. This is a personal mission of mine - albeit one I have yet to make huge progress on.

• QAS-1 Audit of Quality in the Weapons Program - A lot of this week was taken up by this audit. I presented a discussion of Quality in R&D on Monday - representing the status of ADWP and other organizations doing R&D for the weapons program. Preparation for this audit - a major part was a self assessment of our implementation status - was led by Larry Cox. I want to thank the Quality Points of Contact in our Divisions who did the bulk of the work: Steve J. Greene, Kay Fletcher, Tony L. Tomei, Jeff Brown, Michael Haertling , and Lori L. Saunders. The audit agreed with our own assessment that we were non- compliant. They also agreed that the actual quality of our work is excellent, but we lack the overarching framework of policy and management systems to ensure performance. In my view, quality is like safety, security, integrity - values that we incorporate in our work, not something we paste on at the end.

• Flexible work week - Each week a few of you ask me about progress on re-instituting of some kind of flexible work week. I do understand how much going back to something like the 9/80 would improve morale - as do a number of my colleagues on the EB. ISR Division completed their pilot business case and presented it to ADA Rich Marquez, They are doing a few changes and I believe they will present it to the Director this week. I will be pushing for the EB to act on this as soon as possible.

• Making it easier to do work - I have been working at or for this Laboratory for 26 years, more than half of that time as a working scientist. I believe I understand what motivates most of you - and that is the importance of the work you do. I therefore understand how frustrated you are by the shut-down, and by bureaucratic things that make your work harder. I am trying to find things the institution can do to relieve the burden on you, consistent with meeting our obligations to our customers and outside regulators. I encourage you to send along ideas you have for changes we would make with that in mind.

• Communication Communication with all of you is very important to me. These weekly notes are one attempt to improve communications. I have started a new activity - we are calling it "walk-abouts" (different from management walk arounds). The intent is to get out and spend 1/2 hour talking to people about their research. It is also almost always possible to catch me in my office between 5:30 and 6:30 for a brief chat (we usually don't schedule that). I was happy to have such a visit from Jeff Goettee of X-4 Friday evening; he stopped by to talk about his work on the LANSCE refurbishment IPD.

Have a productive and safe week!
Susan

From Anonymous:

In my humble opinion, there are two primary losers in this debacle: the Nation, through the virtual destruction of a prime asset, the talented and once committed workforce of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the UC, through their failure to live up to their putative commitment to provide the Laboratory a working environment of intellectual honesty and integrity. President Dynes has been told of the Director's regular abusiveness in large groups, in small groups, in individual interactions (even at his Executive Board), by the Robbie Vogt et al team he sent to take the pulse of the workforce. This team heard the truth, the depth of the despair and lack of individual empowerment, and communicated it back to President Dynes, twice and in no uncertain terms. President Dynes either did not hear, was reassured by Admiral Foley that all was in order, or he had painted himself into a corner and did not know how to extricate himself. I think all three factors played into his inaction. He is in a difficult situation -- that is clear, but the end result is that the reputation of UC has been tarnished far more by their lack of leadership than by the sequence of operational problems that occurred on their watch. The first they could have done something about; it is less clear that the latter is under their control. I understand that steps are being taken to replace Nanos, to find him a face-saving exit and I laud that greatly, but I fear it is almost, perhaps is, too late.

From Anonymous:

Hey Grumman! Hughes! Bechtel! Washington Group International, Jacobs Engineering, Honeywell, CH2M, BWXT, Fluor! Getcher insights here! Want to learn how UC lost the contract? Read all about it on lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com. Discover how _not_ to run a national lab, *starting* with who not to pick as director (not to mention how you pick him: National search? We don't need no stinkin' national search! We'll appoint one of our Good Ol' Admiral Boys).

Want to hear how not to do safety? It's all documented in the annals of the blog. Security? Double ditto. Public relations (Hi, Baghdad Bob! Hi, Comical Ali!) Yep, once again, read all about how not to do it, right here! Want to avoid lawsuits? Use the University Of California as your guide on what not to do whilst running your "World's Greatest Science Protecting America" national laboratory.

From Anonymous:

Main Entry: cow.boy
Pronunciation: 'kau-"boi
Function: noun
1: one who tends cattle or horses; especially : a usually mounted cattle-ranch hand
2: A person currently winning an argument with a Nanite.

From Anonymous:

http://www.abqjournal.com/north/320637north_news03-12-05.htm?tease

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Report on LANL's Failings Made Public

By Adam Rankin
Journal Staff Writer

In January, Los Alamos laboratory managers learned the U.S. Department of Energy was penalizing the nuclear weapons facility for poor operations. This week, the federal report card detailing the laboratory's shortcomings in 2004 was made public.

The single largest factor contributing to LANL's poor performance ratings was the unprecedented laboratory work shutdown and resumption process initiated in July by lab director Pete Nanos.

Because of the poor ratings, the University of California, which operates LANL, received only $2.9 million out of a possible $8.7 million laboratory management fee for running the nuclear weapons lab in 2004. The $5.8 million fee cut was the largest ever assessed against a national laboratory and was the first time such a fee penalty has been assessed against LANL.

The shutdown, despite improving procedures and raising important safety and security issues for review and improvement, forced laboratory divisions to miss crucial deadlines, according to LANL's 2004 Annual Performance Appraisal.

Of the projects that missed deadlines, most were in the weapons program at Los Alamos, which is the second-largest production facility in the nuclear weapons complex.

"The discussion of operational milestones not met is due to the work suspension," explained LANL spokesman Jim Danneskiold. "High-risk operations are the ones in the weapons program, and those are the ones that were most affected by the work suspension."

He said despite the setbacks, LANL managers fully intend to meet the deadlines in 2005.

Because of the shutdown, LANL delivered only 50 percent of "surveillance components," 82 percent of required packaging materials, 69 percent of neutron tube targets and 98 percent of dynamic experimentation products, according to the appraisal. Also, "Many key facilities were unavailable for the entire fourth quarter of (fiscal year) 2004 because of the suspension of operations," according to the review.

Of the 10 overall criteria that LANL was judged on, the laboratory received three scores of "outstanding" for its national security strategic objectives, preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and community initiatives; four "good" scores for effective business systems, developing the work force, nuclear warhead assessment and certification, and weapon stewardship; two "satisfactory" scores for implementing a balanced weapons program and completing facility projects; and one "unsatisfactory" score for "maintaining a secure, safe, environmentally sound, effective, and efficient operations and infrastructure basis in support of mission objectives."

Also considered "unsatisfactory" was LANL's environmental compliance for meeting state regulations and for missing waste shipment deadlines.

Despite the poor operations rating, DOE reviewers praised several aspects of LANL's work in financial management and the weapons program, which they noted was hindered by the shutdown.

8:40pm 3/11/2005:

Regarding the post below: Blogger.com seems to be back up and working. Anonymous comments are now being accepted again.

--Doug

5:34pm 3/11/2005

Sorry for the inconvenience, but blogger.com has been broken all day. It is not allowing anonymous comments to posts. I will announce when the problem has been fixed. In the mean time, feel free to send a bug report to Blogger Support. Blogger support seems a bit nonchalant regarding timely response to bug reports, so maybe they just need to hear from more of the people that their bugs are affecting.

In the mean time, hold those thoughts.

--Doug

At some point in time today the number of hits (page views) to this site passed 200,000.

Thanks for your interest.

--Doug

A few weeks back I wrote Senator Bingaman to express my concerns regarding the current state of morale at LANL: said morale being a direct result of our shutdown that started July, 2004, and which is still in effect for parts of the lab.  This is his response.



    March 8, 2005



Mr. Douglas Roberts
XXXXXX
Santa Fe, New Mexico  87506

Dear Douglas:

Thank you for writing me regarding the current state of
affairs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).  I
appreciate your taking the time to write.

I understand your concerns about the current situation at
LANL.  I remain concerned about the low morale and the impact
that the stand-down at LANL has had on New Mexico's economy
and LANL employees, especially the low and mid-career
scientists.  When I met last year with Linton Brooks, Director of
the National Nuclear Security Administration, I asked him to
consider the long-term repercussions of keeping LANL closed for
such a long period of time and urged him to have LANL resume
unclassified operations as soon as possible.  I believe that the work
performed by individuals, like yourself, at LANL on a daily basis
is very important to the country, and I am proud that our national
labs play such a key role in helping our country meet its energy
and national security needs.

It is my hope that Director Nanos and the employees at
LANL can work collaboratively to ensure the safety and a quick
resumption of all work activities at LANL without decreasing
morale.  That said, I am aware of the recent reports that many of
the security lapses at LANL were in fact due to clerical errors,
such as the disappearance of two Classified Removable Electronic
Media (CREM) disks that in fact never existed.  Safety at LANL
should be of the utmost concern for the sake of national security
and LANL employees.  But I also believe the employees have
worked very hard to ensure the highest level of safety at the
LANL, and they must be recognized for their efforts.  As I monitor
the situation at LANL, I want to assure you that I will continue to
keep the interests of the Los Alamos employees in mind.

Again, thank you for your letter.  Please do not hesitate to
contact me in the future regarding any other matters of importance
to you and your community.

Sincerely,


JEFF BINGAMAN

    United States Senator

Northrop builds a team to lead bid for LANL
Santa Fe New Mexican…Diana Heil
March 11, 2005

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/11435.html

As the competition to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory nears,
Northrop Grumman Corp. has assembled a team to run head-tohead with the
University of California and Bechtel National.

Northrop Grumman will have the lead role in a partnership with CH2M Hill
of Denver, which would handle environmental cleanup and manufacture
triggers for nuclear weapons. “We’re pressing ahead,” David Amerine of
CH2M Hill said in an interview Thursday. A third player, Teledyne Brown,
would cover minor aspects of operations. The team hasn’t settled on a
university partner yet.

Last week in Washington, D.C., the trio met with the board overseeing the
competition . Amerine said his team suggested ways to make the contest
less slanted toward the University of California, the lab’s operator since
its inception in 1943.

The scoring system in the request for proposals — a draft document at this
point — puts too much weight on science and technology and not enough
emphasis on environmental cleanup and the manufacturing of triggers,
Amerine said.

In the latest version of the bidding criteria, the government increased
the amount of money the next lab operator could make, from the previous
figure of $30 million a year to about $60 million. The Northrop Grumman
team suggested raising the lucre even higher along with higher financial
risk, or offering a small base fee with the possibility to earn much more
depending on good performance .

At last week’s meeting, the trio asked federal officials how serious the
Energy Department is about bringing management change to Los Alamos.

“I genuinely have the impression that the Department of Energy is
interested in change,” Amerine said, “but there are other political
factors at play.”

After a series of security, safety and business lapses in the past few
years, then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Congress decided to
put the Los Alamos management contract out to bid for the first time in
history . A new contractor could be selected as soon as October .

Bidders will be scored, in part, on the senior laboratory leadership they
propose. Northrop Grumman has taken the bold move of advertising five top
positions at LANL, including the deputy director’s seat, in The Washington
Post and elsewhere.

UC regents have yet to vote on whether to enter the competition and won’t
do so until the final request for proposals is published. However, the
university is reviewing potential senior managementteam members and
considering a full range of candidates, including the incumbents, school
spokesman Chris Harrington said.

The University of California and Northrop Grumman, which has offices in
New Mexico, could turn out to be the top two contenders; however , some
interested parties are choosing to keep silent. Nuclear Watch of New
Mexico — in concert with other anti-nuke groups — is gearing up for the
competition.

Those who say they’ve dropped out of the race as prime bidders include:
Lockheed Martin Corp., Battelle Memorial Institute, University of Texas,
Texas A & M University and Computer Sciences Corp.

From Anonymous:

Many folks who dedicated their careers to classified weapons research were well aware that that decision effectively ended any academic opportunities we might have had. It is estimated that in five years a physicist has lost half his value if he is not actively publishing. Working full time on weapons work always precluded any serious publications. in the late seventies and early eighties this was well understood by the lab. The generous pension plan was one way of making up for the serious truncation of career opportunities. since the cessation of nucler testing it appears that those with the knowhow to make weapons work are much less valued. Just keeping the offices filled will do since the lab can still say our weapons are backed by a 2 billion/year lab. No need to keep good people since there is no benchmark to measure their effectiveness. Thus no need to have great pensions. The quality of the pension plan is not divorced from the quality of the science.

From Anonymous:

It seems from some recent posts that issues are
getting muddled. There are several different ones,
some connected and some not.
1) The unethical behavior of Nanos - in direct
violation of the LANL code of ethics, personally
abusing people verbally, by threatening to use the
legal system (not citing truth and justice, but by
stating that his lawyers will "last longer"), and
firing people without (or despite) due process.
2) The bad judgment of Nanos - shutting down the Lab
for months.  Even if DOE was threatening to
shut us down, Nanos could have negotiated a short
stand-down.  Yesterday (3/10) an "Apprentice"
candidate was fired by Donald Trump because he didn't
negotiate the best deal he could have - did Pete
negotiate the best shut-down deal with DOE?
3) Pete used the shutdown to punish -  project leaders
and group leader were told verbatim what to tell their
sponsors, resulting in several project cancellations
and subsequent departures (contrary to what Tom Bowles
wrote on the LANL bulletin board).

None of this has anything to do with contract renewals
and pensions, which we now come to:
1) A new or additional contractor (Bechtel?) could
change the way we work here for the worse.  We did not
have "academic freedom" but the UC contract guaranteed
"intellectual freedom" - the ability to discuss all
points of view based on their scientific merits,
regardless of policy.  This will seriously impact
hiring and morale of new and veteran staff.
2) Pension plan change - this is unlikely to effect
entry-level recruiting, but it will have a
major detrimental effect on the morale of veteran
employees, probably causing many of them to leave.

Lets keep the discussion focused on the issues without
confusing them!

From Anonymous:

This post started with a simple question, “could I write something here and sign my name? And what are the implications of doing this?” To get to the point, the answer is no. Why is worth some comment.

I agree with Brad’s [Holian] assertion that we should be discussing the future of the Lab. It is vital right now, and it is something that should be a continual dialog. I’ve posted to the blog before on this matter and I’m proud of what I wrote, I’d love to sign my name, so why not?

In a nutshell it would be too dangerous to my family. They depend on me, and the current Lab leadership has demonstrated that they will destroy people who get in their way. I am not in a position where I can afford to cause them harm for the cause of the Lab. I’m sure that my position on this matter says something about the present situation and myself.

If I did sign my name, it would be a temporary boon to my reputation with my peers. Nanos is hated and his departure would be seen as a reason to celebrate among those I associate with. If I said something positive, I would be the object of ridicule and lose the respect of my peers. That says volumes about the current state of affairs as well. I’m sure this situation is repeated all over the Lab. If someone is comfortable with speaking positively about Nanos, it speaks volumes about both the person and their circumstances.

I’ll close with some observations about our leadership past and present. I sat down eye-to-eye with John Browne while he was Director and spoke about a serious management issue, the competence and behavior of people in leadership positions. Years earlier I had a heated e-mail exchange with John when he was an AD, I was a lowly staff member in his directorate. In both cases, I communicated with John without fear or reservation. Pete Nanos does not engender the same level of trust and openness. Anytime I’ve either seen or heard about someone raising an issue with Pete they have their head handed to them (“sit down and shutup!”). I’m fairly certain that John did little to deal with the matter I discussed, but at least he was open to listening and I trusted him enough to relate the problem to him. John’s ineffective management was a problem; Pete’s lack of communication insures that he never will hear about the problems in the first place.

What is worse? You be the judge. Maybe the best way to state the questions is (apologies to Ronald Reagan)

“is LANL better off now, than it was two years ago?”

From Anonymous:

"Great Pensions" over "Great Science"? What a specious argument. I have been at this lab for less than 10 years so I don't have a significant pension to lose when the contract changes. But I have colleagues that are afraid they will effectively lose about half of their pension benefits by not quitting or retiring. They would be fools to not be worrying about it. They have families and mortgages. If we haven't learned anything else recently we should at least learn that NO ONE is really looking out for us EXCEPT ourselves.

Harping on all the 'whining employees' that can't see beyond their endangered pensions is just STUPID. Let's see how fast Sen. Dominici would respond if the Senator was asked to happily accept a 50% cut in his benefits just as he was ready to retire. It is all a matter of perspective. After all, comedy is really just a tragedy that is happening to someone else.

But I didn't come here because of UC or the pension or 'in-state' tuition at California schools. Most people that I ask still can't give me one concrete example of a direct benefit that we get from UC -except- the retirement plan. Really. Maybe it is just the people that I work with. I came here to make a contribution to what I thought was the stated mission of the lab. If we are not really going to do pursue it as an institution then please somebody just admit it so I can go work where somebody really does care about national security. Some place where the structure of the institution actually facilitates getting something done. How often do we feel that we get something done 'inspite' of the institutional inertia?

If your job is JUST a job then get out of the way. There really are some people that come here to do defense work. There are young people here who feel that this is how they pay back uncles and fathers and brothers who were at Pearl Harbor, Corregidor, Inchon, Fallujah and every other hell-hole in between. We should be here to give the President a credible deterrent and provide enhanced capability to our armed forces. We should be here to be 'mission critical' not merely employed.

If that is not ultimately why YOU are here, well, get off the Mesa. Not everyone needs to be a plutonium metallurgist or an explosives technician but you should care about 'our' success. We should expect to succeed at our mission, not just successfully retire.

Welcome to Bechtel

This post is inspired by a recent article about a
Bechtel-UC partnership.
[ "Rumors of Bechtel-UC lab venture has bidders’ attention"
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 ]

"Welcome to Bechtel Nevada". These words greeted
a roomful of EG&G Los Alamos employees, including me,
in early 97. The greeter was Dennis Hayes, a manager
at the newly-formed Bechtel Nevada. (Hayes is now on the
T-Div roster at LANL). BN had just taken over the contract
to run the Nevada Test Site. Expect a similar greeting
if UC and its partner Bechtel win the contract for LANL.
You'll be joining them, not vice versa.

The General Manager of BN from 2002-2005 was Fred Tarantino,
currently AD for weapons programs at LANL. Is Bechtel
already here?

Let me give you a taste of what working at the Lab will
be like under Bechtel. I worked as a Scientific Specialist
at BN for five years before coming to LANL 2.5 years ago.
Before that I worked for 20 years for EG&G supporting LANL
at the NTS in the bad old weapons test days.

Also expect:
-- Lots of arrogant, clueless managers straight from
 construction projects in Saudi Arabia.
-- Lots of managers rotating through between construction
 projects in South America.
-- Six Sigma applied to everything ( Fred T. was really
 big on that.)
-- No eating lunch at your desk (unprofessional).
-- Buying your own safety equipment, shoes etc.
-- Ethics training featuring inspirational videos by
 Riley Bechtel, CEO of Bechtel. (This was the last straw
 for me.)
-- Total revision of project planning. One of our local section
 heads left BN in disgust shortly before I did when he
 had to fill out a BN project planning form asking how
 many rental cars and portapotties he needed for his
 development project. His response was " I don't think
 this form applies: I don't know where the bridge is,
 how long it is or what it's made of. And the specs may
 evolve as we start building it."

My guess is that Fred T. will be the new Lab Director.
He's smart, able and ex-army special forces.

Please don't take these comments as a negative reflection
on the many very competent and hard-working people at BN
who do some key work for LANL in several areas, notably
at DARHT. But they do it in spite of the nonsense handed
down from BN senior management.

BTW, I heard more than a month ago from a BN employee
that a senior manager had told a group of BN employees
Bechtel was the UC partner. And you can bet
that Bechtel will not be the junior partner.

Still sure you want UC to get the contract?

David F. Simmons, Soon-to-be-Ex TSM

DX Division (where seldom is heard a discouraging word)

From Anonymous:

Considering how much time the Nanites spend on this blog, they must be taking it very seriously.

But how will they explain away these facts?:
* Los Alamos has a good-to-average safety record, as documented by public data.
* Los Alamos has a good-to-average security record, as documented by public data.
* Director Pete Nanos slandered the Lab workforce and needlessly damaged LANL's reputation when he called us "cowboys" and "buttheads" and denounced a "culture of arrogance" refuted by Secretary Bodman.
* The Director cost the United States an estimated billion dollars and damaged national security by an unnecessary shutdown, which will eventually total one year in length in some divisions.
* The Lab, under Nanos' orders, fired people without proper justification, and will probably lose several expensive lawsuits as a result.
* The Director is still pursuing angry grudges against several staffers, according to his statements in front of groups of people.
* The Director continues to waste taxpayer dollars and critical time on fad programs and discredited safety schemes.

"I like reading it to see how stupid some people are." [Comment made on another post - DJR]

I see. They won't.

From the 3/10/2005 defensetech.org:

LOS ALAMOS: HELP WANTED

It ain't easy, running the world's most important nuclear lab. There are billions of dollars to worry about. Tons of lethally radioactive material. And thousands of scientist employees who think they're smarter than you -- and are probably right. Worst of all, if recent history is any guide, you'll be kicked to the curb before your contract is up, the victim of the latest in a series of seemingly-endless scandals.

So maybe that's why Los Alamos is advertising for top jobs in the Washington Post's classified section. Here's one of the ads, for the Principal Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons Programs.

Responsible for the technical and administrative supervision of approximately 2,500 scientific and administrative personnel, and a budget of about $1 Billion.

Manages the Laboratory nuclear weapons technology program, which includes nuclear weapons design... ensure[s] confidence in the safety, security and reliability of the nations nuclear weapons stockpile.

Serves as the Laboratory focal point for all nuclear weapons activities, including the assessment and certification of the performance of the LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] designed enduring nuclear stockpile. Activities include surveillance, maintenance, and stockpile life extension and limited-scale fabrication of a variety of nuclear and non-nuclear components.

Responsible for the pit manufacturing function, which includes the development and implementation of the capability to fabricate plutonium pits [the hearts of thermonuclear weapons] on all types of pits in the enduring nuclear stockpile...

Must have exceptional management skills on large scale programs approaching a 1Billion/year or more.

Desire a nationally recognized expert in the field of nuclear weapons technology, with a strong background in nuclear physics and nuclear weapons design and evaluation.

If that position doesn't quite match up with your expertise, don't worry. There are others available, including the lab's #2 slot, Deputy Director, and associate directorships for science and technology, international security, and engineering and evaluations.

(via LANL: The Real Story)

Bad faith at Los Alamos

The breakdown of an old contract threatens to leave a great national laboratory gravely weakened.

For an outsider, it's hard to imagine that conditions at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico could get much worse. When two disks containing classified data went missing last summer, federal investigators descended on the lab, operations were suspended for months, and scientists were berated as "buttheads" by Peter Nanos, the lab's director. Now, it turns out, those disks never existed (see Nature 433, 447; 2005).

[...]

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v434/n7030/full/434123b_fs.html

From Anonymous:

I went to Physical Review Letters webpage and did a search for "Los Alamos" in "affiliation"
for a one-year period, then counted the number of papers published each month. March data include papers both already published and accepted. The graph represents only one journal in a multutude, and I make no claim to perfect accuracy. In the March 2005 issue, the range of original submission dates for papers ranges from March to November 2004, with the interval between submission and publication averaging around six months. Thus the somewhat dispersed impact of LANL shutdown should start showing up about now. I make no comments on the graph, but I will gladly update it and refine it if the readers find it useful.

Graph

Rumors of Bechtel-UC lab venture has bidders’ attention

By Donna Heil | The New Mexican
March 9, 2005

Neither Bechtel National nor the University of California will confirm reports that they are teaming up to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory.

But Tuesday, as another potential bidder said it would drop out of the competition for the contact, it endorsed UC partnering with Bechtel, a mammoth engineering and construction company based in Frederick, Md.

"I think Bechtel makes UC a strong team," Michael Plett, of the Computer Sciences Corp., in Falls Church, Va., said in a telephone interview.

Although officials at the University of California, which has operated the lab since 1943 for the federal government, won't confirm they definitely plan to bid for the contract -- Bechtel's name has been circulating as one of UC's likely partners.

Andy Kellsey of Bechtel National said his company remains interested but declined to say whether his company is forming a partnership with UC. "We're still following the procurement," he said.

Months ago, Kellsey said Bechtel would consider being a lead bidder but Tuesday he would not define the role Bechtel is seeking.

Gov. Bill Richardson, in an interview Tuesday, offered his support for such a combination.

"If the reports are true, I do believe that Bechtel would be a good partner to the University of California," he said.

Last year, Richardson made a trip to California to encourage university regents to bid for the contract with an industrial partner and the University of New Mexico. The industrial partner would look after security, safety and other matters that have vexed the university, and the university would focus on managing scientific research.

Richardson said Bechtel could enhance the engineering and scientific strength of the lab.

"It would be good to take advantage of their contacts," Richardson said of Bechtel. "They are strong managers. They are in good financial shape. They have worldwide experience."

He said UC might bid with two industrial partners but declined to name the other one.

Years of safety, security and financial problems at the lab prompted then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to open the management contract to others for the first time in history.

Now, as competitors jockey for position -- forming teams and seeking key management personnel behind the scenes -- players are coy and evasive. Firm commitments probably won't be made until the federal government publishes the official version of the bidding criteria -- which sets forth the amount of money the government is willing to pay the lab manager, the risks involved and the expectations. The Energy Department hopes to name the winner by October.

Northrop Grumman's Information Technology sector, based in McLean, Va., remains interested in being a prime bidder but has not made a decision, Juli Ballesteros, a company spokesman, said Tuesday. In a bold move, the company just advertised for the jobs of deputy director and four associate directors to work at the lab. Of course, filling the positions will be contingent on Northrop Grumman winning the contract, Ballesteros said.

"That's the potential," Ballesteros said. "If we do make the decision to bid, we would have to ramp up pretty quickly and get the talent in there."

She imagines other bidders will do the same.

Northrop Grumman, with offices in Los Alamos and Albuquerque, has 445 employees in New Mexico. A branch of the company that deals with space technology currently has a relationship with LANL, she said.

To find out who's in and who's out, The New Mexican called interested parties that attended a conference last December in Albuquerque about the competition.

Of those reached by phone Tuesday, Computer Sciences Corp. was the only company that had lost interest. "Money and a whole bunch of other things came together," Plett said, noting that CSC decided a week ago it probably would not bid.

The following companies did not return calls: CH2M Hill, Fluor Corp. and BWXT. Prior to this report, Lockheed Martin, Bettelle Memorial Institute and the University of Texas withdrew interest in being prime bidders.

CSC has 40 years of experience in assisting the aerospace and defense industry with business and technology management.

Plett said the federal government crafted a good proposal, and he supports the effort to preserve a beefy pension plan for current employees. "I think Los Alamos laboratory is a jewel," he said. "I think the benefits package has helped make it what it is."

Six months ago, CSC might have been the only prime contractor poised for the job, Plett said, but he doesn't feel bad about quitting the race now. "I think they're going to have a fine competition," Plett said.

He mentioned the University of California, Northrop Grumman and Jacobs.

But Dan Pierre, a Jacobs Sverdrup representative who attended the December conference, had little to say on the matter. "We're not ready to announce," he said.

Representatives from Washington Group International -- who attended the December conference -- were upbeat but tightlipped.

Jim Landers of Washington Group International said, "We're interested," but he would not say in what capacity.

Meanwhile, Landers said he has become an avid reader of the LANL: The Real Story, an Internet blog started by lab computer scientist Doug Roberts, where gripes are aired and issues are discussed.

"I think everybody's reading it. It's pretty insightful," Landers said.

Few companies and universities have what it takes to manage a nuclear-weapons laboratory. Here's the rundown so far:

Not interested

The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/07/MNGOTBLII71.DTL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, March 7, 2005 (SF Chronicle)
UC's Los Alamos chances looking better
Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer


  UC's chances for continuing to manage the nation's leading nuclear
weapons
lab, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, have won an apparent boost with
the withdrawal of one of the most formidable potential competitors.
  The Battelle Memorial Institute, which runs five other U.S.
Department of
Energy labs, decided not to compete in order to focus on its existing
lab contracts, said Bill Madia, Battelle's executive vice president for
laboratory operations.
  UC has managed the Los Alamos facility, birthplace of the atomic
bomb,
since its World War II origin, but security and management lapses
prompted the Department of Energy to open the contract to outside
bidding. The current contract expires Sept. 30.
  The removal of Battelle from the competition is likely to boost UC's
prospects for keeping the contract if UC regents decide to proceed with
their own bid and if the shrinking field of potential competitors
doesn't provoke a delay in the contract renewal process.
  Battelle, based in Columbus, Ohio, just recently added its fifth
national
lab when a Battelle-led consortium won a 10-year, $4.8 billion contract
to manage the 3,000-employee Idaho National Laboratory. That new
responsibility, in combination with seeing the Department of Energy's
draft competition guidelines issued in December for managing the
8,300-employee Los Alamos facility, convinced Battelle to withdraw,
Madia said in a telephone interview Sunday.
  Battelle was a top potential competitor for Los Alamos because it
also
manages or co-manages the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
  "We thought it would be better for us to focus on running these five
labs
with excellence rather than extend beyond our current resources," Madia
said.
  He said Battelle decided not to compete about six weeks ago but did
not
announce it. "We don't typically announce no-bid decisions," he said.
  Battelle's withdrawal follows that of several other potential
competitors,
including the University of Texas, Texas A&M University and Lockheed
Martin. Among those still believed to be eyeing a bid are Northrop
Grumman and General Atomics.
  The Department of Energy is expected to release its formal request
for
proposals for the Los Alamos contract in the next few weeks, triggering
a 60- day period during which official proposals would have to be
submitted. Selection is expected this summer.
  UC spokesman Chris Harrington declined to speculate Sunday on whether
Battelle's withdrawal would strengthen UC's chances.
  "The university is not watching the playing field here," he said,
"but we
are focused on the ongoing playing field of managing our national labs."
  UC also is the founding manager of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Those labs'
contracts also were opened to competition, though continued UC
management of the Berkeley lab appears assured. Congress authorized
extending the Livermore contract until 2007.
  UC officials have been actively preparing a bid to keep the Los
Alamos
contract, and UC regents are expected to vote soon on whether to give
the green light. A UC bid would likely include a private-sector partner.
  "The University of California is preparing a very strong bid (for Los
Alamos) should the regents decide to compete," Harrington said.
  E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle

From Anonymous:

It is worth pointing out that there was a laser eye injury in mid January
at the DOE laboratory NREL (Natl Renewable Energy Lab.) in Colorado. The
accident was in many ways similar to the LANL accident. A preliminary
accident report is available at:

http://www.bnl.gov/esh/shsd/ih/PDF/NREL_LASER_INC.pdf

There have been no expressions of outrage from Congressman Hobson or
Congressman Barton.

There have been no stern warnings issued from the Secretary of Energy.

There have been no calls to cancel the contract to run NREL.

The NREL Director has suspended Class 3b and 4 laser operations, but has
not called for a labwide shutdown.

There have been no public announcements of the accident, as a google will show.

Letter to the Editor from the 3/8/2005 Los Alamos Monitor.

http://lamonitor.com/articles/2005/03/08/letters/letters01.txt

From Anonymous:

The sidebar link on the left called "Reader's Forum" is no longer where it used to be, between "Job Openings" and "Research Library". Just a gaping hole there now.

http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/newsbulletin/2005/03/08/

Referring to the ta-15-crem-incident-and-aftermath post:

In the interest of accuracy I would like to address a few of the recent comments that have been made. I am the coauthor of the CREM article, and I stand by every word of it. We were very careful to make certain that the article submitted was scrupulously accurate and could be verified. There is not a single statement in this piece that cannot be corroborated by witnesses or backed up by supporting documentation. The individual who posted his comments at 7:44 said the “account is extremely biased, self-serving, and emotional.” I would submit to you that the months of erroneous information fed to the world by the Director was biased, self-serving, and indeed emotional. Above all it was untrue.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to remain completely dispassionate when writing about an issue that one is so deeply involved in. Considering the devastating consequences of the Director’s actions and strident claims, I believe our words were reasoned and appropriate. While some might feel our account is self-serving, our right to defend ourselves with facts is completely justified. Who in his right mind would silently tolerate the indignity and injustice of a false accusation followed by outrageous punishment? In our opinion, the time for balance on these issues was long past due. Recall as well the Director’s remark that a few innocent people might be casualties before the Lab was able to resume operations.

While there was a direct case made to fire two employees involved in the barcode incident and responsible for the inventory error, Todd and I were not among them. Contrary to the assertion of the post, I am still a Lab employee. Moreover, the federal authorities found that Todd and I were “completely nonculpable,” which is a very important point. The federal investigation found that we were both blameless in the events that transpired, yet Todd was fired and I was suspended for ten days. These actions were political in nature and designed to lend credence to the shutdown and the Director’s claims that maverick employees were the cause of his CREM problems. That is why we are fighting the sanctions taken against us. Neither Todd nor I were signatories on any of the documents in question, so indeed no mention is made of that in our statement.

The 9:25 post says that we avoid inconvenient aspects of what happened based on his assertion that if someone at DX had been more careful this blog would not exist. The posted statement is a nonsequitur. We address the fact that the inventory was inaccurate, which was the root cause of the CREM debacle, and a problem, I might add, that we uncovered and reported to the SIT through our OCSR. The Director knew about the hypothesis on July 17, as did NNSA.

Lastly, I would like to address the 10:48 post. The footnote is not misleading. The Director did call me a fool. If you were actually in the room that day then you know that Nanos had lost his temper long before I told him that “his black cowboy hat was a slap in the face to everyone in the group.” Your post is misleading because you fail to provide the context for your statement. Additionally, to claim that I am asinine for pointing this out is more misleading. I have personally briefed the director numerous times. I have close friends and family that work at TA-3. All of them agree that the hat that Nanos habitually wore before the barcode incident was a leather “Indiana Jones” style hat that I have seen many times. The black cowboy hat is a new addition to his wardrobe and designed to send a statement. I stand by my comment. I believe I know who you are. You certainly know who I am. The fact that you did not have the common courtesy to say this to me personally or to post your name is telling.

I cannot relay to you exactly how stressful the last nine months have been for us. Both Todd and I have been slandered, maligned, and defamed. Our life savings have been depleted and our careers destroyed. We have had to sell personal property and go into debt to pay attorneys’ fees. Neither of us is the type of person to shirk our responsibilities. Had we deserved any of the charges made against us or the punishments exacted, then we would have quietly accepted it and moved on. However, we are also not shrinking violets that will allow unethical people to abuse us and our families. When we believe we are right we will fight for vindication.

We both realize that we are not the only ones who have been abused in this situation. The actions of the Director, UC, DOE, and the NNSA are reprehensible. All of you have been unreasonably attacked. Even those who do not work at the Laboratory have been deeply affected. Due to the uncertainty at the LANL property values have plummeted, businesses have failed and everyone here has been placed under completely avoidable stress. As lifetime members of this community we are deeply distressed and dismayed at what has occurred. We hope that you understand our defensive motivation in fighting the actions taken against us.

The information that we presented was an accurate description of the CREM incident. We tried to give as much detail as possible for the venue in which it was submitted. However, it is unreasonable to think that we could cover every nuance and anticipate every question in such a brief account. The proper place and time to delve deeply into the details should be in a House or Senate subcommittee hearing that we expect to happen later this year. We anticipate our testimony becoming a part of that record so that Todd and I can clear our names in an official capacity.

John N. Horne

From Terry Wallace:

ADSR Emailgram
March 7, 2004

In the next month and a half all the technical Divisions in ADSR will
undergo their Division Review. This process is a very important
element of assessing the quality and health of science at LANL. The
DRC "grades" the Divisions, and that information is rolled up to the
University of California, and ultimately, to NNSA. The final report
card for LANL performance is based on Appendix F of the prime
contract between UC and NNSA, and the grades impact that award fee
given to UC. For the first time in history, UC received a
substantial fine based on their FY 2004 report card (sort of the
opposite of paying your children for every A they bring home). ADSR
owns the part of the report card grading science excellence. It was
one of the few areas in which LANL was graded as outstanding last
year. One thing is clear looking at the DRC materials for C, EES,
MST and T divisions: I expect that the performance will be
outstanding again. I don't believe that there is grade inflation in
this assessment. LANL has a very specific mission (National
Security), and constraints on how work is conducted. Despite these
obstacles, LANL continues to produce more peer reviewed publications
that our sister labs, and has numerous national awards given to its
scientists. We are at a significant juncture in time though - unless
we improve the environment for science soon we will begin to start a
downward spiral, losing key personnel and research focus.

[...]

Contact Me: I encourage you to email me with your questions,
comments, or concerns. My email address is wallacet@lanl.gov, or if
you prefer, you can send email to my home address with confidence of
confidentiality: tcw@losalamos.com.


--
Terry C. Wallace, Jr
Associate Director for Strategic Research
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Phone: 505-667-8597
Fax: 505-667-5450

From Anonymous:

With Much Warmth And Appreciation

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Los Alamos Monitor
Headline News
Senators defend LANL pensions; express concern

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

New Mexico's two senators were on the same page Friday, joining to issue a single set of comments to the most recent revisions of the Department of Energy's request for proposals on managing Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The senators were not satisfied with Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's answers to their questions during a committee hearing on the administration's budget request for the department in Washington Thursday.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, the two top leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee with jurisdiction over DOE, objected particularly to the idea of a stand-alone benefits and pension plan for LANL employees.

The idea was included in white papers prepared by the Source Evaluation Board (SEB) overseeing the competition process. The white papers were intended to respond to a first round of comments on the draft request for proposals.

The first draft drew criticism from LANL employees and expressions of concern from the senators that employee pensions were not adequately protected.

Now, the senators rejected the procurement committee's suggestion that the winning bidder would create a separate corporate entity to carry out the contract.

Such a move, the senators say, could push senior weapons designers into retirement, in order to lock in current benefits, while deterring younger scientists from seeking employment at LANL.

A management mechanism in the previous draft described a process for adjusting lab pensions closer to prevailing compensation at other DOE laboratories.

Since LANL employees under the University of California pension plan receive pensions well above average, a leveling could only mean a reduction.

The revised RFP language would still apply the leveling influence, but over a period of time established by the contracting officer.

In a joint letter to Bodman Friday, the deadline for submitting comments, the two Senators insisted that the National Nuclear Security Administration that manages the nuclear complex for DOE "not foreclose the option of continuing the existing benefits plan or allowing the new contractor to utilize the existing plan."

The senators called for flexibility and preserving options. They criticized "competition at any cost."

They wrote, "We believe the best way for the SEB to guarantee that employees receive 'substantially equivalent' benefits would be to allow existing employees to remain within the University of California Retirement Plan."

Following the current course outlined in the RFP, the senators estimated for the first time, could add $100 million per year to the lab's overhead, an increase that runs counter to the FY 2006 budget request which proposes precisely the opposite funding, a reduction of $500 million over the next five years.

"We hope the SEB will publish a Final RFP that will not: reduce employee compensation and retirement benefits, reduce the mandate to support world-class scientific research, or increase operating costs to a level that cannot be supported with the budget," they concluded.

The senators did find positive features in the proposed modifications, including the 180-day contract extension that will be requested, in order to provide adequate time for the winning bidder to prepare pension and benefit plans that meet the contracting officers approval and allows employees enough time during the transition to evaluate any changes and differentials.

From Anonymous:

Brad Holian is giving a talk "LANL: past, present, future" this Wednesday
at 4:30 PM in MSL Auditorium.

From Anonymous:

From Anonymous:

The above was posted today on the NNSA recompete site
<http://www.doeal.gov/LANLContractRecompete/Reports.htm>. Of
particular interest is the section regarding the loss of some of UC's
fee attributed to "serious security violations". If you look at the
overall rating for LANL the fee seems rather steep especially given
the fact that there was no missing CREM. Nanos cost UC a couple of
million + .

Hope they think he is worth it.

More on the online recruiting ads.....

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/ksfr/news.newsmainaction=article&ARTICLE_ID=747078

Multi-national company recruiting for key jobs at LANLBy Bill Dupuy, KSFR News

SANTA FE (2005-03-07) -- A multi-national company based outsideWashington, D.C. has posted online recruiting ads on the web for several key positions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, including the job of deputy director.

A spokeswoman for Northrup Grumman Information Technology tells KSFR she was unaware of the job postings. She says the company has been watching the process for bidding for the Los Alamos lab contract but would not comment whether the job postings indicate a possible partnership between the company and the University of California or whether the company is considering a bid on its own.

In addition to the number two, deputy director positon, the recruiting ads say Northrup Grumman IT is looking for an Associate Director for Nonproliferation and International Security division and an Associate Director for Engineering and Evaluations. Lab spokesman Kevin Roark says those two specific job titles do not now exist at Los Alamos. About 7,000 of the Los Alamos lab's 11,000 employees work for theUniversity of California, which has held the contract for more than 60 years.

Northrup employs 23,000 people worldwide and generates $4 billion annually in revenue.

---

From Anonymous:

Northrup Grumman looking for a Deputy Dir at LANL

While I was conducting another random search of other career opportunities, I stumbled into
the following at careerbuilder.com. I thought a few people might be interested.

http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/det.asp?d=J3X81V79MJ6GKVYBV58

FREEDOM

America has a government founded on the principles of freedom and liberty. The founding fathers were inspired and motivated to form a separate nation from Great Britain for a variety of reasons. Most of these reasons or principles were summarized in the original statement of "Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . . . That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Though Great Britain was supplying America with safety and security as its mother country, as an imperialist government it failed to bestow on its citizens certain liberties and rights deemed important to the new Americans who chose to explore and stake out a life in the New World. The principles of freedom and liberty are paramount to a strong nation made up of creative and inspired individuals who can tackle the challenges of making a new and better life for each and all of its citizens. Without freedom and liberty, how else can one truly explore and investigate, experiment and experience, and learn by failure and success, on the awesome journey of discovery in any new world or on any new knowledge frontier. America therefore chose freedom and liberty as its founding principles in government, and the nation has grown strong and prospered accordingly for over 200 years.

Freedom and liberty must be balanced with safety and security, which necessitates a government and nation of laws and protections for its citizens. These laws by their nature limit some of our personal freedoms and liberties, and are necessary to maintain our civilized society and culture. The 9/11 event brought into focus the importance of safety and security in a free society. It was an attack using methods of terror that motivated our country to implement more laws and regulations with the goal of creating better protection for its citizens. Therefore, to some extent the terrorists have won a battle by forcing us to give up some of our freedoms and liberties in favor of safety and security. It is critical, therefore, that we as a nation maintain a clear and strong balance between freedom & liberty and safety & security.

Currently at Los Alamos National Laboratory safety and security has mostly eliminated the freedom and liberty of its employees. Dr. Oppenhiemer, the Laboratory’s founding father and first director, had many conflicts with General Groves, the military leader of the project, regarding how much freedom and liberty should be allowed to the laboratory scientists. Dr. Oppenhiemer’s leadership prevailed and the scientific community was free of most of the more unreasonable restraints to its freedom and liberty. Recently the mission of the Laboratory has radically changed from that of doing research and science to maintain our personal and national freedom and liberty to that of regulating and documenting safety and security in order to maintain our livelihoods. Fear and intimidation are the driving forces that now direct Laboratory employees’ efforts. Employees are no longer free to do the jobs they were trained for and do not have the liberty to investigate new discoveries. I believe the director said something to the effect that we will have no safety incidents and no security infractions. I interpret that to mean we will have no freedom and no liberty at Los Alamos National Laboratory! Laboratory management says we are going in the right direction now. Do we really want to go there?

Don Gettemy

(A rare noon-time post made from the Los Alamos Public Library computer, during my lunch hour.

--Doug)

http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/news/ci_2596088

UC seeks new Los Alamos director
Despite expressing confidence in embattled leader, officials are quietly searching for his replacement
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

While the University of California has expressed high confidence in the embattled director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, university officials quietly have been searching for his replacement.
Headhunters for the executive-search arm of A.T. Kearney recently contacted senior figures in business and the nuclear-weapons complex in what the recruiters termed a "sensitive" recruitment of a director "for one of the national labs."

It's no secret which one. Retired Vice Adm. Pete Nanos, tapped by the university to turn around a troubled Los Alamos, now faces a virtual mutiny after verbally berating scientists as "buttheads" and shutting down the New Mexico desert lab for months, largely over a security breakdown that apparently never happened.

Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the FBI confirmed what scientists had muttered for months — that two disks of nuclear secrets that supposedly were lost last summer never in fact existed.

Los Alamos attaches bar codes to all its portable electronic secrets. Within a day or two of reporting the "loss," rank-and-file scientists and a senior weapons manager realized that someone mistakenly had created two more bar codes than disks.

Those scientists say Nanos and federal officials at the NNSA dismissed that explanation. By then, several lawmakers in Congress were demanding accountability and swift discipline for the losses. Several scientists lost their jobs or were demoted.

When a senior physicist criticized Nanos in the pages of Physics Today, the director suggested the scientific journal lacked integrity, was not peer-reviewed and that the scientist had "perjured" himself. For reasons unclear, that edition of Physics Today never reached more than half of the lab's 400-plus subscribers.

With acknowledgment by federal authorities that the disks never existed, hundreds of Los Alamos scientists have signed a petition demanding Nanos' resignation, and the university is searching for a new Los Alamos chief.

The hunt for a new leader of Los Alamos comes at a delicate time for the university and for the lab that maintains, by number, most of the nuclear explosives in the U.S. arsenal.

The NNNSA is expected by the end of March to begin taking competitive proposals to run Los Alamos, starting a 90-day clock for the University of California to identify its executive team.
Los Alamos public relations officials waved off speculation on Nanos' departure, saying new and creative rumors of his tenure's end circulate every week. But UC officials did not repeat their usual assurances about Nanos' leadership.

University spokesman Chris Harrington steered clear of mentioning Nanos in response to questions about the leadership of the laboratory and the search for a new lab chief. Because federal officials will judge the university's operations partly by its management team, he said, "it is therefore important to the University of California that the best people, with the right skills and expertise, are in the right management positions at the lab."

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.

From Anonymous:

Posted on Sun, Mar. 06, 2005


UC's lab prospects still dicey

By Betsy Mason

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

With the countdown to the Los Alamos Lab contract competition likely to begin this month, the University of California is in the spotlight on several fronts.

Though UC still has not officially decided to bid for the New Mexico nuclear weapons lab that it has managed for more than 60 years, the University's chances of winning the contract seem to be getting simultaneously better and worse. But the worse appears to be outpacing the better.

The deadline for a second round of comments on the draft request for proposals for the Los Alamos contract was Friday. A final request is expected by the end of the month, after which bidders will have 90 days to respond. The Department of Energy hopes to award the new contract by Oct. 1.

On the plus side for UC, several major players who had expressed interest in managing the lab have bowed out of the competition, including Lockheed Martin, the University of Texas and Texas A&M. This leaves UC looking like the front-runner.

Also in UC's favor, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is supporting the university, as is the New Mexico legislature.

But the list of potential obstacles for UC seems to be growing faster. Difficulty finding an industry partner, the revelation that highly publicized missing classified computer disks never existed, recent changes to the proposed contract by the Energy Department and talk of replacing the lab's director, could all spell trouble.

The university is in ongoing discussions with potential partners, Gerald Parsky, chairman of the UC Board of Regents, told the Times in an email Friday.

"The University recognizes that there are some areas in which we are particularly strong, specifically science and technology. There are other areas that an industrial partner could certainly help us to enhance, including business practices, the handling of hazardous materials, environmental matters and security issues," Parsky wrote. "Clearly these are where we have seen some of the challenges at (Los Alamos)."

However, the field of desirable industry partners shrunk in size and stature when Lockheed Martin decided not to compete. The company, considered by many to be the strongest potential partner, was rumored to be in talks with both UC and the University of Texas.

"The decision was one of resources," said Lockheed spokeswoman Wendy Owen. "We wanted to stay firmly focused on what we are doing right now."

Some big companies still may be interested, including Northrop Grumman, Bechtel and the Washington Group; a whole host of smaller companies have expressed interest as well.

But cementing a partnership may be much easier said than done. One reason the University of Texas cited for pulling out was an inability to find a workable partnership after months of discussions with potential partners.

At a regents' meeting in November, Parsky said that UC would want to be in overall charge in any partnership they might form.

But Regent Sherry Lansing worried about keeping a partner from meddling with the scientific management, likening the situation to the separation of church and state. "That is scary because they overlap," she said.

And Robert Foley, UC vice president for laboratory administration, said that talks with potential industry partners had broken down over who would be top dog.

"We've had two walk away just on that point," Foley said. "They say, 'If we are going to team up with the University of California to bid for Los Alamos, UC must get a minority part and we must have the lead.' So we have walked away from these discussions or they have walked away from us."

There may be other reasons UC might have trouble finding a partner, said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley Communities against a Radioactive Environment, a lab watchdog group that plans to bid for the lab contract along with Nuclear Watch of New Mexico. "I think the University of California is having trouble finding partners because its management of Los Alamos has been so dysfunctional," she said.

Another potential setback for a UC bid came two weeks ago, when the National Nuclear Security Administration announced proposed changes to the management contract. The new rules include a requirement that bidders form a separate corporation to carry out the contract -- a move that could mean even if UC wins, Los Alamos workers would not be UC employees, a prestigious academic affiliation that has helped attract top scientists.

Another change would be a standalone pension plan for Los Alamos employees, who would consequently lose access to UC's generous retirement benefits, another big draw for recruiting.

On Thursday, Senators Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., confronted Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman Energy during a Natural Resources Committee hearing saying the changes "could be construed as being unfairly calibrated to make it very difficult for UC to get the bid," Domenici said in a statement after the hearing.

The National Nuclear Security Administration also raised the management compensation from 0.6 percent of the lab's $2 billion annual budget to 3 percent, possibly to attract more interest from industry.

Trouble for UC may also be brewing again at the lab. After two classified computer disks were reported missing at the lab last summer, director Pete Nanos shut down all activity at the lab for months and fired five people and punished seven more. Investigations recently concluded the disks never existed and now two of the punished employees are saying they were used as scapegoats. And some are calling for Nanos himself to be fired on a blog set up by Los Alamos lab employees.

In response to questions about Nanos' future, UC spokesman Chris Harrington said, "As strong managers, we are continuously evaluating our senior management team and will continue to do so in the future."

All the turmoil surrounding the bid has some, including Domenici, speculating that the Energy Department could have an empty mailbox on the day bids are due.

From Anonymous:

Folks, before we rush out to purchase that bottle of bubbly to celebrate today's news leak that UC is hunting for a replacement for our beloved director, pause for a moment and stop to think: why now? UC has been silent through this entire process. Even after the FBI reported that there was no missing CREM. Especially after Physics Today reported that LANL's safety record was pretty damn good, bearing no resemblance to Nanos' claims regarding our safety record.

Why now? Could it be the release, just two days ago, of Todd Kaupilla and John Horne's account of the actual events surrounding the CREM incident?

Yes, it could be that.

Could it be that UC would like to try to staunch the flow of retirees and younger scientists leaving LANL for better places to work?

Yes, it could be that.

Could it be that UC has no intention of doing anything more than putting on a show of looking for a replacement for Nanos, and then throwing up their hands and saying "We tried, but we can't find anybody"?

Yes, it could be that.

Do you trust that UC is looking after our best interests, or could it be that UC is trying to perform damage control, without actually having to make any difficult decisions.

Yes, it could be that, too.

All:

There are numerous bugs in Internet Explorer (all versions) that can affect your viewing satisfaction while browsing LANL The Real Story. Here are two that I know about:

Bug 1. The sidebar links which appear at the top right-hand side of the page are usually incorrectly rendered by IE to be at the bottom right-hand side of the page.

Bug 2. When clicking on a link to a pdf document, IE frequently complains that "file must begin with %pdf-" and then refuses to bring up the pdf file.

To fix these problems, I encourage you to upgrade your browser to Firefox (www.mozilla.org). Try it, you will be glad that you did.

--Doug