LLNL - The True Story -

Contributed Anonymously: New Bechtel Happy Video

Anonymous said... The race is over, go home. Russia plans to continue modernizing its deterrent Our enemies are making new and better weapons while we are in unilateral disarmament mode. Let's not start blaming politics again, enough threads on that. This was a national decision, done over many years through fair elections. The people wanted this, now they have it. No new nukes, tear down the labs, dismantle our deterrent. God help us all. February 26, 2009 8:37 AM

Submitted Anonymously: I spoke to Rep. Ellen Tauscher's field office today and mentioned that the 65% subsidy for COBRA does not apply to me because I was laid off from LLNL before the Sept. 1, 2008 window. (The subsidy of up to 9 months is part of the stimulus package.) I learned that there are no guarantees, but letters are being collected and packaged together from constituents, setting forth there stories and what a subsidy would mean for them (such as, how to pay for insurance after the 18 months of COBRA expires? Being over 50, my rates for individual insurance are higher than as part of a group). PLEASE help see if something can be shaken loose for those of us who were part of a mass layoff to save a federal agency $$, and send along your personal account to: Rep. Ellen Tauscher 2121 N. California Blvd. Walnut Creek, CA 94596

Since Dr. Miller has proven Newton's 3rd law in his previous "all-hands". Let's see what pans out this time.

Another example of a high profile organization that was killed by privatization. It is the story of the wolf who promised to guard the sheep... An Article from Corpwatch.org

Yet another question posed . . .

Someone emailed me the question - so I posted it. So, did something unusual happen in HR recently?

Director George Miller will hold his quarterly all-hands meeting at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Feb. 23, in the Bldg. 123 auditorium.

Employees may have recently read news articles that discuss U.S government plans to study the possible transfer of the DOE/NNSA laboratories and weapons complex from the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense. These articles refer to an internal government memo outlining plans for a study of the costs and benefits of such a transfer. Keep in mind that the news articles refer to a request for a study. Similar studies have been conducted in previous administrations and the laboratories have been and will be asked to support these studies. When asked, LLNL will provide objective advice and counsel in support of the U.S. government study and potential policy decisions. We will continue to highlight the world-class capabilities of our people and facilities and our continued critical scientific and technological contributions to our nation’s security

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced today a contract with IBM to bring world-leading supercomputing systems to its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to help continue to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation’s aging nuclear deterrent. “The longstanding partnership of NNSA, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and IBM is ushering in an era of multi-petaflops computing,” said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. “These powerful machines will provide NNSA with the capabilities needed to resolve time-urgent and complex scientific problems, ensuring the viability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent into the future. This endeavor will also help maintain U.S. leadership in high performance computing and promote scientific discovery.” The Rest of the Story

Scientists have been working to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion and energy gain in the laboratory for more than half a century. When the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is completed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2009, that long-sought goal will be much closer to realization. NIF's 192 giant lasers, housed in a ten-story building the size of three football fields, will deliver at least 60 times more energy than any previous laser system. When all of its beams are operational, NIF will focus about two million joules of ultraviolet laser energy on a tiny target in the center of its target chamber – creating conditions similar to those that exist only in the cores of stars and giant planets and inside a nuclear weapon. The resulting fusion reaction will release many times more energy than the laser energy required to initiate the reaction. Experiments conducted on NIF will make significant contributions to national and global security, could lead to practi...

Anonymously contributed: You might want to look at the LANL blog.... Nuclear Work in Danger By John Fleck, The Albuquerque Journal The Obama administration wants to kill major nuclear weapons design and manufacturing programs left by its Republican predecessors and ratchet down the amount of non-weapons science done at Los Alamos and other nuclear weapons labs, according to a document obtained by the Journal. The memo calls for canceling the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a proposal to design a new U.S. nuclear weapon. Other proposed changes: • Cancel plans to expand Los Alamos National Laboratory's capability to make plutonium warhead parts. • Cancel spending to upgrade the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, a major non-weapons science project that federal officials have argued is critical to supporting non-weapons science at Los Alamos. • Cut in half money allotted to Los Alamos and the other nuclear weapons labs, including Sandia National Laboratories, for "laboratory-direct...

or how long will KBR keep screwing taxpayers? KBR Article

Anonymously contributed: You want to cut cost, improve morale and gain employees respect? You'd better listen: 1. Layoff bloated management. Please stop shifting these ineffective managers to other positions. If they have not done a good job they should go, not be rewarded with other positions. I hate to see layoffs as much as the next person, but I have no issues with laying off bad employees. And by any metric I can think of, management has failed terribly. Accountability means getting rid of those that have created this situation. 2. Change the compensation "ranking" system. Who in the world came up with this system? This system was custom built to dis-incentivize the employees. I complained about this system to the lab and they told me that certain jobs are valued, others less so. As such the person doing a great job at a "less valued" job will never get a high ranking. So this system is set up to encourage low productivity. Why work your butt off if there i...

So, I heard that there is a possible "retroactive" tax of like 6% being added to the programs. As always, it's retro active, so how many jobs it this going to cost?

Anonymous said... New laptop computer brouhaha/scandal at LANL......their cancer is out of remission....it won't be long before LLNL gets chemotherapy. Missing Laptops February 12, 2009 6:53 AM

Anonymous said... I don't know if anyone else has had this pleasure, but my daughter just turned 23 and is no longer covered under the medical plan. I thought no big deal several plans to choose, 300 - 400 dollars max as was the case with my son. No way - one choice Blue Cross EPO at the tune of $584 a month.Thanks LLNS February 5, 2009 9:39 AM

Military Control of Labs Studied By John Fleck, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer The Obama administration is considering moving Sandia and Los Alamos national labs, along with the rest of the U.S. nuclear weapons design and manufacturing complex, out of the Department of Energy and into the Defense Department, according to an internal memo obtained by the Journal. Such a change would end more than six decades of civilian management of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The move, if it goes forward, would not happen until at least 2011, according to the memo from the Office of Management and Budget outlining plans for a study of the costs and benefits of the move. Officials across the government — at the labs and the federal agencies involved — declined comment Tuesday, saying the document in question is part of internal government deliberations. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., released a statement Tuesday evening saying he spoke to OMB chief Peter Orszag on Tuesday to register his con...

Anonymous said... Tuesday February 3, 1:46 pm ET PRESS CONFERENCE: February 4, 2009 The Story

By Scott Ferguson, eWeek.com IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have signed a new contract to build the next generation of IBM’s BlueGene supercomputers at the famed DOE facility. The first IBM BlueGene supercomputer, called “Dawn,” will have a top processing speed of 500 teraflops. The second IBM system, dubbed “Sequoia,” will offer 20 petaflops of performance and surpass the records Big Blue set when it installed the massive Roadrunner system for the DOE in 2008. [Read the full story here .]

Contributed anonymously (also created as a 30-day poll) For the employees left, is your job harder or easier than it was before some of your fellow employees went missing? Were they deadweight as some have stated, or are you finding it harder to get things done without them?