LLNL - The True Story -

From SPSE: SPSE-UPTE Working to Reduce the Hardship of Shrinking Take Home Pay for Some in TCP1 Retirement Plan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ By William Smith ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To fund TCP1, those LLNL employees who elected to stay in the TCP1 defined benefit plan that replaced the University of California’s Retirement Plan had their take home pay cut by around 10% in June for most employees. Soon, in 2013, take home pay may be cut by nearly 14%. With medical and other premiums increasing, many employees are looking at reducing contributions to 401(K) retirement plans, cutting entertainment expenses, moving to less expensive quarters, and at least one has quit LLNL to take a better paying job elsewhere. As part of the bargaining to modify the contract between LLNS to negotiate reductions in benefits with the skilled trades bargaining unit, SPSE-UPTE ha...

Anonymously contributed: layoffs! NIF cut 49 loose with more to go: ULM has been secretly cutting employees loose around the lab. EBAS are next. A high ranking nif employee is headed out the gate.

From the JULY 2012 SPSE-UPTE Monthly Memo The NAS Report and UPTE’S Response Rally By Jeff Colvin On February 15, 2012 the National Academies (NAS) National Research Council released a congressionally mandated Report on their year-long study of the management of the nation’s national security laboratories: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). The strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) held a hearing on the NAS Report less than 24 hours after it was released. Motivating the study was the 2006-2007 transition of LANL and LLNL to private, for-profit monopoly management by Los Alamos National Security, LLC and Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. The NAS was charged with studying the effects of the management transitions on the Labs’ scientific and national security missions. The basic conclusions of the NAS Report were that scientific productivity, opera...

Anonymously contributed: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 82 year old nun infiltrates highest security area of Y-12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If this story is true, it will have ramifications across the weapons complex. "Three peace activists -- including an 82-year-old nun -- infiltrated the highest-security area of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in a predawn protest Saturday, reportedly evading guards and cutting through three or four fences in order to spray-paint messages, hang banners and pour human blood at the site where warhead parts are manufactured and the nation's stockpile of bomb-grade uranium is stored. It was an unprecedented security breach at the Oak Ridge plant, which enriched the uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II and continues to be a mainstay of the U.S. nuclear defense program." ...

Anonymously contributed: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow the money! What nuclear weapons contractors donate the most to which members of congress? http://www.ciponline.org/images/uploads/publications/Hartung_IPR_0612_NuclearLobbyReport_Final.pdf

Anonymously contributed: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GAO: Lab oversight still needed due to the Quintana scandal The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has also expressed reservations about changing the oversight mechanism at the weapons laboratories. While he declined to comment on the House legislation specifically, Eugene Aloise, GAO natural resources and environment director, told GSN that limiting the Energy Department’s ability to conduct independent oversight of the NNSA sites “just doesn’t make sense.” Between 2000 and 2007 there were more 50 security violations at the facilities, “35 of which severely impacted our national security,” Aloise said, referring to a period that included a 2006 incident in which a Los Alamos employee removed more than 1,000 pages of classified documents from the facility, among other incidents (see GSN, July 16, 2007). “Now things seem to be quiet,” Aloise said. As it is, Aloise sa...

Anonymously contributed: Uh - Oh, POGO is back! "One of the nation’s main nuclear weapons labs has sharply underestimated the amount of radiation that could leak from the facility as a result of an earthquake, according to a federal advisory panel. The radiation could be more than four times as intense as the Los Alamos National Laboratory predicted in a safety analysis last year, according to a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The New Mexico laboratory’s analysis included “multiple, substantial deficiencies,” wrote Peter S. Winokur, chairman of the advisory board. The higher estimate calls for “additional safety controls” and “prompt action,” he added. The report’s findings raise questions about the safety and reliability of Los Alamos, which says its work includes ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Analyses like the one in question “are fundamental elements for ensuring safe operations at defense nuclear ...

Anonymously contributed: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Global Security Newswire July 17, 2012 Obama Official Supports Lawmaker's Opponent Over Nuclear Lab Stance A California congressional delegate's purported opposition to nuclear weapons activities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory prompted the Obama administration's special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense to endorse the lawmaker's electoral opponent last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. A representative of the laboratory's legislative district must acknowledge the facility's benefits, including its contribution toward a "a safe and reliable and effective nuclear stockpile," said Ellen Tauscher, a former House member who for 12 years worked alongside Representative Pete Stark (D-Calif.). "It's important that we have somebody ... with the aptitude and the attitude to do what's right, an...

Anonymously contributed: ________________________________________________________________________________________ http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/07/17/news/bureaucracy-strangles-critical-work-at-lanl.html

Anonymously contributed: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://bos.sagepub.com/content/68/4/28.full

Anonymously contributed: -------------------------------------------------------------------- What happened to Tomas? Heard he's left the lab . . .

Anonymously contributed: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weapons Complex Morning Briefing July 11, 2012 LLNL Director: Despite Missed Milestone, Lab ‘Tantalizingly Close’ to Ignition Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Parney Albright defended the laboratory’s quest to achieve fusion ignition in a memo to senior laboratory officials Monday, suggesting that the lab should get more time to pursue the challenging scientific breakthrough. Albright’s memo comes on the heels of revelations last week that the National Ignition Facility missed a key ignition milestone and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s admission that the facility was “unlikely” to achieve ignition by the expected target date of Sept. 30. Suggesting that lab officials had made significant progress in the three-year ignition campaign, Albright estimated that the lab was 75 percent of the way to achieving ignition, but...

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Lawrence-Livermore-National-Laboratory-Reviews-E35235.htm

Anonymously contributed: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sandia has been undergoing Total Comp-- a means of defining and benchmarking job descriptions and job families to the market. For the most part, most non-represented exempt employees saw their pay bands lowered. Now, all the overhead functions are being functionally aligned, and the rumor is, that redundancies will identified and layoffs will happen before the end of the fiscal year. Have you heard any other rumors like this?

Anonymously contributed: ............................................................................................ Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor Morning Briefing July 9, 2012 CALIFORNIA LAWMAKER: BE PATIENT ON NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), whose 10th District includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is urging patience with the lab’s struggle to achieve fusion ignition at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility. The National Nuclear Security Administration revealed last week that the facility had missed a key milestone on the path to ignition, with a spokesman acknowledging that it is “unlikely” that the lab will meet expectations to achieve ignition by the end of the fiscal year. “Science doesn’t always follow the timelines of mankind, but we would be centuries behind if we gave up after every scientific hiccup,” Garamendi said in a statement provided to NW&M Monitor. “America may still lead the world in scientific advances, b...

Anonymous contributor is quoting the following from somewhere: ..................................................................... Nothing to see here folks - move along: “Over the past decade, we have made numerous recommendations to DOE and NNSA to improve their management and oversight practices. DOE and NNSA have acted on many of these recommendations and have made considerable progress. Nevertheless, enough significant management problems remain that prompt some to call for removing NNSA from DOE and either moving it to another department or establishing it as a separate agency. As we concluded in January 2007, however, we do not believe that such drastic changes are necessary, and we continue to hold this view today. Importantly, we are uncertain whether such significant organizational changes to increase NNSA’s independence would produce the desired effect of creating a modern, responsive, effective, and efficient nuclear security enterprise. In light of the substantial lea...

Anonymously contributed: Another GAO study of NNSA Surprise, surprise, surprise!!! "Nevertheless, NNSA continues to experience major cost and schedule overruns on its projects, such as research and production facilities and nuclear weapons refurbishments, principally because of ineffective oversight and poor contractor management." http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-867T

Anonymously contributed: ................................................................................... I am curious as to the what will be happening with the Superblock at LLNL. We've been shipping out material and NNSA and Livermore are proudly announcing they are far ahead of schedule on this exportation. Yet now we hear that with the demise of CMRR, LANL will be pushing some plutonium work to LLNL. Is Livermore doing an out with the old / in with the new? And what of the staffing reduction in security with the expectation of not having material to protect. Is it a matter of NNSA's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

Anonymously contributed: James Cartwright, the retired Marine Corps general who commanded U.S. nuclear forces from 2004-07, thinks the U.S. should acknowledge that a large nuclear force is of limited value in deterring today's major threats. "No sensible argument has been put forward for using nuclear weapons to solve any of the major 21st century problems we face," including threats posed by rogue states, terrorism, cyber warfare or climate change, Cartwright and his colleagues at Global Zero wrote in a report in May. Global Zero is an organization that advocates a step-by-step process to achieve the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. The group argues that the U.S. could safely reduce its arsenal over the coming 10 years to 900 total nuclear weapons. That compares with the current U.S. arsenal of about 5,000 weapons, of which 1,737 are deployed. ------ From Cartwright’s paper… “This notional [US nuclear] force would consist of ten (10) Trident ballistic mi...

Anonymously contributed: Can someone tell us what the CIO has accomplished since he arrived a year ago? What is done more efficiently and intelligently now as compared to a year ago? What is his agenda?