DIR-13-253
SUBJECT: ANNOUNCEMENT OF BRET KNAPP AS LLNL ACTING DIRECTOR
Parney Albright announced he is stepping down as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director at the end of the month in order to pursue broader interests in the national security arena. Board of Governors Chair Norm Pattiz announced today the appointment of Principal Associate Director for Weapons Programs Bret Knapp to the position of Acting Director of LLNL, effective November 1, 2013.
The Los Alamos and Livermore Boards have advised Secretary Moniz and the Acting NNSA Administrator Held of Parney’s departure and have coordinated with them on the designation of Bret as Acting Director while the search for a permanent replacement is completed. A national search for a permanent Director will commence shortly under the leadership of University of California.
It is in the nation’s interest to have two strong nuclear security science laboratories, and I have committed to the Boards my support to Bret as he assumes this important role. Bret is no stranger to Livermore having worked there for 26 years before coming to Los Alamos in 2006. He has built strong and effective relationships across the laboratory community, the DOE/NNSA, the Department of Defense, and with other stakeholders.
In Bret’s absence, I have asked Craig Leasure to serve as the Acting Principal Associate Director for the Weapons Program. I ask for your full support of Craig during this transition period.
Comments
As to the Labs: Obama appears to want us to do even more of what we used to do (Which is to innovate and to create for the good of the country) because he understands that the whole country benefits from the things we do and that the profit motive of some corporations does nothing more than to drive up the cost.
Freeware* vs. Proprietary – If you will
* Not that there won’t be nominal fees for the use.
You are delusional. "Obama appears..."? Based on what?
When all is said and done it will not be free and neither is any of Odumbo's offerings, especially national health care. But lets get back to balancing LLNL's budget, how it will be done and how many have to go before Christmas. That is my main concern.
So you'd rather discuss and throw out a bunch of wild speculation than to talk about what our President has been proposing we do and others won't let him?
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I don't know Knapp but I hope that he cares enough about this Lab and the town he grew up in to do all he can to push us in a productive direction.
FWIW I think I went to school with his older brother. Then again there could very well could be 2 Knapp families in town in the early 70's.
Obama proposes $2 billion plan for clean energy technology research
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-15/politics/37738445_1_clean-energy-president-obama-obama-first
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Bringing Technology from “Lab to Market”
Leading up to the President’s signing of the America Invents Act, the Administration worked with Federal agencies and private-sector partners to launch a series of new “Lab to Market” initiatives. The initiatives are aimed at helping to achieve the President’s goal of strengthening “commercialization of the nearly $148 billion in annual federally-funded research and development”, as first proposed in January 2011 at the launch of the White House-led Startup America campaign. These efforts encouraged Federal agencies to streamline their technology-transfer procedures, support additional government-industry collaboration, and encourage the commercialization of novel technologies flowing from our Federal laboratories.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/technology#id-3
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I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some of you don't know this stuff.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-15/politics/37738445_1_clean-energy-president-obama-obama-first
Please send the $2B to LBL since that's what they do best. LLNL has already proven $7.5B will get you nothing.
Personally I'd like to see the $2B spent on building solar tracking solar panels in the desert plugged into the grid. We'd get a far better return.
Please just go away. This a Blog about LLNL 9and sometimes LANL) not your hatred of Obama.
This is a training progtam for Knapp so he can return to LANL and be its Director.
October 25, 2013 at 2:29 PM
What everyone who "does the math" knows is that so-called "clean energy technology" can't possibly satisfy the projected world-wide demand for energy over the next 20 years. The entire developing world will burn coal and oil, and in doing so will surpass the US in economic growth as a percentage of GDP within the next 5 years. The US will build windmills and feel good about itself. Yay.
As a number of people have pointed out, the prognostications on this blog tend to be grim. Does anyone have any real information about what Parney's motivations might be.
Certainly you don't leave if things are great and every morning you can't wait to get into work. Parney had a tough job and he may not have felt this way for some time. And perhaps all he saw was more of the same in the future.
Parney was a popular director with a lot of people at the lab. People felt that he was honest and he tried to do his best for the employees.
The only fault that I might ascribe to him is that he did not succeed in putting into place, either in global security or the lab as a whole, a structure to bring in more projects. But I doubt that this was the reason that he left.
So does anyone have anything solid to contribute other than the speculation I've indulged in? Do you think that you might be able to keep on topic and leave politics out of it?
Well, we can always hope.
The speculation I've heard, and it is solely that, is that Parney got cross ways with the wrong people in the funding stream and this was necessary to keep LLNL's place at the trough. It certainly doesn't seem like an idea he came to completely on his own, given the abruptness of his departure.
For whatever it's worth. At least it's not another unhinged political raNT.
One thing should be clear to anyone: the Lab cannot simply cut its way to success. At some point the end of that path leads to shutting down the lab.
October 25, 2013 at 9:10 PM
Might be a good thing. I think they can cut at least 50% more. Global security needs to stay. The rest can go wayside until the deficit is paid in full.
This is true of all groups (except chartered support groups). You need to have your own funding, not exist by taking a percent off the top from others.
The country either needs two design labs or it doesn't. If it does, then they should be far less co-dependent than the state today. If it doesn't, then the necessary functions should be consolidated and the other location re-purposed.
It might have needed two at one time....maybe not so much now. Stand alone facilities like Terascale, Global Security that are productive and bring in funds (and have newer physical facilities) can probably function fine as stand alones. I don't know about "Moses Money Pit" though....might have to walk away from that like the lab has been forced to do in the past with its boondoggles! It's cool though I hear they're building a high speed boondoggle down Fresno way so you guys should have no difficulty finding alternate employment building "Jerry's Folly"!
If no one wants to pay you, why force them too.
I can't speak to the funding sources for programs with which I am not associated but the intent of my statement was that those entities would be obtaining funding from willing subscribers not skimming from other organizations.
Can either LBL or a University maintain an adequate security program that would allow them to perform the kind of work that Global Security currently does?
If not, that's how you end up with outrageous overhead costs.
October 25, 2013 at 5:25 PM
Bingo! Poster 5:25 PM is right on target. BTW, if you haven't done so, Livermore, take a close look at the educational credentials of your new boss, Brett Knapp. They're very unimpressive.
Knapp is far from having a PhD... just a MS in Mech. Engineering from Cali State. Fortunately, that's all that is required for a modern lab Director at the NNSA "science" labs. Sad, isn't it?
Oh, and his chief function since leaving LLNL and coming to LANL several years ago was to be the executive team's "head chopper" for LANS. Brett Knapp is well known around LANL as a very brutal man. He's most likely been sent back to LLNL to further downsize the place and utilize his anger management problems as an asset while he proceeds to kick butt.
Enjoy!
October 25, 2013 at 7:16 PM
I hope its windmills, geothermal, sea and solar all at the same time and all plugged into the grid. As far as what the rest of the world is doing I don't care. They can do as we do if they wish on their on funds not ours. Many are already doing more and better using todays technology.
Bret's degrees are B. S. from Cal Poly and M. S. from UC Davis, both in mechanical engineering.
October 27, 2013 at 4:40 AM
So it's not about pollution or global warming, but about making yourself feel good? Yay.
October 27, 2013 at 9:57 AM
Sorry, although I agree with your point, there is a third option beside "living in the dark." It is making carbon-based fuels as clean-burning as possible by technology and by matching the right fuel to the right use, and reducing the amount of pollution generated by transportation of fuels by truck and rail, i.e., build more pipelines.
That's all good but what you guys are doing at NIF is not going to resolve the energy crisis world wide. It's a weapons research took that is not clean and with the use of Pu soon it most definitely will be as worthless as they come. Again I'd much rather see every nation in the world at this very moment start construction wind mills, sea wave, dams, geothermal, and above all solar tracking array on every square miles of unused land we have and look toward apparatus which use less energy. Oh and one more items which needs work is a battery which cam full recharge in a few minutes and give you 300 miles travel in a full size vehicle or stations where you can swap the battery out robotically in the same time. Public transportation. NFW, been there, done that and hatted every minute of it. Again, we don't want to be nuts to butts on PT like Europe.
I would rather drive around in a Hummer with a "Don't Pollute" bumper sticker on the back.
Name the directors and senior lab officials current and past, who owned these cars:
Lamborghini
Ferrarri
Lotus
Tesla
October 27, 2013 at 6:40 PM
What, penis envy again?? Geez, get a life.
LLNL has already been significantly downsized. And the rationale for LANL doing larger scale radiological material work over LLNL is so self evident it requires no "decision to concentrate." LANL is in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to being part of a major metropolitan area suburbs. That's why LLNL, not LANL, deinventoried.
That said, unless and until CMRR is built and operational, there is still some need for LLNL support in radiological operations. It will just be smaller scale.
So, no, Knapp wasn't sent here to kill LLNL. It's obvious the departure of Parney occurred suddenly, and it's a very short list in terms of people who can step in as acting director of a national lab on one week's notice.
While there were no obvious internal LLNL candidates to follow Parney, that should not translate to bringing Knapp back. What is evident from 11:46 AM's comment is that the management structure of both locations is, for practical purposes, indistinguishable. The level of independence of each location has eroded badly over the past decade.
The need for both locations, even without CMRR, is still an undecided point; however, the intertwined management structure will continue to argue for keeping both locations open. While they each may spend some time fighting for a larger slice of the pie, the current model has them both spending a lot more time fighting for a larger pie that always has two slices.
October 28, 2013 at 4:34 PM
Bret only follows orders from the director as the director's hatchet man. He was brought along by the LANS carpetbaggers as their enforcer. Remember that the director is also president of LANS, so the board is fully aware of the point of Bret, and condones his behavior.
You OBVIOUSLY never worked for Moses. I've worked for both - albeit it was the late eighties with Bret. Moses is abusive personified; arrogant, bombastic, crude and rude. We were overjoyed that he was recently demoted...
Alot of the Brett Knapp haters also keep bringing up his beautiful car. He just followed in the footsteps of Sig, who has a beautiful Lamborghini.
You did not work with Clough, Emmett, Coegnsen, Papadapolis, Moses, Teller, Wood or Melanie.
Many difficult folks as well as more gentle souls have toughened the LLNL workforce. Knapp is the caretaker. He will not develop organizational strategy or design, but he will manage the interregnum.
And more recently incompetents Russo and Soderstrom were/are deeply flawed damaging to your future.
And they were far less damaging to your future than Congressman Dingle, Senator Domenici, Senator Boxer, Congressman McInerny (the addlepated ghost) or the coven of Pryzbylek, D'Agostino and Bodner who should go hunting with Cheney.
Lots of camp followers in LLNLs past.
Wow, way to drop names. No content there, though. Just implied denigration. Too lazy to either specify your complaints or to actually do your homework. Shameful for people who supposedly care about facts.
You did not work with Clough, Emmett, Coegnsen, Papadapolis, Moses, Teller, Wood or Melanie.
October 30, 2013 at 8:36 PM
I beg your pardon! I worked for both Clough and Knapp. First of all, Clough was far more intelligent than Knapp and understood nuclear weapons. Clough treated me with respect and dignity when I was at LLNL. Knapp destroyed my career when he came to Los Alamos.
It is not clear that technical surveillance and stewardship will survive the trauma.