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The story reads like a how-not-to do business in the NWC.
"LANL allowed changes to classified nuclear weapons drawings without using a documented and approved change notice, the report states. In one case, lab officials “told us they ‘assumed’ the changes were needed,” the auditors said.
LANL also didn’t limit access to weapons drawings as required and “circumvented” a control over changes after a weapons design drawing had been approved. The Los Alamos lab gave 30 nuclear weapons designers the ability to make changes to drawings whether they were assigned to a particular weapons project or not.
Lab officials said they didn’t limit designer access because they believed they had internal processes that were “more efficient, without raising risk issues.”
By making changes to released drawings after the drawings have been extensively reviewed and approved, “NNSA is at increased risk of unauthorized and inappropriate changes to nuclear weapons design information,” the report asserts.
Sandia, meanwhile, earned kudos for its control of weapons drawings. Once a drawing has been approved at Sandia, it is in “read only” status and can’t be changed after release. Sandia’s practices “effectively decreased the risk of unauthorized changes to nuclear weapons drawings.”
The auditors also were concerned about the use of non-conforming weapons parts, failures to obtain engineering evaluations to support waivers from parts specifications and lack of a “fully implemented supplier quality management program.”
The report says that of 30 “specification exception releases” for parts sampled at LANL, 19 did not have the required technical justification.
“As such, officials lacked assurance that the component was suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.” LANL officials said the lab’s quality reviewers likely knew the engineers involved and relied on their professional opinion."
You can say that it does not matter much that LANL screwed up on WIPP or that they can not manage cost, schedule or performance on major projects. These areas are not in the core of the Lab and so we should not hold them to a high standard. The news of this investigation from a couple months ago brings to light shortcomings in the nuts and bolts part of the operation. You can dismiss the safety and security failures as being on the edges of why the nation still needs LANL and play it off that the real focus is spent on the nuclear mission.
In every presentation Charlie always goes out of his way to make a big deal out of his annual letter and how his letter is the most important function of the Lab. You have a hard time reconciling the findings reported in the paper with his words.
Even if the story is not from this week's headlines, it is in no way whatsoever a sleeper.
Sandia needs to be spanked for bad behavior, namely for having a chili cookoff with no chili and managers with masters but not doctorate degrees. What is this world coming to? This is fully grounds for shutting down Sandia once and for all.
Somebody call the poster of the four post a waaaaambulance!
Most of these mistakes in the report are from production during the late 1980s and earlier. The production processes shouldn't have allowed this sort of thing, but no one expected weapons to be out there for so long and the world was an entirely different place.
It would have been useful for the report to share more information about when the mistakes took place.
Scooby: Why is the headline for this post limited to Sandia? No doubt we can thank the poster of the previous four posts who thinks that a PhD is required to be a good manager.
Sandia had 12.5% mistakes in the limited sample size.
LANL had 66% mistakes in the limited sample size.
No one looks good, but give LANL the credit they deserve. LLNL needs to steal more LANL systems before they get noted in the report.
Sandia did find all but one of the drawings, which had been misnumbered, and all of the product definitions.
Los Alamos sampled 24 plutonium “pits,” devices used to trigger nuclear bombs, and the definitions and drawings for all of them were located.
LANL allowed changes to classified nuclear weapons drawings without using a documented and approved change notice.
Sandia, meanwhile, earned kudos for its control of weapons drawings.
The report says that of 30 “specification exception releases” for parts sampled at LANL, 19 did not have the required technical justification.
Only seven of 56 exception releases reviewed at Sandia didn’t have proper evaluations. The report said Sandia implemented corrections in this area in 2009 and the audit didn’t find problems there after 2010.
Most senior managers at the labs don't even have an undergraduate course, much less an advanced degree, in the disciplines they oversee. That's why they continue to be snowed by the con artists working for them. Most are truly pointy hair types, straight out of Dilbert.
Most senior managers at the labs don't even have an undergraduate course, much less an advanced degree, in the disciplines they oversee.
June 3, 2014 at 11:24 PM
Patently false. Undoubtedly true if you had said "...in ALL OF the disciplines they oversee." Which of course would be unlikely at best, and impossible in a practical sense.
Which first post are you referring to? The one about the cosmological constant to explain inflation, or the one about Sandia being fined $4 million to Shawn Carpenter?
Which three postings are being ignored? The ones about using protein CP29 to bind to photosystem I of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under State 2 conditions, or the one about Sandia being fined $4 million to Shawn Carpenter?
All these "bad things" Sandia did.... really makes them look good when you compare them to LLNL and LANL. Chili cookoff hater must be a pro-Sandia troll.
" Tim Shepodd (8223) liked the moniker and agreed to call it the “chili cookoff.” But there was no chili involved, and the only “cooking” had to do with the kind of chemicals not usually found on Sandia grounds. "
This Carpenter fellow looks like a real troublemaker who just won't let up, and acted beyond his job requirements. But hey, he got a payout from it, though he didn't deserve it. This individual seems to have some similarities in behavior to Snowden. The security officer was right. Management was far too understanding.
Carpenter thinks that it is in his right to not exhaust all legitimate channels to air his concerns. Instead, he took it upon himself to ignore all of those channels and go ahead and inappropriately disclose sensitive information. Luckily it was not to the wikileaks as Snowden did. But nevertheless it shows someone entrusted with sensitive information who decided to make up his own rules, ignoring existing paths for escalating his concerns. People like this should never be allowed to have a clearance. Sandia did the right thing.
I'm glad the American justice system thought the above 2 postings was wrong and gave him $4 million. Apparently, the US federal government thought Shawn Carpenter was justified since he still works in national security employment.
US and the American people: 1 Sandia: 0 (actually minus $4 million)
Sandia's fault was that they were too accommodating to this individual. He should not possess a security clearance. Reeks of Snowden, the darling of the masses who have no idea about the responsibilities that go along with security clearances.
On October 14, 2007, The Albuquerque Journal published a story ("Analyst, Sandia Settle Suit") that stated that Sandia had dropped its appeal of the verdict.[2] According to the story, the judgment had been accumulating 15 percent interest since the verdict in his favor in February 2007. The piece also related that Carpenter continues to work in the national security area for clients in the intelligence community, federal agencies and the military.
Carpenter is as much a "whistleblower" as snowden considers himself a "whistleblower." What snowden did was much much worse than what carpenter did. I'm sure carpenter is wise enough to not make the same mistake again given similar circumstances.
"Carpenter thinks that it is in his right to not exhaust all legitimate channels to air his concerns. Instead, he took it upon himself to ignore all of those channels and go ahead and inappropriately disclose sensitive information..." I love the arrogant armchair quarterbacking by the troll, who feels that cases should be decided be them, rather than the standard jury trial -- which happened, by the way, in Sandia turf. It didn't matter, though, because it was such a train wreck for Sandia. Two separate weeks over five years of sign in logs, coincidentally the exact weeks that were requested, went mysteriously missing for almost two years. By some miracle, they turned up after one of Carpenter's supervisors "went in during the weekend to look again", after two years of searches by security guards and other personnel turned up nothing. And that's just the start of the unbelievable testimony from Sandia witnesses. We live in the USA, thankfully, not Trollopilis, where judgment is meted out by insecure and inadequate self-lovers like you. We have court systems, where despite the odds and barrels of cash (your cash, as a taxpayer) that institutions like Sandia throw at lawsuits, the truth prevails at a jury trial. Either you are a bored, ill-informed narcissist, or you are a member of the Sandia PR team doing some image management. My money is on #2.
41 comments:
The story reads like a how-not-to do business in the NWC.
"LANL allowed changes to classified nuclear weapons drawings without using a documented and approved change notice, the report states. In one case, lab officials “told us they ‘assumed’ the changes were needed,” the auditors said.
LANL also didn’t limit access to weapons drawings as required and “circumvented” a control over changes after a weapons design drawing had been approved. The Los Alamos lab gave 30 nuclear weapons designers the ability to make changes to drawings whether they were assigned to a particular weapons project or not.
Lab officials said they didn’t limit designer access because they believed they had internal processes that were “more efficient, without raising risk issues.”
By making changes to released drawings after the drawings have been extensively reviewed and approved, “NNSA is at increased risk of unauthorized and inappropriate changes to nuclear weapons design information,” the report asserts.
Sandia, meanwhile, earned kudos for its control of weapons drawings. Once a drawing has been approved at Sandia, it is in “read only” status and can’t be changed after release. Sandia’s practices “effectively decreased the risk of unauthorized changes to nuclear weapons drawings.”
The auditors also were concerned about the use of non-conforming weapons parts, failures to obtain engineering evaluations to support waivers from parts specifications and lack of a “fully implemented supplier quality management program.”
The report says that of 30 “specification exception releases” for parts sampled at LANL, 19 did not have the required technical justification.
“As such, officials lacked assurance that the component was suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.” LANL officials said the lab’s quality reviewers likely knew the engineers involved and relied on their professional opinion."
This is ancient news....yawn.....
Yeah, this was released months ago. May 30, 2014 at 2:19 PM is clueless.
You can say that it does not matter much that LANL screwed up on WIPP or that they can not manage cost, schedule or performance on major projects. These areas are not in the core of the Lab and so we should not hold them to a high standard. The news of this investigation from a couple months ago brings to light shortcomings in the nuts and bolts part of the operation. You can dismiss the safety and security failures as being on the edges of why the nation still needs LANL and play it off that the real focus is spent on the nuclear mission.
In every presentation Charlie always goes out of his way to make a big deal out of his annual letter and how his letter is the most important function of the Lab. You have a hard time reconciling the findings reported in the paper with his words.
Even if the story is not from this week's headlines, it is in no way whatsoever a sleeper.
Sandia needs to be spanked for bad behavior, namely for having a chili cookoff with no chili and managers with masters but not doctorate degrees. What is this world coming to? This is fully grounds for shutting down Sandia once and for all.
Sandia has done so much illegal stuff (even being chastised by the federal government):
http://amarillo.com/stories/2002/03/29/usn_sandia.shtml
http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/07/sandia-chastised.html
Don't forget the illegal payments Sandia made to politicians too!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/11/ig-report-finds-questionable-payments-to-former-us-rep-heather-wilson/
My favorite one is where Sandia was punished by a jury for $4 million to Shawn Carpenter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
Somebody call the poster of the four post a waaaaambulance!
Most of these mistakes in the report are from production during the late 1980s and earlier. The production processes shouldn't have allowed this sort of thing, but no one expected weapons to be out there for so long and the world was an entirely different place.
It would have been useful for the report to share more information about when the mistakes took place.
Scooby: Why is the headline for this post limited to Sandia? No doubt we can thank the poster of the previous four posts who thinks that a PhD is required to be a good manager.
Sandia had 12.5% mistakes in the limited sample size.
LANL had 66% mistakes in the limited sample size.
No one looks good, but give LANL the credit they deserve. LLNL needs to steal more LANL systems before they get noted in the report.
Sandia did find all but one of the drawings, which had been misnumbered, and all of the product definitions.
Los Alamos sampled 24 plutonium “pits,” devices used to trigger nuclear bombs, and the definitions and drawings for all of them were located.
LANL allowed changes to classified nuclear weapons drawings without using a documented and approved change notice.
Sandia, meanwhile, earned kudos for its control of weapons drawings.
The report says that of 30 “specification exception releases” for parts sampled at LANL, 19 did not have the required technical justification.
Only seven of 56 exception releases reviewed at Sandia didn’t have proper evaluations. The report said Sandia implemented corrections in this area in 2009 and the audit didn’t find problems there after 2010.
Most senior managers at the labs don't even have an undergraduate course, much less an advanced degree, in the disciplines they oversee. That's why they continue to be snowed by the con artists working for them. Most are truly pointy hair types, straight out of Dilbert.
You know what's worse? The chili cookoff fiasco...
Most senior managers at the labs don't even have an undergraduate course, much less an advanced degree, in the disciplines they oversee.
June 3, 2014 at 11:24 PM
Patently false. Undoubtedly true if you had said "...in ALL OF the disciplines they oversee." Which of course would be unlikely at best, and impossible in a practical sense.
What's this chili cookoff fiasco that everyone keeps talking about?
I dunno, but I bet it was really bad!
Anonymous said...
I dunno, but I bet it was really bad!
June 6, 2014 at 4:44 PM
Was it as bad as the $4 million Sandia had to pay in court fees to Shawn Carpenter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
June 7, 2014 at 3:29 AM
Everyone ignored your first posting of this. That's a hint.
Which first post are you referring to? The one about the cosmological constant to explain inflation, or the one about Sandia being fined $4 million to Shawn Carpenter?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
So now everyone has a chance to ignore three postings by you.
Which three postings are being ignored? The ones about using protein CP29 to bind to photosystem I of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under State 2 conditions, or the one about Sandia being fined $4 million to Shawn Carpenter?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
Four!
But if Jimmy cracks corn and nobody cares, then why does he keep doing it?
Give up caring about most things happening at any of the NSNA labs and you'll be much happier with your life.
What's an NSNA lab? Is that the one that Edward Snowden revealed was spying on all of us?
Dare to commit a typo, and the trolls pounce!
Someone still didn't answer what the chili cookoff fiasco is...
Actually., no one answered it. Guess you have to do your own research...
All these "bad things" Sandia did.... really makes them look good when you compare them to LLNL and LANL. Chili cookoff hater must be a pro-Sandia troll.
Here's your answer:
http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-waste.html
" Tim Shepodd (8223) liked the moniker and agreed to call it the “chili cookoff.” But there was no chili involved, and the only “cooking” had to do with the kind of chemicals not usually found on Sandia grounds. "
that whole chili story... makes Sandia a very likeable organization.
Yes, Sandia is a very likeable organization!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
This Carpenter fellow looks like a real troublemaker who just won't let up, and acted beyond his job requirements. But hey, he got a payout from it, though he didn't deserve it. This individual seems to have some similarities in behavior to Snowden. The security officer was right. Management was far too understanding.
Carpenter thinks that it is in his right to not exhaust all legitimate channels to air his concerns. Instead, he took it upon himself to ignore all of those channels and go ahead and inappropriately disclose sensitive information. Luckily it was not to the wikileaks as Snowden did. But nevertheless it shows someone entrusted with sensitive information who decided to make up his own rules, ignoring existing paths for escalating his concerns. People like this should never be allowed to have a clearance. Sandia did the right thing.
I'm glad the American justice system thought the above 2 postings was wrong and gave him $4 million. Apparently, the US federal government thought Shawn Carpenter was justified since he still works in national security employment.
US and the American people: 1
Sandia: 0 (actually minus $4 million)
US wins!
Sandia's fault was that they were too accommodating to this individual. He should not possess a security clearance. Reeks of Snowden, the darling of the masses who have no idea about the responsibilities that go along with security clearances.
June 11, 2014 at 6:41 PM is just your typical run-of-the-mill bleeding heart Snowden lover. Typical.
I'm glad the American justice system thought the above 2 postings was wrong and gave him $4 million.
US wins!
June 11, 2014 at 6:41 PM
If you think that constitutes a "win" for the US, you are as screwed up as the US justice system is!
On October 14, 2007, The Albuquerque Journal published a story ("Analyst, Sandia Settle Suit") that stated that Sandia had dropped its appeal of the verdict.[2] According to the story, the judgment had been accumulating 15 percent interest since the verdict in his favor in February 2007. The piece also related that Carpenter continues to work in the national security area for clients in the intelligence community, federal agencies and the military.
Carpenter is as much a "whistleblower" as snowden considers himself a "whistleblower." What snowden did was much much worse than what carpenter did. I'm sure carpenter is wise enough to not make the same mistake again given similar circumstances.
US still wins!
Umm... the US lost... that was taxpayer money that went to the lil'snowden.
"Carpenter thinks that it is in his right to not exhaust all legitimate channels to air his concerns. Instead, he took it upon himself to ignore all of those channels and go ahead and inappropriately disclose sensitive information..." I love the arrogant armchair quarterbacking by the troll, who feels that cases should be decided be them, rather than the standard jury trial -- which happened, by the way, in Sandia turf. It didn't matter, though, because it was such a train wreck for Sandia. Two separate weeks over five years of sign in logs, coincidentally the exact weeks that were requested, went mysteriously missing for almost two years. By some miracle, they turned up after one of Carpenter's supervisors "went in during the weekend to look again", after two years of searches by security guards and other personnel turned up nothing. And that's just the start of the unbelievable testimony from Sandia witnesses. We live in the USA, thankfully, not Trollopilis, where judgment is meted out by insecure and inadequate self-lovers like you. We have court systems, where despite the odds and barrels of cash (your cash, as a taxpayer) that institutions like Sandia throw at lawsuits, the truth prevails at a jury trial. Either you are a bored, ill-informed narcissist, or you are a member of the Sandia PR team doing some image management. My money is on #2.
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