Yes, indeed, "The rent at LANL is too damn high"!
This even applies to bio-defense work. LANL has managed to price itself out of most research markets and even the DOE admits this fact.
So much for the expected cost savings at the lab through privatization of the lab's management. The for-profit management system has only made out of control costs and bloat grow much worse:
* Feds blast plans for bio-defense labs at LANL *
Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug 11th
.... “Despite LANL’s assertions, we found outside demand for a new ... facility to be less certain,” auditors reported. The audit noted that LANL’s reports ignored the prevalence of bio-security services throughout the country, and officials with federal agencies that LANL plans to rely on for business at the expanded labs told auditors they would be unlikely to use it because less expensive, equally secure options already exist.
“In our judgment, NNSA needs to fully reassess its need for biological research facilities,” auditors reported.
.... Auditors also questioned cost estimates LANL provided for the proposed expansion.
“LANL’s current cost allocation practices may have understated the costs of biological research personnel,” running afoul of the Energy Department’s cost recovery policies by applying funds allocated for specific projects to work for other government agencies.
7 comments:
Bio researchers are some of the lowest paid scientists on the planet. You can easily get hoards of Chinese foreign national postdocs to work for ~$30K/yr at any university or university affiliate lab, many of which have even biosafety level 4 labs.
The reality is, you just don't need to do science that isn't NW related (or at least highly classified) at a NNSA lab. We have these things called universities, and they are cheap, open and employ gobs of slaves that don't have annoying things like benefits, families and 40 hr work weeks.
Aside from the rent being too damn high, just look at the quality of the work. It has been over a year and the Plutonium facility is still another year away from operations. What will that $700 million buy the NNSA?
August 13, 2014 at 7:23 PM
What does this have to do with quality of work? It's not the scientists who won't open the lab, it is the risk averse managers and NNSA. They are the ones so afraid that they won't do anything.
Get a second job working at McDonald's in Espanola to help your finances.
Rent at LLNL is pretty high, too!
The "rent is too damn high" because the people collecting the rent like it that way.
Until that changes, the rents will simply keep going higher and higher. Good luck dealing with that, lab researchers. You're going to see fewer and fewer of your hard earned research dollars going to actual science and to pay your salaries in future years.
If the "rent is too damn high" and yet LANL is old, decrepit and falling apart, doesn't that make LANS a typical slum lord?
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