LLNL - The True Story -

Interesting new Website... www.deprivatizethelabs.org "The privatization has placed the LANL and LLNL science and engineering missions in jeopardy. The focus has shifted to meeting the contract performance goals and earning maximum fee, resulting in less tolerance for the open debate and discussion that is necessary both for good science and engineering and for regulatory compliance. The changed environment has affected careers through program misdirection and loss of trained personnel, and has escalated a decline in science and engineering productivity. Both Labs have suffered from a decline in recruitment and a continued loss of senior people. All of this has happened while costing taxpayers an additional 300-400 million dollars per year, more than half of which is in management bonuses."

UPTE meets with public about LANL contract change By Tris DeRoma Los Alamos Monitor Friday, April 28, 2017  Representatives of the University Professional & Technical Employees (UPTE), which has a chapter at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, urged people at a town hall meeting to help it make changes to the laboratory’s management and operations structure. “We put together this panel to initiate this discussion, which we hope will turn into an ongoing discussion over the next number of months as the requests for proposals for the next LANL contract is being composed and created within the DOE (Department of Energy) and the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration),” said UPTE System-wide Executive Vice President Jeff Colvin. When the lab’s operations and management contract comes up for rebid sometime this year, UPTE is hoping a non-profit entity takes it over, instead of a for profit entity, which is what the lab has now under Los Alamos National Security LLC. Represen...

This week marks the turning over of the keys for SNL from Lockheed to Honeywell. From all reports it has gone very well so far and NNSA is moving forward with transitions at other sites as well. Has anyone seen any indications that there will be a delay in the final SNL hand over date?

Napolitano and UCOP called out for $175 million in hidden slush fund and tampering with audit reports to hide facts SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — University of California administrators hid $175 million from the public, its governing board and lawmakers in a secret reserve fund even as the UC raised tuition and asked the state for more funding, the state auditor said in a scathing report released Tuesday. Auditor Elaine Howle said the office of UC President Janet Napolitano also overcharged the system's 10 campuses to fund its operations, paid its employees significantly more than state employees and interfered in the auditing process. "Taken as a whole, these problems indicate that significant change is necessary to strengthen the public's trust in the University of California," Howle wrote in the report. The audit found that over the course of four years, the UC's central bureaucracy amassed more than $175 million in reserve funds by spending significantly less than it b...

LANL union to host town hall meeting Wednesday By Tris DeRoma Friday, April 21, 2017  A union that represents some scientists and technical workers that work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory will host a town hall-style meeting Wednesday in Los Alamos to discuss the upcoming contract transfer. The Department of Energy’s rebid process for the lab’s management and operations contract, currently held by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, is scheduled to start in the late spring or summer. The union, the “University Professional and Technical Employees,” is advocating for a non-profit company to take over the contract. Members of the community are invited to the meeting. “This is really organized as a true town hall meeting, where we want input from stakeholders,” said Jeff Colvin, executive vice president of the union. “Stakeholders are basically every employee at the laboratory and people who live in the local communities. Everybody is a stakeholder in the success of th...

Fire in plutonium facility sends employee to hospital. With a headline like this, someone is sure to get called to Congress for hearings. Would be entertaining if it was Napalitano and Pattiz that had to do it for the UC led contractor! Comment Anonymous April 24, 2017 at 2:35 PM No one in Congress or NNSA believes that UC is in charge of anything at the labs. In fact, you might be the only hold out who hasn't gotten the memo.

LANL reports fire at plutonium facility By Edmundo Carrillo/Journal North Friday, April 21st, 2017 at 5:47pm SANTA FE — A small fire broke out in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium facility Wednesday and caused minor injuries, but a lab spokesman said no radioactive materials were involved in the incident. The fire started around 10 a.m. during cleanup activity. Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the blaze involved a pyrophoric metal material, which can spontaneously overheat in the presence of oxygen, but it was quickly put out. Roark said no radioactive substance was involved, but said the material that ignited is still under investigation. One employee was taken to the hospital with finger burns and was later released. The facility was not damaged and resumed normal operations Thursday, Roark said. The plutonium facility is part of the lab’s Technical Area 55. https://www.abqjournal.com/991580/lanl-reports-fire-at-plutonium-facility.html Comments: . ...

Anyone have any insight from Klotz speech yesterday?

LANL Website: "The only national laboratories that earned a spot on the Woman Engineer list of top government employers were Los Alamos (No. 14) and Sandia National Laboratories (No. 17)." KRQE News: "Women at Sandia Labs allege discrimination in federal lawsuit" http://krqe.com/2017/02/08/women-at-sandia-labs-allege-discrimination-in-federal-lawsuit/ Comments: Anonymous April 19, 2017 at 9:40 PM Really, a local liberal Albuquerque news headline as evidence of something? What a joke. Yeah, that's a great source of "facts." Aggrieved people can "allege" anything they want. Doesn't make it true. Whiners and crybabies (or in this case, crybullies) get all the press they want these days.

Headline banner on today's LANL website was about how LANL and SNL were the only two national labs that won awards last year for diversity in the workplace. Which two labs lost their contract? Looks like a perfect correlation.

Who is going to replace Klotz? Comment: Anonymous April 19, 2017 at 3:04 AM Admiral Jay Cohen was rumored to be in the running for NNSA several months ago.

An official call for new management at LANL will come out soon. This could be the opportunity to it right this time and crush the LANL cultural problem once and for all. Wording needs to be put in the contract that will allow the manager to do what needs to be done without question. This time they must not underestimate how clever the LANL people and not allow them to wait the next contractor out just as they did with LANS. They must anticipate that what normal people consider decent or undignified will not work on the LANL people who thing they know best. They will not respond to mere words, they will talk in the shadows, offsite, and on blogs. They have a history of showing contempt for the corporate management and this must change and change must be forced and the new contract must allow the next corporation to leeway to force it. LANL has been given every chance and has failed every time, so the next contractor needs to fix it or shut it down. To many it has seems unbelievable t...

VSIP in the near future? Inquiring minds want to know!

Open letter to lab management about flawed code http://www.independentnews.com/mailbox/open-letter-to-lab-management/article_c69106b4-1a35-11e7-915f-7fd08f789ffb.html COMMENTS Hmm, I cannot say anything about the viability of his claims for the code. Sometimes these people have a point and other times not. Perhaps his issues have been addressed by the community but he just refused to believe it. Of course maybe he has a valid issue that needs to be addressed. However there is some interesting tidbits here. "I was even told that (at least in my group) the appraisal of a scientist’s work rests strictly and solely on whether or not they had managed to obtain funding; not on the quality or incisiveness of their ideas. Yet, and with all due respect, the Director of the Laboratory has recently proclaimed LLNL to be a ``new idea’’ Laboratory." This does seem to ring true. Does anyone want counter this? To be fair funding is important and should and must be part of ...

This month's issue of "APS News" arrived in the mail this week and the front page cover headline was "How African-American Women Succeed in Physics." Clearly the APS has moved away from promoting science and is now spending all of the dues collected to promote diversity and inclusion. In the process it has lost its once mighty clout as the lead advocate for science in Washington, and an important supporter of the NNSA physics labs is now relegated to just one more noisy voice in the crowd. Comments Anonymous April 14, 2017 at 12:21 PM The dreadful lack of women in STEM educational fields, and the scary demographic trends regarding men vs women in higher education in general, might justify some of this, but the title (I haven't read the article) seems to indicate a truly unfortunate racial focus. How about "How Women Succeed in Physics"? Wouldn't that necessarily include African-American women? Not politically correct enoug...

'March for Science’ Group Laments Trump’s Bombing Of ‘Marginalized’ ISIS Fighters http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/13/march-for-science-group-laments-trumps-bombing-of-marginalized-isis-fighters/

Anonymous April 12, 2017 at 7:10 PM Here we go, the first mention of moving NNSA over to DOD "Mulvaney declined Tuesday, when first announcing the plan, to say how many jobs, overall, the administration intends to eliminate. One possibility is moving the National Nuclear Security Administration from the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense." http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/12/trump-replaces-federal-hiring-freeze-with-surgical-cuts.html Comments  Anonymous April 12, 2017 at 9:32 PM Bad move, obviously considered by people who know nothing about history. Millenials: if they didn't experience it, it doesn't matter. Anonymous April 13, 2017 at 3:27 AM 9:32 is full of rhetoric and empty on facts. Mulvaney is hardly a millennial and he is closer to being a pensioner than he is to the college student. Moving NNSA from DOE to DOD will face the Congressional turf battles of some snowflakes losing oversight authority a...

Can't wait to see how the UC led team at LANL tries to spin this one. http://www.lamonitor.com/content/lanl-employee-pleads-no-contest-theft-tools Comments Anonymous April 12, 2017 at 7:21  AM The rumor I keep hearing is that UC will not be part of any bid at LANL. In any case we can always blame of the culture of arrogant scientists on this.

APS is now an official partner and supporter of the March for Science! http://www.aps.org/about/marchforscience.cfm But when you read their mission page, you find politically correct drivel like this, "We acknowledge that society and scientific institutions often fail to include and value the contributions of scientists from underrepresented groups. Systems of privilege influence who becomes a part of the science community, what topics we study, and how we apply our work in creating new technologies and crafting policy. We recognize that, historically and today, some scientific endeavors have been used to harm and oppress marginalized communities....", and "The March for Science does not tolerate hate speech, bigotry, or harassment within or outside our community. Targeting individuals or communities with violent language, including statements that reflect racism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or any form of bigotry, will result in banning and...