Nuclear labs face weapon reductions, layoffs
Plans reveal sites such may see 20 to 30 percent reduction in workforceBy Betsy Mason, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 12/20/2007 06:29:21 AM PST LIVERMORE
The Department of Energy revealed draft plans Tuesday to consolidate nuclear weapons work at eight sites, including Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, a move that could result in a 20 to 30 percent reduction in workforce and the closing of 600 buildings.
At the same time, President Bush announced a 15 percent reduction in nuclear weapons, which along with a previous 50 percent cut that will be complete by the end of the year, would bring the stockpile down to 25 percent of the peak Cold War size.
The smaller stockpile could be maintained by a smaller weapons complex, Thomas D'Agostino, head of the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a news conference Tuesday.
"We must act now to adapt to the future and stop pouring money into an old Cold War nuclear weapons complex," he said.
The proposal includes four possible plans, including the DOE's preferred strategy which would consolidate missions and facilities to create a smaller, safer and more secure complex that would be less expensive to run, D'Agostino said.
"Things will be done differently, and they will be done better," he said. Ideas for reducing the weapons stockpile and shrinking the complex have been much discussed for more than a year.
The full draft of the plans will be made public in mid-January, followed by a 90-day public comment period.
Eighteen public hearings will be held during that period, including one in Livermore on March 19.
None of the eight major weapons facilities would be closed, but redundancies would be eliminated. In September the DOE had announced plans to move the plutonium out of Livermore by 2014.
The new consolidation proposal would move the timetable up to 2012 and would include moving plutonium and weapons-grade uranium to just five sites by 2012, in order to reduce the costs of securing the special nuclear materials.
The total square footage dedicated to weapons work would be reduced by a third to 26 million square feet.
Explosives testing would be stopped at two facilities including Livermore's Site 300 near Tracy.
Bruce Goodwin, head of Weapons and Complex Integration at the lab, said that other work would continue at Site 300, including work for agencies other than the DOE such as the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
"The development of that site is a work in progress," he said. Livermore Lab would close two other testing facilities, at Site 300 and at the Plutonium Facility, that simulate the environmental conditions the stockpile is likely to experience to ensure the weapons will last.
That work will move to the Pantex Plant in Texas.
Livermore would continue to be a center for supercomputing, for high-energy and density physics at the National Ignition Facility and for high explosives research and development. "We're going to be one of the two weapons and design centers of excellence," Goodwin said.
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is the other. D'Agostino said he expected the planned workforce reduction to be largely taken care of through attrition.
Last month, Livermore Lab announced it would lay off 500 temporary and supplemental workers, and that as many as 300 more layoffs could be needed early next year due to potential federal budget cuts.
Livermore Lab had beaten out Los Alamos Lab for work on developing a new, more reliable and robust warhead that the administration hoped would eventually replace the existing, aging warheads.
But the broad omnibus spending bill expected to be approved by Congress eliminated money for the Reliable Replacement Warhead for the current fiscal year.
The administration had asked for $88 million for design and preliminary work on the proposed warhead.
"This (warhead) would have sent the wrong signal around the world encouraging the very proliferation we are trying to prevent," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a critic of the new warhead program said.
The Energy Department had argued the new warhead would be easier to maintain than the current aging warheads without the need for actual nuclear testing.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Reach Betsy Mason at bmason@bayareanewsgroup.com or 925-952-5026.
5 comments:
I hear we're only about $250M - $270M in debt. I somehow can't seem to see how axing 900 people is going to resolve this issue and from what I can see there is no immediate fix except to ax people. So once again, how many people is LLNL going to have to release by April 2008. Could I hear and see a truthful figure please.
Test site at Lawrence lab may shut under new federal plan
(12-20) 14:22 PST Tracy, Calif. (AP) --
More than 900 nuclear weapons program workers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could lose their jobs if the federal government goes ahead with a proposal to stop testing at a site in the Altamont Hills.
The Site 300 test range near Tracy is slated to stop testing under the U.S. National Nuclear Security Agency's proposal to consolidate the nation's nuclear weapons infrastructure.
Lab spokesman David Schwoegler says nuclear weapons launching systems tests could stop by 2010, and high explosives tests could stop by 2015.
Federal officials say that plan would lower security risks and storage costs by moving some of the work performed locally to a New Mexico lab and a Nevada test site.
Schwoegler says the lab is exploring other uses for the facility before the agency makes a final decision next year.
1. Axing 900 people does not seem to make the numbers come out right.
2. An interesting part of the bills in Congress that give funding to the Labs is how rapidly the stories disappeared. I take this rapid disappearance of a story important to all of us as meaning that the country as a whole does not care about the Labs or about nuclear weapons.
Eric,
what stories are you referring to and where did they disappear from?
December 21, 2007 9:07 AM
If LLNL is truly only $300,000,000 in the hole than axing 900 people would work out to each person costing the program $333K. Having taken what George Miller said about how the cost of each employee now being $450K to $650K we're getting off cheap.
$300M / 900 = $333K
Now if you believe that this RIF is being driven strictly by that measly $300M, think again. First they'll 900 people passed out the gate for that sad little reason they gave us, but the question that remains will be, why 1,100 or more as time goes on from outsourcing and over sites that will come along as the days go on. My gut feeling says LLNS is going to can 2,000-2,400 no matter what creative down sizing tactic have to be contrived. It's them or us, but there is no room for both, especially when one is looking at retaining they $280K - $410K a year salary and failure to meet a goal would cost them their job. No way will anything below AD be indispensable.
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