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In the name of safety and security!

The following was an anonymous comment in a recnet post and deserves to be its own post:

DOE oversight is broken. The worthless bureaucrats keep adding more and more meaningless requirements in order to perpetuate their existence.

This white-collar welfare in the name of safety and security results in the cost of doing business as a DOE organization being much more than the private sector.

We just had numerous people working all last week doing paperwork for a 15-minute repair that was about as risky as changing the doorbell button. We have to protect against nonsense security risks.

Eventually they will kill off all work. The only good thing about that will be that these parasites will then die also.

Comments

Anonymous said…
DOE oversight is broken. The worthless bureaucrats keep adding more and more meaningless requirements in order to perpetuate their existence.

I agree DOE oversight is overly unwarranted & burdensome. But, rather than perpetuate their existence, I think it’s much more due to the heavy hand of Congress, & the anti-nuke crowd. The DNFSB (under the aegis of Congress) has through its heavy-handed & overly bureaucratic approach to regulation/oversight reduced productivity by ~80% & increased the operating cost of the NWC by ~300-400%. The DNFSB is but a tool for eliminating the NWC.
As for DOE/NNSA, they just keep patting themselves on the back & ask for more $$$.
Anonymous said…
Safety and Security events that are the result of stupid and/or arrogant people have provided the over bearing management the fuel they need to ram regulations down our throats. It was also those incidents that provided the fuel for the contract changes.

In a sense, we don't need a test ban. I doubt that under the current risk averse environment we could get down to Nevada and field a test shot. NNSA got a contractor in place that is more than willing to jump to the inane rules.

I've got a handful of years left until retirement. It will be done in a very safe and very secure method. And very little will be accomplished. It's not the lab I enjoyed working at and when I leave, I will do so with the thought "Thank GOD that's over."
Anonymous said…
I doubt that under the current risk averse environment we could get down to Nevada and field a test shot.

You make a good point. I would further add that if a new test shot was ever plannd it would take 5 years to schedule & would be limited to less than 1kt nuclear.
Anonymous said…
"Eventually they will kill off all work."


Yes, but not before causing costs to rise to levels that finally induce massive lab layoffs of the remaining research staff.

Thank goodness the "for-profit" boys and girls in the executive management team will still be around until the very end. What would the NNSA labs do without these bloated hordes of over-paid managers who bend to NNSA's every whim, no matter how insane?
Anonymous said…
Why any young, bright and eager scientist would ever want to come work at the totally dysfunctional NNSA "labs" is beyond me.

These "labs" might have a future as generators of construction projects for Bechtel's management team, but not much more than that.
Anonymous said…
"I doubt that under the current risk averse environment we could get down to Nevada and field a test shot."

Can you even imagine an IWS for an undergroud shot? One just to dig a deep hole would probably be impossible to get approved.
Anonymous said…
I disagree, LLNL/LLNS decides how to implement DOE/NNSA/congress oversight. We do these things to ourselves!

Why - I am not sure, but it might have something to do with the big management fee?

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