Thursday, September 13, 2012
Peace group says kill the NNSA
Anonymously contributed:
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I hate to admit it, but as a 20 year employee at the Lab I have to agree with this group’s conclusion…
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Frank Munger’s Atomic Cite Underground
September 12, 2012
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Peace group says kill the NNSA
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The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance today said the time has come to get rid of the National Nuclear Security Administration, saying it's an unnecessary and expensive layer of management and rife with problems.
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"In light of persistent management failures, documented by the General Accounting Office, the (Defense) Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, and Inspector General reports, the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance believes the NNSA should be abolished, and management of the nation's nuclear weapons complex should revert to the Department of Energy," the report said.
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Another excerpt: "Aside from an occasional personnel shuffle and a rigorous effort to shift blame to contractors, NNSA's response to criticisms is consistently, 'We get it now, we're compiling lessons learned, we'll do better.' "
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The group added: "But the persistent and recurring evidence of management incompetence at NNSA should raise the existential questions: How does the government receive value added from the NNSA? Does the NNSA do more harm than good? Is the management culture at NNSA fixable?"
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5 comments:
I'm a bit confused here. If I am interpreting the message this way, then I am led to believe that "getting rid of NNSA as the sponsor agency overseeing certain facilities in the NWE" would "make things better with respect to preventing the recurrence of incidents like these at Y-12 and LANL." I highly doubt that NNSA is the sole source of root causes for all of the problems described in the GAO report. Making the proposed changes to get rid of NNSA and move the NWE back under DoE isn't by itself going to mitigate problems like these. One only needs to go back in history to the pre-NNSA days to see this.
I suspect this is just the attempt at taking a shot at the NWE by going after the sponsor agency (NNSA) that is perceived as being under seige and weakened by politicians and other actors. Or perhaps even worse, they simply are not informed about the players, the institutions/facilities, the relationships, the history, and the dynamics at play.
While I tend to sympathize with groups like these that promote peace, disarmament and/or fiscal conservatism, I generally don't have any tolerance for groups that make poorly argued and poorly articulated statements as they indicate to me a kind of blind fervor that can fuel a mob mentality that is impervious to reason and is incapable of contributing productively towards helping find solutions.
While I tend to sympathize with groups like these that promote peace, disarmament and/or fiscal conservatism...
September 13, 2012 4:49 PM
You're kidding, right? Fiscal "conservatism" is never associated with the former two views. You must know this. Give an example of an organization that promotes all three.
Oh yeah, i wouldn't expect to see all 3 together. just saying that i am okay with both philosophies (liberal tree huggers and penny-pincher small-government camps).
Unfortunately, the incompetence that is readily seen at NNSA comes from the "mother ship" of incompetence and expensive and wasteful bureaucracy.... the DOE.
Get rid of the NNSA before they get rid of you. :-)
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