Your Favorite Blog Topic: NIF
Hey the reprieve you non-NIF programs got from discriminatory overhead rates (even 2 years after the build was complete), well you can do your duty and give it right back to NIF. Oh wait, you don't have a choice. You non-NIF people should just go to Silicon Valley. Google hires good people all the time. The bad ones can stay as government contractors at a national lab as part of the white collar welfare program.
Weapons Complex Monitor
March 27, 2013
NNSA Seeking To Shift $138 Million In Funds For National Ignition Facility
With Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility set to run out of funding next month, the Department of Energy says it will need to reprogram $138 million to compensate for higher overhead rates that are being charged to the facility. In a reprogramming request sent to House and Senate authorizers and appropriators last week, DOE Deputy Chief Financial Officer Alison Doone said the Department was seeking to reprogram $88.1 million, and would soon ask for authority to transfer another $40 million to keep the facility running through the end of the Fiscal Year. NIF enjoyed lower overhead rates than the rest of the laboratory during construction, but as it has entered full operations, it has shifted to a higher overhead rate, forcing lab officials to free up additional funds in what largely amounts to a complex accounting exercise.
Doone said an internal NNSA reprogramming of $5 million during FY 2012 and another $5 million this month have allowed the most critical research at NIF to continue, and because the increase to NIF overhead rates has lowered overhead rates for other programs at the lab, the current $88.1 million reprogramming request will be paid for by the “windfall” from the other programs. “These funds can be redirected to LLNL’s RTBF activity with no adverse effects to the programs involved,” Doone said in a letter to top House and Senate authorizers and appropriators last week. However, the additional $40 million that will be needed for NIF is likely to have an impact on the program, Doone said. “We will aim to minimize potential adverse impacts to other programs as we select these sources to fund this high-priority effort,” she wrote.
Last year, NIF Director Ed Moses told Congress that a $140 million shortfall driven by higher overhead rates could force the lab to lay off 450 NIF employees.
Hey the reprieve you non-NIF programs got from discriminatory overhead rates (even 2 years after the build was complete), well you can do your duty and give it right back to NIF. Oh wait, you don't have a choice. You non-NIF people should just go to Silicon Valley. Google hires good people all the time. The bad ones can stay as government contractors at a national lab as part of the white collar welfare program.
Weapons Complex Monitor
March 27, 2013
NNSA Seeking To Shift $138 Million In Funds For National Ignition Facility
With Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility set to run out of funding next month, the Department of Energy says it will need to reprogram $138 million to compensate for higher overhead rates that are being charged to the facility. In a reprogramming request sent to House and Senate authorizers and appropriators last week, DOE Deputy Chief Financial Officer Alison Doone said the Department was seeking to reprogram $88.1 million, and would soon ask for authority to transfer another $40 million to keep the facility running through the end of the Fiscal Year. NIF enjoyed lower overhead rates than the rest of the laboratory during construction, but as it has entered full operations, it has shifted to a higher overhead rate, forcing lab officials to free up additional funds in what largely amounts to a complex accounting exercise.
Doone said an internal NNSA reprogramming of $5 million during FY 2012 and another $5 million this month have allowed the most critical research at NIF to continue, and because the increase to NIF overhead rates has lowered overhead rates for other programs at the lab, the current $88.1 million reprogramming request will be paid for by the “windfall” from the other programs. “These funds can be redirected to LLNL’s RTBF activity with no adverse effects to the programs involved,” Doone said in a letter to top House and Senate authorizers and appropriators last week. However, the additional $40 million that will be needed for NIF is likely to have an impact on the program, Doone said. “We will aim to minimize potential adverse impacts to other programs as we select these sources to fund this high-priority effort,” she wrote.
Last year, NIF Director Ed Moses told Congress that a $140 million shortfall driven by higher overhead rates could force the lab to lay off 450 NIF employees.
Comments
Aren't their accounting mechanisms in place to prevent this?
This damages the Director's "necessary furlough" credibility (llnl's lack of funds). How can llnl's costs be controlled when NIF, for what ever reason, is being fiscally irresponsible.
...yet the largest project at the lab has free reign to do just about anything it wants.
They clearly have the oversite spotlight in the wrong place.
Moses. the lesser, has to forgo reduced capital construction burden rates (an artificial DOE accounting practice that assert capital construction projects use less overhead per dollar spent than operations) Buttttt he is now operating a full burden rates and he needs more $ so he takes it back by taxing the organizations he is giving it to....
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.
Only a NY jew has such chutzpah. Does anyone wonder why he is hated?
Why must other programs pay for NIF excesses? The salary increase gluttony is well known over many years.
Alot of you poor bastards who work in matrix organizations like PLS, Comp, Engineering are going to get screwed unless you're deemed critical to NIF. And HEAF and Site 300? Notice how critical capability is not being sustained there? You guys are getting killed off. That's because you're critical capabilities are no longer critical.
But these are just the changing times. Remember how ANCD disappeared 15 years ago? The business lines associated with nuclear chemistry was not so important anymore. Alot of you there, sorry to sound so brutal. You can hate NIF and Moses and Parney all you want, but that's not going to change anything. Look out for yourself. Don't expect the lab to ever look out for you, unless you've been deemed critical to NIF programs.
What's your point Moses? From my perspective, sounds like Moses can't manage his program. Make our day and follow through on this threat! Get rid of 1,000 for all we care! Hell, make it 5,000.
NIF did absolutely nothing to solve their own foreseeable problem. Amazing!
NIF alone should pay the price for their problem and inaction. Let NIF suffer the necessary program cuts it brought about itself.
If this was done, I bet they'd be on budget next year.
No other program should be punished, or their employees suffer, for NIF's inability to run a program on budget.
That's a little harsh...the landscaping is fabulous!
Use the overhead savings to reduce the shortfall and cut 500 or so NIF employees...
Or
Apply the overhead savings back to NIF, maintain the larger shortfall, and cut 700 or so non-NIF employees...
That amounts to non-NIF employees being counted as 3/5 of a person... sounds like we've seen something like this in the distant past.
>>>>>> LASER EOS <<<<<<
will be rearing its ugly head again. Also it could be.....
*(*(*(*( RAYLEIGH TAYLOR STRENGTH )*)*)*)
The ironic thing is that the much reviled Ed Moses did his job very well, getting the build completed and to specification. He is not to blame for the shoddy science that his machine is subjected to.
March 29, 2013 at 4:21 PM
What about the initial selling of NIF as essential for nuclear fusion power research, and to stockpile stewardship and maintenance of our nuclear deterrent? Greatest flimflam known to man? (PT Barnum excepted.) Sort of like when LANSCE was sold as a "Meson physics facility".
March 29, 2013 at 11:14 AM"
This is exactly the problem with NIF, it has been underfunded. There is a lesson to learned from this story NIF will succeed just as the best will succeed if is given the right funding
March 29, 2013 at 9:00 PM"
First of all NIF is exploring a new realm, we cant change Nature my friend. If in the end we cannot show ignition it will as big or a bigger discovery than ignition. Imagine if there was no Higgs, it would change everything we know about physics, the same could happen at NIF.
March 30, 2013 at 7:50 AM
Man, that is pathetic. Expensive machines that don't work are as valuable as those that do work? News flash - it isn't what we don't know about physics that is preventing ignition, it is what the NIF scientists don't know about making NIF work.
March 30, 2013 at 9:21 AM"
But what if NIF is working it is just that nature is different at the level of energy?
Isn't one of managements tasks to ensure we operate within our budgets.
I'd like to overspend too.
Amen to that. Parney has foolishly doubled down on Moses...and now we are all going to reap the negative results.
We all carried Moses for years paying ridiculous overhead. Moses needs to stand on his own two feet like the rest of running projects at the lab.
He's been given more than enough leeway...
This won't be allowed to go on for much longer given the quickly shrinking national budgets. More lies won't save NIF.
This won't be allowed to go on for much longer given the quickly shrinking national budgets. More lies won't save NIF."
This just your opinion and yours alone. Prove the NIF was sold on lies, prove that the people where dishonest. You cannot because perhaps it is just an opinion.
By any chance where part of an EOS and got fired? You sure seem very bitter about this but you provide very little facts. It seems like you just have an agenda rather than a legitimate point. I am just saying, you seem like you protest too much as they say.
March 30, 2013 at 2:56 PM
Of course it is an opinion - this is a blog! If it were easily provable, you and everyone else at NIF would be fired tomorrow. But the truth will out. Get ready. Nobody has to "prove" anything. This isn't a court of law. But your insistence on "proof" makes you sound like a defendant. All that needs to happen is that DOE/NNSA gets tired of all the lies and misdirection. Again, get ready.
No opinion there, just a fact.
As it is having a grave impact on the entire lab population, what is being done to prevent this from occurring again?
I guess someone touched bit of nerve here to get you going. You are the only talking about EOS. I think one of the posters may have summed up your situation.
I guess someone touched bit of nerve here to get you going. You are the only talking about EOS. I think one of the posters may have summed up your situation.
March 31, 2013 at 5:33 PM
March 30, 2013 at 9:37 PM said nothing about EOS, only "lies and misdirection." Maybe your guilt led you to read the truth into it?
April 1, 2013 at 5:10 AM
Betcha the response from LLNS will be "proprietary information" not subject to FOIA. Another exemption to FOIA is "pre-decisional" information, which will be claimed applies to raw data. Good luck with that, I hope you are very, very patient.
Competitors, the rest of the community sees an emperor (LLNL laser EoS program) with no clothes. The promise or potential of accurate measurements is 16 years too late. I don't know if lab managers have even a clue of the predicament that the laser EoS effort is in....
*(*(*(*( RAYLEIGH TAYLOR STRENGTH )*)*)*)
This would be more appropriate:
~~~~~~~~RAYLEIGH~TAYLOR~STRENGTH~~~~~~~~
March 29, 2013 at 9:00 PM"
"First of all NIF is exploring a new realm, we cant change Nature my friend. If in the end we cannot show ignition it will as big or a bigger discovery than ignition. Imagine if there was no Higgs, it would change everything we know about physics, the same could happen at NIF."
Ignition was first demonstrated in 1951. It was demonstrated hundreds of times since then. There is no discovery to be made.
You have a budget & you live within that budget, just like all other programs.
April 1, 2013 at 6:53 PM
False premise, false conclusion.
But don't hold your breath that they will correct the problem. Failure has always strengthened the resolve of the usual Livermorons to dig their heels in and double down on fail strategies. Ed is an anomaly because he did his part and delivered as opposed to the experiment leads. What's a capable general to do when all his minions fail and let him down? What does a general do with all these people? Just suck it up and accept his ultimate fate of disappointment and failure because he is in a sense being conned by his own scientists and mid level management?
The lab really needs a "win" but Ed is not being given any results to make his job easier. The clock is ticking, and on top of that, they have the "ticking time bomb" to deal with on EoS. The best approach is to come clean, to clean house and purge the mediocrity within the scientific ranks, and in doing so, buying goodwill to be given time to rebuild teams that are run by superstar experimentalists who have a record of success. They should stop making their inward facing messaging different from their public facing messaging. After all, in the age of Internet, we already know about the admissions to scientific failure by lab management internally in EoS and strength. And they spend far too much time and resources trying to massage their outward messaging and trying to manage external perceptions while leaving the same failed teams with more and more chances. What is up with that? Are the technical leads somehow exerting leverage against the lab? Is that why the lab can't just get rid if them? It's not like they are near the top of the food chain...
Wow - are we finally done with NIF?
April 4, 2013 at 7:14 PM
No. These charlatans will be around for many years to come. As long as the DOE and NNSA are gullible enough, and there is no executive oversight of those agencies, they will continue to waste your tax dollars on the NIF.
Are we finally done with NIF and EOS whatever that is?
April 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM
Who was on the awards committee that year? Anyone from Livermore, per chance?