Skip to main content

Sandia chastised

Sandia chastised by an internal review board, condemned by the federal government and cost taxpayers millions of dollars:

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/larry_barker/sandia-lab-safety-costs-taxpaers-millions

Comments

Anonymous said…
That's horrible!
Anonymous said…
From the article:

“When we have a tragic mistake like this and people’s lives (are) destroyed really, and massive amounts of taxpayer money being paid out,” said Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., “this is a pretty sorry performance in terms of a government agency.”

And that poor record has cost the lab dearly. After calling employee safety standards “inexcusable,” the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration recently withheld more than $6 million in incentive fees from Sandia as punishment.
Anonymous said…
How many times this month is someone going to post old articles about a tragic event which took place in 2006 and is being dealt with? Even the links are not recent news. How about this blog start reposting incidents which have happened at all labs since the dawn of time. Companies never talk about litigation, get used to it.

It is absurd that one of these articles claims that there is a lab tradition of a day-long alcohol-soaked celebration.

This may have happened in this one particular case, but there is no lab tradition to do this. Having been at a successful launch, you go back to the hotel and get to sleep. There were no celebrations. When you get into the endzone, act like you have been there before. Labs have almost no funds allocated to any sort of celebration, and especially not for purchasing alcohol.

A bad apple can spoil the bunch, but this is an isolated incident of people with severely poor judgement who have caused great damages to themselves and coworkers and the reputation of the lab. Maybe start reposting information about the Rosenbergs and Klaus Fuchs
Anonymous said…
July 19, 2013 at 6:31 PM:

You are absolutely correct, but keep in mind that "someone" does not post those things here - the blog administrator does. And apparently he exercises no judgement or control. His only filter is whether the post offends him in some obscure way. To filter a 6 year old non-news inflammatory story posted for the sole reason of arousing strong feelings among the ignorant, is apparently beyond him. Too bad. This blog long ago lost all real credibility because of the ineptness of the administrator, so not much has changed.
Anonymous said…
The post by Anonymous (very likely a Sandia employee at the Livermore site who has contributed little to the scientific community) on July 19, 2013 at 6:31 PM is wrong on 2 accounts:

(1) The link is indeed recent news. This news story was posted on May 2013.

(2) There's another news story by KRQE about parties involving alcohol with Sandia employees:

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/larry_barker/vandenberg-afb-post-launch-celebration
Anonymous said…
The 2:28am post by Anonymous, thanks for breaking news of a "2002" video reported on in 2009 where all we can tell that happened is that there is at one person linked to UCLA is out drinking with their friends. Any relationship to any other claims are invalidated by a poor video. Find a copy where they show their business cards or faces of people actually known to work at a location and your little contributions to the scientific community may be increased beyond mediocrity.
Anonymous said…
The previous post sounds like another Sandian (most likely a Sandia Livermore manager!) that can't write properly.
scooby said…
" because of the ineptness of the administrator"
Think again. BLOG admin is doing the LLNL/LANL community a favor by maintaining it on a voluntary basis.
You can say admin is inept only if you are paying him for his service.
If you dont like the BLOG, dont let the door hit you in the b....
Anonymous said…
Ineptness is a character trait, not a function of payment. Unless because you are not paid, you choose to be inept...
Anonymous said…
That was two the 10:06 poster, not the 8:12 poster, sorry for pulling you into this mess.
Anonymous said…
well that didnt work.
Anonymous said…
To the 10:06 poster, I am so sorry that not everyone can graduate from the #1 university of the world as valedictorian and class president while earning their PhD, JD, and MD and still have time to troll this little blog.

If only everyone had the ability to incorrectly discern what sort of job a person has or company that they work for from a short fragment on the internet like your intrepid sluthing. Oh wait, somehow that wasn't actually relevant to a conversation about the breaking news that you posted from 2002.
Anonymous said…
You people (all of you) have way too much time on your hands. Why you let yourselves be trolled so badly over the past 12 months as to be manipulated into attacking the other labs, you guys are real classic. Alot of you just can't refrain from throwing in your two cents.
scooby said…
"Ineptness is a character trait"
Yes Dr Brothers!
Again, if you dont like the BLOG, go away!
Anonymous said…
Blog owner can run the blog how ever they please. Referees, teachers, and blog owners are "always right" in their domain.
Anonymous said…
I'm curious to hear if anything came out of those contracts by the NM labs to that politician. Story seemed to just disappear. Was it fully explained/resolved?
Anonymous said…
I'm curious to hear if anything came out of those contracts by the NM labs to that politician.

July 24, 2013 at 3:18 PM

"...that politician"?? If you really cared, you'd know the name. Just trolling to stir up trouble, huh?

Anonymous said…
Referees, teachers, and blog owners are "always right" in their domain.

July 24, 2013 at 3:07 PM

Yes, and blog commenters are always allowed to complain if a blog is potentially of great interest and import, but is run poorly.
Anonymous said…
I heard that a couple of people in the Materials Chemistry department (including Adam Rowen, the manager) at Sandia booked a trip using Sandia funds to Hawaii to attend the 2012 ECS meeting. That is definitely a waste!

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

LLNL un-diversity

Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it.  Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!