Audit cites problems at LANL, Sandia
http://www.abqjournal.com/379790/news/audit-cites-problems-at-lanl-sandia.html
http://www.abqjournal.com/379790/news/audit-cites-problems-at-lanl-sandia.html
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...
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"LANL allowed changes to classified nuclear weapons drawings without using a documented and approved change notice, the report states. In one case, lab officials “told us they ‘assumed’ the changes were needed,” the auditors said.
LANL also didn’t limit access to weapons drawings as required and “circumvented” a control over changes after a weapons design drawing had been approved. The Los Alamos lab gave 30 nuclear weapons designers the ability to make changes to drawings whether they were assigned to a particular weapons project or not.
Lab officials said they didn’t limit designer access because they believed they had internal processes that were “more efficient, without raising risk issues.”
By making changes to released drawings after the drawings have been extensively reviewed and approved, “NNSA is at increased risk of unauthorized and inappropriate changes to nuclear weapons design information,” the report asserts.
Sandia, meanwhile, earned kudos for its control of weapons drawings. Once a drawing has been approved at Sandia, it is in “read only” status and can’t be changed after release. Sandia’s practices “effectively decreased the risk of unauthorized changes to nuclear weapons drawings.”
The auditors also were concerned about the use of non-conforming weapons parts, failures to obtain engineering evaluations to support waivers from parts specifications and lack of a “fully implemented supplier quality management program.”
The report says that of 30 “specification exception releases” for parts sampled at LANL, 19 did not have the required technical justification.
“As such, officials lacked assurance that the component was suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.” LANL officials said the lab’s quality reviewers likely knew the engineers involved and relied on their professional opinion."
In every presentation Charlie always goes out of his way to make a big deal out of his annual letter and how his letter is the most important function of the Lab. You have a hard time reconciling the findings reported in the paper with his words.
Even if the story is not from this week's headlines, it is in no way whatsoever a sleeper.
http://amarillo.com/stories/2002/03/29/usn_sandia.shtml
http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/07/sandia-chastised.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/11/ig-report-finds-questionable-payments-to-former-us-rep-heather-wilson/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
Most of these mistakes in the report are from production during the late 1980s and earlier. The production processes shouldn't have allowed this sort of thing, but no one expected weapons to be out there for so long and the world was an entirely different place.
It would have been useful for the report to share more information about when the mistakes took place.
Scooby: Why is the headline for this post limited to Sandia? No doubt we can thank the poster of the previous four posts who thinks that a PhD is required to be a good manager.
Sandia had 12.5% mistakes in the limited sample size.
LANL had 66% mistakes in the limited sample size.
No one looks good, but give LANL the credit they deserve. LLNL needs to steal more LANL systems before they get noted in the report.
Sandia did find all but one of the drawings, which had been misnumbered, and all of the product definitions.
Los Alamos sampled 24 plutonium “pits,” devices used to trigger nuclear bombs, and the definitions and drawings for all of them were located.
LANL allowed changes to classified nuclear weapons drawings without using a documented and approved change notice.
Sandia, meanwhile, earned kudos for its control of weapons drawings.
The report says that of 30 “specification exception releases” for parts sampled at LANL, 19 did not have the required technical justification.
Only seven of 56 exception releases reviewed at Sandia didn’t have proper evaluations. The report said Sandia implemented corrections in this area in 2009 and the audit didn’t find problems there after 2010.
June 3, 2014 at 11:24 PM
Patently false. Undoubtedly true if you had said "...in ALL OF the disciplines they oversee." Which of course would be unlikely at best, and impossible in a practical sense.
I dunno, but I bet it was really bad!
June 6, 2014 at 4:44 PM
Was it as bad as the $4 million Sandia had to pay in court fees to Shawn Carpenter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
Everyone ignored your first posting of this. That's a hint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-waste.html
" Tim Shepodd (8223) liked the moniker and agreed to call it the “chili cookoff.” But there was no chili involved, and the only “cooking” had to do with the kind of chemicals not usually found on Sandia grounds. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
US and the American people: 1
Sandia: 0 (actually minus $4 million)
US wins!
US wins!
June 11, 2014 at 6:41 PM
If you think that constitutes a "win" for the US, you are as screwed up as the US justice system is!