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House panel calls out nuke officials for repeated failures

* AP News - June 12th 2015 *

Members of a U.S. House panel said Friday that they are frustrated with decades of security and safety lapses at some of the laboratories, manufacturing facilities and other sites that make up the nation's nuclear complex.

... U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, R-New York, said taxpayers are on the hook for the mistakes made at Los Alamos and the repository. Collins said he wanted to know why no one was fired.

Had something like that happened in the private sector, he said those responsible would have lost their jobs and the contractor would have been sued to recoup the cost of the damages. Collins said simply reducing the term of the contract doesn't go far enough to hold the lab manager accountable or address the systemic problems that have plagued the lab.

Collins, a businessman, said his biotechnology company works with infectious diseases and other bioterrorism materials. "We don't make mistakes because we have people in charge who know what they're doing. Clearly that can't be said for your agency," Collins said to the panel of federal officials.

news.yahoo.com/house-panel-calls-nuke-officials-repeated-failures-174007660--politics.html

Comments

Anonymous said…
Perhaps New Mexico should just close WIPP after the DOE cleans up LANL and Sandia. After all, Rocky Flats put far worse stuff there. It just didn't explode. and now they want to put lots more plutonium and other nuclear waste there. No thanks!
Anonymous said…
I bet LANL/DOE was responsible for the disaster on the Moon in the TV series Space 1999 as well... :-)
Anonymous said…
Three Vice Presidents (and now the President) of technical divisions at Sandia National Laboratories do not have a Ph.D.: Hruby, Walker, Vahle. To my knowledge, these are the first ever Vice Presidents without a Ph.D. in Science or Engineering to lead techical divisions at Sandia.

Adam Rowen (no longer manager of the Materials Chemistry department) from Sandia National Laboratories does not have a Ph.D.

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