Comments:
I head December but who knows. I also heard that Bechtel is no longer interested in being part of any rebid. Other "rumors" are that TCP1 will be terminated, U Texas and U of California could be interested, and that the the system could go back to non-profit. Of course this is all just speculation.
Termination (freeze-out) of TCP1 would lock-in the service credit of those who have yet to retire. They would keep the accumulated service credits they have at the time of the TCP1 termination but continuing to work at LANL wouldn't lengthen their service credit in subsequent years at the lab. This would result in far less pension payouts than most current employees on TCP1 are expecting. It would also not be "substantially equivalent" to what is currently available to the pensioned employees still working at UC but any LLC contract change-over effectively kills off the "substantial equivalent" promise from DOE.
Current employees who are on TCP1 would be very angry with the announcement of TCP1's termination (freeze) but it's the type of thing you could expect DOE/NNSA to do to reduce costs in operating their labs. Lots of corporations have frozen their pensions over the last decade, at least for those employees not in the "executive chain". It wouldn't surprise me to see the same thing happen at both LANL and LLNL in coming years. LANL would probably be the first to go this route. It's also yet another reason why DOE/NNSA would probably like to re-bid the LLC contracts.
By the way, you can also expect the next contract to reduce or totally eliminate medical retirement benefits. Because they are not a guaranteed benefit, even those who have retired would be affected by this change. As with a pension freeze-out, lots of corporations have eliminated or greatly reduce retirement medical benefits, too. With federal budgets for agency spending expected to continually shrink in coming years due to the rapid rise in Social Security and Medicare costs, the government will soon be looking for ways to cut their discretionary spending any way they can.
Your source for this information is?
Comments
LLNL and LANL.employees were raped by the NNSA mandated efficiencies (benefit reductions) of the last contract rebid.
It was so bad the then female Senator of Washingon state got her lab, Batelle Nothwest, exempted from the rebid to protect her contituency. The declining soon to be addelpated Senator Domenici on the orher hand was angry with LANL and despised LLNL, so he approved the rebid.
Feinstein, Boxer and Pelosi and Udall hate the weapons program and have sworn to dismantle it.
So if a new contact is started employees will suffer as NNSA contract administrators try to justify their jobs by taking from you. (ref Tyler Pryzbylek)
History
An additional protection, an ad hoc professional employee assembly, that advises and consents on what what is acceptable during the period of contact term development.
From the country's perspective an effective and vibrant weapons program leading the country's stewsrdship of nuclear weapons technology that is better than all competition and proprietor of adequate facilities is the goal. Effective management would be helpful.
...so would the local rapture of current NNSA and administration overseers.
Congressional staff and DOE/NNSA lifers hsve been shown incapable of managing the labs through current contact forms.
The path to s successful future lies in the past.
Maybe Trump will add that to his to-do list, but in the meantime there is no reason to keep talking about how it used to be. All that talking will make no difference at all to those that make such decisions.
For lack of a better description, the current "oversight" according to those that can influence "such decisions" believe
it is "not ready for prime time". There were never "limitless budgets", but they were more reliable back in the day.
The "pay more get less" LANSLLNS model that has brought a flurry of lab accidents and lab indiscretions is going over
like a D-38 balloon. Will the labs revert to 100% UC management? Unlikely. Will the new contracts to run LLNL and LANL
be a copy and paste of the LANSLLNS model? Unlikely. Perhaps something between these boundaries is in store for these
"sister" labs.
August 3, 2015 at 6:53 PM
Expected by whom? Based on what?
This sounds about right.
August 5, 2015 at 3:35 AM
I have thought something along this lines before, maybe just firing everyone at LANL and start hiring again. Unfortunately I doubt it will work, LANL has a history which infects anything it touches, and a new workforce will just become infected again
and go back to a cowboy culture. Of course the the other alternative is that there never was a cowboy culture.
August 5, 2015 at 6:35 AM
DING!! DING!! DING!!
Looks like Pete Nanos is still reading the blog.
Cowboy:
"Ma'am. I gotta round up 40 head on the other side of the mountain. Won't be back til tomorrow sundown. I'd appreciate some grub."
LANL/LLNL NNSA Approved Weenie:
"I don't want to leave the bunkhouse. It's too cold out there on the range."
"I scratched my finger on some barbed wire. Does anyone have some disinfectant?"
"This is my new horse. I'm going to name him fluffy."
But if it were given serious consideration, remember that UC today isn't the UC of the post-war or even Cold War era. As but one tiny example ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/uc-irvine-california-college-ask-students-pick-from-6-genders-in-application/
Maybe they could find a world-class University that would be willing to take this on, and actually have national security as a priority. But that's not UC any more.
August 5, 2015 at 7:49 AM
All the recent incidents at LANL say, not ding ding ding. They have a huge culture problem, still, years after Wen Ho and the laser eye incident and the Mustang and the classified in the meth house incidents that brought down UC management. Nothing has changed, so it might be time to just clean house. That or shut down the lab entirely.
August 5, 2015 at 6:20 PM
Shutting the lab down is the safest and most reasonable thing to do. LLNL is also completely infested with an out of control cowboy culture and also needs to go. Just look at the facts about LLNL, NIF disaster, LIFE disaster, lost keys, employee killed in the parking lot, people fired, lawsuits, fired lab directors, bad image, and they have had plenty of security incidents. These are the exact same incidents that brought down UC from running LLNL. If anything like this happened in private company it would have been instantly out of business. The cowboy culture is utterly rampant and must somehow be celebrated in all the NNSA labs and cannot and will not be dislodged. Even Sandia has now gone bad as seen by the plethora of growing and highly disturbing scandals over the years such as the celebrity stalking case, polygraph scandal, computer security incidents, chile cookoffs, lack of Phds, and lobbying scandal. Logic dictates that it is simply time to close the whole thing down. The problem is that even if we start a new laboratory from scratch the same things will just repeat itself and will lickly be even worse. It is sad but that is the way it is.
August 6, 2015 at 2:50 AM
Agreed, but LLNL and Sandia will have to have their culture changed as well. As we have learned it is not possible to change a culture since some things never change so shutting them down is the only thing to do. Starting new labs will not help since the same culture will be implemented. The labs have been a disaster for 70 years now, a total disaster. 2:50 AM "gets it" as Nanos said. And let me remind you "It's the same old day in and day out safety and security issues at Los Alamos" Dr. Victor Reis. 1997 this statment alone puts everything into complete perspective.
Eliminating both weapons labs eliminates the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Impossible to contemplate since 10 potential competitors or enemies of us and our allies possess nuclear arsenals. We de facto would cede world democratc leadership. It would be a historical blunder even more serious than Louis XVI lack of will to control the chaos that lead to the French Revolution and The mutiple ensuing "Terrors".
Unilateral nuclear disarmament is foolish to contemplate for all but the weakest temperaments.
Even very weak Jimmy Carter and the defeatist Barak Obama aren't this extreme.
In view if this all of the nuisances real or imagined are insignifact. Man up. People sometimes stink a bit. A million manyears is not going to be without a few human moments of failure.
People often screw up. You adjust and keep living.
And with that revealing statement, you, 7:02 am, have revealed you have absolutely NO credibility or since of history. The labs helped to win WWII. They've had many other success since that time. A disaster for 70 years? Without the labs and their nuclear weapons expertise you might have expected to see at least one or two additional World Wars by now. Get back to you meetings with Greg Mello and leave this blog alone.
Ok, perhaps I was too hasty in my judgment of the previous accomplishments of the labs but that still does not change our present predicament as we all agree that labs have been a disaster since 1997. Still it is odd how how UC could run them effectively for 50 years and than the cowboy culture came almost out of nowhere in the last 20 years. I admit it is rather confusing when you start thinking about it, so we need to step back and simplify. LLNL and LANL did not have a cowboy culture from roughly 1950-1997 as there where no incidents, no accidents, no security problems, no meth, no Mustangs, no fires, no
people being beat up near Cheeks... in fact nothing at all happned and than BOOM 1997 hits and ...cowboys and cowboys all the way down and the establishment of the "cultural" problems. Who is to blame? I would guess UC, but that is not important now the question we must ask ourselves is is how to fix the labs or if they even can be fixed. They tried to fix them and it just got worse. In fact the problems at LANL also meant that the LLNL contract had to be changed which means that they too must have a long ingrained cowboy culture. They threw everything at fixing the out of control culture at the labs but nothing works n fact it just got stronger. It is like some Star Trek episode where the more you fight the alien it the stronger it gets. And for you fools who keep saying we do not nor ever had cultural problem please consider these irrefutable facts...how is it that every single other institute in the United State that has some role in national security have never had the kind of problems you see at the NNSA labs?...Huh. Why are we so special...? I only hear crickets...crickets...cicadas...bat noises. You see there can be no possible response to these facts. Another question is why was 1997 so important? We have the Vic Reis quote and after that everything after this went to hell. So has every hire before 1997 been bad? This does not really make sense as there where no cowboys before 1997. So if we fire everyone hired before 1997 it will not help. Of course those who where hired before 1997 could have been corrupted during 1997. So has everyone hired since 1997 been cowboys? Again this is problematic since corrective action where taken? So what went wrong and why is it that LLNL has a cowboy culture? Since none of these questions can be answered maybe shutting them down is the best thing to do. Logic works!
Nonsense. Even the Test Site could manage the minor issues associated with rusting warheads.
"We de facto would cede world democratc [sic] leadership."
Too late by 6 years...
Nonsense. Even the Test Site could manage the minor issues associated with rusting warheads."
Please. Stop and think for a moment.
Year 2055. General Dwight Eisnehower III. is consulted by Emporer Donald Trump on whether and how to counter the Iranian vibrant large well-tested nuclear threat with 100 year old US nuclear warheads after the labs have been closed 30 years. No one can answer a single question and the US nuclear arsenal is mooted by lack of technological understanding.
Hypothetical, of course, amusing, perhaps. Unrealistic. NON.
Present day Iran's entire antiaircraft defense and offensive capability was mooted about 5 years after the US embargoed technical support for the Shah's frontline US provided AWACS and F14 interceptors. None fly today and Iran has no replacement. They try to buy parts from US junkyards. All US defense industry client states fear US techical support cutoff.'
Eliminating both nuclear weapons labs is the same death sentence. Shortly thereafter as the unresolveable technical weapons questions arose, uncertainty would moot the arsenal.
Unilateral disarmament, by stupidity, no less.
It is abdication of leadership by a weak leader. As Louis VXI lead to French terrors.
Sometimes in history, lily-livered, weak American apologists, must stand aside to let powerful men use the point of the sword to defend your basic interests for you. Civilian basketball wanabee and occasional scold, Barak Obama, meet General Ordinero.
Three Vice Presidents of technical divisions at Sandia National Laboratories do not have a Ph.D.: Hruby, Walker, Vahle.
Adam Rowen a former manager of the Materials Chemistry Department at Sandia Livermore does not have a Ph.D. either.
The previous 3 individuals are the first ever Vice Presidents without a Ph.D. in Science or Engineering to lead technical divisions at Sandia. A quick search on the internet shows that Adam Rowen went to a school in New Mexico.
Steve Renfro deputy AD Nuclear Weapons, BS without PhD (also comes from a New Mexico school)
What you see is what you get at the labs. Live with it or leave.
August 11, 2015 at 12:10 PM
Defeatism, victimhood, maybe even Stockholm syndrome. Why "leave?" Does it bother you when other people try to alter a situation you have decided is impossible to alter? Just think, if they actually succeed, you'll get the benefit without having to do anything, except to admit you were wrong.
August 10, 2015 at 5:31 AM
John Benner (LANL Associate Director for Weapons) does not have a PhD. James Owen (W-division Leader) has a BS degree from NMSU. Owen failed at obtaining his MS at U. of Colorado after spending two years on-campus on a full-time LANL salary. Ask Owen about this next time you see him.
There is a cowboy culture at LANL. I have seen the rest of the DOE complex and NEVER seen it like this one.
Many things that LANL does can be done somewhere else but you won't see many people at LANL who believe that. Which is a problem.
There is a cowboy culture at LANL. I have seen the rest of the DOE complex and NEVER seen it like this one.
Many things that LANL does can be done somewhere else but you won't see many people at LANL who believe that. Which is a problem.
>"There is a cowboy culture at LANL. I have seen the rest of the DOE complex and >NEVER seen it like this one."
Odd this seems to go against my experience in dealing with other labs in DOE complex. In fact if you just look at the numbers of security and safety incidents LANL is well below the DOE average. These statistics have been posted on this blog before. The whole "cowboy" culture thing is nonsense.
>Many things that LANL does can be done somewhere else but you won't see many >people at LANL who believe that. Which is a problem.
This is a very bizarre statement as literally anything be done somewhere else. You
can always close down Washington DC and start a new national capital in Alaska,
so what? The real question is would be worthwhile to close LANL and start new somewhere else? This would cost a huge amount of money and most likely the you would end up hiring many of the same people with specific expertise. Also what else would be gained? There is no reason to believe safety and security would be improved and since there is no cowboy culture at LANL how would moving the lab somewhere else improve things. It would cost huge amount of money, due huge damage to the nation, and could make things worse.
I have to say that it seems that your problems with LANL are personal. Perhaps you felt mistreated or not appreciated so you tell yourselves lies to somehow make yourself feel better. I hate to tell you this but even if they close down the lab most of the workers you hate so much will due just fine and be very successful at being hired at any new lab that starts, other DOE, DOD labs, private sector, and academics. since 2001 there has been least 1/3-1/2 worker turnover rate and the workers who have left have done very well. Perhaps you left the lab or was let go and you have not done very well. If this is the case than you may need to take an honest look at yourself and have an accurate assessment of your abilities and you may find that you alone are the cause for your problems. I do not mean to be harsh but I am just trying to help. Judging from your repeated posts it seems that you do not consider facts very carefully, completely overgeneralize,
and constant put the blame on others, which is a problem.
August 15, 2015 at 4:57 PM
4:57 here, Your answer is dishonest. I have no particular beef with LANL. I have personally worked at the other locations, both laboratory and production. My point of view is matter of fact. There is a cowboy culture here either through ignorance of the rules, not likely, or not believing they should not apply, more likely.
Furthermore, it would not cost much to move many of the things done at LANL. Remember, the DOE complex was set up with that very thought in mind. Some of that has degraded after the Cold War but some of the infrastructure and programs still exist. And yes, some of the people would be moved, but under a new team of management and culture which would dramatically shift their actions, over time.
You appear to be one of the people I am talking about. No problems to see here and we are irreplaceable.
There is no cowboy culture, never was, never will be. The statistics have been posted and discussed many times on the lab. I most likely have significantly more experience with the DOE lab complex than you do and really have no idea what you are talking about. You certainly appear to have a personal issue with LANL and again this says more about you than LANL.
"Furthermore, it would not cost much to move many of the things done at LANL. Remember, the DOE complex was set up with that very thought in mind. Some of that has degraded after the Cold War but some of the infrastructure and programs still exist. And yes, some of the people would be moved, but under a new team of management and culture which would dramatically shift their actions, over time."
Again this is just a bizarre comment, the cost of the CMR alone would have been billions. Moving the lab would cost enormous amount of money and scare many potential employees from working at such a new institution. The issue of culture is also pointless because there is no evidence of a cultural problem when the actual facts and statistics are looked at. Also in any organization the size of LANL or that does multiple very different tasks cannot have a single culture or any culture at all. It is also odd that you say a new mangement team would change the culture. If that is the case than why move the whole lab and just get a new management team? As you may have noticed a new management team was placed at both LANL and LLNL, and little in the way of "cultural" change was done.
>You appear to be one of the people I am talking about. No problems to see here and we are irreplaceable.
You seem rather confused about what you are talking about. In any case even if the whole lab was closed most of the people will be do very well which is demonstrated by the jobs other people at the lab have taken or jobs they have been offered. Be honest as this is what your real problem is. You cannot get a job and you are just very bitter. Attacking the workers at LANL, LLNL, or Sandia will not improve your personal situation or your issues.
August 16, 2015 at 8:06 AM"
You have no idea what you are talking about when you say culture. If you really have been to other DOE labs than you damm well know that LANL is far more safe and secure than any of the other non NNSA labs. I would go as far to say that that LANL is better than LLNL or Sandia. I am calling bs on you having experience with other DOE labs. My point about the management team changing is there was no cultural problem to begin with so just changing management is not going to fix non-existent problems.
You just sound completly crazy and delusional, please get help before something goes really wrong with you, it's only a matter of time.