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!
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I am bit confused. A university would take little fee to begin with so even if it got reduced by 90% it would not make much of difference. The point is that there will be a much smaller fee if it is non-profit, which is kind of the point of a non-profit. You see that LANL and LLNL ran for 40-60 years as nonprofits and they ran very very well. In 1999 some corrupt individuals figures out that they could give money to their corporate overlords by making everything for profit. Since that tame it has disaster for the labs and the nation.
The contact form failed to operate as desired.
With A new contract with little fee will a GOCO will accept no operational risk.
NNSA owns it all. Which is the way it is. Contract or no.
Bull the contract was never about correcting errors UC made, it was about making
money for corporations.
money for corporations.
February 19, 2016 at 7:16 AM
You have either forgotten, never knew, or are conveniently leaving out, a whole lot of interesting historical facts regarding the transition from UC management to the LLC model. But never mind.
There is No state support. UC lacks the skilled people and systems to manage, large complex science.
No one else has core weapons experience. No one will apply who can do it well... instead a bunch of eager, incompetent otherwise unemployable nuclear navy 0-5s will come in an kill it with 10000 rules.
In truth, from the beginning, any success at LANL has been largely as a result of local effort by scientists and engineers and support staff. UC offered stability and selected lab directors and the labs incorporated their administrative policies and their pension plan and the offer of in-state tuition rates. Other than that, they have provided little else but just the logo and all that it meant was more than any industry partner like Bechtel, BWXT, and AECOM can bring to the table. At least not for $500M in fee since 2006 and at an additional cost in gross receipts tax which LA County and the State will not likely want to give up.
Risk? The notion was that there is very little financial risk associated with the LANL and LLNL contracts. But ironically, the pressure from the NNSA and DOE to impose fines and penalties has increased in proportion to the amount of money paid out for so little return. The LANL WIPP debacle of $31M plus shocked the LANS, LLC as did the separate fines at WIPP itself. That single incident plus the electrical arc flash event ended any chance to keep the failed Pryzbylek experiment alive. More importantly, it will dampen any commercial interest in LANL which may or may not be a good thing. After all, Batelle operates multiple sites in a not-for-profit mode and seems to maintain a positive reputation and employees with high morale.
The genie was let out of that bottle in 2006. The SNL RFP will be a good indicator of what the next NNSA experiment will be.
"The federal government has issued a pair of preliminary notices of violation against two contractors involved in a radiation leak that forced the shutdown of the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository.
The U.S. Department of Energy said Friday the notices mark the completion of investigations into the 2014 disaster as well as the enforcement process against the managers of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The notices cover worker safety violations at the southern New Mexico repository as well as violations stemming from the handling of waste at the lab.
The contractors did not immediately respond to requests for comment."
February 19, 2016 at 9:32 AM
All of which are completely irrelevant to the claim of "making
money for corporations." But thanks for obfuscating.
Thanks! I would have said all of that to February 19, 2016 at 7:16 AM if I'd had the energy.
What really bothers me is the way the LANS executive team constantly crows about the fabulous job they are doing at LANL. They hand out big raises and perks to their buddies in the executive suite and live in this bizarre, delusional world.
Things have only become worse in most areas at Los Alamos since LANS/Bechtel took over and started collecting their phat annual profit fees. They have been a disaster! Good riddance, Charlie and crew.
February 20, 2016 at 12:45 PM
Well, I suspect you made up the "for little or no profit" part. Unless you can point to an official definition of the acronym and term "GOCO" that says that. I don't think you can.
Can we please go back to hating arrogant scientists at Los Alamos?
Well one good thing about keeping LANL for a for profit is that it hurt the scientists so are you happy now 11.09AM?
Man you guys focus on the wrong stuff. Lets site some references and argue about useless stuff instead of exploring the true issues. "Since this guy/gal can't give a pure definition (which really doesn't exist more than sited above) to the Acronym let's discount thought. Lame
The point that 12:45 was trying to make is the NNSA is too deep in the contractor's business for anyone to want to take this on for no money. Second point, the state and local governments love the tax revenue.
Both valid points.
I'm more worried about the retirement plan being up for negotiation, again.
The only chance for NNSA to get any valid responses for a new LANL contract will be to go the opposite direction from what they did for NTS, and massively increase the fee. Either that, or agree to hold harmless the new contractor for any and all failures during the term.
February 25, 2016 at 10:18 AM
Since neither of these scenarios has any chance of happening, for a variety of very good reasons, what do you predict?
One of the real reasons that LANS failed was the fee was just too small to manage such a large institute with a such massive cultural problems. They simply did not have the skin in the game. In order for the next entity to really want to do it they need three things (1) A substantially greater fee, (2) The ability to bring down the hammer on the scientists and start clearing house, this would include getting rid of large portions of the workforce. Culture is really no different than other infestations, you have to wipe out everything since even the smallest remaining spots can start growing a new infestation again. Nanos saw this, understood this, and tried to act on this but this but due overwhelming political reasons he could not carry out the plan that would have saved the lab. One big step would be to shut down this dam blog and every other blog that springs up and sign loyalty oaths that you will not criticize lab management in any public. (3) They need to be able to have say on what is to be delivered. In order to drain the swamp there may be a few years where things cannot be delivered and the new contractor should be given time just for this. (4) The contractor should also have the option to leave the contract if certain conditions are not meet, for instance if they are prevented for cleaning house, they should have the option to just leave the contract not questions asked. The door needs to swing both ways on this. NNSA needs to start appreciating just how hard it is to manage LANL and that in the end it was LANL that failed not LANS. Reducing the fee or giving more freedom to LANL is the exact opposite direction of where the labs should be going. What we need now is BTK policy, get rid of all WFO, LDRD, and any external DOE work not directly related to the missions. All this does is allow workers to think they are in charge keep the cultural problems alive and we have seen where these programs have lead LANL.
This is the only way it will work and the same plan should be applied at LLNL. Without these incentives they will not get a single bidder, not one.
Gentlemen we are starting to come to a consensus. It is clear that the lab should be split and we agree on this. The science part of the labs is small and has been shrinking for many years, the best thing would be to just to get rid of science from the NNSA labs altogether. If you need science for NNSA, which is a big if, than you could have it at LLNL or Sandia. LANL should be turned into something like Pantex with an industrial type mission. New Mexico would keep the money, the cultural problems would be gone, and the lab would fulfill its mission in spades. Maybe the reality is that we need to face is that we simply do not need any science at the labs. If we really need "science" we could easily contract particular projects for something like 5-10 year terms to universities, it would be much cheaper, more efficient and if anything goes wrong the universities take the blame. As long as LANL or LLNL have scientists than they are vulnerable. Remember the whole Wen Ho Lee, Mustang, disks, and cowboys where about the public's well earned hatred of scientists. Get rid of the scientists and you get rid of the problems. The public can put up with creepy scientists at universities but anywhere else and they are a very risky liability. Again if the labs need science than have it done at a universities for cheaper and better. Universities can hire cleared techs that can do the job 10 times better and 10 times cheaper than any so called scientists at the labs. Explain where I am wrong on this, this is a win win for 95% percent of the stake holders at the NNSA labs.
This is just weird. Cats do not intrinsically have human attributes, they are not arrogant, vain, greedy, or ignorant, they are simply animals. These attributes are something you must project on to cats and are likely your own personal attributes that you projecting.
Now back to to the main point. You are indeed correct that there is classified science that could not and should not be done at universities, however we should still move all the non-classified science out of the NNSA complex, this just adds clutter and confusion to the complex and adds nothing to the mission.
And for February 28, 2016 at 8:53 AM, if you don't believe animals have personalities and psychological attributes, you have obviously never had a pet. Or if you have, I pity it.
And for February 28, 2016 at 8:53 AM, if you don't believe animals have personalities and psychological attributes, you have obviously never had a pet. Or if you have, I pity it.
February 28, 2016 at 10:37 AM
My cat's personality was most like Nanos but since he weighed 7 pounds it was not big deal.