LLNL gets top marks, while LANL gets lowest score of all of DoE in first annual report on nuclear crit safety to DNFSB.
https://ehss.energy.gov/deprep/2016/TB16A19A.PDF
https://ehss.energy.gov/deprep/2016/TB16A19A.PDF
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.
Comments
DOE concludes that LANL is performing adequately, that's just dereliction of duty by DOE; LANL is understaffed, LANL has relied on external bodies to find criticality safety problems, and LANL has had a large number of events. What does DOE find? DOE found that LANL has a very large number of "opportunities for improvement".
The real problem here is the DOE/NNSA. With problems like these, in an area like criticality safety where mistakes can be catastrophic, DOE should have replaced LANS management - it seems that DOE is just whitewashing problems, some quite severe.
As for the comments regarding the demise of LANL, the LANS model is working perfectly if your goals are a lack of leadership and decades to resume operations at the nations only full service plutonium facility.
April 27, 2016 at 4:11 AM
LANS is gone. Only a matter of time. The nation's plutonium needs will remain, and LANL will meet them, given Congressional support. It is not an issue of any management "model," it is an issue of national need that must be addressed. And of the people who were, and are, willing and able to meet that need. Despite their recent inane and incompetent management.
You hit it.
"I can think of four individuals from Livermore that have been responsible for the demise of Los Alamos National Laboratory."
Now you can see why LLNL ushered them out the door. They couldn't meet LLNL standards and went to the second string lab. LLNL got it right as you so deftly illustrate.