Skip to main content

Why blame Bechtel?

Following from the stacks and stacks of studies in the recent years, the quality of science has declined at LANL. Since LANL science is 100% led by UC, how is it that Bechtel keeps on getting blamed for this decline?

Comments

Anonymous said…
LANSLLNS is focused on short term profit streams not on long term missions or the scientific and engineering talent to achieve it.
Anonymous said…
The OP misses the point that EVERYTHING that happens at LLNL or LANL is 100% owned by UC, not just LANL science.
UC owns NIF, WIPP, and everything else that has occurred under LANSLLNS.
When they inked the contract to be majority control in the LLC, they accepted this 100% ownership of everything - good or otherwise.
Anonymous said…
Number of managers, overhead, and harassment of scientists has shot up to pay for profits and the stupidest managers that can be found. As UC did not do this in decades of previous management, how ca you blame anyone but Bechtel?
Anonymous said…
"how ca (sic) you blame anyone but Bechtel?"

You can't put more than a small part of the blame on Bechtel because Bechtel is not in charge. DUH.

You do know that the UC managers in charge of LANL are NOT the same people that previously ran LANL fairly well, don't you? Double DUH.
Anonymous said…
You do know that the UC managers in charge of LANL are NOT the same people that previously ran LANL fairly well, don't you?

August 13, 2017 at 4:54 PM

Actually many of them are, at least the ones who haven't retired yet. Most existing LANL managers at the time joined the UC/Bechtel proposal writing team, not the Lockheed one.
Anonymous said…
Nonsense. No manager has worked for 60 years. The current managers are ALL different from the early managers. Every one of them.

A few current managers worked during the last 10 years of UC but not many. Don't try to BS, I knew every single upper-level manager personally during the last 10 years of UC and most have retired, were replaced, or moved to another job outside LANL. In addition, the number of upper-level management positions has grown, these new positions are almost all filled with people who were not upper-level managers before.

It is completely false to suggest that LANL is being run by the same crew that ran the Lab under UC.
Anonymous said…
8:40 PM maybe you "knew every single upper-level manager personally during the last 10 years of UC" but that doesn't impact the quality scale. The UC managers at LANL for the first 50 years were cut from a different cloth. Those in the final decade were not of the same quality as their predecessors.




Anonymous said…
I agree. There has been a steady decline in the quality of UC managers in the last 20 years. However, the managers in the final decade, with few exceptions, are NOT the managers that run the lab now. The current managers are clearly worse than the last-decade managers.

The point is that the addition of Bechtel, a minor player, is NOT the principle cause of LANL's downfall. The addition of Bechtel is a factor, a minor factor, but it's not one of the main causes.

The steadily declining quality of the UC management is the one of the two main causes of LANL's downfall. Add to that a completely feckless and out of touch NNSA and you've got the recipe for the collapse that's now underway.
Anonymous said…
It is ironic that UC is attempting to deflect blame for LANS failures to other partners, considering that the managers on duty when the ship crashed were nearly all UC lifers.
Anonymous said…
It is ironic that UC is attempting to deflect blame for LANS failures to other partners, considering that the managers on duty when the ship crashed were nearly all UC lifers.

August 17, 2017 at 5:16 PM

False premise. Show your evidence that "UC is attempting to deflect blame for LANS failures to other partners."
Anonymous said…
August 17, 2017 at 5:16 PM

False premise. Show your evidence that "UC is attempting to deflect blame for LANS failures to other partners."


Anyone seen Terry Wallace lately? hmmmmm.....

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

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...

Trump is to gut the labs.

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.

LLNL un-diversity

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!