LLNL - The True Story -

More talk that John Sarrao is the head of the UC lead bid. Webster is head of U Texas, and somebody named Perry is head of the Texas AM team. I presume this is not Rick Perry. Also there is probably a couple of other for profit teams with Lockheed, Bechtel and who knows. Some other rumors is that the UC team is worried, apparently they thought that no one else would bid and did not expect Texas or Texas AM to put something in. Also if history is any guide the Director must be a weapons guy. Wallace of course has been the only exception but he is just a lame duck.  Predictions (1) it will go down like Sandia, some completely unexpected team will win.  (2) Bechtel lead team wins. (3) The Perry guy is in fact related to Rick Perry and Texas AM takes it.  My bet is on 1, something like Northrop Grumman, or Leidos and the Director will be an ex General. The motto will be "Modernization Through Compliance MTC" or " Compliance alone sets minds in motion.", "Ne...

No Nomination Hearing Scheduled for NNSA Chief-Designate January 30, 2018 By Exchange Monitor About two weeks before 2019 budget negotiations are set to compete for lawmakers’ attention on Capitol Hill, the Senate still has not taken a look at the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration. President Donald Trump nominated former Department of Energy and National Security Council staffer Lisa Gordon-Hagerty to the post on Dec. 19. About a month later, Frank Klotz resigned after almost four years as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), leaving agency policy chief Steven Erhart at the helm on an acting basis. The NNSA administrator, who also serves as undersecretary for nuclear security, is by far the highest-ranking Department of Energy (DOE) nominee the Senate has left to consider in the Trump administration. The agency’s other two undersecretary-level positions were filled in November, around four months after the admini...

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1426514/senior-executive-service-announcements/

Correcting for COLAs, how much did LANSLLNS management salaries from Supervisors and above go up as a percentage compared to the pre-LANSLLNS period? What is a typical LANSLLNS manager "bonus" referenced to their respective base salaries, 5%, 20%, other?

New head of NNSA has BS degree from UNM.....how far things have fallen, how far from the times when highly qualified scientists could be found in charge of the enterprise. https://nnsa.energy.gov/aboutus/ourleadership/acting-administrator

New LANL legacy clean up contract to start soon http://newsroom.huntingtoningalls.com/releases/n3b-joint-venture-to-begin-transition-for-los-alamos-legacy-cleanup-contract NEWPORT NEWS, Va., Jan. 24, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE:HII) announced today that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a notice to proceed into transition for the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract to Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos, LLC (N3B), a joint venture led by SN3, part of HII’s Technical Solutions division, with partner BWXT Technical Services Group, Inc. The 90-day contract transition period begins today and will lead into a base period of five years and option periods of three years and two years, respectively, with a total period of performance of up to 10 years and three months. The total value of the contract is $1.39 billion if all options are exercised.

http://www.theeagle.com/news/texas/kevin-eltife-joined-the-ut-system-as-an-outspoken-critic/article_0f02a2c5-e7de-5e98-bc3c-7131bb709459.html Kevin Eltife joined the UT System as an outspoken critic. Now he might reshape it When former state senator Kevin Eltife was appointed last year to the University of Texas System Board of Regents, he arrived with an attitude shared by many of his old colleagues: skepticism. Lawmakers had said they were fed up with spending in UT System offices, concentrating their ire on a $215 million land purchase in Houston and a ballooning administrative headcount. Like them, Eltife came in casting a critical eye on system growth and on the ambitious but expensive proposals championed by its leadership. When the system decided to vie for a contract to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory – an opportunity supporters said was lucrative and prestigious, but was said to cost over $4 million to bid for – Eltife echoed Longoria, another regent, when she said t...

LLNL receives highest marks ever from NNSA 1/19/18 The Laboratory's outstanding performance in FY17 has resulted in the highest earned fee to date in the annual Performance Evaluation and Measurement Plan (PEMP) issued Jan. 18 by NNSA's Livermore Field Office. Once again, the Laboratory earned ratings of excellent in all four science and technology goals, with ratings of very good for operations and leadership. The result is an award of more than 94 percent of the total possible award fee. In addition, Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC received another one-year term to manage the Laboratory for the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. This extends the contract to Sept. 30, 2022. "This has been a very good year for our Laboratory and I'm pleased to see NNSA agrees," Director Bill Goldstein said. "Our ability to execute on our critical mission commitments is a result of the dedication each employee brings to their job every day...

Savannah River Site has some advantages in fight for pit production http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2018-01-20/srs-has-some-advantages-fight-pit-production-800-jobs

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/after-safety-breaches-new-los-alamos-director-pushes-accountability-nuclear-weapons-lab

https://www.abqjournal.com/1121661/los-alamos-docked-3-1-million-for-shipping-plutonium-via-commercial-air-cargo.html LANL docked $3.1M for shipping plutonium via commercial air. At 3.1M that would be two managers at best at LANL. The price of doing business at LANL.

LANS gets docked $2.6M for accidents in 2017, but it sounds like criticality incidents weren’t a big issue.  http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/feds-dock-lanl-m-for-big-lapses-in/article_213942b3-ea75-56b7-83dd-82990a841988.html

Both LLNL and LANL are for profit. Profit is money that one gets in return beyond what is invested. In the case of LANL and LLNL, certain members members of the LLC make a profit, other members of the LLC reinvest the money back in the lab and do not make a profit. People paying the extra money that got used for profit expect something in return. I cannot go into all the details on this blog but one of the expectations was that by paying this extra money that certain industrial partners promised that they would improve business practices, introduce industrial effectiveness and so on which would actually save lots money in the long run. At least that was the claim, however this not only did not happen but things become much more expensive and less efficient. Of course one could argue what certain industrial partners wanted to really "maximize" their profit by doing absolutely nothing and not investing anything at all. Let us go through a simple exercise, suppose you come acros...

DOE staffer claims retaliation over photos of secret meeting "A former photographer at the Department of Energy says he lost his job in retaliation for making public photos of a meeting between Secretary Rick Perry and a coal baron peddling a wish list of policy initiatives that would directly benefit his company. Simon Edelman has filed a federal whistleblower complaint alleging he was terminated from the agency after he provided the photos to two media outlets that published them in December. Edelman was at the March 29, 2017, meeting snapping shots as Robert “Bob” Murray handed Perry a four-page “action plan” to revive the nation’s struggling coal industry. Murray is chairman and CEO of Ohio-based Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal producers. Also attending the meeting were Perry’s chief of staff and Andrew Wheeler, a coal company lobbyist later nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the second-highest ranking official at the Environmental Protection Agenc...

Texas A&M nonexclusive partnership with multiple companies is one version of why they refuse to go public on LANL bid teams. If this is correct, that is some messed up situation. 

Trump has been busy today. Exclusive: Here Is A Draft Of Trump’s Nuclear Review. He Wants A Lot More Nukes. His first Nuclear Posture Review: more nukes, more posturing.  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-nuclear-posture-review-2018_us_5a4d4773e4b06d1621bce4c5?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009   n October, NBC reported that President Trump had told a gathering of high-ranking national security leaders that “he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” While the report doesn’t nearly go that far, it does call for the development of new, so-called low-yield nuclear weapons — warheads with a lower explosive force. The logic of those pushing for the development of smaller nukes is that our current nuclear weapons are too big and too deadly to ever use; we are effectively self-deterred, and the world knows it. To make sure other countries believe that we’d actually use nuclear force, the thinking goes, we need more low-yield nukes. 

NNSA Could Do With Less Semiautonomy, DOE No. 2 Tells Congress https://www.exchangemonitor.com/nnsa-less-semi-autonomy-doe-no-2-tells-congress/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/01/08/regulators-reject-rick-perrys-plan-to-prop-up-coal-and-nuclear-plants.html

NNSA Administrator Klotz To Retire Jan. 19 Defense Daily 01/09/2018 National Nuclear Security Administrator Frank Klotz told sister publication Weapons Complex Morning Briefing on Tuesday he will retire from the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon agency on Jan. 19.  http://www.defensedaily.com/nnsa-administrator-klotz-retire-jan-19/

Pope wants to ban the bomb!  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-nuclear-weapons-ban_us_5a5355dde4b003133eca0d3e?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

What is happening with the LLNL Retire group suing UC to restore the health benefits to retirees? Apparently the Retiree Website is no longer being updated. See: http://llnlretiree.com/ Why did the judge decertify the retiree list?  http://www.independentnews.com/news/surprise-ruling-decertifies-retiree-class-in-lawsuit/article_7b76ca3e-d541-11e7-9c6c-47e48d1fdcf4.html Yet I got an E-mail that included: " The order decertifying the class will result in our having to fight harder. There will be added expense. But we are determined to do the right thing for retirees who spent their lives worked at the Laboratory assuming they would get the benefits promised by the Regents, which we all understood were protected and guaranteed. It is not acceptable that retirees in our class (now including over 9,000 people when surviving spouses and dependents are counted). We must continue the fight! So we have to ask for your help again. Please give what you can afford. Every