LLNL - The True Story -

New Mexico senators speak out on nuclear safety board order By Rebecca Moss | rmoss@sfnewmexican.com New Mexico’s U.S. senators are asking Congress to block a Department of Energy order that would limit a federal board’s access to information about nuclear facilities and could hinder its ability to oversee worker health and safety. In a letter sent Wednesday to the leaders of a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall also ask their colleagues to block impending staff cuts and a broad reorganization at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. New Mexico is home to three of the 14 nuclear facilities under the board’s jurisdiction: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. “We feel strongly that these two matters facing the [safety board] and its future must be suspended while Congress and the public have time to review and offer constructive feedback” on how to maintain and impr...

https://www.wacotrib.com/news/ap_nation/doe-awards-leidos-battelle-team-research-support-contract-at-national/article_41b6709b-77f4-54c8-9ffb-c95dda839838.html

Acting DNFSB Chairman claims DOE order is at odds with Atomic Energy Act The dispute between the political appointees of the DOE and those of the DNFSB resulted in all members of the DNFSB, both democrat and republican appointees, joining together to question if the DOE order is consistent with the existing law. Nuclear Safety Board Slams Energy Department Plan to Weaken Oversight "The Trump administration defended an order that could be used to withhold information about nuclear facilities from a federal board, but its leader says the action is not consistent with the U.S. Atomic Energy Act." https://www.propublica.org/article/nuclear-safety-board-slams-energy-department-plan-to-weaken-oversight

Nuclear Safety Board Slams Energy Department Plan to Weaken Oversight By Rebecca Moss | rmoss@sfnewmexican.com  A new Department of Energy order that could be used to withhold information from a federal nuclear safety board and prevent the board from overseeing worker safety at nuclear facilities appears to violate longstanding provisions in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, the board’s members said Tuesday. Members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, both Democrats and Republicans, were united in their criticism of the Energy Department’s order, published in mid-May. It prevents the board from accessing sensitive information, imposes additional legal hurdles on board staff and mandates that Energy Department officials speak “with one voice” when communicating with the board. The New Mexican and ProPublica first reported on the order’s existence in July, but the board recently called for a special hearing, saying its members had no formal input before the document was finaliz...

So much for Mason's claim that all employees will work for Triad and not for one of the industrial partners. https://www.theladders.com/job/chief-operating-officer-capital-projects-fluor-los-alamos-nm_37318621 Fluor Government Group (FGG) is seeking candidates to support the FGG scope of work at the Los Alamos national Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. The Los Alamos National Laboratory has a capital project portfolio in excess of $4 billion dollars covering multiple line item projects valued in excess of $50 million each. In addition to the line item projects, there is an annual budget covering small capital projects of approximately $200 million. The Triad National Security Capital Projects organization is responsible for delivery of the facilities in a safe, secure, reliable and cost effective manner.  The Director for Capital Projects is seeking a Chief Operating Officer (COO-CP) in support of delivering the capital projects. Responsibilities of the Capital Projects team include:...

Where is the list of the Triad board members that was promised by a Triad spokesperson to a national news outlet? If they make such statements, they should follow through on them or understand that credibility is lost. Coupled with the botched GRT decision, things look to be off to a rocky start for the new contractor.

Now that NM GRT is going to be collected from Triad, the politicians can just keep going on trips with free booze and baseball tickets. This is a terrible waste of money. We’ve kept silent regarding the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities and its sorry story of misspending, deceit and exposure. However, with the recent release of an audit and no clear mission, it’s clear the group is nothing more than a slush fund for politicians. Taxpayers must push to stop this mindless spending. Add to that the hiring of Eric Vasquez as former director Andrea Romero’s replacement and we taxpayers have a stewing recipe for more waste of taxpayer dollars. Readers may remember Vasquez as the former salaried Española Chamber of Commerce executive director who simultaneously had another full-time job operating a failed newsletter, sometimes from the Chamber’s offices. He’s also married to Stephanie Garcia-Richard, who is on her way out as a state representative, as she runs for state land commissioner...

From the looks of the initial pass at the organization charts that Triad has put out, there will still be a lot of residual overhead from the LANS structure. With just over 8,000 employees there are more than 55 divisions and another 25 division level offices. These are placed under 11 directorates and 20 directorate level offices. Looks as if the typical division may wind up with just over 100 employees. If correct, that is still a large overhead burden.

NNSA staying under DOE is a good idea, according to former DOE officials. Changing nuclear oversight threatens security, tech edge BY SPENCER ABRAHAM, ERNEST MONIZ, CLAY SELL AND ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/402993-changing-nuclear-oversight-threatens-security-tech-edge Now that the 2019 John McCain National Defense Authorization Act has become law, there is a lesson to be learned from a furtive effort to fundamentally change the way the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile is sustained to ensure a reliable deterrent.  We learned at the eleventh hour that language had been inserted into the Senate-passed bill that would have weakened the management of vital Department of Energy (DOE) national security programs that assure the safety, security and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, and provide global nuclear propulsion for the U.S. Navy. Although the language ultimately was r...

New Los Alamos lab manager Triad will pay GRT, official says By Andy Stiny | astiny@sfnewmexican.com Aug 22, 2018 A representative of Triad National Security LLC, which takes over management of Los Alamos National Laboratory in November, said Wednesday the consortium will pay gross receipts taxes, easing concerns of local officials about losing millions of dollars in revenue. Scott Sudduth, assistant vice chancellor with the Office of Federal Relations for the Texas A&M University system, told an audience of about 50 community members during a meeting in Los Alamos that the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department responded to a recent inquiry from Triad by saying that “it is their view that the gross receipts tax does apply to Triad.” Los Alamos County officials had said previously that if Triad were deemed to have nonprofit status, the county estimated it could lose $21 million annually and the state $23 million in gross receipts tax revenues, according to published reports. No...

Did anyone else speak with Scott Sudduth from A&M when he was at LANL? Look him up and he is the Washington lobbyist for the university. He has been the person spending the most time talking about the A&M role in LANL. So, for all of you that were wondering what part of running LANL was going to be done by A&M, he has cleared that up. A&M is taking care of Washington lobbying for LANL, and from all indications not much else.

Looks like Texas A&M will take a post on Triad board, and no other role in LANL The move reflects Banks’ ascent to Triad’s governing board, an A&M spokesperson wrote in an email Monday. Banks was formerly vice chancellor for engineering and remains dean of the system’s College of Engineering. Texas A&M University is the only senior Triad partner without a representative among the senior laboratory staff the consortium has identified on its website. Meanwhile, the number and identities of the remaining Triad board members have not be revealed publicly. Triad plans to disclose the members’ names and affiliations “after our initial Board meeting which is planned for the end of the month,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email Tuesday. The Triad spokesperson did not immediately know the day for which this meeting is scheduled. Triad’s senior partners are: Battelle Memorial Institute, longtime Los Alamos manager the University of California, and Texas A&M University. The ...

DNFSB Major Reform: 80% More Resident Inspectors Washington, DC — Acting Chairman Bruce Hamilton announced today a major transformation of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s staff. The reform is in response to a number of studies and critiques on the Board’s effectiveness during the past several years. Among the changes: an 80% increase in the number of Resident Inspectors located at defense nuclear facilities operated by the Department of Energy; two new field offices in Albuquerque and Las Vegas which will provide full-time coverage of Sandia National Laboratories, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Nevada National Security Site, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory; a 46% reduction in headquarters personnel; a facilities-focused reorganization of the headquarters staff; and, the establishment of a new Executive Director of Operations,or EDO, who will lead the entire agency.  https://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/document/15591/DN...

At the all hand's meeting, Mason was pretty clear that the new organization will be run in the Battelle way. He seemed to express disdain for the old structure in some of his comments.

LLNL is at it again with hydrogen: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/metallic-hydrogen-lasers.html They “re-analyze” Sandia data so it agrees with the NIF data, an interesting move that the Sandia people don’t agree with, according to the NYT article. 

https://www.abqjournal.com/1210368/lanl-coalition-is-whats-toxic-in-our-governments.html It’s time for the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities to go away. The organization – with an annual budget of $200,000 – was always something of an odd duck. It is made up of cities, counties and pueblos located near Los Alamos National Laboratory, and says it has two goals: to push for promoting local economic development from the lab and advocate for federal money for cleanup of long-term radioactive and hazardous waste at LANL. The big question about the coalition has always been: What does it do that New Mexico’s congressional delegation doesn’t when it comes to pushing for waste cleanup and local economic benefits from the lab? There’s no empirical evidence to show having local politicos lobby Washington for cleanup dollars has made a difference. Romero, as director of the RCLC, is appropriately a target in this mess. But remember, she was being reimbursed for using her private credit card ...

Lots of talk that UC will be playing a much bigger role in the new contract this time around. In LANS they just seemed to step back and let the corporate partners control the culture, now that there are no corporate partners this will change and UC can once again participate in a more substantive way. Lets hope this is true.

The White House on Friday announced the anticipated nominee to fill the No. 2 slot at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which has been vacant throughout the Trump administration. Longtime Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory senior physicist William Bookless would take over as NNSA principal deputy administrator upon Senate confirmation, according to the Aug. 10 announcement of intent to nominate. He would succeed Madelyn Creedon, who retired on Jan. 20, 2017, the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated, after about two-and-a-half years in the position. Bookless had not been formally nominated as of deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. His nomination would pass through the Senate Armed Services Committee. The White House and NNSA at deadline had not answered queries regarding the extended delay in filling the principal deputy position. After earning a doctorate in physics in 1980 from the University of Wyoming, Bookless spent 32 ...

Now that the NM attorney general is involved in the probe it will be hard to kill the story quickly. The defense makes no sense at all to claim that they did not know the law and it is not a crime because no one told them about it. The documents were altered after the fact by the LA county staff employees to cover up years of illegal payments when it came to light. At least that is what the audit reports as facts, and they have the altered documents with the specific LA county employees changes, so it just makes no sense to continue on the defense of ignorance equates to innocence.  There is no real distinction between LANL and LA county in this story, since any responsible oversight would have required an audit that would have surfaced what has been claimed as widespread waste, fraud and abuse. It was LANL that provided the funds to LA county for the lobbying effort, and then never bothered to check into how the money was spent. Now that the county admits that alcohol and sports t...

True story of Walp and Doran uncovering theft at Los Alamos aired on CBS last Friday. The show disproved the insane Walp and Dorn (sic) defender troll. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/los-alamos-whistleblower-we-were-up-to-our-neck-in-possible-espionage/

Time after time, it is the coverup that brings down organizations and not the original crime. The individuals throughout the LA county offices that went back and falsified and changed records after the fact should be held accountable. They acted in order to cover up the crime of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money and if this is all correct, they should be prosecuted. http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/report-los-alamos-county-possibly-tried-to-hide-misspending/article_7a196783-b791-5281-bb44-76108992155d.html

https://www.cbs.com/shows/whistleblower/video/IrPcp7agZf4CxamFn2Y_ZiGM84ijEx_x/whistleblower-the-case-against-los-alamos

"Appeals Court Sides With LLNL Retirees" http://m.independentnews.com/news/appeals-court-sides-with-llnl-retirees/article_74285a9c-9b55-11e8-9cc5-47fdf9f9fb9b.html?mode=jqm

Breaking Through the Normalcy of Los Alamos on Hiroshima Day The normalcy of Los Alamos is so inhumanly, grotesquely, demonically abnormal as to seem perfectly reasonable https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/08/06/breaking-through-normalcy-los-alamos-hiroshima-day You can’t get any more white, well-educated, upper-class, sophisticated, over-privileged, supposedly-“Christian” and totally normal than Los Alamos. There’s the Starbucks, the Taco Bell, the pet store, the co-op, the hardware store, the fine wine store, the great high school, the beautiful churches, the day care center—and, in the center of town, like in any other town, the mammoth colonoscopy center. Life is good in Los Alamos. Everything is perfectly normal.

"Projects Seek to Make Fusion Energy Feasible" https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-announces-364-million-fusion-energy-sciences-research

Report due on LANL coalition spending of taxpayer funds on personal items such as baseball tickets and expensive liquor http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/guzzlers-of-whiskey-and-wine-fear-special-audit/article_3a623524-175e-56d7-9364-a78cd8e2ac24.html

https://www.ladailypost.com/content/los-alamos-county-officials-make-case-grt

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9eIrcyRIQxyY0RSNFpmXzliNWpMTEtRcTJBRUZtbjFVSDRn/view?usp=drivesdk

Update: Mr. Rivera may need to take DOE back to the United States District Court LAW OFFICES OF ANTHONY P. X. BOTHWELL  558 Presidio Blvd., Ste. B PO Box 29547 San Francisco, CA 94129-0547 (415) 370-9571 apxb007@msn.com  August 2, 2018 The Honorable Rick Perry Secretary  United States Department of Energy 1000 Independence Ave., SW Washington, DC 20585 Re: Anthony T. Rivera v. LLNS OHA Case No. WBB-17-0010 Dear Secretary Perry: On January 4, 2018 Anthony Rivera timely filed his Petition to the Secretary seeking review of the case of termination of his employment in 2013, after he had made protected disclosures of safety violations and mismanagement with Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), the contractor that operates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It has been seven months since that Petition to the Secretary Perry was filed. I am obliged to advise that Mr. Rivera will feel compelled to bring the Department of Energy back ...

August is here and Triad still has not yet named a AD for Simulation & Computation. As pointed out by a poster in another thread, it is unusual how the award could be made consistent with the RFP and not specify each of the key personnel by name. The mystery lingers as to why NNSA would permit this obvious discrepancy.

Something doesn't add up in this report of the LANL scandal. He must have had an inside accomplice in order to pull off something of this magnitude.  http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/ceo-pleads-guilty-to-embezzlement/article_7631802a-fd7a-514a-a4ee-c33d6b8793e4.html

Leading force behind UT bid for LANL now departing  https://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional/deputy-chancellor-david-daniel-retire-from-his-system-post/nPjzsHrvtcg62QDe9uLCDK/