LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.
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But seriously, this was an EERE call and it went to the usual DOE Office of Science suspects. Not an area LANL nor LLNL are competitive in -- by design.
NNSA does bombs not batteries. Not hard to understand.
I doubt DOE wants to pay the 800% overheard to make battery which could be done cheaper and better elsewhere. Unless it is bombs we do need it, cannot do it, and do not want it. LLNL will be closed at some point anyway, LANL is going to become a pit manufacturing plant. Sandia which is the one good lab in the NSF system will be more than capable of doing what little science and tech that needs to be done. Ok this was a bit exagerated but such points are often raised at the labs.
The more relevant reason is the legacy of Nanos will always taint the labs when it comes to BES, DOE and WFO work in that most of these places could think why should we send money to place that could be stood down at any second for whatever reason. You never hear about all of Argonne being "stood down" for 8 months, or all of Harvard being "stood down". Trust me I know a few DOE people and they always say that the NNSA labs are a concern due to possible crazy stuff like the whole thing being shut down. Working with the NNSA labs can be risky. If you where at DOE and wanted give some money to a lab would you rather give it ORNL, ANL or LANL? One costs a lot more, has more risk, not to mention the quality of the science has been declining. You see what I mean. In 1999 LANL was considered the top lab in the entire DOE complex when you counted publications per year. Now it is 5th behind, LBNL, ORNL, ANL, and BNL. The only other lab to show a similar decline was LLNL, as LANL has has about 3 times more publications than LLNL.
In fact I would guess DOE would rather not give any non NNSA money to the NNSA labs but are sort of forced to at this point. In the past they would more than happy to do so as these labs used to have some of the very best science in the world, could do things that could never be done elsewhere and where happy to do it. This is no longer the case.