I find it very very odd that a real investigative reporter has not reviewed the near concurrent departure of NNSA LANS Field Office Manager Lebak at or about the time LANL Director McMIllan stepped out of LANL management. Was Lebak complicit with something not made public?
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...
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I would agree with you if the NNSA HQ was planning to shut down LANL, or remove all hazardous and potentially catastrophic activities away from LANL, but as you may know in 2021, the NNSA approved the production of 30 Plutonium pits per year at LANL, among many other dangerous activities that occur or will occur at LANL.
This LANL Field Office Manager didn't transfer to another NNSA assignment , instead, she "voluntarily" elected to retire from NNSA employment entirely at the age of ~50. There were numerous safety mishaps under the leadership of Director McMillan and LANS management. NNSA Field Office Managers are responsible for objective contractor oversight and to evaluate the operations of the contractor. NNSA Field Office Managers are not by one way or another, permitted to enable more safety or performance deficiencies of the contractor. This must be the standard. NNSA Field Office Managers must be held directly accountable, otherwise employees that work at LANL, taxpayers, and downwinders, may be impacted for a failure to address root clauses of the numerous deficiencies at LANL. You can't wave a NNSA Field Office Manager through (if NNSA HQ did) and expect the same problems at LANL will not resurface.
FYI July 27, 2021:
"Huntington Ingalls Industries Announces Kimberly Lebak as New President and General Manager of N3B Joint Venture...As president and general manager of N3B, Lebak is responsible for managing the 10-year, $1.4 billion Los Alamos legacy cleanup contract for the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management’s Los Alamos Field Office."
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/07/27/2269654/14858/en/Photo-Release-Huntington-Ingalls-Industries-Announces-Kimberly-Lebak-as-New-President-and-General-Manager-of-N3B-Joint-Venture.html
12/06/2021 4:53 PM
That was a rather long winded way to say that yes it is about a four-year old axe to grind. Got it.
"2014 nuclear accident in N.M. ranks among costliest in U.S. history
The direct cost of the cleanup is now $640 million, based on a contract modification made last month with Nuclear Waste Partnership that increased the cost from $1.3 billion to nearly $2 billion."
https://www.thedailyworld.com/nation-world/2014-nuclear-accident-in-n-m-ranks-among-costliest-in-u-s-history/
The irony of revolving doors.