LLNL - The True Story -

  Charlie Verdon phones it in from home in final days as fed Charlie Verdon, NA-10, has not been seen in the Forrestal building in weeks. Preferring to collect his government check during these days of heightened security from his home office rather than in the room where it happens in D.C. The nominated replacement for this holdover cannot be confirmed soon enough.

  https://www.reuters.com/world/india/war-with-ukraine-putin-puts-nuclear-deterrence-forces-alert-2022-02-27/ Putin puts nuclear forces on alert. KYIV/MOSCOW, Feb 27 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin ordered his military command to put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday in the face of a huge Western response to his war on Ukraine, which said it had repelled Russian ground forces nearing its biggest cities. I keep seeing posts like "Get over yourself, the labs are not relevant nor are 30 year old weapons systems." I do not get this, if Russia still sees the US deterrent as credible then they will think twice about using their arsenal. The labs are crucial to that deterrent. Of course could be that they have been reading the LANL and LLNL blogs and thinking that after Nanos and Bechtel that the US arsenal is not all that credible anymore.

  In light of recent events are LLNL and LANL more relevant now or less relevant now. I can see both sides. If one had read the LANL or LLNL Blogs since 2006 several posters have pointed out that Russia or China could be watching how we treated the national weapons lab that the US may not have a credible deterrent. I am pretty sure that China was not calling all their lab scientists cowboys and butt-heads that could be easily replaced by just random people. I am pretty sure they did privatize their labs as to sleazy for-profit companies. I am pretty sure they did have public hearings saying how the labs are full of arrogant eggheads who "don't get it".

  Gang Chen, whose case was just dismissed, is doing his pity tour for the US media :  NB: This post was submitted with a link to a NY Times article. Link requires subscription. So, I substituted it with an accessible link.  Please do not submit subscription-only links.  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-chen-mit-professor-china-charges-dropped/

  You Had an Affair. What Does That Mean for Your Clearance? https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/02/20/you-had-an-affair-what-does-that-mean-for-your-clearance/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=204847639&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--dxQJ2tQqZAOnkEtmx15wT2FxxMxOJw9O2V6SWAtWzLPpRerHP6bZZXSOiacGd64sX3Wn4eV-RR9sCB_4KfFEWFuuwtFcKobFF3C45h8EX2xqqS-A&utm_content=204847639&utm_source=hs_email

If you are a US citizen with a clearance and working at a NNSA and recently donated money to the Canada truck convoy can you get in trouble or lose your clearance? I heard some US citizens have been doxed. One argument is that you supporting international terrorists and are risk.

  Missing the 2030 Pit deadline already: https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/news/savannah-river-site/80-pits-by-2030-wont-happen-nnsa-boss-reaffirms-but-acceleration-is-in-the-works/article_8c97850e-88f9-11ec-9303-7f85431d832b.html

  Mason is giving his all hands talk. The message is LANL is going to be doing pits and it is going fundamentally change the lab as we know it. Mason speech is pretty bad, did something happen to him, he sounds horrible. He seems to have a tremor in voice like someone has gun to his head. He still does not say stuff as dumb as McMillian. I understand the argument for pits it just seems like the best option would be to have separate PIT facility distinct form the lab.

  https://www.thecollegefix.com/scholars-argue-field-of-nuclear-science-is-racist/ The University of Michigan in June 2020 declared that the nuclear engineering field was not diverse enough and that it sought to do better. “call for antiracist action” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. “The very notion of nuclear weapon and non-weapon states, and some of the language deployed to characterize this divide, perpetuates Western hegemony and dominance over the Global South,” the piece argued. It also outlined how American nuclear science is allegedly awash with racism, from geographical sites chosen for testing to racism in the workplace, both past and present. “The nuclear engineering field was founded in military and classified programs with a white, male dominated, and hierarchical worldview and never really changed. We became a very cloistered field, unable to open the door and welcome vast amounts of talent. To date, the nuclear sector has failed to create a culture where Bla...

  Triad National Security, LLC has earned an overall “Very Good” rating and an overall 83.7 percent of its award fee for its Managing & Operating contract at Los Alamos National Laboratory for FY2021. The total amount awarded is $46.7 million out of almost $50 million that was available. The National Nuclear Security Administration announced the performance results in a three-page summary that can be viewed here: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/FY21%20Triad%20PES%20Final.pdf .

 Have you heard?  https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/02/09/uk/nuclear-fusion-climate-energy-scn-intl/index.html

  https://metro.co.uk/2022/02/08/vladimir-putin-threatens-nuclear-war-in-europe-if-ukraine-joins-nato-16066912/ While Putin claimed his talks in Moscow with French President Emmanuel Macron were constructive, he used a joint press conference to warn of nuclear conflict if Ukraine joins Nato and then tries to regain Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. I would assume this is relevant to LLNL/LANL and the wider NNSA complex.

 Here is an interesting ranking system for government and private institutions.  Very versatile.  https://www.scimagoir.com/rankings.php?sector=Government&country=USA&area=2100