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Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Fire near LANL

 Cerro Pelado fire Monday (May 2) update: Fire remains 6 miles from LANL, crews and Lab prepared for red flag conditions tomorrow


https://discover.lanl.gov/news/0502-cerro-pelado

26 comments:

Anonymous said...


This is going to be third fire in 20 years that threatens the lab. Does this sound like a safe place to build 30 pits a year?

Anonymous said...

Hopefully all CREM will be handled in a safe and secure manner this time.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully all CREM will be handled in a safe and secure manner this time.

5/03/2022 8:42 AM

LANL will go cowboy again, they cannot help it, they think they are smarter than everyone else.

Anonymous said...

5/03/2022 4:19 PM

Not everyone, just those in the A-bomb business.

Anonymous said...

I’ve never seen the smoke so bad in NM, Just got back from Santa Fe.

Anonymous said...

Not everyone, just those in the A-bomb business.

5/05/2022 3:22 PM

Since that is kind of the whole point of LANL, my statement stands and is accurat, LANL will cowboy again it is just the way it is.

Anonymous said...

Since that is kind of the whole point of LANL, my statement stands and is accurat, LANL will cowboy again it is just the way it is.

5/05/2022 11:13 PM

Is that you, Pete?

Anonymous said...

LANL stated today that the fire does not threaten LANL property at this time.

Anonymous said...

Is that you, Pete?

5/06/2022 1:48 PM

Pete..got it. You do "not get it" and "that" is your problem. You simply "are not getting it". If you ask me what "it" is than you need to get out of your cubical and see what the rest of the town sees. Of course you will ask those around you what "it is" which just shows you that you do not get "it".

Pete said it was cowboys, and it is cowboys. If you ask what he means by cowboys it means you are a cowboy. If you are confused by this it is because are a cowboy that does not get it.

Get it now.

Anonymous said...

5/06/2022 6:31 PM

You really need to get rid of your 16 or 17 year-old grievances against LANL and Nanos. He is long gone, and so are the very few "cowboys" who were rightfully terminated. To hang on to this sickness for so long has made you as crazy as Nanos was.

Anonymous said...

You really need to get rid of your 16 or 17 year-old grievances against LANL and Nanos. He is long gone, and so are the very few "cowboys" who were rightfully terminated. To hang on to this sickness for so long has made you as crazy as Nanos was.

5/07/2022 5:40 PM

What cowboys where rightfully terminated?

Seems like everyone who was fired by Nanos was picked up instantly by other places and ended up doing even better.

Remember Sattlenger? He got a job a short time later at ANL as Associate lab director and keep winning award
after award.

https://www.anl.gov/article/argonne-scientist-awarded-for-pioneering-leadership-in-inorganic-chemistry

Seems odd if he was such a cowboy that that other DOE labs would grab him as fast possible at even higher position.

Tom Meyer is now a Chaired Prof at UNC and sent tons of postdocs to LANL. Again odd that UNC would give a cowboy a Chaired Professorship and the other DOE labs would be so happy keep associating with him.

By the way years later no believes the laser in the eye of the student story, it never made any sense and no could even figure how it could have happened https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/manuals/laser/losalamos.pdf

Of course it did not help that they had Frank Tarantino in charge of that investigation . (Not one of the best and brightest by long shot). That guy was total disaster and after Nanos got axed he was out. How long did he last at his next job in some planetary center after that, maybe a few months.

David Cremers has gone one to do very well and making a big profit leading a laser company in Abq which by the way does business with the DOE labs. Odd that DOE and others would be so happy to do business with a so called cowboy. Also I heard he got a very nice settlement from LANL but who knows. I also heard several other people that Nanos went after won handsome settlements. Several others got jobs with Bechtel, or other places so everyone was fine.

It just seems that getting accused of being a cowboy by Nanos sure did not carry much weight with other employees. It is almost like they did not believe the cowboy narrative. The people at ANL I know for a fact never believed this and asked me, do you know anyone else who is a LANL cowboy, we would love to hire them.

So I ask who was "rightfully terminated" since most other places who hired all these people seemed not care and that apparently many sued the lab and got compensated?

Looking back it seems like Nanos just messed up completely and handled everything badly and then he got "rightfully terminated".


Anonymous said...

11:29 is spot on. I was trying to remember the name of Nanos’ hit man. Thank you for recalling Frank Tarantino. A bigger zero never walked the halls at LANL.

The “cowboy” narrative was nothing more than an excuse for Nanos to exercise dictatorial powers; Lord knows nobody respected his scientific chops. Thank goodness those days are done.

Anonymous said...

5/07/2022 11:29 PM

Pete Nanos is shaking his fist in anger yelling cowboy cowboy cowboy!!!!!


A few years ago when Mason was coming in they had a meeting at LANL which included all the former lab Directors, Hecker. Kuckuck, Brown, McMillan and Anastasio. Wallace who was the Director at the time made made it very well known that Nanos was not there and made several very snide comments in front of everyone that garnered much laughter. It kind tells you where Nanos fits into things when a current LANL Director can openly mock him in front of the former and incoming Director.

Anonymous said...

There are Cowboys but it’s not the scientists. It’s the operations management. Just check the record. How many radiological and nuclear facilities have been shut down or “paused” at LANL. Better yet, how many haven’t. I can still hear Terry telling the story of how smart the people at LANL are so they decided to “pause” operations before the DOE shut them down for not having CSEs and crit analysts. You know, requirements from like 1998 that LANL was too smart for.

Dont defend stupid even if Nanos was a fool.

Anonymous said...

"Thank you for recalling Frank Tarantino. A bigger zero never walked the halls at LANL."

Frank was not at LANL very long. He was way beyond his depth at LANL. He rapidly made enemies of anyone smarter than he was which just about everyone. After he got the boot from LANL he was thrown out of his next job very rapidly. I never knew what happened to him after that.

It seemed like after the cold war people thought nuclear weapons where a waste time so they could just dump some of the worst of the worst on the place since it would not matter. I am not a Trump fan but I do have to wonder about the "deep state". I think it is not as organized as people think it is that you get some people like Nanos, Frank Tarantino or Ed Moses in the system and it is hard to get rid of them. After some time you have enough of these people that it starts to act like force of its own trying to survive or cause mayhem to anyone who tries to improve the system. How else can you explain Nanos who was just a disaster through his whole career jumping from one job after another screwing it up. Everyone knew it was going to be disaster yet they kept it up. The same thing with Frank and Ed. Everyone told the Magellean project do not hire Ed, it will be a disaster, they hire Ed and disaster. It is like there is some other force in control that keeps letting this happen over and over again.

Anonymous said...

11:01 your “hidden force” is membership in the bohemian grove aka Bechtel’s old boys club.

Anonymous said...

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/safety-questions-arise-as-los-alamos-national-laboratory-pursues-pit-production/article_0fb60822-c651-11ec-9d78-8f2a8e8b2a10.html


Safety questions arise as Los Alamos National Laboratory pursues pit production.

The comment section is filled the Mello and Coglan going at each other. These guys head the Los Alamos Study Group and the Nuclear Watch Group. I know these guys do not get along but it seems it has amped up the past few years and now they are just going...nuclear on each other!!!!

Mello once again goes on about how having more money in New Mexico would be economically bad for the region, an argument that no one seems to buy. He states "This newspaper and our congressional delegation are under the misconception that LANL's billions for more weapons of mass destruction will help bring prosperity to Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. The reverse has proven closer to reality, as any independent person with an economics background could predict. "

I would like to ask how is this a misconception and could Mello please provide one person....one with an "economics background" and carpenters in Taos who got kicked out of graduate school do not count. Give me one Ph.D economists who believes this. In fact go to UNM (Ok they do not exactly have a top economics department), but still find me one from UNM.

He keeps going on about this but has never provided any evidence with numbers. The study they talked about a while about was pure garbage at best and out and out fraud at worst. I suspect that it not actually fraud but pretty close as their where deceptive in the way they presented the data.

Anonymous said...


No to bash Mello for all his points. He does make case that I think is legit that I have not seen LANL address.

He says " In that regard, one of the nation's highest nuclear safety authorities, currently serving in that capacity, said to me in 2019: "We all know what will happen if LANL does pit production. There will be an accident, and that will be that. We can only hope not too many people will be hurt."

I think he has a real point that there will probably an accident. It is just the nature of doing this kind of work. My guess is the same thing will happen in Savannah River. You could argue if the odds are higher that the accident will be in LANL or not but I do not have a good estimate. In any case I doubt "that will be that" but it could lead huge delays perhaps calls to de-Cowboy the place, punishment or budget cuts. People are all ra ra over pits but the risk of something going wrong at some level is going to be high. and it is something
we should be thinking about.

Of course in China any accident would be just a minor bump in the road that would fixed in a few days.

Anonymous said...

Of course in China any accident would be just a minor bump in the road that would fixed in a few days.

5/18/2022 10:59 PM

Of course the last Chinese accident was a bit more than a minor bump in the road, and hasn't been fixed yet in spite of billions of dollars spent on vaccines, and a million American lives lost.

Anonymous said...

"We all know what will happen if LANL does pit production. There will be an accident, and that will be that.

5/18/2022 10:59 PM

Ridiculous. "We" don't know that, nobody knows that. The assertion is just stupid, and designed to enrage people and make trouble. There is no analysis or technical knowledge behind it, it is just more crap from people who hate everyone who disagrees with them. That attitude is killing the US.

Anonymous said...

"Ridiculous. "We" don't know that, nobody knows that. The assertion is just stupid, and designed to enrage people and make trouble. There is no analysis or technical knowledge behind it, it is just more crap from people who hate everyone who disagrees with them. That attitude is killing the US.

5/19/2022 5:23 PM"

In essence I agree with you but this is LANL we are talking about. You can argue about how bad some past things have been but in just the last 25 years, we had Wen Ho Lee, stolen Mustangs, culture of theft, lost disks, classified info in meth labs, lasers in student eye, accusations of beating up whistleblowers, accusations of worse crimes, the employees all being cowboys and butthead, kitty litter shutting down WIPP and few other things. That is a lot of stuff. So now we are going hire a whole bunch more people making the lab the biggest it has ever been doing much risker work. All in a place that no longer has a great reputation. What are the odds that something is gong to wrong with the pit production?

Anonymous said...

"Of course the last Chinese accident was a bit more than a minor bump in the road, and hasn't been fixed yet in spite of billions of dollars spent on vaccines, and a million American lives lost.

5/19/2022 4:35 PM"

Let me guess you also follow Q-Annon and believe pizzagate. You are in a fake news bubble and are example of why we need do something about misinformation.

Anonymous said...

5/19/2022 10:00 PM.
Nice rant, with all the stuff that never happened (except WHL, which was bad for the US, not just LANL). Believing all the stupidity and insanity causes extreme doubts about the future. Living the reality and seeing the progress causes optimism Try it.

Anonymous said...


"Nice rant, with all the stuff that never happened"

????

Some of the stuff was overblown for sure but every single thing that was listed in fact happened.

lost disks....yep in fact there was the also a separate disk indent with Nanos incident was well.

, culture of thef...probably not a culture but yes some people went jail over that in some rather high profile cases. Look it up.

"the employees all being cowboys and butthead...again not really true but Nanos did make the accusation and the general picture was repated by several congress members.


accusations of worse crimes ...read Tony Montanos book "LANL hidden Colony, a storey of pure fiction!!" for all the goods! Ok this is all bs but Montano did make the allegations which are kind of out there.

accusations of beating up whistleblowers....Remember Tommy Hook, the guy who got beat up at a strip club. He claimed someone was going give secret whistle blwoer stuff but he got beat up instead. The FBI concluded it was bs speaking of Tony he still says it was true. As for Tommy Hook, type his name into Google along with Arizona strip club to find out about how it ended with him.

kitty litter shutting down WIPP....that happened.

Laser in eye of student...that was the reason Nanos gave for the shutdown.

Let us not forget the people that burned in the electrical cleaning incident, Uranium being FedExed. LANCE radiation contamination, building blown, radioactive tools stolen, copper theft and so on. All within the last 20 years. You can agrue how serious these events are but they all happened.

Anonymous said...

Living the reality and seeing the progress causes optimism Try it.

5/20/2022 6:02 PM

The reality is that about 30% of the population are incapable of functioning beyond the reach of a cellphone tower. LANL has adjusted to that reality by tailoring its web pages and instructions to mirror the screens of the celltoys GenZ lives by.

Anonymous said...

"LANL has adjusted to that reality by tailoring its web pages "

If you look at the lab pages you cannot even figure out what LANL does. You cannot find the word science. It is bunch of stories about how someone climbed a mountain, about someone being a coach, an award for best practices that include women in Northern New Mexico. A story on a local business, a diversity story, a picture of a deer. The one science highlight could something about the Mars Rover but if you read the story it is clear that the particular story is about the Mars helicopter and LANL had nothing to do with it. Another story about how a guard always wanted to be Shakespearean actor but things did not turn out that way and now they are in LANL which sort like being in tragedy or comedy so it all worked out in the end.

I admit the LANL web pages are just weird now.

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