LLNL - The True Story -

Does anyone know what the "special event" was at LLNL this week that shut down the central cafeteria for the week and had a stream of local police, highway patrol, and sheriff cars coming in and out of the Lab the last two days?

Meanwhile, "Hundreds of badges, credentials, cell phones and guns belonging to the Department of Homeland Security employees have been lost or stolen in recent years -- raising serious security concerns about the potential damage these missing items could do in the wrong hands.  Inventory reports, obtained by the news site Complete Colorado show that over 1,300 badges, 165 firearms and 589 cell phones were lost or stolen over the span of 31 months between 2012 and 2015."

Looks like they need to send this guy to clean up LANL! Well at least he should be put into NNSA.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets. Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel. Worried that Branch was on the verge of being indicted, Navy leaders suspended his access to classified materials. They did the same to one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations. More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/267249-congress-should-probe-energys-national-laboratory

AMARILLO GLOBE-NEWS January 25, 2016  AMARILLO — A nuclear safety agency has reported the federal Department of Energy recently approved plans to ramp up production of plutonium “pits,” the core that that triggers nuclear weapons, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which could lead to more warhead refurbishment work at the Pantex Plant northeast of Amarillo. The plans include a big increase in plutonium capacity at an existing facility at Los Alamos and new laboratory space for pit production, part of plans to get pit production up and rolling. lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2016-01-25/rise-plutonium-production-points-more-work-pantex

UChicago Argonne, LLC - the M&O contractor for ANL - is being investigated by DOE over an accident that nearly amputated machinist's arm/hand.  http://energy.gov/ea/downloads/enforcement-notice-intent-investigate-uchicago-argonne-llc

So someone went through most of the existing threads today and posted "So what?," Who cares," "It is unimportant." ""Everybody does it," and similar nihilistic c**p. This blog seems to periodically attract such losers, who either are trying to elicit flame-throwing responses, or are seriously disturbed individuals who need help and are accessing the only mechanism they see for getting it. Either way, pathetic. I never thought I'd say it, but maybe it is time for this blog to abandon anonymous posting and require real-name registration. Then we'll see who the true believers are. And exactly who supports the goals here and who is just indulging in digital flatulence.  Comments:   Anonymous  said... Prediction: Abandon anonymous postings, and the blog will soon become devoid of content related to misdeeds and management failings at the labs. Fear of retaliation is a powerful silencer.

 WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIMS $5 MILLION AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS LAB Anthony T. Rivera, an award-winning senior engineer who blew the whistle on safety violations at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, sued the lab today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. His suit seeks $5 million in damages – and a court order reforming U.S. Department of Energy practices. Rivera, a 29-year employee with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, charges Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC is liable for wrongful termination in violation of public policy because managers fired him after he disclosed safety violations in the lab’s high explosives test facility and alleged mismanagement. His suit also seeks damages against two U.S. Department of Energy officials – Kimberly Davis Lebak, the DOE/NNSA site manager at Livermore in 2013, and Shiwali Patel, a DOE Office of Hearings and Appeals investigator who refused to investigate Rivera’s claims. The suit says Lebak and Patel punished Rivera for exe...

Take a look  here . Peruse those bios. You will see a collection of retired admirals, lawyers and ... quite a few folks of very modest educational backgrounds and accomplishments. Yes, they are incapable of understanding what's going on in the NW complex, which involves extremely complex, multidisciplinary science and sophisticated engineering. Yet, they managed to get themselves put in charge of this $12B enterprise. How did this happen? These folks must be really clever to get up there lacking even the most basic qualifications.

The folks at DOE - or more accurately NNSA - do share the blame for the LANS fiasco. After all, they are the ones who awarded the contract. But others, including the media and politicians, are no less guilty. And, in a certain perverse way, none of the players were "stupid". All had their own logic, protecting and advancing themselves, while destroying the Lab.  Remember, the contract change in 2006 came about after a sustained and brutal smear campaign against LANL. It was always obvious that the media hysteria was built on shaky and often simply false foundations. The Ford Mustang story was a fabrication and the two "missing" zip discs had never existed. This didn't matter to the media, which fed on the sensationalism of the moment. "Scathing exposés" sold many copies of newspapers. Thoughtful corrections and follow-ups not so much. Scathing exposés it was then.  Feeding on this media frenzy were the politicians in Congress, who found it convenient t...

I have heard in several places that DOE realizes that privatizing LLNL and LANL was mistake but they are not sure how to undue it. This seems odd to me since they could just say in the next round it is non-profit. Perhaps they have to get permission from congress to do this, or they know they will catch hell from the state of NM, they will look bad politically if they try to change it or they just so utterly incompetent that they just will not be able to make any kind of change.

Is there any supporting evidence that the assigned LANL leadership score was 40 and the operations score was 20? This may not be correct, but those are the numbers that keep coming out over and over from government employees. Word is that NNSA pulled another "Neile Miller" and adjusted the LANL scores up after the fact.

Go back and listen to Charlie's spin on the loss of the LANL contract. It sure looks like he is claiming that only 2 points seperated the loss from an extension. Really? An employee nearly dies in an electical accident, after LANL had been specifically warned about electrical safety, and he spins it to make it look like a close decision. DOE could have assigned any score from 0 to 50 for this near fatal accident. It doesn't matter what the score is, the contract is over this year. To spin it otherwise is a pathetic attempt to safe face. Comments:   Anonymous said... The story I heard was that the score was much lower than that but the sight office or DOE moved it up 49 percent for some reason. They where not close at all. January 15, 2016 at 9:07 PM Anonymous said... They moved the score so that Charlie could save face. The score, such as it is, is completely arbitrary anyway. Furthermore, they people who choose the sco...

 Do whatever it takes to be part of the next bidding team, throw anyone and everything under the bus, every man and women for themselves, do not let a good crises go to waste! Do not waste the last few years doing something for LANL spend every spare moment of time, lobbying and positing yourself for the next possible pot of booty! Build your buddy network, enforce you castle, perfect your lies, and profit and glory could be yours, but act quickly before someone makes app on a smartphone about how to get rich on the next contract change at LANL and everyone will be in on it.

And on Tuesday, a DOE spokeswoman provided a statement warning that LANS could lose the contract after 2017 if it doesn’t turn things around. Los Alamos fallout Although investigators still are evaluating exactly what caused the drum to overheat and rupture, they say the Los Alamos drum was improperly packaged with a volatile mix of nitrate salts and organic cat litter used to absorb liquids. The feds, in addition to dramatically reducing the fee for LANS, also took back a previously granted one-year contract extension for the consortium that includes Bechtel Corp. and the University of California. The contract with Los Alamos National Security has a “four-strike provision” that vacates the contract if LANS doesn’t earn four one-year extensions, a DOE spokeswoman said Tuesday. LANS has held the contract since 2006, “Having failed to earn contract term extensions for fiscal years 2013 and 2014,” and with the recent revocation of the previous extension, “LANS must earn (an) award term in...