More details please?

Anonymously contributed:

A budget deal has been reached, does anyone know how NNSA did?

Slow days...

Thief asked:

Anybody else notice how slow it is on Thursdays and Fridays these days? In the past when I would deign to come in to catch up on things on a Saturday or...gasp....Sunday there was always a little activity. These days the weekend seems to start around 4:30 Wednesday afternoon.

Am I crazy or just losing my powers of observation?

Security officers on loan?

Anonymously contributed:
Any one else notice the different uniformed security officers at the LLNL gates. I think they are on loan from other sites.

LLNL and LANL: The true story.... from Linton Brooks.

Anonymously contributed:

Here's is an interesting excerpt from the July 22, 2011 Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor story on the NAS Laboratory Management Panel's last public session with former NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks

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In re-examining the decisions that led to the recompetition of the lab contracts nearly a decade ago, Brooks emphasized that it would be “difficult to overstate the anti- University of California bias existing at that time,” especially on Capitol Hill. However, he made it clear that the moves by DOE to consider re-bidding the Los Alamos contract—and ultimately the direction from Congress to recompete nearly all lab contracts—were fueled by concerns about business practices, not science. “There was never the slightest concern with the quality of science,” Brooks said. “The quality of science as far as we could tell then and as far as I can tell today is superb.” Przybylek [former NNSA General Counsel and Chair of the LANL contract selection board] agreed. “While we were looking for world-class on the science side, we were looking for ‘good enough’ on the back office side,” he said. “We recognized that you don’t want to pay for world-class business systems that cost a fortune that take away from the funding you have for science.”

Interestingly, Brooks suggested that NNSA would have decided not to recompete the Livermore contract, without intervention from Congress. “We explicitly and deliberately left open the question of whether there should be a competition for the management of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,” Brooks said. “At the time, the perception in DOE headquarters, including by me, was that Los Alamos was in trouble but that Livermore was doing generally well. There is absolutely no way to know what we would have really done if the Congress had not intervened. ... It is my guess, and only my guess, that we would have decided not to do a competition for Livermore.”

Notably, Brooks also considered combining Livermore and Los Alamos into a single competition. “Because I valued common management of the two laboratories, I went through a very brief phase of suggesting we would compete for the management of both labs as a package,” he said. “I ignited a firestorm primarily at the staff level, believing that the only entity who would be able to compete would be the University of California and that was unacceptable to the Hill. We therefore made the decision, accepted the reality, to compete them separately.”

So How Many Acres Did Burn on LANL Property, MacMillan?

Anonymously contributed:


So How Many Acres Did Burn on LANL Property MacMillan?

133 Acres Burned on Lab (LANL) Property

Las Conchas: The majority of the burned acreage, though, was due to backburn

By John Severance (LA Monitor)
Saturday, July 23, 2011 at 7:44 pm (Updated: July 24, 4:23 am)

Officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory were insistent throughout that the Los Conchas Fire only came onto LANL and Department of Energy property twice.

The first came when the fire jumped over NM 4 onto TA-49, causing a one-acre fire that was quickly extinguished June 27, the second day of the fire.

The second came on July 2 when a squirrel touched contacts in an electrical substation’s transformer at TA-53, the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) Facility substation and that fire was put out within a short period.

On Friday, the Las Conchas Burned Area Emergency Response team released the acreage burned by jurisdiction. The chart said that 133 acres burned on DOE and LANL property.

So what’s the story?

The Questionable History of Lawrence Livermore National Labs

Anonymously contributed:

From 911blogger.com 7/12/2011:


http://911blogger.com/news/2011-07-12/questionable-history-lawrence-livermore-national-labs

Brooks 'not Been Impressed' With Industrial Partners At LANL

Anonymously contributedL

From the lab's (LANL) Daily Clips page:

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing

July 19, 2011

Brooks 'not Been Impressed' With Industrial Partners At LANL

Addressing a National Academy of Sciences panel examining the management of NNSA's weapons laboratories yesterday, former NNSA Administrator Linton Brookssaid the recompetition of the Los Alamos National Laboratory contract to bring in industrial partners as part of the management team is not working out exactly as he'd hoped. Longtime LANL contractor University of California teamed with Bechtel, URS and B&W on its successful bid to keep the lab contract. "Our idea was that we would preserve the great science but improve safety, security and general management," Brooks said. "I think those areas have improved. It is unclear to me whether they have improved enough to justify the turbulence that the contract change caused. I think the jury is still out. I have not been impressed ... with the involvement of the industrial partners. I have not seen from them the same level of commitment and ownership."

As an example, Brooks cited how the key personnel on the contract differ in their commitment to the lab. "The lab director has, thus far, come out of the academic community and therefore has spent his-or someday her-life in the laboratory system," Brooks said. "The senior industrial people rotate in and out and see their long-term future with their parent corporation. I don't know whether that's a problem or just a fact. I did not internalize that as well as I wish I had when we were doing all of this. When I said I hadn't been impressed with the support of the industrial partners that was one of things I had in mind."