More on Sandia

Audit cites problems at LANL, Sandia

http://www.abqjournal.com/379790/news/audit-cites-problems-at-lanl-sandia.html

Sandia irresponsible

Sandia Labs being irresponsible for waste cleanup:

http://www.abqjournal.com/381581/opinion/sandia-needs-to-clean-up-toxic-dump.html

cleanup cost

Let's start a pool on how much it will cost to get the "bad kitty litter" barrels into compliance with the WIPP waste acceptance criteria.

My guess is $2M per barrel.

Citizen Action New Mexico is suing the NNSA

Citizen Action New Mexico is suing the NNSA for withholding documents related to the safety of nuclear operations at Sandia National Laboratories

http://www.radfreenm.org/index.php/foia-lawsuit-vs-nnsa-nuclear-safety-docs-11-23-2013

Topic: Charlie

Charlie McMillan has quite the record of failure under his bespoke Italian leather belt.

* There was the screw-up over multiple years in building the new security system at TA-55 that LANL was force to pay for to make amends.

* There was his female Dep. Director whose husband gained lucrative LANL contracts and for which she failed to inform LANL -- and Charlie knew about this obvious conflict of interest for years and did nothing!

* There was the horribly mis-handled $6 billion plutonium lab planned for LANL which now appears will never be built due to massive cost over-runs.

* There are the upgrades of the radioactive waste disposal pipelines that, just like the proposed plutonium lab, are now spirally massive out of control in terms of costs and completion deadlines.

* There is the on-going (now one year and growing) shut-down of all activity out at TA-55.

* And the final piece to his "glowing" career? Probably billions in cleanup costs as his mismanagement of LANL results in the "kitty litter" fiasco which will, at the very least, shut down WIPP for years to come and make the state of New Mexico wonder if any of those 500 barrels might someday blow open and spew radioactive fumes into the air.

Heckavajob, Charlie. How much does LANS pay you for this stellar record? Is it one million or two million these days?

May 25, 2014 at 10:20 PM 

Anonymous said...

May 25, 2014 at 10:20 PM


Ha, Charlie will laugh at you fools all the way to the bank. The only legacy is how much money you make not about what you do. He played to win, and he won, you on the other hand are are the loser. The deputy also played to win an in the end got a lot of money she did the honorable thing and stepped down, I doubt a single one ya all ould have done than that. If you cannot play the game and win the big $$$ than that is just because you suck at the game not because the game is evil. We all play and you have be honest about it, just admit you are playing as well and would take every dollar that came your way. The people that put down our management are sore losers and have absolutely no right to judge. Only God judges and heaven helps those that help themselves and that is the way it goes. You can say all the bad things you want about Charlie but he will make out much better than you.

May 25, 2014 at 10:34 PM 

Anonymous said...

Those corporate managers at Enron played to win too. By your logic they are heroes and those employees and mom and pop investors that lost their life savings were losers.

The management at WIPP says they they don't foresee getting back to normal operations for 3 years after the radioactive leak. Large sections of the WIPP underground storage area will need to be completely sealed off forever.

LANL says they now think there are 500 of those kitty litter "time bombs" sitting around WIPP, LANL and the temporary site in Andrews, TX.

This whole fiasco is going to be extremely expensive for NNSA and LANL to fix. I'll bet the final cost to handle it will make the $200 million security system screw-up out at LANL's TA-55 look cheap by comparison.

You have to wonder why these changes in the packing of the barrels were allowed, given all the heavy education about formality of operation and precise documentation of all steps for getting even the most mundane types of work done at the lab.

May 23, 2014 at 8:49 PM 

Anonymous said...

Where is the outrage at LANS LLC management failures that lead to the WIPP mess. If UC was still the sole manager of LANL you can bet there would be screams from watchdog groups and politicians that UC was to blame. Clearly the LLCs are a failure and have done nothing to improve management of the Labs - unfortunately, no one outside the Labs care or is willing to admit the obvious. Why won't the media do an investigative report into corporate for profit private management vs non-profit public UC management of the labs. Seems like there's now 7 to 8 years of data to look at and reach some conclusions.

May 24, 2014 at 7:46 AM 

Anonymous said...

Where is the outrage at LANS LLC management failures...

May 24, 2014 at 7:46 AM

I don't know about everyone else, but I have had it up to here with all of this manufactured "outrage" about everything that happens. This constant need to find someone to blame and to chop off his head is juvenile and demented. The sane response to problems is to identify why and how they happened, put corrective measures in place so they don't happen again, and move on. We have become a nation of self-absorbed, spoiled whiners. Give it a rest, already!

May 24, 2014 at 9:40 AM 

Anonymous said...

You have to wonder why these changes in the packing of the barrels were allowed, given all the heavy education about formality of operation and precise documentation of all steps for getting even the most mundane types of work done at the lab.

May 23, 2014 at 8:49 PM

Have worked in the Los Alamos Waste Disposition Project (WDP), I can tell you first hand that the entire LANL Transuranic (TRU) Operation was a "hurry up and rush it" attitude. It was a Chinese sweat shop to meet the deadline of the 3706 (cubic-meters) program and "follow the money to this PBI"! They need a Congressional Investigation of this.

I wish LANL people had their own blog.

I wish LANL people had their own blog.