Whistleblower retaliation

"Bill would make Hanford contractors regret whistleblower retaliation"

"RICHLAND, WA - The U.S. House approved an annual defense bill on Thursday that could make contractors at Hanford and other Department of Energy sites pay fines for nuclear safety violations.

The National Defense Authorization Act states that the energy secretary should impose civil penalties on contractors who retaliate against whistleblowers who raise nuclear safety issues.

The provision, inserted into the bill by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., was in response to a 2016 report by the Government Accountability Office that found that DOE seldom holds its nuclear program contractors accountable for unlawful retaliation against whistleblowers..."

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article215617380.html

What's the story with life sciences and Triad?

So what's the story with life sciences and Triad? Under LANS it was CLES with life sciences being more important than earth sciences. Triad has flipped it to CELS by demoting life sciences underneath earth sciences. Is this a sign that Triad plans to phase out life sciences at LANL and move the work to other Battelle run Labs?

Rate increase

And so it begins... this was in my email today, and speaks to the county of Los Alamos looking to recoup the loss of GRT in the event TRIAD goes non-profit:

Proposed Sewage Rate Increase going to the Board of Public Utilities
Jul 26, 2018 02:38 pm | Los Alamos County

The Department of Public Utilities is proposing an increase to sewage rate services. Read the discussion and provide your feedback to the Board of Public Utilities. The public hearing for the proposed sewage rate increase is scheduled for: 
Wednesday, August 15th @ 5:30 PM Council Chambers, Municipal Building, 1000 Central Avenue, Los Alamos, NM

Highlights from the week

Highlights from the week include Mason unveiling his new lab leadership and lots of random guesses on most everything else. A&M does not play much role, if any, in the new structure and Battelle is, from all appearances, fully in charge of the operation. They do not look to be leaning to pay GRT, but are reluctant to underestimate the resolve of the local politicians to find a path to collect it anyway.

Other events also happened in the world this past week, but you would not know that from overhearing casual cafe conversations in town.

Wake up call from UCOP

UCOP "looks forward" to the quarterly BOG meetings, as well as "all the subcommittees" in Triad

Anyone that was under the delusion that removal of LANS would be a reduction in parent organization oversight and thus an improvement in lab governance just got a wake up call from UCOP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bzGGKoeDHY&feature=youtu.be&t=8846

Non-profit mindset is good

Returning Los Alamos to Non-Profit Mindset Key to Big Triad Win, UC Exec Says

Excising the profit-seeking mindset from the Los Alamos National Laboratory was key to keeping the University of California on the storied nuclear-weapons lab’s management team, an executive with the massive public university system said Wednesday.

After about a dozen years under the for-profit Los Alamos National Security, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in June awarded a possibly decade-long Los Alamos management and operations contract to Triad National Security: a non-profit team including senior partners Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of California (UC), and Texas A&M University.

Los Alamos National Security includes senior partners UC and Bechtel, with BWX Technologies and AECOM. All but UC are for-profit companies. NNSA decided to pull the incumbent’s contract more than a decade after its final option period would have expired after a series of management and safety lapses at the lab.

The last straw for NNSA came in 2014, after a shoddily packaged barrel of nuclear waste from Los Alamos caused a small underground explosion and radiation leak that at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant — the Department of Energy’s only deep-underground repository for plutonium-contaminated material and equipment.

The disposal site shut down for almost three years after that, and by 2015, NNSA had decided to put the Los Alamos management and operations contract back on the street.

When that happened, UC immediately became convinced that “returning to a partnership amongst nonprofit organizations” was key to keeping some degree of control over the laboratory it helped build in 1943, and which it managed solo for most of the decades since, said Kim Budil, vice president for national laboratories at UC’s office of the president.

A nonprofit partnership “would commit to a shared fate, a shared sense of urgency about supporting the laboratory and ensuring its success, and a common set of values in how we pursue that,” Budil said Wednesday in a regents meeting webcast from San Francisco.

Budil framed Triad’s nonprofit core as “an equal partnership,” though the company’s president and chief executive officer, Thomas Mason, has a strong Battelle pedigree. Mason, who will be director at Los Alamos, comes to New Mexico after a decade as president and chief executive officer of Oak Ridge National Lab prime contractor UT-Battelle.

Outside Triad's main triumvirate are some for-profit entities, headlined by the nuclear-savvy Huntington Ingalls Industries/Stoller Newport News, and Fluor Federal Services.

“[W]e do understand the role that industrial practice plays in improving the operations at the laboratory, so we structured our LLC such that the private sector partners we brought in would be integrated subcontractors,” Budil said. "That does two things: it gives them the ability to see the success of the laboratory through our lens. They can’t locally optimize to their own parts of the laboratory because the ultimate decision goes through the LLC. So they’re full partners in the total success of the laboratory.”

Triad is set to take over Los Alamos Nov. 1. The company’s contract is worth around $20 billion over 10 years, with options. Total Triad fees could be as high as $50 million a year. Budil said UC would know exactly what its share of those fees will be by July 2019.

Who is leading TRIAD show?

Couple of real wild quotes in here

"The UC will take a leading role in the management partnership among the three institutions, which will operate as Triad National Security, LLC, or Triad, according to UC President Janet Napolitano."


REALLY need to get this news to Battelle, who is pretty clear on who is leading the Triad show. 



"The UC is estimated to earn a net fee of $24.6 million for the calendar year 2018 under its existing contracts for management of both the Los Alamos lab and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. According to Kimberly S. Budil, UC vice president for national laboratories, the fee that the UC will earn from the new Triad contract is slightly smaller than that earned from the previous contract and will impact the 2019-20 budget."


SO the fee that UC takes from LANL will only be slightly smaller under Triad than under LANS. That will sure come as shocking news to NNSA.



http://www.dailycal.org/2018/07/18/uc-wins-management-contract-los-alamos-national-laboratory/