LANS Performance on Plutonium Project Criticized

Anonymously contributed:

Los Alamos Manager’s (aka LANS) Performance on Plutonium Project Criticized

By John Fleck / Journal Staff Writer on Wed, Apr 4, 2012

The contractor team that managers Los Alamos National Laboratory for the federal government did a poor job of managing the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility, a proposed plutonium lab that the federal government said this year it was deferring indefinitely because of cost overruns.

In its annual “Performance Evaluation Report” on the lab’s management, the National Nuclear Security Administration said the lab’s management failed to “effectively manage CMRR NF/SFE progress in support of NNSA strategic objectives”.

NNSA made the Performance Evaluation Report public this week amid a battering, including litigation, over the agency’s policy of keeping its contractor performance evaluations secret.

Here’s the document. I’ll have more in tomorrow’s newspaper (scroll down for a direct download if you don’t want to use Scribd):

http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/04/04/abqnewsseeker/los-alamos-managers-performance-on-plutonium-project-criticized.html

April 5, 2012 1:46 AM

New LANL BLOG

what happened to the new LANL BLOG?

Hardly any activity. It is a more appropriate BLOG for LANL. Most LANL visitors fill our ears with Knapp, Mc Millan and Co. who we dont care about. I encourage LANL visitors to express their views about those 2 characters at:

http://lanllayoffs2012.blogspot.com/

Those who have constructive contributions are welcome to continue visiting the llnl BLOG.

Scooby

UC pays 400K salary to Mara!

Anonymously contributed:


UC pays 400K salary to Mara!!


"The following appointment was approved by the UC Board of Regents today (March 29):

Office of the President
Glenn Mara, vice president, Laboratory Management
Approval was requested for Mr. Mara as a term appointment effective on or about July 1, 2012, for a total compensation of $394,266. This request was in response to the impending departure of the incumbent. Mr. Mara will be responsible for management of the UC Laboratory Management Office in its efforts to support Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Limited Liability Companies that manage Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as well as the university's oversight of the Department of Energy (DOE) contractual agreements relating to science and technology research programs at the National Laboratories.

Mr. Mara's annual base salary of $367,000 is 4.8 percent below the midpoint for the SLCG Grade 112 ($385,300) and 4.2 percent below the 50th percentile market base salary of $383,100.

Mr. Mara is a rehired retiree currently serving as Acting Associate Vice President Laboratory Programs on a 43 percent basis. Mr. Mara, as a condition of appointment, will suspend all payment of retirement benefits consistent with regents' policy.

This position is funded from non-state sources, specifically the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) contract fee earned as UC's partner share at LANL and LLNL and reimbursement for laboratory management expenses approved by the DOE Contracting Officer at LBNL. The funds for this position are part of the UCOP expenditures budget paid from lab fees annually approved by the regents."

Here are the performance reports

Anonymously contributed:

An article in the ABQ journal. Finally NNSA has released the performance reports.
here are the links:

http://www.nukewatch.org/

LANL documents reveal problems

White House Requests Study of National Lab Governance

Anonymously contributed:

Another study that will lead to zero "positive" change at the labs... Btw, didn't Parney work at IDA?

Weapons Complex Monitor
April 4, 2012
White House Requests Study of National Lab Governance

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has tasked the Institute for Defense Analyses’ Science and Technology Policy Institute to study governance of the nation’s federal laboratories, and former Under Secretary of Energy for Science Steve Koonin will head up the review effort, NW&M Monitor has learned. The study is expected to examine whether the governance structures in place at the laboratories—including the government-owned, contractor operated model in place at Department of Energy/NNSA labs—is appropriate to meet national security challenges into the future. OSTP and Koonin did not respond to requests for comment, but Koonin is expected to hold invitation-only information-gathering sessions over the next month to aid in the review.

In a recent study of the NNSA’s nuclear weapons laboratories, the National Academy of Sciences called the agency’s relationship with its labs “dysfunctional” and “broken.” Koonin was notably outspoken about the state of the science at the NNSA’s weapons laboratories during the NAS study, suggesting that the switch to private management of the labs had taken its toll on science. “It’s been a challenge to maintain a vibrant scientific enterprise,” Koonin said at the time. “That’s not to say there isn’t some great stuff going on, but if you look at the totality of the effort, I don’t think it matches what we had decades ago in the basic research area.” Koonin left the Department in the fall for a post at IDA.

More FAQs for LLNS Defined Benefit Plan

Anonymously contributed:

More FAQs for LLNS Defined Benefit Plan

A second round of answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) has been posted on the LLNL TCP1 Benefits Web page.

Frequently Asked Questions as of April 2, 2012

1. What is the ratio of employer vs. employee contributions?

A. For FY12, the $20 million employer contribution equates to 17 percent as compared to the 5 percent employee contribution. For FY13, the employer contribution is projected to be $88 million, or 24 percent.

2. Why are contributions starting out at 5 percent? Why not a lower amount?

A. Had contributions been approved two years ago, they would have begun at a lower rate and would have increased over time. Since DOE only recently approved starting contributions, it was necessary to begin at 5 percent because the obligations of the plan are higher than they were two years ago.

3. Are employee contributions capped at 5 percent or will they increase?

A. The amount of future contributions will depend on many factors including future asset performance. The contribution schedule currently authorized by DOE includes approval to increase employee contributions to 7 percent of pay in 2013. LLNS will be requesting DOE approval to increase employer contributions to $88 million, or 24 percent of pay.

4. When will employee contributions end?

A. Contributions must continue until the plan has sufficient assets to pay all future pension obligations. We expect contributions to continue for the foreseeable future.

5. What happens when interest rates increase and the Defined Benefit Plan becomes well overfunded?

A. The amount of future contributions will depend on many factors including future asset performance. As interest rates increase and assets grow through earnings and contributions, the plan will become better funded. Once the plan has enough assets to pay all future pension obligations, both employee and LLNS contributions will cease.

6. What happens to the plan as the number of members continues to decline? Will the fact that there are fewer members mean they have to increase their contributions?

A. As the number of active members in the plan decreases due to retirement, the rate of increase in future plan obligations will decline, since those who have retired are no longer accruing future benefits. By starting employer and employee contributions to the TCP1 pension plan now, the Laboratory will mitigate future shortfalls. The steps under current implementation are designed to ensure that the pension plan will be able to fully meet all of its future obligations.

7. How is my pension benefit calculated at time of retirement?

A.. When your 5 percent contribution is withheld from your paycheck, it will be reported to the pension plan administrator, Aon Hewitt. They will keep track of your contributions, both taxable and non-taxable, separately from all other employee contributions in your "account." At the time you retire, when your monthly benefit is calculated, a portion of it will be attributed to your contributions. The IRS dictates how the allocation is determined; should you pass away before exhausting all of your contributions, any remaining contributions are paid out based on the election you chose when you retired.

Depending on this election, remaining contributions are either credited to your spouse's or contingent annuitant's monthly benefit payment, or to your beneficiaries if you chose an annuity only for yourself. If your contingent annuitant dies prior to exhausting your employee contributions, any remaining balance will be paid to your beneficiaries. If you instead only chose an annuity for yourself, the remaining employee contributions you made will be paid out to your beneficiaries upon your death. Your contributions are used to fund your retirement benefit. The formula to calculate your pension benefit remains as Age Factor x Service Credit x HAPC (highest average monthly full-time equivalent plan compensation over 36 continuous months as an active plan member).

No Technical Reason to Avoid a Test Ban, NRC Panel Says

Anonymously contributed:

Note the last paragraph from this excerpt!!

From Science Magazine:

No Technical Reason to Avoid a Test Ban, NRC Panel Says
by Daniel Clery on 30 March 2012

The United States' nuclear deterrent will remain safe and reliable without nuclear testing as long as the government keeps its weapons up to date with the so-called Stockpile Stewardship Program and fosters a scientific workforce capable of running the SSP, says a report from the U.S. National Academies released today. The report investigated technical issues surrounding the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and also concluded that the treaty's monitoring system, along with America's own intelligence resources, have made huge strides in recent years in their ability to detect clandestine tests that could pose a military threat to the United States. The CTBT Organization's International Monitoring System (IMS) "has created a capability so that any potential tester would have to be concerned about being detected," says Ellen D. Williams, committee chair and chief scientist of the oil company BP. ...

...The White House commissioned the National Academies in 2009 to review a 2002 study on this topic and investigate whether technical capabilities have changed over the past decade in a way that might influence the debate over ratification. Williams said at a briefing at the National Academies today that the SSP was still quite young in 2002, and since then there has been enormous progress. "They've overhauled and refurbished two complete weapon classes," she says. Part of the program involves understanding the physics and chemistry of the materials that make up the weapons and understanding how they decay and degrade. In some cases, replacement parts can be manufactured. "We understand these weapons today even better than we did while testing," committee member Marvin Adams, a nuclear engineer at Texas A&M University in College Station, said at the briefing. "We've done it. We've reset the clock on these weapons."

A large part of the program also involves developing computer simulations of the action of nuclear explosives. To test the validity of the simulations, national laboratories have built facilities that can reproduce parts of a nuclear explosion without creating an actual blast. These facilities include the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Applications facility (MESA) at Sandia National Laboratories, and Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility (DARHT) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "It's very crucial for researchers to establish a close coupling between [these facilities] and scientific computing so that they can test and stress the computer codes essential to the health of the program," Williams says.

The committee's main concern was about the government's future commitment to this program and its workforce. "The technical ability to maintain the stockpile exists; our concern is about the political will to maintain those capabilities," Williams says. Committee member Lynn Sykes of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University says, "There's one golden bullet: a high quality workforce. I can't stress that too strongly."

Full article:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/03/no-technical-reason-to-avoid-a-t.html