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UC Wins Contract to Run Los Alamos

Posted by samzenpus on from the nuclear-hotel-california dept.

crlove writes "LA Times reports, 'The University of California today won its hard-fought bid to continue operating the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, beating back a challenge from a Lockheed Corp.-University of Texas team to run the nuclear weapons research facility... For months, the New Mexico laboratory had been shaken by allegations and revelations of theft, fraud, security lapses and lax oversight.'"

6 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Re:UC Wins Contract to Run Los Alamos by manojar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not surprising, since some universities are as big as small towns & some towns are dependent on universities alone, and universities usually have an efficient bureaucracy in place, and tend to have balanced budgets.

    --
    Manojar - pronounced like Manager
  2. Not strictly a UC win by Angstroman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While the University of California will be deeply involved in the new management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, it is not strictly correct to call this a win for UC. As the DOE press release makes clear, the winner of the competition was a limited liability corporation comprised of UC, Bechtel, BWX Technologies and others. The difference is very significant in some areas. For example, LANL personnel will no longer be members of the UC staff and participants in their retirement system, but employees of the LLC. The DOE did not release details of the winning proposal yet. As they do, I believe it will become increasingly clear that there is much more to this change than just UC continuing to play the same role.

  3. Abivalence by putko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's been a lot of ambivalence at Berkeley in the past about it running labs like this. One line (not that I believe it) goes that it is better for the Univeristy involved than leave it strictly to the defense contractors.

    I think it provides UC with some serious money and opportunity to do major research, so the geeks get attracted to it and tend to brush over any ethical concerns.

    E.g. who else has the budget and inclination for some serious computin'?

    Similar stuff happened at MIT in the beginning of computing. It was somehow harmless when it was just Ma Bell wanting telephone switching technology -- but the defense contractors have budgets and interesting requirements, so it is easy to look the other way.

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    1. Re:Abivalence by jimhill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "I used to work at LANL ... I can almost see the folks at LANL partying over this."

      Well, I still work at LANL and believe me, there's no partying going on here. The feeling is one of shock and disbelief that an organization which so badly mismanaged the institution that it lost its 63-year no-bid, no-compete contract is rewarded by being given (a share of) the management of the institution. Once the revised RFP came out last year which drummed up additional bidders by guaranteeing our pensions would be destroyed, thereby saving the winning bidder a pile of money, the only reason to support a UC bid went out the window. For the last 24 hours, I'd wager the number one employee activity here has been rèsumè-updating. Which, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to.

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  4. Re:UC Wins Contract to Run Los Alamos by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Insightful
    when exactly did simple criticism (particularly valid critisicm) become "bashing"?

    • When your party is winning, then the other guy is a sore loser.
    • When your party is losing the other is a sore winner.
    • When you catch your party in deep shit with mass deficts, traitors, lies, torture, etc. then anything somebody says is going to be bashing, wild conspiracy theories, or unpatriotic even if true.
    BTW, this happened here in the 90's against Clinton. While he did not increase the deficit, was not a traitor, did not torture (of course, he was the 2'nd president to use gitmo for detaining ppl), he DID lie about sex and there were plenty of conspiracies theorey about him, his wife, the 2 of them and their dogs, the 2 of them and some bunch women, etc. etc. etc.. And there were similar postings with similar mods. So, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
    --
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  5. Re:The Real Story? by mengel · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The other big problem is perennial budget uncertainty -- National Labs never know from one year to the next what their budget might be, as it literally takes an Act of Congress to renew the funding each and every year, and especially the last few years, it's rarely been anywhere near on time. Add to that the fact that sometimes the DOE takes budget back partway through the year...

    It means that things you should buy, but that aren't absolutely critical, often get delayed until the Mad September Purchasing Rush, when folks actually know what's left in their budget. This can mean that new database server to let you build the tracking system for something you really ought to have been tracking already is delayed 6 months to a year... Or you don't get training you should, or hire staff you should, not because there isn't budget for it, but because you don't know if there is budget for it.

    Just repeat that sort of cycle for 10 years or so, and things can get kind of out of hand.

    --
    - "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'