NUKE LAB FEE SLASHED

We’ve known for a while now that the “two com­puter disks that sup­pos­edly dis­ap­peared last sum­mer, prompt­ing a vir­tual shut­down of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in fact never existed.” But what’s inter­est­ing in this AP rpe­ort is that the Department of Energy has gone ahead and decided to slash the lab’s man­age­ment any­way.

In a harshly worded review that described severe secu­rity weak­nesses at the nuclear lab, the U.S. Energy Department con­cluded that bar codes were recorded for the disks but the disks them­selves were never cre­ated. A sep­a­rate FBI inves­ti­ga­tion sup­ported that find­ing, accord­ing to the report.
“The weak­nesses revealed by this inci­dent are severe and must be cor­rected,” accord­ing to the report.
As pun­ish­ment for the prob­lems, the Energy Department slashed by two-​​thirds the man­age­ment fee it paid to the University of California for run­ning the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Out of a pos­si­ble $8.7 mil­lion, UC will get only $2.9 mil­lion; it is the largest fee reduc­tion ever imposed on a national lab­o­ra­tory.
“Although mul­ti­ple inves­ti­ga­tions have con­firmed that the ‘miss­ing’ disks never existed, the major weak­ness in con­trol­ling clas­si­fied mate­r­ial revealed by this inci­dent are absolutely unac­cept­able and the University of California must be held account­able for them,” National Nuclear Security Agency Administrator Linton Brooks said in a statement.

This is a real change of busi­ness for an Energy Department that usu­ally looks the other way when one of its nuclear cen­ters screw up. The lab watch­dogs at Project on Government Oversight may feel that any fee is too much for the University. But this seems to me to be a proper step.

January 29th, 2005 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.