SANDIA CHIEF LEADING LOS ALAMOS BID

For a while, it looked like no one would chal­lenge the University of California for con­trol of Los Alamos, the world’s lead­ing nuclear lab. Not any more.
Lockheed Martin, the country’s biggest defense con­trac­tor, is prep­ping for a mon­ster bid for Los Alamos. And the com­pany has tapped the long­time chief of Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos’ more buttoned-​​down sis­ter to the south, to head the effort.
Lockheed already runs Sandia for the Energy Department. And for nearly ten years, the for­mer Los Alamos physi­cist C. Paul Robinson, has been the company’s point man there. It’s been a rel­a­tively calm period for the Sandia, with only a faint whiff of the cor­rup­tion and shaky secu­rity that has stunk up Los Alamos over the last decade.
But Sandia has also missed the flashes of scary bril­liance that the world has come to expect from Los Alamos. Sandia is known more as an engi­neer­ing cen­ter.
Last August, Lockheed dropped out of the run­ning for Los Alamos. The retainer for run­ning the lab was puny. And early drafts of the request for bids seemed heav­ily slanted in California’s favor.
But “Lockheed Martin jumped back into the fray after the DOE pro­posed changes to the Los Alamos con­tract, includ­ing increas­ing the manager’s fee from 0.6 per­cent of the lab’s $2 bil­lion annual bud­get to 3 per­cent,” the Contra Costa Times says.
And now, it looks like a sec­ond dis­cour­aged Los Alamos bid­der, the University of Texas, may be com­ing back to the table, as well. Lockheed and Texas offi­cials are talk­ing about team­ing up to run the lab.
In recent years, many Los Alamos sci­en­tists have been vocal in their dis­taste for both Texas and Lockheed. “We’ve estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as an idea lab, and I think you’d lose that if the man­age­ment went to a cor­po­ra­tion,” Los Alamos non­pro­lif­er­a­tion sci­en­tist Bill Priedhorsky told me back in 2003. “I think you’d see the bet­ter peo­ple flee.“
This morn­ing, some­one posted to Los Alamos employee blog LANL: The Real Story a Photoshopped memo from Paul Robinson. He’s wear­ing a Hitler mous­tache in it.
But atti­tudes may be soft­en­ing, a bit. “I’m mid-​​career, and frankly am ready to work for a man­ager that’s com­pe­tent, deft, astute, respected, effi­cient, ratio­nal, self-​​disciplined, and under­stands what we do and how hard it is to do it,” writes one LANL: The Real Story poster. “LockMart & C. Paul Robinson sure look like they got a good oppor­tu­nity to ful­fill that poten­tial.“
“What a dif­fer­ence a year makes!” another writes. “Can you imag­ine any­one at LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] say­ing a year ago, ‘Gee, I wish LockMart would take over from that incom­pe­tent bunch at UC…’ Now, we hear, ‘Paul! Save us! Bring in some san­ity from Lockheed Martin! You can even change our name to Sandia National Laboratories at Los Alamos! We don’t care! Just SAVE us!’

April 12th, 2005 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.