Postal Service Funding Nuke Labs

$2.1 bil­lion dol­lars a year ain’t enough for the brains in charge of Los Alamos National Lab, appar­ently. So the world’s most impor­tant nuclear research cen­ter has turned to the U.S. Postal Service, of all places, to fund its new, 400,000 square foot “Science Complex.“
No, it’s not like the fathers of the atom bomb are now start­ing some new-​​fangled effort to zap your mail. Instead, the lab’s man­agers have been on the hunt for “alter­na­tive fund­ing (i.e. third-​​party meth­ods)” to bankroll its con­struc­tion projects, doc­u­ments uncov­ered by Nuclear Watch of New Mexico reveal.
Funds for the new Science Center weren’t any­where to be found in the Energy Department’s publicly-​​available bud­gets. Nuke Watch had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out that the Energy Department was dig­ging into the U.S. Postal Service’s pock­ets for two new build­ings (one clas­si­fied, the other not) and a park­ing lot. “As a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,” Nuke Watch notes, the depart­ment “cited a vaguely worded fed­eral law that autho­rizes the USPS to fur­nish prop­erty and ser­vices to exec­u­tive branch agen­cies and vice versa.“
Nuke Watch direc­tor Jay Coghlan calls it an “end run around Congress.“
About 10% of Los Alamos’ total work­force will even­tu­ally have their offices in the Science Center. That includes the every­one in the “Strategic Research” direc­torate, includ­ing the folks in the “Nuclear Technology Office.” What will they do there? Well, they prob­a­bly won’t be han­dling big piles of ura­nium or plu­to­nium. But they will be tack­ling “basic and applied sci­en­tific research” for “Stockpile Stewardship” — main­te­nance of the country’s nuclear arse­nal.
Now, Los Alamos com­plains that half of its 8.9 mil­lion square feet of facil­i­ties are over 30 years old, and half are in “fair, poor, or fail­ing con­di­tion.” So the need for new build­ings is under­stand­able. But why do if off-​​the-​​books? And why the shenani­gans with the Post Office?
(Big ups: TH)

June 21st, 2006 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.