National Laboratories

Congressional leaders asked the Department of Energy to turn over by Feb. 16 its communications with three national labs reportedly targeted in January by Russian hackers. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was among the labs the hackers targeted by, among other things, creating fake login pages and asking authorized users of the lab’s […]

Employees suing the Department of Energy’s prime for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over its COVID-19 vaccination policy continued settlement talks with the contractor and a mediator, according to a recent court filing.  Since the Dec. 28 joint status report, “the parties have continued to exchange offers and counter-offers,”  according to the update […]

Employees suing the Department of Energy’s prime for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over its COVID-19 vaccination policy continued settlement talks with the contractor and a mediator, according to a recent court filing.  Since the Dec. 28 joint status report, “the parties have continued to exchange offers and counter-offers,”  according to the update […]

Sandia National Laboratories’ Ion Beam Laboratory reopened late Wednesday after tritium levels spiked inside a glove bag on Monday and prompted an evacuation, the Albuquerque, N.M.-based lab said. “On Monday, Jan. 16, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories were performing work to characterize tritium samples inside of a confinement glovebag at the Ion Beam Laboratory. Workers […]

Sandia National Laboratories’ Ion Beam Laboratory reopened late Wednesday after tritium levels spiked inside a glove bag on Monday and prompted an evacuation, the Albuquerque, N.M.-based lab said. “On Monday, Jan. 16, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories were performing work to characterize tritium samples inside of a confinement glovebag at the Ion Beam Laboratory. Workers […]

The Ion Beam Laboratory and the Sandia National Laboratory’s Albuquerque, N.M., site remained off-limits to most lab employees Tuesday after being evacuated on Monday, according to the labs. “Continue to avoid Bldg. 720, the Ion Beam Laboratory, until further notice due to the ongoing incident response,” the labs wrote in an emergency alert issued around […]

Due to winter weather, onsite employees at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico should plan to arrive between 10 a.m. and noon local time, according to a notice posted this morning on the laboratory’s webpage. Workers could also call a laboratory hotline for more details, according to the notice. The […]

Russian hackers targeted three Department of Energy laboratories, including the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, in a password-stealing scam, Reuters reported last week. The news service said the attempts involved Russian hackers creating fake login pages for each lab and then emailing lab employees with invitations to log in to the fake sites. DOE […]

Amid the winter rainstorms pounding California, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has temporarily curtailed all but essential activity at its experimental test site in the San Francisco Bay Area, a spokesperson said this week. “Site 300 was in minimum safe configuration this week due to infrastructure conditions on roadways leading to the site,” a lab […]

Amid the winter rainstorms that pounding California, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has temporarily curtailed all but essential activity at its experimental test site in the San Francisco Bay Area, a spokesperson said Tuesday. “Site 300 has been in minimum safe configuration Jan. 4-5 and Jan. 9-11, due to adverse weather and infrastructure conditions on […]

The Department of Energy was set to fine Sandia National Laboratories more than $200,000 for allowing unauthorized electronic equipment into secure areas of the lab’s main campus in Albuquerque, N.M., two years ago, the agency said Friday. The agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments hit lab prime National Engineering and Technology Solutions of Sandia (NTESS) with […]

A communications outage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that began over the weekend was unresolved at portions of the lab as late as early Monday morning, according to the lab. “The Laboratory experiences a communications outage over the weekend due to a fiber-optic cable cut near Santa Fe which impacted cellular and internet services […]

The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used its bank of high-powered lasers on Dec. 5 to ignite a fusion reaction that produced more energy from a small pellet than the lasers put into the pellet, the lab said. The long-hoped for achievement marked “a new chapter in NNSA’s [National Nuclear Security […]

A communications outage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that began over the weekend was unresolved at portions of the lab as late as early Monday morning, according to the lab.  “The Laboratory experiences a communications outage over the weekend due to a fiber-optic cable cut near Santa Fe which impacted cellular and internet services […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration extended Los Alamos National Laboratory management and operations contractor Triad National Security for five more years, through Nov. 1, 2028, the agency announced this week. In the third such mass-extension this year for a nuclear-weapons site contractor, the agency picked up five one-year options on Triad’s contract simultaneously. Triad includes […]

The Department of Energy will apply a little extra scrutiny to a worker’s heat exhaustion during legacy nuclear waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments said recently. The worker “experienced heat exhaustion while supporting corrugated metal pipe retrieval operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on September 8, […]

A New Mexico judge who worked for more than a decade at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was apparently murdered by her husband, who then killed himself, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said Saturday. “Eric Pinkerton is believed to have shot his wife and several animals in the house before shooting himself,” the sheriff’s office […]

A New Mexico judge who worked for more than a decade at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was apparently murdered by her husband, who then killed himself, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said Saturday. “Eric Pinkerton is believed to have shot his wife and several animals in the house before shooting himself,” the sheriff’s office […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s latest mask mandate lasted only three days, after which COVID-19 community transmission rates dropped below high, according to a lab memo. The New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory let employees take the masks off Nov. 18 after briefly making face coverings mandatory again on Nov. 15, according to an internal email, […]

On Nov. 17, the legacy cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico lifted a month-long stop work order issued after a steady drip of small mishaps, a spokesperson said Tuesday. Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) fully lifted the “self-imposed stop work order” last week after allowing some […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s latest mask mandate lasted only three days, after which COVID-19 community transmission rates dropped below high, according to a lab memo. The New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory let employees take the masks off Nov. 18 after briefly making face coverings mandatory again on Nov. 15, according to an internal email, […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup field office at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, set up in 2015, and its remediation contractor still face staff shortages, a federal safety watchdog heard Wednesday. Michael Mikolanis, who heads the DOE Office of Environmental Management field office at Los Alamos, told the Defense Nuclear Facilities […]

By Dan Parsons Engineers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory continue to upgrade the ventilation system at the plutonium pit production facility after two separate incidents where the system failed to blow contaminated air away from clean rooms where employees were working.  The most recent failure occurred on Aug. 22, when ventilation in the Plutonium […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory again ordered employees and visitors to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 after transmission rates in the area rose, according to an internal lab message. “COVID-19 community levels have moved to high in Los Alamos and Santa Fe Counties,” reads the message, the text of which the Exchange Monitor read. […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory again ordered employees and visitors to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 after transmission rates in the area rose, according to an internal lab message. “COVID-19 community levels have moved to high in Los Alamos and Santa Fe Counties,” reads the message, the text of which the Exchange […]

The Department of Energy on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement covering the next 15 years of operations at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The public may comment on the draft through Jan. 03, according to a Federal Register notice. For the period spanning 2023-2035, the DOE has proposed 75 projects at the younger […]

People placed on leave from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for refusing a COVID-19 vaccinations will get no help from the courts in ongoing arbitration proceedings with the lab, a federal judge in New Mexico said recently. The decision dropped Halloween night in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico, where Judge Kea Riggs told […]

People placed on leave from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for refusing a COVID-19 vaccinations will get no help from the courts in ongoing arbitration proceedings with the lab, a federal judge in New Mexico said recently. The decision dropped Halloween night in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico, where Judge Kea Riggs told […]

The Department of Energy on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement covering the next 15 years of operations at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The public may comment on the draft through Jan. 03, according to a Federal Register notice. For the period spanning 2023-2035, the DOE has proposed 75 projects at […]

A federal magistrate judge has ruled a scientist fired by a Honeywell-owned prime contractor for Sandia National Laboratories need not litigate his wrongful termination case in U.S. District Court. U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephan Vidmar ruled Oct. 20 that National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia has not proven the lawsuit brought by Carlsbad, N.M., -based […]