National Laboratories

The Department of Energy, as expected, has wrapped up negotiations on five-year extensions at the SLAC National Accelerator Facility and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. DOE reached agreements on the extensions with the facilities last year, but negotiations on the extensions weren’t formally concluded until September. The new deals at the labs extend Stanford University’s […]

Battelle has agreed to pay a fine of $96,800 after hundreds of bank swallow nests and thousands of eggs were destroyed during construction of a new laboratory at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The money will go to the nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for purchasing or restoring shrub-steppe habitat in Eastern Washington, according to […]

 Bonnie Apodaca, a 24-year Sandia Labs employee, has been named the labs’ vice president of business operations. Apodaca started as a contract auditor and has since held a variety of business operations jobs at the nuclear weapons research center, including a stint from 1998 to 2005 as head of Sandia’s pension management group and, more […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is considering merging all—or part—of the Sandia National Laboratories and Kansas City Plant management and operating contracts, and is seeking input from industry on its plans. The agency issued a Request for Information yesterday asking industry to comment on merging the two M&O contracts or combining the Kansas City Plant […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory shut down some operations at its Lujan Neutron Scattering Center at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center after an incident discovered Saturday in which workers were contaminated with Technetium-99. The lab called in the Department of Energy’s Radiological Assistance Program (RAP) team after acknowledging in a statement that some of the […]

Former Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher has been named to the Boards of Governors of the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, effective Sept. 17. Earlier this month, Tauscher joined Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, as Strategic Advisor and is a member of the firm’s Federal Public Policy Group. From February […]

Oak Ridge National Laboratory contractor UT-Battelle, LLC, released an expression of interest Friday seeking companies willing to process radioactive waste generated at the lab. ORNL does not have the capability to process all remote handled and contact handled transuranic and liquid waste resulting from work at the lab, according to the EOI. “ORNL currently relies […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has identified “systemic deficiencies” in safety strategies developed for nuclear operations at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Board said in a recent letter to National Nuclear Security Administration chief Tom D’Agostino. DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur outlined several areas of concern in an Aug. 30 letter to D’Agostino, including lingering […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Parney Albright defended the laboratory’s quest to achieve fusion ignition in a memo to senior laboratory officials Monday, suggesting that the lab should get more time to pursue the challenging scientific breakthrough. Albright’s memo comes on the heels of revelations last week that the National Ignition Facility missed a key […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration may have its share of governance issues, but they’re not affecting the quality of science and engineering at the agency’s laboratories, according to Defense Programs chief Don Cook. Speaking yesterday on the sidelines of a public meeting of a National Academy of Sciences panel examining the quality of science and […]

Former Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Sig Hecker told the Albuquerque Journal this week that he’s still not comfortable with the nation’s understanding of the lifetime of plutonium pits, and in an article that was published yesterday, he pointed a finger at the burdensome requirements that the NNSA has placed on its nuclear weapons laboratories. […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility (PF-4) is continuing to draw concern from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. In its second PF-4-related letter to the Department of Energy in the span of a month, the DNFSB said it was concerned about the ability of the facility to withstand an earthquake and that it was […]

Though half of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s corporate partners have stalled or dropped out of an effort to jump-start the domestic U.S. supply of a key medical isotope, a Department of Energy Inspector General report released yesterday reported that progress is being made and agency officials believe the program’s objectives can still be met. […]

A bipartisan group of 100 House lawmakers is appealing to Energy Secretary Steven Chu to preserve funding for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility. The facility has been beset by complications in its quest to achieve fusion ignition and after the facility missed a key milestone at the end of June, the National Nuclear […]

Six protesters were arrested Monday as they blocked the road to Los Alamos National Laboratory during an event organized to remember the 67th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The protest capped four days of events in northern New Mexico held to commemorate the anniversary. In preparation for the event, the laboratory closed its normally-open […]

Five high performance computing companies are receiving a total of $62 million in research and development funding from the Department of Energy aimed at accelerating the nation’s push toward exascale supercomputing, which would be 1,000 times faster than today’s supercomputers. Through a combined National Nuclear Security Administration/Office of Science initiative dubbed FastForward, AMD, IBM, Intel, […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s transuranic waste program announced this week that it has sent 172 shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant so far this Fiscal Year, already surpassing last year’s 171 shipments. “Our goal this fiscal year is 184 shipments and we are on track to surpass that by a substantial margin,” Lee Bishop, TRU […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has signaled that it will recompete its Sandia National Laboratories management and operating contract, but former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine suggested yesterday that competition isn’t always in the nation’s best interests. Lockheed Martin has held the Sandia M&O contract since 1993, but is one of a handful of companies […]

Former DOE Under Secretary of Science Steve Koonin has been named to the Board of Governors for the LLCs that run Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. Koonin left the Department last year and currently heads up New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. He’ll officially join the Boards of Governors at […]

The topic of New Mexico’s two nuclear weapons laboratories is becoming a hot topic in the race for Jeff Bingaman’s Senate seat, the Albuquerque Journal said yesterday. A spokesman for Republican candidate Heather Wilson blasted Democratic candidate Martin Heinrich for supporting the Fiscal Year 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act earlier this month, which does […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Sequoia supercomputer has grabbed the top spot on the list of the world’s fastest computers. The Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was revealed early this morning at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and the IBM-built Sequoia was able to sustain a speed of 16.32 petaflops (a […]

The heads of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, defense programs chief Don Cook and nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington are in Russia this week to meet with the directors of Russia’s weapons laboratories and tour Russian facilities in an effort to foster cooperation between the two countries. Details of the trip have […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory is cutting another 80 contractor positions from its flexible workforce as it tries to navigate a difficult budgetary environment, LANL Director Charlie McMillan said in a memo to employees yesterday. The cuts come on the heels of the departure of 557 full-time employees and 55 flexible term contractors from the lab’s […]

Despite recent upgrades to Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility, potential exposures in the case of an earthquake-induced fire still exceed Department of Energy guidelines, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a recent letter to the National Nuclear Security Administration. In the sharply worded June 18 letter, DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur said that […]

Concerned about reduced oversight across the weapons complex, the House Energy and Commerce Committee wants the Government Accountability Office to study the National Nuclear Security Administration’s governance model and evolving contractor assurance systems among site contractors. Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) made the request yesterday in a letter to Comptroller […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and IBM are joining forces on a new high performance computing initiative aimed at helping industry in the United States increase productivity, innovation, and competitiveness. Dubbed Deep Computing Solutions, the lab and IBM will deploy officials at Livermore’s High Performance Computing Innovation Center with the goal of accelerating the development of […]

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), whose 10th District includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is urging patience with the lab’s struggle to achieve fusion ignition at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility. The National Nuclear Security Administration revealed last week that the facility had missed a key milestone on the path to ignition, with a spokesman acknowledging […]

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory paid four employees more than $1.5 million in lodging and per diem for what was supposed to be temporary work assignments that in one case lasted 14 years, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General said in a report released late Friday. The money was paid by the lab and reimbursed by […]

Defense contracting giant Boeing, which made a big splash by jumping into the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration market last year when it announced it was teaming with Fluor to bid for the Sandia National Laboratories management and operating contract, has pulled out of the bidding for the potentially lucrative opportunity, a […]

Sandia National Laboratories’ “Integrated Safety Management” program is failing to identify internal weaknesses in ways that put workers at risk, according to a new report from the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General. As evidence, the IG cited a 2010 comparison between Sandia’s line management self assessments, which found just two ISM “weaknesses,” and […]