National Laboratories

Los Alamos National Laboratory is expected to reveal the details of its Voluntary Separation Program at an all-hands meeting today. Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan announced the 1:30 p.m. (Mountain Time) meeting in a message to employees yesterday, but did not reveal any information about the program, which lab officials hope will trim its workforce by […]

B&W Pantex executive Jeff Yarbrough is set to take over as Los Alamos National Laboratory’s new Director of Plutonium Science and Manufacturing. Yarbrough will succeed Carl Beard, who became the lab’s Principal Associate Director for Operations and Business in May, and acting Plutonium Science and Manufacturing chief Tim George. Yarbrough most recently oversaw directed stockpile […]

The New York Times recently visited Los Alamos, N.M. to assess the climate of one of the truest company town in the weapons complex as the Los Alamos National Laboratory lab looks to cut 400 to 800 employees from its workforce. What did they find? Lots of uneasy townspeople. “What’s going to keep people here? […]

Kim Davis has been picked to head up the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Livermore Site Office, taking over for Alice Williams, who is joining the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management in January. Davis has served as the Sandia Site Office’s deputy manager since December of 2005, first in an acting capacity and as […]

Senior National Nuclear Security Administration official William Bookless has been named Brookhaven National Laboratory’s associate director for policy and strategic planning. Bookless, a longtime staff research physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will begin work at Brookhaven Jan. 3, replacing J. Patrick Looney, who is chairing the lab’s Sustainable Energy Technologies Department. The lab said […]

A worker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in recent weeks suffered second-degree burns during low-level waste processing at the lab’s Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility, according to a newly released Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board site representative report. The accident, which occurred the week ending Dec. 2, was caused by equipment failure and resulted […]

Raymond Juzaitis will formally take over as the President of Nevada National Security Site contractor National Security Technologies LLC Jan. 5, taking the reins from Stephen Younger. Younger announced his retirement in August, and Juzaitis was named the head of the test site in November. Juzaitis most recently served as the head of nuclear engineering […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded Los Alamos National Security LLC $76.1 million in management fees and a one-year extension to its lab management contract, extending the contractor’s current contract through 2017. As has been the practice in recent years, lab and NNSA officials did not release the award letter or performance evaluation report […]

Lawrence Livermore National Security, the Bechtel and University of California-led manager of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, earned $12.8 million in fixed fee during Fiscal Year 2011 and was paid a total of $47.0 million for managing the lab, according to details of the contractor’s performance released by the National Nuclear Security Administration late last week. […]

With the National Nuclear Security Administration’s combined Y-12/Pantex M&O procurement in full swing, Patty Wagner, the chair of the Source Evaluation Board for the procurement and the manager of the agency’s Sandia Site Office, said she will retire early next month, according to a message yesterday to SSO employees. Wagner, who shepherded the procurement over […]

With workers scrambling to beat a Jan. 1 change in retirement benefits, Sandia National Laboratories saw 511 retirements in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012, bringing to more than 900 the number of retirements in Fiscal Year 2011 and the first quarter of FY12. The retirement bulge, first reported by the Albuquerque Journal, is […]

Geoff Beausoleil has been named the next manager of the Sandia Site Office, replacing Patty Wagner, who announced her retirement last week. Beausoleil, who has served as the Deputy Manager of the Pantex Site Office since 2008, will replace Wagner once his appointment is approved by the National Nuclear Security Administration and Department of Energy […]

With the lawsuit of laid off Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees looming next month, a group of the former employees is planning a rally in Livermore Thursday. Gary Gwilliam, the Oakland, Calif.-based lawyer who is representing 130 laid off Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, employees, said in a press release that the employees will gather […]

Photographs being distributed anonymously that purport to show a security officer asleep on the job, as well as using an unauthorized cell phone or electronic device, inside the high-security Building 3019 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could present a budding security scandal in Oak Ridge. Building 3019, which houses a large stockpile of fissile uranium-233, is considered so […]

In the wake of President Obama’s State of the Union pitch for renewable energy, Energy Secretary Steven Chu will visit Sandia National Laboratories Thursday as senior department officials fan out across the country to sell the president’s message. A DOE statement said Chu would “tour renewable energy research facilities at Sandia National Laboratories, which is […]

An Alameda County (Calif.) Superior Court judge has postponed a trial involving laid off Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees to deal with procedural issues and to allow the plaintiffs and the lab to meet for a mediation session in early February, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said yesterday. Judge Robert Freedman has rescheduled the trial […]

Ted Sherry, who until December was the top federal official at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 Site Office, has joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory to help build the lab’s national security work, ORNL Global Security chief Brent Park said Friday. Sherry will start Feb. 6 as the Director of Advanced Programs, and Park said […]

Bruce Darling, the University of California’s top laboratory official, is joining the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council as executive officer, taking over for William Colglazier. As the Vice President for Laboratory Management at the University of California since 2008, Darling has overseen UC’s management of three national laboratories: Los Alamos, Lawrence […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed key seismic upgrades to the lab’s Technical Area 55 Plutonium Facility, NNSA Defense Programs chief Don Cook notified the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Monday. Repairs completed to date, primarily a new roof strut intended to protect against building collapse in a major earthquake, have reduced the worst-case off […]

A bipartisan group of 24 senators is pushing the Obama Administration to continue its support of high performance computing and a Department of Energy effort to achieve exascale computing speeds within the next decade. Exascale computing involves speeds one thousand times more powerful than supercomputers are capable of today, and the Department of Energy has […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration still has made no decisions about the two main construction options—deep or shallow excavation—for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF), according to a Nov. 18 letter to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The shallow excavation option “will save money and result in lesser environmental impacts without undermining […]

As he left the Department of Energy, former Under Secretary of Science Steve Koonin sounded a note of alarm about Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s effort to achieve fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility by the end of Fiscal Year 2012, suggesting in a Nov. 8 memo obtained by NW&M Monitor that success on the […]

A federal court Monday ruled against the government’s latest effort to throw out a lawsuit against the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The National Nuclear Security Administration previously won a lower court ruling that allowed work on the project to proceed, but the U.S. Court of […]

Former Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos manager Raymond Juzaitis has been named as the President of Nevada National Security Site manager National Security Technologies, LLC. Juzaitis will take over the position Jan. 5, replacing Stephen Younger, who announced his retirement in August. Juzaitis most recently has served as the head of Texas A&M’s nuclear engineering […]

Penrose “Parney” Albright will formally take over as the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory today, assuming the reins of the lab from retiring George Miller. Albright, who had served as the lab’s global security chief, was named as its 11th director in late October, but Miller had remained at the laboratory over the last […]

With his lab facing a potential budget shortfall of $200 million, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan has established a senior executive panel to oversee the lab’s belt tightening. McMillan said in a memo to employees last week that he was forming a Laboratory Integrated Stewardship Council that will be headed up by lab […]

Former Department of Energy and AREVA executive Beth Sellers is taking over as the Deputy Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, replacing Ike Richardson, NW&M Monitor has learned. Sellers, who fills Bechtel’s top spot at the laboratory, served as the Senior Vice President of Program Development at AREVA Federal Services over the last year and […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s next director is expected to be named in the next few weeks, and it’s not going to be Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason. Mason told the Knoxville News Sentinel that he would not be moving to one of the NNSA’s nuclear weapons laboratories. “I’m staying here. This is where […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration came down hard on Los Alamos National Laboratory Sept. 16 over the lab’s failure to fully implement required criticality safety programs at its PF-4 plutonium complex, according to documents made public Sunday by the Albuquerque Journal. The documents detail the agency’s concerns with 23 criticality infractions in 2010, a trend […]

Persis Drell is stepping down as the director of Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory after four years on the job. Drell made the announcement yesterday, saying that she was planning to return to research and teaching at Stanford after nearly a decade as a manager at the laboratory. Stanford Vice President Bill Madia and […]