National Nuclear Security Administration officials were highly critical of Los Alamos National Laboratory management in the lab’s recently released Fiscal Year 2014 Performance Evaluation Review, with the document stating that shortcomings during the year “reflect a negative trend in leadership performance.” The agency docked lab manager Los Alamos National Security more than 90 percent of its available fee during the year, paying just $6.25 million, in large part due to the lab’s role in the radiological release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Previously, the NNSA released fee information for its weapons complex contractors, but last week it released the full performance review documents for each of its sites, including Los Alamos’ 29-page review.
The document lauds the lab for meeting much of its nuclear weapons mission work, but highlights many of its shortcomings, including the continuing shutdown of the lab’s Plutonium Facility, “ethical lapses” by senior lab staff—a reference to former Deputy Director Beth Sellers, who is facing a three-year debarment from government contracting for not promptly disclosing her husband’s consulting agreement with the lab—and issues with the lab’s Earned Value Management System. “While there were significant accomplishments during the reporting period, the impact and gravity of documented shortcomings overwhelm those accomplishments and reflect a negative trend in leadership performance; constituting performance that is below expectations,” the NNSA said.
The impacts of the problems “include the diversion of key staff from mission work, huge financial costs to the Department of Energy that are still accumulating, failure to meet environmental commitments made to the state of New Mexico, damage to an important relationship with a key state regulatory body, broad adverse economic impacts associated with the suspension of normal operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and a degradation of public confidence in the conduct of nuclear and high hazard operations at the Laboratory.”