Indefinite Career

Since you LANL folks have the day off (purportedly, according to one pissed off-sounding anonymous commenter because Mike Anastasio did not want to drive in the snow up from Santa Fe) I thought you might be amused to learn that somebody in the University Of California Office Of The President ended up on the blog here by searching for "indefinite career". It looks to me like UC wants to be in this for-profit NNSA lab business for the long haul. The host name "sor-fharms-1.ad.ucop.edu" should help identify who was looking into this lifetime career opportunity.

--Doug

Click to enlarge

Don't plan on going anywhere, anytime soon

From the "It's really, really broken" department:

Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:19:49 -0700
To: admin-support@lanl.gov,as-additional@lanl.gov
From: Distributions
Subject: Status of Travel Claims
Sender: owner-admin-support@maillist.lanl.gov

Status of Travel Claims

The Travel Office is currently experiencing a high volume of expense reports and phone calls. We are working to assist everyone as promptly as possible. The current turnaround time for reimbursement is 10 business days. Please advise your travelers of the turnaround time. We work expense reports in the order they are received so let them know it will be approximately 2 weeks before they receive their reimbursement. They should not call the Travel Office. Also, please advise your travelers that by linking the reservations and the credit card transactions to the expense report, it will increase the timeliness of their reimbursement as the processors will not have to look for additional information.

Also please advise your travelers that if they need assistance with entering an expense report, they should refer to the training and checklist provided on the Travel Home Page. Due to the high volume of expense reports, the processors are not available for training. Should you need to call the Travel Office, leave a message. The phone calls are tracked electronically so unless you leave a message we will not have a record of your call so that we can assist you. For Domestic Reimbursement, please select Option 1 "reimbursement" from the main menu and then select Option 1 again for Domestic Reimbursement. For Foreign Travel, select Option 1, then Option 2. For Relocation, select Option 1, then Option 3 for relocation reimbursement. Your patience is requested as we are answering calls as promptly as possible.

Don't call us, we'll call you.

Lab Conducts First X-Ray Test on Mock Weapon

By John Fleck, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
Saturday, December 05, 2009

Los Alamos National Laboratory on Thursday evening took the first ever three-dimensional X-ray movie of a mock nuclear weapon detonation, a milestone two decades in the making.

The test at the lab's Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility, known as "DARHT", used the world's most powerful X-ray machines to take pictures of the inner workings of a W78 nuclear warhead, said Dave Funk, head of the lab's hydrodynamics experiments division.

The 6:09 p.m. test, with more than 60 Los Alamos staff in attendance, was a success, yielding good data on the W78's behavior, Funk said in a telephone interview Friday.

The massive X-ray machine is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's suite of test equipment and computer simulations used to maintain U.S. nuclear weapons without underground test blasts.

Garrett Harencak, a senior National Nuclear Security Administration official overseeing the lab's weapons work, issued a statement calling the test "an important development in the NNSA's stockpile stewardship mission."

"I applaud LANL for reaching this important milestone. DARHT will help ensure a safer and more secure stockpile without testing," Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a statement.

The test ends an embarrassing episode for the weapons program. DARHT was originally planned in 1988 with a price tag of $30 million to $54 million, but a series of delays because of litigation by environmentalists, design changes and design flaws dragged out the project, and pushed the final price tag over $300 million.

For the first five decades of the U.S. nuclear program, weapons were actually detonated to test them, first above ground and then underground beginning in the 1960s. "You got the answer, right? It worked or not," Funk explained.

The United States abandoned full test blasts in 1992, establishing a program of small-scale experiments and computer simulations instead.

In a nuclear weapon, high explosives are used to squeeze plutonium to create a critical mass, yielding its nuclear blasts.

DARHT tests allow weapons designers to X-ray a mock nuclear weapon during the early stages of that blast, to compare the weapon's performance to predictions made by the lab's supercomputer simulations, Funk explained. Without the explosive plutonium, there is no nuclear yield, and the blast can be contained with a big steel vessel, according to Funk.

Comment of the Week, The Winner

Sad, but true. We do. I never much cared for the anonymous character assassination that has flourished on all three of the LANL blogs. I believe it says something unsavory about the people who work there.

From the Saturday COW, here is our selection for Comment of the Week:

Actually, the anti-Pedicini folks should shut their holes. At least John isn't afraid to (a) speak his mind even if the opinion is not what people want to hear and (b) he signs his name when he posts on the blog. There is a reason why LANL higher-ups want to keep him around ... he knows what he is talking about even if they don't want to hear him say it.

I respect someone who has the courage to use his own name to voice his convictions. Not so much respect for anonymous cowards.

--Doug

Comment of the Week, Saturday Edition

For those of you in the LANS PASO (Public Affairs Spin Office -- Hi, Kevin!) who like to claim that this blog only reports bad news about LANS, I am happy to set the record straight with this upbeat note sent in by a reader on the Comment of the Week, Wednesday Edition post.

Good News! Your LANS team is working harder than ever to make LANL a great place to work. The future looks bright with the steady hands of our LANS executive team at the helm.

This week, Dr. Anastasio released a heart-to-heart memo to his fellow employees at "the lab". In it, he urged our world class "best and brightest" to press on and take LANL to even greater levels of achievement.

Here are just a few, small pieces of the good news that Dr. Anastasio had to say to employees:


"The bills (FY2011 funding) are good for the NNSA enterprise and good for the Laboratory."

"All of this is good news - especially when you add to it to the considerable investment being made at LANL through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), or “stimulus bill. We have received $212 million for our cleanup activities, and we have competed for and won (to date) close to $40 million in ARRA-funded work in science and technology."

"As with every year, we can’t sit back and rest on what we have. I – along with my fellow Lab directors – have been working with the Administration as they formulate the FY11 budget."


Dr. Anastasio is working very hard for LANL, but even with his hectic schedule, he has announced that he will be taking time out to have a All-Hands meeting with his employees in early January. It's clear that this is one Director who intends to get down in the trenches and stay engage with his hard working staff. You won't want to miss this upcoming meeting!

Yes, LANL is turning around and headed for greatness. Our Director and his new business-savy team from Bechtel and BWXT are all actively working overtime to make LANL a huge success. Recent survey results demonstrate that over 91 percent of the workforce is dedicated to helping LANS achieve success with its efforts. Join this incredible LANS team in their hard work that is making it all happen. Great things await us as we push forward. Onward, ever onward, people!

This is clear, indisputable evidence that LANS is on a trajectory for greatness that the history books will not forget. Posterity will remember LANS fondly for the great greatness that it brought to LANL.


--Doug

Comment of the Week, Wednesday Edition

Ok, guys, here's our COW. From the Coverups Are Bad, Transparency is Good post:

It's only taken a little over a month and employees are already beginning to forget about the morale survey fiasco. This LANS mess will die a quick death. By April, it will all be forgotten as word of the FY2011 budget start to come around and employees prepare for a further dose of LANL downsizing (excuse me, I mean... "right-sizing". I'm still new at this LANS-speak thing).

To me, as a relative outsider these days (even though I still collaborate with a few of my LANL colleagues) it is fascinating to observe how well LANS is managing to maintain a public happy face regarding conditions at LANL. Keep those tweets coming, D'Ag!

Comment of the Week, Day Before Thanksgiving Edition

Left earlier today on the Coverups Are Bad, Transparency is Good post:

Richardson may be unhappy about the survey results, but only because they exist and will have to be made public. History shows that he has no problem with low morale at LANL, which he single-handedly created as Energy Secretary when he raked John Browne over the coals in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee revelations.

Bill Richardson is a consummate politician, and as such will seize every opportunity to do what is best for Bill Richardson. No surprises here. Maybe he will see the poor performance of LANS as an opportunity to grab a few sound bites, publicly chastise Anastasio and LANS, and maybe even the NNSA over the morale issues they have created, and by so doing generate a few favorable vibes for himself.

Or, more likely, he will just continue to toe the party line that "NNSA is doing a terrific job, and LANS is doing a terrific job; costs are down, productivity is up, and everybody is just thrilled to be working at LANL now that the troublesome UC has been kicked out."

--Doug

Happy Thanksgiving, Don't Drink the Water

From our friends over at the Santa Fe Reeper (sfreeper.com):

The details change, but the story never does.

The latest Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) brouhaha unfolded yesterday, when the New Mexico Environment Department slammed the lab with a hefty $960,000 penalty for failing to properly monitor radioactive pollutants in nearby watersheds. This time, it’s particularly scary: the groundwater in question provides drinking water for Los Alamos County, White Rock and the lab itself—“and it may well be the same aquifer that’s connected to the Buckman well field,” the environment department’s hazardous waste bureau chief, James Bearzi, says. Without proper monitoring, Bearzi worries the lab’s cleanup of Material Disposal Area G, its only active (and unlined!) waste disposal site, due to be finished by 2015, may do little to deal with the radioactive contaminants leaching into New Mexico’s precious water resources.

LANL, of course, sees things differently. [...]

See the full story here.

BTW: Has anybody seen the actual LANL morale survey results yet? We're ready to do the rollout, just waiting on our copy...

Coverups Are Bad, Transparency is Good

I've been pretty busy in my LAL (Life After LANL), and wasn't going to do any posts this week, but a comment on the Lab executive team starts Employee Survey results rollout post made me change my mind.

Here's the comment, posted at 5:22pm today:

11/17/09 2:54 PM wrote ..."5 month staged rollout my ass. LANS is going to bury the survey results."

Bingo.

Someone needs to spill the results to the real blog (this one) that actually shares information instead of hiding it.

I tend to agree with our COW contributor: attempting to bury the survey results is lame, and I suspect you all know my orientation regarding lame management decisions.

That's right: override them.

So, I second 5:22's request -- if someone has access to the actual, non-LANS-doctored employee survey results, please send them to either Frank or me. We won't wait 5 months before doing a rollout.

Frank: pinkyandthebrain.acmelabs@gmail.com
Me: lanlblog@parrot-farm.net

Lab executive team starts Employee Survey results rollout

Cascading results helps ensure action

The results of the Lab's 2009 Employee Engagement Survey are in, and the sharing begins today. Nearly half of the 9,378 employees who were invited to complete the survey took part and provided Lab leadership with valuable feedback on a range of items, from security, communication, and safety to management, leadership, diversity, ethics, and job satisfaction.

First up to hear about the institutional results is the Laboratory's executive team (director, principal associate directors, and associate directors), who will be briefed today and begin action-planning discussions focused on addressing concerns identified in the survey.

Later, as part of the survey results rollout, most employees will hear about the results and subsequent action planning in discussions with their organizational managers.

Here's how the rollout will work. The executive team is briefed first and begins action-planning discussions. Next are division-level leaders, who will receive their briefings in early December and follow an action-planning process similar to that used by the executive team. The cascade will continue through January and February as division-level leaders go through the process with their respective management teams and employees, focusing on organization-specific survey results.

In March, after the cascading is complete, all Lab leaders will convene to discuss what has been done so far and continue working together on issues raised in the survey.

Why not share the results with everyone at the same time? To ensure that the results of the survey are understood and owned by all levels of leadership at the Lab and that subsequent action is taken on these results, senior management opted to cascade the information level by level by means of a process that includes discussion and action planning. This decision was influenced by the survey's lowest-ranked item: "I believe that action will be taken on the results of this survey." Only 17 percent of the 4,313 employees responding to this item indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

Although this statement was the lowest-rated item in the survey, employees did feel more positively about other issues, such as job satisfaction, safety and security, and compensation. For example, the following statements were rated among the top survey items:

• "I am committed to the success of the laboratory" (91 percent of respondents marked "agreed/strongly agreed"),
• "I know the proper channels for reporting concerns about security (94 percent of respondents marked "agreed/strongly agreed")
• "I am satisfied with my overall compensation, including benefits" (62 percent of respondents marked "agreed/strongly agree")
  

Watch for more information on the Employee Engagement Survey results and subsequent action planning as the rollout continues.


Is this ordinary spin or a graveyard spiral? Brief your executive team today. You know - the ones who don't read this blog (wink).