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LANL's Future
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2009
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- False Choices at the Nuclear Weapons Complex: We D...
- Comment of the Week
- NNSA, LANL file tort claims against Los Alamos Cou...
- Program to refurbish aging nuclear warheads faces ...
- From Pyongyang to Tehran, with nukes Tue, 05/26/2...
- Comment of the Week
- Los Alamos Plutonium May Pose Fatal Risk By John ...
- Better Way To Spend $2 Billion The Albuquerque Jo...
- Compa Information
- Comment of the Week
- Lab Pensions and the 2010 Budget By John Fleck, A...
- How chintzy is LANS management, you ask?
- LANSCE-R project
- Comment of the Week, Early Weekend Edition
- Obama Proposes Cuts at LANL By John Fleck And Mic...
- DOE FY2010 Budget
- All-Employee Director’s talk
- $2 Billion LANL Project Pushed By John Fleck, The...
- Anastasio gives upbeat update By Jennifer Garcia,...
- Ethridge to lead LANS office By Tatjana K. RosevJ...
- THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMISSION ON THE STRATEGIC POST...
- State Labs Await '10 Budget Report By John Fleck,...
- No October increases at SNL, LLNL and LANL
- Comment of the Week
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29 comments:
Any analysis of the LANL budget from those who monitor these things? Any significant cuts in these figures?
Interesting... page 543 of the NNSA report shows that there will be about a 1300 decrease in contractor employment between FY09 and FY10... major funding cuts, too... sigh...
So how does one find out how many $M LLNL is short for this year and the 2010 budget?
Try this link:
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/10budget/Content/Labandstate/FY2010lab.pdfLook at pages 44 to 46 of 128.
Other tables are available at http://www.energy.gov/about/budget.htm
am I missing something? Mike says 100 million in construction cuts only but I see a complete zeroing out of pit manufacturing and as the previous poster said, a decrease in 1300 jobs. Where's the disconnect?
I'm fairly certain that with the delivery of the first certified W88pit, the pit "campaign" was closed and future W88 pit activities went under the Directed Stockpile Work line item, with a small amount of scope to the science campaigns (some of the prior certification work). This would also explain the $120M increase in DSW from 07 to 09.
Overall, budget numbers for LANL:
FY07 $1,891,911
FY08 $1,884,853
FY09 $1,741,401
A cut, yes, but all considered, the first post-Domencici numbers aren't all that bad. Certainly not the doomsday, turn-out-the-lights scenario many of the gadflys around here have been predicting. Of course, they're going to say that's coming in FY11. Then FY12... Then....
Our budgets:
FY07 $1,891,911
FY08 $1,884,853
FY09 $1,741,401
Yet, in spite of this, we continue
to meet our PBIs without wasting
any effort on science.
SO, I should get a larger bonus this year.
Don't you agree?
MIKEY!
1300 cuts NNSA Wide, not just LANL. Drop in the bucket. I have news for the Obabma administration. Back off on the overkill oversight. Need oversight but not a witch hunt. Other idea is to fire all the boneheads. This crosses all orgs at LANL. If you cut all the boneheads and slackers LANL would be more efficient and cost less to manage.
Pg 543 of the NNSA FY10 budget request is LANL only. It uses "End of Year" employment figures at LANL of FY08 8139, FY09 7940, FY10 6640 this is a decrease of 1500 employees at LANL between Oct 2008 to Oct 2010. The LANL budget is down about $150 over the same period.
LLNL already fired a bunch so they are flat in employment from FY09 to FY10
to 3:59
I agree with your sentiments of oversight, but I think it's unlikely to happen. I worked at LANL ~ 30 years and every year was worse than the previous year in this respect. The rate of oversight increase may change from year to year, but the sign is always the same. My opinion is that this is just the nature of an aging bureaucracy. Frankly, I don't know how to fix it other than burning down the NNSA/DOE, firing all of the employees in Washington, and starting over. this steadily creeping bureaucracy is why the overhead is outrageous and it is difficult to accomplish anything.
Ah yes all of those pesky numbers, but realize that Obama is asking (demanding) a 17 billion dollar cut in spending. DOE/NNSA are prime targets, so we can add another 1500 FTE's at LANL with-in the next two years. And the numbers game continues.
I got to LANL in the 70s and it didn't take long to see that many of the big programs were illegitimate, that is they were funded in spite of bad science, partially through the misuse of secrecy. Later, Domenici's influence kept money flowing but management, if they understood what was happening, chose to ignore the bad programs. We've come to the point where the lab is unproductive by every measure and has become a synonym for bad security.
One could say that this state of affairs is appropriate and that the time has come to start all over. This means that the resources of the lab should be utilized by scientists that can write legitimate, competitive proposals.
Its become obvious that there is no vital capacity at LANL that cannot be, at least, duplicated by the other weapons labs. All we need then is a funding organization that can tell a good proposal from a bad one. Does anyone believe that NNSA can do it?
From Terminations, Reductions, and Savings
Budget of the U.S. Government
Fiscal Year 2010
Office of Management and Budget
www.budget.gov
(1) Termination: Reliable Replacement Warhead
Department of Energy
The Administration proposes to cancel development of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) -- a new design warhead intended to replace the current inventory of nuclear weapons -- because it is not consistent with Presidential commitments to move towards a nuclear-free world.
Funding Summary
(In millions of dollars)
2009
Enacted
Budget Authority: 0
2010
Request
Budget Authority: 0
2010 Change
from 2009
Budget Authority: 0
Justification
Development of RRW was scheduled to require $60 million between 2009 and 2014 to complete both design work and analysis for a new family of nuclear warheads. The 2009 request for the program went unfunded by Congress. Terminating RRW is consistent with Congressional priorities and the Administration´s commitment to move toward a nuclear-free world.
In recent studies, the National Academy of Sciences, the Goverment Accountability Office, and other prominent groups have concluded that the current stockpile will remain reliable for an extended period as long as planned maintenance and certification programs continue.[1,2,3] On-going Life Extension Programs (involving replacement of aging components and selected improvements to safety, security and reliability) support these maintenance and certification efforts and will continue.
The Nuclear Posture Review will address the programs needed to support long-term certification of the stockpile and how to maintain the required skilled and specialized workforce. Until its results are published, committing funding to any particular programmatic solution is premature.
Citations
[1] National Research Council of the National Academies, Evaluation of Quantification of Margins and Uncertainties Methodology for Assessing and Certifying the Reliability of the Nuclear Stockpile (November 2008).
[2] Government Accountability Office, Nuclear Weapons: NNSA Needs to Establish a Cost and Schedule Baseline for Manufacturing a Critical Nuclear Weapon Component, GAO-08-593 (May 23, 2008).
[3] George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, "Toward a Nuclear-Free World," Wall Street Journal (January 15, 2008).
(2) Termination: Los Alamos Neutron Science Center Refurbishment
Department of Energy
The Administration proposes to cancel refurbishment of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE). The LANSCE is a linear accelerator that was built 30 years ago and no longer plays a critical role in weapons research.
Funding Summary
(In million of dollars)
2009
Enacted
Budget Authority: 19
2010
Request
Budget Authority: 0
2010 Change
from 2009
Budget Authority: -19
Justification
In the past, LANSCE was used for a variety of scientific investigations of nuclear weapons and basic science, but today, its usefulness in these roles is ebbing.[1] This is because either more powerful, more flexible machines can meet these needs, the capability can be purchased at lower cost from other sources, critical questions in weapons research have migrated away from LANSCE, or work done with LANSCE has been completed. For example, the Department of Energy (DOE´s) Nuclear Energy program has recently stopped using LANSCE to produce medical isotopes.
The facility is mostly used by organizations outside of NNSA who do not pay the full costs of its operations. Operational costs must be subsidized by the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA). To keep LANSCE operable and up-to-date would require a $180 million refurbishment. Neither DOE nor NNSA have considered this cost justified, and NNSA has not requested funding for this refurbishment in 2009 or 2010. However, the Congress has kept the program going in the past.
Citations
[1] NNSA Response to Direction in House Report 109-275 (2006 Appropriations) regarding Capability of Proton Radiography of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center Facilities to Support Stockpile Stewardship Activities (July 1, 2006).
(3) Termination: Yucca Mountain Repository Program
Department of Energy
The Administration proposes to eliminate the Yucca Mountain repository program. The Budget provides $196.8 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) to explore alternatives for nuclear waste disposal and to continue participattion in the repository license proceeding before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Funding Summary
(In million dollars)
2009
Enacted
Budget Authority: 288
2010
Request
Budget Authority: 197
2010 Change
from 2009
Budget Authority: -91
Justification
This proposal implements the Administration´s decision to terminate the Yucca Mointain program while developing disposal alternatives. All funding for development of the facility would be eliminated, such as further land acquisition, transportation access, and additional engineering.
The President has acknowledged that nuclear power is -- and likely will remain -- an important source of electricity for many years to come and that how the Nation deals with the dangerous byproduct of nuclear reactors is a critical question that has yet to be resolved.
The President, however, has made clear that the Nation needs a better solution than the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. Such a solution must be based on sound science and capable of securing broad support, including support from those who live in areas that might be affected by the solution. Accordingly, Secretary of Energy Chu has announced that he will stand up an expert, Blue Ribbon Commission to evaluate options and make recommendations to the Administration for developing a new plan for the back end of the fuel cycle. The program accounts continue to fund only those costs necessary to participate in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceeding and an effort by the Administration to devise a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal.
And,
(4) Termination: Nuclear Hydrogen Activities
Department of Energy
(5) Termination: Nuclear Power 2010
Department of Energy
(6) Termination: Oil and Gas Company Prefernences (8 Terminations)
Department of Energy
(7) Termination: Oil and Gas Research and Development Program
(Mandatory Funding)
Department of Energy
(8) Termination: Oil Researh and Development Program (Discretionary Funding)
Department of Energy
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdf)
PS: I disagree with the non-supporting of nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and Yucca Mountain by the Obama administration.
Frank, can you please censor the next person to use the term "gadfly"? Please?
"The ever increasing bureaucracy composed of managers who require more and more detail, and guaranteed schedules, will in the not too distant future completely eradicate our nation's world position in research and technology." Harold Agnew
Thank you 3:31 for the explanation.
"End of Year" employment figures at LANL of FY08 8139, FY09 7940, FY10 6640 (4:37 PM)
Doing the math, 7940 - 6640 = 1300 people who are due to walk the plank next year at LANL. So, am I to take it that LANL will be planning layoffs in FY10? Did Mike ever mention these figures at his All Hands today? Perhaps LANS plans on driving these people out using attrition and lowering the morale even further?
At peak employment levels about 4 years ago LANL had almost 12000 employees. If we go down to 6650 employees next year the lab will almost have been cut in half in just 5 years.
No wonder LANL seems to have few people wandering around these days. If it seems much less crowded it's because the lab has been downsized by a huge amount. People are fleeing this place and not being replaced with new employees. It's almost time to turn out the lights and close the front gates.
Harold Agnew is a prophet. He also would never have allowed LANL to pay for his car expenses while he was lab Director. In fact, he use to run around town back in the 70's in a beat-up old station wagon.
My, how the times have changed. LANL is now run by rejects like Mike Anastasio who demand that their luxury sport cars be paid for by LANS LLC. On top of this, Mike and his pals at the top have made sure that their salaries were raised by large margins once LANL became a "for-profit" management operation.
LANL is no longer about science. It's all about clawing your way to the top of the heap to get the big payoff while crapping on all those below you. There is not an ounce of integrity left in the whole cadre of top managers who run the place. A curse on them all!
From Joe Monahan Blog:
We're going to be hearing a lot of complicated spin about the proposed federal budget for New Mexico, but the most important fact is this--long-term funding for the Department of Energy is going down in this state. That's the trend and there seems little chance it will be reversed.
According to NM senior Senator Jeff Bingaman:
The president’s budget request would result in about $4 billion of spending from all DOE programs in NM in FY 2010, down from the $4.3 billion voted by Congress for the comparable DOE programs in NM in FY 2009. This includes a decline in spending at Los Alamos National Laboratory from $1.885 billion in this fiscal year to $1.741 billion in the new budget request from the president. The total for SandiaNational Laboratories would grow slightly, from $1.322 billion to $1.343 billion.
Los Alamos was slammed with a seven percent proposed reduction. Get ready for more "For Sale" signs on the streets there.
Jeff's take on Sandia sounds like it is a slight budget increase, but it is actually one step forward and two steps back. In FY '08, Sandia received $1.40 billion, but in FY '09 that dropped to $1.332 billion. Now the proposed FY '10 budget is $1.343 billion, well below '08 and confirming the long-term downward trend. Senator Bingaman and the rest of the delegation should have some luck boosting Obama's numbers for the labs, but history says not much.
The $300 million overall DOE NM cut represents a seven percent reduction in funding. Throw in a point or two to account for inflation, and you're close to a double-digit slash in DOE funding here.
Yes, there will be one time stimulus and other possible spending bumping the numbers here and there, but the fact is that in the years ahead the plan is for Los Alamos Labs to continue to shrink and Sandia Labs, at best, to stay flat at the currently reduced levels.
NO SURPRISE, REALLY
If you hang around here, you're not surprised at this news. When Energy Secretary Chu visited ABQ recently and did not issue any budget assurances, it was clear the state would take a hit.
As for the labs significantly diversifying their mission into "alternative energy" and "Green" programs, there appears to be little support in Congress for such a notion. The budget proposes that Sandia get about $60 million for renewable energy, a 25 percent increase but still not a big deal in the overal scheme of things.
The world has changed and nukes aren't what they used to be. Obama and Bush before him weren't singling us out, just dealing with reality. Senator Domenici's historic seniority and interest in national security kept the budget propped up. He's now gone.
New Mexico's political and economic leadership is going to have its hands full trying to bringing jobs in here to replace what is inevitably going to be slowly lost. Don't say we didn't tell you.
That is great news 12:01. It sounds like there will be no decrease in the number of people working at LANL.
LANL is on a downward sprial, the only unknown here is: how soon, until we become "a not so vital lab) as we were in the past. It's not so much the funding thst will affect our status within the DOE/NNSA complex but rather our mission. Being appointed as the "Pit Manufacturing" center of the complex helped to seal our own fate. Funding and Congressional support for Nuclear weapons in todays world has a very limited life span, even Sec. Gates is undecided on this issue.
DOE may also sell us to the DOD in the near future which would end all of our worries.
The 7 percent cuts for LANL for next year are just the beginning of the budget cutting process.
Get out of LANL if you can, as science is going to be harder to accomplish. FTE costs will go even higher and the policies will become even more severe. The budget cuts are going to grow and layoffs will eventually arrive, if not this year then by next. Don't be fooled. Happy talk coming from LANS upper management won't stop the process that is about to unfold.
For scientists who decided to flee LANL and move to academia or fast growing DOE labs like ORNL, PNNL or ANL, it's going to look like they made a very wise decision.
"In the past, LANSCE was used for a variety of scientific investigations of nuclear weapons and basic science, but today, its usefulness in these roles is ebbing.[1] ... For example, the Department of Energy (DOE´s) Nuclear Energy program has recently stopped using LANSCE to produce medical isotopes."
This represents an abject failure on the part of our Government Relations staff and our Congressional delegation.
Yes, DOE-NE has stopped using LANSCE for isotope production... but that's because the entire isotope production program has been moved over to DOE-OS under the nuclear physics program! Recent Office of Science calls refer *specifically* to LANL's IPF.
It sounds like readers are unaware of this critically important fact: the FY2010 budget was embargoed by OMB, and very strict controls were put in place so that contractors and most in DOE/NNSA did NOT see the budget prior to release, including the proposed cuts and other actions.
It was only Wednesday of this week that anyone at LANL got a look at the budget, including the proposed LANSCE-R elimination. This may not completely absolve government relations and others from keeping LANSCE off the list, but it does place things in a bit of a different light.
Yes, thanks 5:44PM. I smoked crack today, too. What's your point?
I find it interesting that all you LANL folks disparage LLNL all the time yet LLNL continues to outshine LANL at budget time. Maybe you should quit bitching and pay more attention to LLNL and how they are consistently able to outperform LANL in the budget arena.
5/7/09 8:10 PM Fact: RRW couldn't get past the starting line with a repub congress AND administration....that is an absolute, incontrovertible fact.
Yes 5:19, we paid attention to the huge RIF that the Livermoron managers inflicted on their loyal employees. They certainly outperformed LANL in that arena.
From Danger Room:
What´s Next in National Security
Pentagon´s Black Budget Grows to More Than $50 Billion (Updated)
By Noah Shachtman May 7, 2009 7:39 pm
The Pentagon wants to spend just over $50 billion on classified programs next year, newly-released Defense Departmnt budget document reveal. "That´s the largest-ever sum," according to Aviation Week´s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget seer - a three percent increase over last year´s total.
It makes the Pentagon´s secret operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside, "roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan," Sweetman adds. All in all, about seven and a half percent of the Defense Department´s total spending is now classified.
Black-world weapons-buying "remains dominated by the single line item," according to Sweetman. (You can find it under the Air Force´s "other procurement" section, on page F-21 here.) "This year´s number stands just above $16 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, that´s 240 percent more than it was ten years ago."
Many of the secret budgets still remain clandestine, however. In the research budget, the line item for a "Special Program" of the super-secret National Security Agency is a string of zeros. Same goes for an NSA "Cyber Security Initiative" kitty. And don´t even ask about NSA´s "Intelligence Support to Information Operations" account. That´s a blank slate, too.
Some other fun facts, buried in the Pentagon´s just-released budget docs:
- Money for "Directed Energy Technology" - real-life ray gun research - jumps from $62.7 million last year to $105.7 million in 2010.
- Cash for "Prompt Global Strike Capability Development" - weapons that can hit anywhere on the planet, in just a few hours - jumps from $74.1 million to $166.9 million.
- The high-flying Global Hawk drones get an extra $486.8 million.
- The Office of the Secretary of Defense is pushing $75 million in new alt-fuel and alt-power projects - from "Landfill Gas Energy Capture" to a "Tactical, Deployable Micro-Grid."
- The Maui Space Surveillance System gets a major downgrade, from $36.3 million to a mere $5.8 million. Aloha, space-watchers!
UPDATE: CQ´s Tim Starks reports that "the budget would also allocate an unspecified amount to the new ´Imagery Satellite Way Ahead´program, a joint effort between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense designed to rewamp the nation´s constellation of spy satellites."
The mostly classified plan would include new, redesigned "electro-optical" satellites, which collect data from across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the expanded use of commercial satellite imagery. Although the cost is secret, most estimates place it in the multibillion-dollar range.
(http://wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/pentagons-black-budget-grows-to-more-than-50-billion/#comments)
--------------------------------
1) What is the black budget of DOE, DOE/NNSA, and LANL? (Up, flat, down, or zero?) (Is RRW and RNEP in the black budget of DOE/NNSA, and the Aurora project, Next Generation Bomber (NGB), Minuteman III replacement, RRW, space based laser, and conventional prompt global strike in the black budget of DoD?)
2) Directed Energy Technology, aka Directed Energy Weapons, why doesn´t DOE/NNSA, and the National Labs work with that on an increased scientific and funding scale? (DEW are a future weapon of low yield(s), and could be (very) useful in the (not so distant) future.)
3) The $50 billion and 3% increase since last year´s total black budget of DoD is low compared to the hundreds of billions of bailout dollars. (The black budget of DoD, DOE, and DOE/NNSA deserves a bailout, e.g. a boost of dollars.)
4) The links to DoD´s budget:
4.1) http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2010/fy2010_r1.pdf
4.2) http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2010/fy2010_p1.pdf
4.3) http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2010/fy2010_m1o1.pdf
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