A History of Innovation and Dysfunction At Los Alamos National Laboratory (santafenewmexican.com) 85
In the past, Los Alamos National Laboratory has done some of the United States' most crucial research and development. Lately, the lab has been dealing with accidents and management problems. Reader DougDot directs us to a report from the Santa Fe New Mexican about the questions surrounding LANL's future. Quoting:
Federal officials told Congress in December that they will put the LANL contract up for competitive bid for only the second time since the lab opened in 1943. The current LANS contract ends Sept 30, 2017. Identifying what went wrong, and why the lab has proven so difficult to manage, will play an important role for the Department of Energy as it seeks out new managers to run the lab. Investigators say the problems stem from repeated management weaknesses, the kind that were supposed to get fixed when the Department of Energy turned to private industry in 2006 to oversee the lab.
It was the first time the federal government had put the lab’s management up for bid, with the idea that a for-profit model, operating under an incentives-based contract, would fix the problems that haunted the nonprofit University of California, which had run the lab since World War II. ... experts, watchdog groups and former lab employees point to an array of problems, from a clash of cultures between the regimented and profit-driven Bechtel and the languorous, research-oriented university; to incentives that may have induced contractors to put a premium on meeting deadlines despite safety risks; to a mix of shoddy accountability and micromanagement on the part of the federal government.
It was the first time the federal government had put the lab’s management up for bid, with the idea that a for-profit model, operating under an incentives-based contract, would fix the problems that haunted the nonprofit University of California, which had run the lab since World War II. ... experts, watchdog groups and former lab employees point to an array of problems, from a clash of cultures between the regimented and profit-driven Bechtel and the languorous, research-oriented university; to incentives that may have induced contractors to put a premium on meeting deadlines despite safety risks; to a mix of shoddy accountability and micromanagement on the part of the federal government.
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Two people died while I was there (industrial accident) back in the 80's when it was solely a Berkeley contract. IIRC, White Sands was the private operator and LA was the University operated arms.
Um, no. White Sands (?) is a National Monument just south of Alamagordo, NM. The University of California managed the LANL contract from the mid-40's through 2006, when i tlost the contract to the current LLC, LANS.
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BUT, they likely retained almost all of the people and middle management from the previous run...so, you basically had the same exact people causing problems before, still there causing the same problems.
They'd likely need to pretty much "clean house" and start over, however, you'd lose a lot of brain talent that way too...and it often hard to pick out who truly you need and whom you can let go on a contract that large...but
Re: Private industry... (Score:1)
Private industry is good at what it's good at, but if doing something dangerous it needs to be watched carefully because it WILL cheat and cut corners. That will continue until we stop rewarding sociopathic behaviors.
Private industry is NOT good at other things, and basic research is one of them. Unpredictable timelines, highly educated people who actively dislike being 'managed'--these things are not compatible with a profit motive. Where government and nonprofits tend to foul up is in an extreme focus
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Really ?
Cosmic Background Radiation, Bell Labs
Band Theory of Semiconductors, Bell Labs
Information Theory, Bell Labs
Atomic Force Microscope, IBM
Josephson Junction Circuitry, IBM
LASER, Bell Labs
High Temperature Superconductors, IBM
That's off the top of my head. I see the Zampolits in the universities have worked their magic on you very well.
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Really ?
Cosmic Background Radiation, Bell Labs
Band Theory of Semiconductors, Bell Labs
Information Theory, Bell Labs
Atomic Force Microscope, IBM
Josephson Junction Circuitry, IBM
LASER, Bell Labs
High Temperature Superconductors, IBM
That's off the top of my head. I see the Zampolits in the universities have worked their magic on you very well.
Yes, well: The big dog in the current LANL contractor LLC is Bechtel. A construction company. Running a National Lab. No wonder everything is screwed up at LANL. A huge paradigm mismatch occurred when Bechtel took over the LANL contract in 2006.
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Yes, well: The big dog in the current LANL contractor LLC is Bechtel. A construction company. Running a National Lab. No wonder everything is screwed up at LANL. A huge paradigm mismatch occurred when Bechtel took over the LANL contract in 2006.
A huge paradigm mismatch occurred when the government decided the best way to choose a contractor was by lowest price...the phrase is actually "lowest price, technically acceptable". You get what you pay for, and companies play the game of lowballing, or filling positions with people marginally qualified for the positions, so they can be paid less giving the firm more profit. And, in times of shrinking budgets, there's always pressure to reduce staffing.
FWIW, a lot of my work is on contracts, figuring out
Re: Private industry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cosmic Background Radiation, Bell Labs Band Theory of Semiconductors, Bell Labs Information Theory, Bell Labs
Bell Labs, a privately run lab to soak up profits from a government mandated monopoly. Not sure that makes a case for private for profit management. More like publicly funded research utopia.
Atomic Force Microscope, IBM Josephson Junction Circuitry, IBM LASER, Bell Labs High Temperature Superconductors, IBM
IBM's accomplishments were all in the pursuit of making more better cheaper things. Any "basic research" that fell out of these efforts were serendipitous happenstance.
Re: Private industry... (Score:4, Informative)
>Bell Labs, a privately run lab to soak up profits from a government mandated monopoly. Not sure that makes a case for private for profit management. More like publicly funded research utopia.
Not to mention the core diference is that Bell Labs, being created as a profit sponge, was not a profit seeking enterprise. They may have been owned by one, but because they were specifically *expected* to not make profit they didn't operate like one - and instead was allowed to operate like academia and deliver knowledge instead (some of which, at least, would later be profitable to Bell of course).
The GP correctly pointed out that basic research is a very bad fit for a profit-motive, the only thing Bell Labs prove is that "academia" and charity are not the only ways one could conceivably fund a non-profit research lab. Nobody argued that, that was the case.
That said - government-funded academia is definitely simpler to accomplish - which is why there are millions of government funded research labs around the world (including major multinational ones like CERN) while examples like Bell Labs are few and far between.
Where private enterprise have tried to dabble in the "free reign for researchers lab" model in the past, hoping to cash in on ideas, there are far more dismal failures than successes. Xerox PARC was such an attempt - and while they produced world-class research and innocations - Xerox utterly failed to see it's value or capitalize on it (and basically gave the results to Steve Jobs for free). Ultimately that led to the end of PARC.
Bell Labs didn't survive much past the end of the AT&T monopoly either. It genuinely seems that research labs run by profit-seeking enterprises generally do not work well, and can only succeed when very specific conditions are in place (that are not organically arrived at by market forces).
I would add to the GP's reasons for this that science requires peer review, which works best when the results are shared as widely as possible. Secret-sauce science is not really science at all - and that too is fundamentally incompatible with the profit motive. Profit demands exclusivity but science demands reproducability - which are flat-out contradictory aims. This means that even when, practically, the process can be made to work - the results are tainted as science. Just look at the many resent scandals due to unreproducible drug tests. Evidence based medicine becomes a lot less trustworthy when we water down the scientific standards for what "evidence based" means (though still a lot better than pseudo-science like homeopathy and anti-vaxxers).
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>(parenthetically, it is unclear why any company would purposely destroy its own profit)
For exactly the reason Bell Labs existed - so a monopoly could hide how *much* of a monopoly it was and avoid antitrust laws.
> Bell saw that only the labs could develop the technology their system needed.
Most of what Bell Labs developed were useless to AT&T and they did some of the most important research in a field Bell was specifically prohibited from entering - they could only do that because there was no i
Re: Private industry... (Score:2)
But engineers dont try to build designs that almost certainly wont work. Scientists do experiments they expect to fail routinely - to confirm that they fail and if they dont start figuring out why.
Engineering applies (usually very simplified) scientiffic theories while assuming those theories are correct. Science assumes tge opposite.
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But engineers dont try to build designs that almost certainly wont work. Scientists do experiments they expect to fail routinely - to confirm that they fail and if they dont start figuring out why. Engineering applies (usually very simplified) scientiffic theories while assuming those theories are correct. Science assumes tge opposite.
As an engineer I worked at an R&D "lab" that was also charged with producing actual product. To confirm our models, we absolutely created designs that we expected to fail in order to confirm the models were correct so that designs that were supposed to work had a greater degree of confidence in meeting their design goals. I guarantee you I did not work in the only such job, as I strongly suspect companies like Apple work along similar lines, albeit maybe not with quite so many intended failures, as one
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You have a remarkable capacity to miss the point - then you pounce on explanatory statements and try to disprove those as if that would somehow impact the validity of the argument they were meant to explain.
Let me try this again: engineering does not follow the scientific method, if it did it would *be* science. That is literally the difference between science and non-science.
Philosophers demarcate systems of thought into three broad categories:
1) Science - which can be identified by the fact that it follow
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You have a remarkable capacity to miss the point - then you pounce on explanatory statements and try to disprove those as if that would somehow impact the validity of the argument they were meant to explain.
Not at all. I agreed with the rest of your post except for this absolute statement:
But engineers dont try to build designs that almost certainly wont work.
The only potential quibble is as an engineer with an R&D lab are you more scientist or engineer? That would be a philosophical discussion I'd be open to but would likely be long and need to morph depending on the specific task being done (i.e., I'm stating that it is indeterminate in the general case)
Perhaps I should have prefaced it with a few mollifying terms and not just stated it baldly, as I could see how that migh
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
At least link to the sound for the noobs :)
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You named two organizations, one defunct which was not a profit-making operation anyway. A very few companies will do serious basic research, but that doesn't mean it's a viable model. Most basic research is government-funded.
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First you aren't challenging the point, just the limits of effort I was willing to put into making the post.
Second your second point is wrong.
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Do you have figures on basic research that is or is not government-funded? There are occasional companies that back researchers in pretty much what they want to do, like IBM or Microsoft, but most companies want to do more short-term and directed research and development and stuff they can incorporate into their products (and MIcrosoft seems particularly bad at that, however much I appreciate their contributions). It's going to be hard to separate out basic research. Coming up with the laser was arguabl
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I have heard personally from a former colleague who is intimately involved with LANL, a high-level University researcher with ties to LANL but not a direct employee.
The current lab management contractors have various metrics for which they manage the lab employees & programs. One metric which is now completely absent? Progress, results, and success in innovative scientific research.
The UC management might have been lax in other ways---it was very hands-off and let the lab do anything it wanted as long
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Just because you are ignorant of the English language doesn't mean everyone else is. And if you are unable to apply the definitions you look up then that brings into question your grasp of English overall. (And giving a fake definition for a word does not contribute to demonstrating your having a grasp on the language.)
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So a project was set up to pass all the skills to the private sector and then bring the results back into the UK as a production line within budget and on time.
The UK got its own nuclear systems ready and working via its own staff and skill sets.
Nations can use their private sectors with gre
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just doesn't work. The teapublicans are just too stupid to understand that.
Earth to Hate-Filled Bigot Luddite: George Bush is gone, it is the Democrats that have presided over the worst Crony-Capitalism in American history, for years now. Wow. (Funny how people can't help but project their own inadequacies... the stupid part being one.)
fire the coach (Score:2)
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With that said, their are sections of the labs that do great work and have talented people. Those are usually in the smaller, more focused programs.
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There are ingrained issues at the labs. A new management company can't come in a get rid of existing dysfunctional subcontractors. Their employees often have bad attitudes and live in an entitlement culture. The DOE needs to let new companies displace the existing ones completely and just hire the existing people that want to get jobs done.
With that said, their are sections of the labs that do great work and have talented people. Those are usually in the smaller, more focused programs.
Wow, sounds like the voice of experience from an actual current or past LANL employee. I spent 20 years at LANL. During the last 15 years there my group brought in all of our own funding from external, non-DOE sources for non-weapons work. We had to fight LANL management and the DOE to do this, because they resented us doing work for others.
We brought in work from other agencies in spite of the fact that due to LANL's exorbitant overhead costs the annual FTE rate (the amount of money we we had to charge out
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The first thing Bechtel did when they took over the LANL contract in 2006 was to triple the number to upper-level managers making more than $200K per year from 20 to 60. It did wonders for the overhead rate.
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Ah yes, looks like we have a private industry worshipper.
If the buck doesn't stop with LANS, then what are they being paid for?
I worked there (Score:2)
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Did you work there during UC's reign or LANS? I was there for the switch over. It went quite rapidly down hill. First thing they did was start paying themselves much much more money (duhhh). Then they decided to (a) instigate a hiring freeze and (b) make life shitty so they could lose staff by "attrition". Of course what that does id get rid of the people most able to leave (i.e. good people who can find employment elsewhere).
Then when ever something bad happened, they seemed determined to do as much damage
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Oh yes, and shit on foreign nationals a bit more (fun fact: we've not been responsible for a single security incident ever).
Oh yeah, foreign nationals never exfiltrate information to their home countries... Perhaps you should take your head out of a book, and maybe read some current events, as yes, they do, and are the largest source of leaks. There is a reason that The Big Bang Theory made a joke out of one of the characters dating a woman who defected to North Korea and was only interested in the rocket fuel formula he was working on. It is quite common for foreign nationals to try to steal trade secrets and export them hom
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Oh yeah, foreign nationals never exfiltrate information to their home countries
Not at Los Alamos they don't. Because we were very effectively kept away from sensitive information by not having a clearance, and having no access to ITAR stuff.
Perhaps you should take your head out of a book, and maybe read some current events, as yes, they do, and are the largest source of leaks.
At Los Alamos? Citation fucking needed, mate. Especially as nice, upstanding Americans have been caught selling nuclear secrets for
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To be fair, the highway does terminate in Transylvania, they probably had a hell of a turnover with Dracula eating all their workers.
In reality though, look at the path the highway takes, it goes across the whole country, which as far as I understand is quite mountainous. The particular section that they worked on is not indicated as to the difficulty though, and the Carpathian mountain section is said to be the most difficult, which apparently they didn't work on.
One major culprit unnamed (Score:4, Interesting)
I grew up in Los Alamos and I worked there during my high school years through some of graduate school. The article completely failed to mention one of the main culprits for a lot of these problems: The Department of Energy. While I do not have knowledge beyond what is in the press for most of the incidents mentioned, the ones where I do mostly include a major role in the problem played by DOE ranging from their screwed up policies to direct involvement. Given this, a new contractor can only do so much.
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I grew up in Los Alamos and I worked there during my high school years through some of graduate school. The article completely failed to mention one of the main culprits for a lot of these problems: The Department of Energy. While I do not have knowledge beyond what is in the press for most of the incidents mentioned, the ones where I do mostly include a major role in the problem played by DOE ranging from their screwed up policies to direct involvement. Given this, a new contractor can only do so much.
Or only so much less, in the case lf Bechtel-led LANS.
But I basically agree with you. BTW, I also grew up in Los Alamos, and worked there during some of my undergrad days. Oh, and then spent two decades there as a staff member.
Exactly what you'd expect (Score:3)
Investigators say the problems stem from repeated management weaknesses, the kind that were supposed to get fixed when the Department of Energy turned to private industry in 2006 to oversee the lab.
If you believe that was ever the goal of turning it over to a private company, I've got a bridge to sell you. It was strictly about giving a valuable contract to a big company, done by an administration that Believed(TM) in the divinity of private industry.
I don't have inside information about Los Alamos, but I did know someone at a different national lab that got privatized at the same time. I heard a lot of horror stories from him. Their policies had nothing to do with running an effective research organization, and everything to do with squeezing as much money out of it as they could get.
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I worked for several years at Bettis Labs in PA in support of the Naval Nuclear program -- it's another DOE-operated site, albeit on a smaller scale than Los Alamos. Some of the policies I saw there, which I know applied at at least a half-dozen other DOE sites were nothing short of immeasurably stupid. As one example, the entire facility is operated under a "manpower" limit as opposed to a budget for personnel...which meant that all other things being equal, the operators would hire a disproportionate nu
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Sadly, what you're describing is true of any large organization. The Dilbert Principle in action.
Stick a fork in it. (Score:2)
LANL is officially dead. Last one out, turn off the lights. (It'll keep glowing on its own for quite some time.)