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Safety
Uc, Bechtel to Manage Los Alamos Lab
UC awarded new contract to operate laboratory that built the atom bomb
by Glenn Hess
December 22, 2005
An academic-industrial team led by the University of California and engineering firm Bechtel National Inc. has been awarded a seven-year contract to run the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico.
Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman announced at a Dec. 21 news conference that the UC-Bechtel team beat out a rival joint bid led by the University of Texas and defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
"This is a new contract with a new team, marking a new approach to the management of Los Alamos, one that will benefit the national security of the U.S. through superb science," Bodman said. "It is not a continuation of the previous contract."
It was the first time in the 63-year history of the nation's premier nuclear weapons lab that the contract had been open to competition. UC has run the lab on its own since the facility was created during World War II to design and build an atomic bomb.
The new management and operations contract, which takes effect on June 1, 2006, is worth up to $79 million a year. The Los Alamos lab will also get a new director—Michael Anastasio, who is currently head of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He will replace Interim Director Robert W. Kuckuck.
Former energy chief Spencer Abraham announced the competition in April 2003 after a series of safety, security, and management lapses brought the lab and UC under critical scrutiny by Congress and DOE's inspector general. Problems included "missing" classified computer disks that turned out to be an accounting error.
An eight-member board comprising career civil servants from throughout the nuclear weapons complex has been evaluating contract proposals since July. Los Alamos National Security LLC, a limited liability corporation made up of UC, Bechtel, BWX Technologies Inc., and the Washington Group International Inc., will run the lab under the new agreement.
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