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LIVERMORE LAB 'ENRON ACCOUNTING' HIDES CONTROVERSIAL MEGA-LASER'S TRUE COSTS - 0 views

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    An internal U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) study details how managers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) shifted costs to understate total spending on the controversial National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser. The previously secret document, released today by the nuclear watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs, pegs the current hidden costs of NIF at $80 million annually. "Livermore Lab is systematically disguising the true costs of the NIF," charged Tri-Valley CAREs' executive director, Marylia Kelley. "When calculated over the life of the project, these hidden costs total more than $2 billion." Kelley continued, "This illegal scheme circumvents the United States Congress, which sets NIF's budget each year, and violates our nation's most basic federal contracting laws." According to the report by the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Field Financial Management (OFFM), Livermore Lab's practice of assigning NIF overhead expenses to other Lab programs violates Public Law 100-679 Cost Accounting Standards (CAS). This law is an integral part of the structure set up to regulate government contracts. Some of the NIF fee reductions date back to 2001. The OFFM investigators noted that the misleading cost accounting, "materially misstates the actual costs by LLNL for the NIF/National Ignition Campaign... and may result in an undercapitalization of the NIF/NIC's total project costs."
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    An internal U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) study details how managers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) shifted costs to understate total spending on the controversial National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser. The previously secret document, released today by the nuclear watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs, pegs the current hidden costs of NIF at $80 million annually. "Livermore Lab is systematically disguising the true costs of the NIF," charged Tri-Valley CAREs' executive director, Marylia Kelley. "When calculated over the life of the project, these hidden costs total more than $2 billion." Kelley continued, "This illegal scheme circumvents the United States Congress, which sets NIF's budget each year, and violates our nation's most basic federal contracting laws." According to the report by the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Field Financial Management (OFFM), Livermore Lab's practice of assigning NIF overhead expenses to other Lab programs violates Public Law 100-679 Cost Accounting Standards (CAS). This law is an integral part of the structure set up to regulate government contracts. Some of the NIF fee reductions date back to 2001. The OFFM investigators noted that the misleading cost accounting, "materially misstates the actual costs by LLNL for the NIF/National Ignition Campaign... and may result in an undercapitalization of the NIF/NIC's total project costs."
Energy Net

Report: Livermore National Lab hid $80 million of new nuclear fusion lab's cost - Insid... - 0 views

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    Improper accounting practices have hidden the true cost of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to the tune of $80 million in this fiscal year alone, according to a leaked report. Critics say this fiscal sleight of hand means the facility's already-huge cost - $3.5 billion to $4 billion overall, already three times its original estimated cost, and almost a half-billion dollars this fiscal year - has been significantly lowballed. Construction began in 1997 on the NIF, which uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point of nuclear fusion; scientists hope it will be the first in the world to achieve "ignition," producing more energy than was put in to start the reaction, ultimately providing a new source of clean, renewable energy. After years of delays and rampant cost overruns, it was finished in March and dedicated in May to great fanfare. The NIF already eats up about a quarter of the Livermore Lab's budget. But a report prepared in October by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Field Financial Management - leaked to Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), which in turn provided it to this newspaper - says managers have hidden the NIF's true costs by making other parts of the Livermore Lab pick up the tab. Besides weapons research, the lab's many programs include research in environmental science,
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    Improper accounting practices have hidden the true cost of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to the tune of $80 million in this fiscal year alone, according to a leaked report. Critics say this fiscal sleight of hand means the facility's already-huge cost - $3.5 billion to $4 billion overall, already three times its original estimated cost, and almost a half-billion dollars this fiscal year - has been significantly lowballed. Construction began in 1997 on the NIF, which uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point of nuclear fusion; scientists hope it will be the first in the world to achieve "ignition," producing more energy than was put in to start the reaction, ultimately providing a new source of clean, renewable energy. After years of delays and rampant cost overruns, it was finished in March and dedicated in May to great fanfare. The NIF already eats up about a quarter of the Livermore Lab's budget. But a report prepared in October by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Field Financial Management - leaked to Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), which in turn provided it to this newspaper - says managers have hidden the NIF's true costs by making other parts of the Livermore Lab pick up the tab. Besides weapons research, the lab's many programs include research in environmental science,
Energy Net

Document Reveals that DOE's Internal Nuclear Weapons Plans Significantly Differ From th... - 0 views

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    "NEW DOCUMENT REVEALS GOV'T PLANS TO * Abandon promised science and "ignition and gain" at Livermore Lab NIF mega-laser * Jack up funding for nuclear weapon "life extensions" beyond what the facts justify, and * Escalate bomb budgets through 2030 despite lip service to Obama disarmament goals LIVERMORE -- The Fiscal Year 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (colloquially known as the "Green Book"), obtained recently by Tri-Valley CAREs, reveals that the U.S. Dept. of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) foments internal plans significantly at variance with the agency's public pronouncements and the Nation's disarmament goals. "The document demonstrates that the NNSA will reach deeper and deeper into the taxpayers' pockets in the coming decades, even as it jettisons scientific objectives and delivers less," charged Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, the Livermore-based nuclear weapons watchdog organization. " What the plan reveals about the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is shocking." (See attached analysis for details.)"
Energy Net

GAO Report Takes Some Wind Out of NIF Hype - The Project On Government Oversight (POGO)... - 0 views

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    "In the last few months, the PR team for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Lab has certainly earned its keep. Even though the project is not complete, 400 percent over budget, at least 10 years behind schedule, and hiding its costs within other Lab program budgets, it has gotten a lot of buzz in the media. However, today, the GAO released a report stating that it is too soon to say that the project is a success, and that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Lab have conducted "weak oversight" of the project. From the report:"
Energy Net

POGO: POGO Responds to NIF's Award: Over Budget, Behind Schedule, Undeserving - 0 views

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    Last week, POGO sent a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu challenging the decision to bestow upon the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) an award for "Project Management Excellence" for the performance of what is ironically one of its most poorly managed projects, the National Ignition Facility (NIF).
Energy Net

Could a New Generation of Power Plants Turn Nuclear Waste Into Clean Fuel? | 80beats | ... - 0 views

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    Last week's official dedication of the National Ignition Facility, the massive experiment in nuclear fusion, has set some physicists to plotting ways in which nuclear fusion could be put to work in a new generation of nuclear power plants. Although doubters say that NIF may not even be able to produce a controlled fusion reaction, the same reaction that occurs in the heart of the sun and in thermonuclear weapons, boosters such as U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu are already discussing how fusion energy could best be harnessed.
Energy Net

GAO uncovers more cost overruns and delays at National Ignition Facility - Physics Toda... - 0 views

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    "Weak management of the National Ignition Facility is being blamed for more cost overruns and delays to experiments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory project, according to a recently released report by congressional auditors. The cost of NIF's experimental program has already grown by 25%, or $400 million, to an estimated $2 billion through fiscal year 2012, and the scheduled completion of ignition experiments has been pushed back by a year, to September 2012, says the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The 192-laser NIF was officially completed more than a year ago, at a cost of $3.5 billion-$1.4 billion above the estimate when construction began in 1997. But GAO said that LLNL had been allowed to put off "major aspects of NIF's safety infrastructure," including installation of concrete doors and other target-area shielding to protect personnel from neutron radiation. Funding for those safety items, totaling around $50 million, has had to come from the National Ignition Campaign, and NIF's preliminary experimental program, which includes "nonignition" experiments producing temperatures and pressures below the ignition threshold, had to be suspended for several months while their installation was completed. That stoppage could delay attainment of NIF's experimental objective-ignition, the point at which the energy from fusion exceeds the energy needed to initiate the reaction-beyond the already postponed 2012 deadline."
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