LANL: The Real Story

This is the last post to LANL, The Real Story . 869,847 visitors, 3,274,719 page views as of today.

This blog will remain on-line for some as yet undetermined period, but I have turned off the ability to comment on existing posts, and there will be no more submissions accepted. The Los Alamos Historical Society has requested that I burn a copy of the blog to DVD so that they could archive it, and I will do this. In addition, I may install a stand-alone version of the blog on computer at the Los Alamos Museum where visitors will be allowed to browse a "live" copy of LTRS, but not make any modifications to it. Details for doing this have not yet been worked out.

There is one person whom I have to thank for having provided me with the incentive to start this blog: George P. Nanos. Were it not for his incredibly ill thought out string of management actions, to include his flawed and precipitous decision to shut the entire laboratory down in July, 2004 for what ultimately became a period of 7 months for some organizations, I might still be working at LANL.

I hope that the open discussion environment provided here produced some good. Many of the problems that have existed at LANL were thoroughly dissected; hopefully that discussion will result in improvements being implemented. DOE, Bechtel, BWXT, WG, UCOP, LM, NG, and a whole host of other government and corporate entities read this blog on a daily basis, so if improvements are not made at LANL, it will not be for lack of knowing about the need.

In my opinion, the best news story to have been written about LANL in the past 1 1/2 years was the piece entitled "A Good Enough Performance" that appeared in the June 15, 2006 edition of The Economist. That article provides a calm, rational basis for predicting what changes are likely in store for Los Alamos in coming years. The post containing that article immediately follows this one.

Many thanks to Brad for his assistance in maintaining the blog, and to the numerous contributors (no, Kevin: we are not a small, yet highly vocal group of malcontents, we were a large, yet highly vocal group of malcontents) who provided much of the thoughtful material that was presented here.

Finally, no one responded to my request for those who were interested to send in an essay that described why their site should be considered as a follow-on to this one. So, either there is no longer a need for this kind of discussion forum, or no one is willing to maintain one. On that note, then, we will now return you to your regular programming.

--Doug