The competition for a multibillion-dollar contract to manage the troubled Los Alamos National Laboratory is beginning after a week in which the northern New Mexico facility was hit with criticism for its record of safety lapses.
The National Nuclear Security Administration on Tuesday posted online its intent to conduct a competition for the management and operation contract. The agency is expected to release more details about the request for proposals in the coming weeks.
Lab Director Charlie McMillan told employees in an internal memo that the work done at Los Alamos will transcend the contract changeover.
"We must continue to execute our national security mission safely and securely while the NNSA works to complete their process," he wrote.
The current $2.2 billion contract for Los Alamos National Security LLC to manage the lab ends in 2018. Some critics have said the bidding process will offer an opportunity to make changes at Los Alamos.
Greg Mello with the watchdog organization Los Alamos Study Group said the present contract model separates authority from responsibility. He suggested the federal government have more of a role in operating the lab with the help of one or more private contractors.
"Accidents and shutdowns will be inevitable until NNSA can start exerting sufficient authority, including and especially budget authority, at LANL," Mello said.
On Friday, federal officials announced an investigation into the lab's improper shipment of nuclear material to other federal facilities around the country via a commercial cargo plane.
This follows other reports about the mishandling of plutonium and radioactive waste at Los Alamos, home to some of the nation's top nuclear scientists and other researchers.
Birthplace of the atomic bomb, the lab has struggled for years to address management and oversight issues along with more recent safety concerns.
A series published by the Center for Public Integrity cites numerous internal reports and other documents outlining federal regulators' concerns about safety lapses at the lab over the years, including a plutonium spill last summer and workers handling plutonium rods in a way that could have been disastrous.
The center this week also detailed workplace hazards at Los Alamos, Sandia National Laboratories and other labs that make up the U.S. nuclear complex, suggesting that lax oversight along with light penalties have contributed to a weak safety culture at the labs.
Federal records obtained by the center show numerous instances in which the contractors committed new safety infractions, even after being hit with financial penalties for malfeasance. Experts say the situation suggests the contractors are building the fines and penalties into their economic models.
At Los Alamos, the criticism has intensified as the contract competition begins and as work ramps up to produce a key component for the nation's nuclear weapons cache.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry testified before Congress last week that the lab is on track to resume the production of plutonium cores used to trigger the explosions in nuclear bombs.
Los Alamos officials have said the plutonium facility is operating safely and that improvements have been made in recent years.
The lab also has struggled to rebuild its reputation following a 2014 chemical reaction that stemmed from the inappropriately packaging a barrel of radioactive waste. That caused a radiation leak at the government's only underground nuclear waste repository that led to costly recovery work and a backlog in the nation's multibillion-dollar program for cleaning up waste from decades of research and bomb-making.
There have also been reports that Los Alamos failed more than once in recent months to accurately document and label hazardous liquid that was shipped to a disposal facility in Colorado.
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