The man the University of California hired as director two years
ago to reform the problem-ridden Los Alamos National Laboratory
announced his resignation Friday during a critical time in the
UC’s potential bid for the extension of its current
management contract.
Robert Kuckuck, a nuclear physicist and an experienced
laboratory administrator, will replace Director Pete Nanos. Kuckuck
is expected to serve as the lab’s interim director until
September, when the UC’s current management contract
expires.
Nanos’ resignation comes at a time when the UC Board of
Regents must decide whether to compete for the new management
contract of the lab. If the regents vote to bid for the lab after
reviewing the final Request for Proposal (due out later this
month), they may face tough competition from defense contractors
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
In a departing memo to employees, Nanos said he believes the UC
Board of Regents will bid for the lab and that he is confident the
university will win.
“We are now considered to be a laboratory with both great
science as well as strong business and operations
capabilities,” Nanos said.
The UC has managed Los Alamos for over 50 years, but the
Department of Energy opened the bidding for the lab’s new
management contract due to a series of recent financial, security
and safety scandals at Los Alamos. Further, some congressmen have
recently questioned the value of keeping the lab open.
During his two years as director, Nanos reduced costs associated
with scientific research, reshaped the lab’s organizational
structure, and sought to decrease security and safety risks at the
laboratory. But Nanos encountered many critics along the way. A
complete shutdown of classified work at the lab over the summer
cost the lab millions of dollars, and some employees considered
Nanos to have a harsh style of management.
Despite Nanos’ turbulent two years, UC President Robert
Dynes said in a memo to Los Alamos employees that Nanos’
strong policies and procedures have helped place the UC in a highly
competitive position to bid for a new management contract.
UC spokesman Chris Harrington said the decision to bid for Los
Alamos depends on the UC Board of Regents, but that Kuckuck’s
background in management and science should be well received.
Kuckuck obtained his doctorate degree in applied science from UC
Davis and started his career as an experimental physicist at the
UC-managed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Since then, he has served as deputy director of Lawrence
Livermore, as well as principal deputy administrator for the
National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the
Department of Energy which oversees Los Alamos. In December 2003,
he began working for the UC Office of the President as a senior
adviser on laboratory oversight issues.
But complicating a potential bid by the UC might be
Kuckuck’s expressed desire to retire after the current
contract expires in September, possibly leaving the UC without a
director experienced with Los Alamos if it does win the
contract.
Kuckuck was appointed by Dynes, who said in a statement that
Kuckuck’s familiarity with the university as well as the
laboratory makes him an excellent choice for director.
“Bob’s expertise in nuclear weapons and his
fundamental understanding of how strong management and science must
coexist in a national laboratory will be invaluable to the ongoing
and important work of the lab,” Dynes said.
Despite the security and safety problems that have beset the lab
during Nanos’ term as director, Dynes also praised Nanos for
his work in a statement, saying that the former director “has
done a remarkable job under extraordinary pressures and
circumstances these past two years.”
Nanos, who took over as director in early 2003 when the lab was
suffering from financial mismanagement scandals under its previous
director, promised to reform Los Alamos during his tenure.However,
the lab continued to have problems.
Last summer, Nanos suspended all classified activities at the
lab due to security concerns when two classified computer disks
were believed to be missing. During the shutdown, Nanos tried to
reform what he believed to be a problem of “culture”
within the lab in which individuals believed they did not need to
follow all safety and security rules.
Though an investigation revealed that the disks did not exist, a
restart of highly classified work at the lab took several
months.
Security and safety risks were reduced at the lab because of the
shutdown and tightening of security and safety regulations that
followed, but the reduction came at a cost that has been estimated
from $100 million (according to the Los Alamos director’s
office) to over $360 million (according to the National Nuclear
Security Administration, which owns the lab).
Many employees became frustrated with Nanos’ style of
management during his two years as director. They have criticized
Nanos and management practices at the lab in thousands of mostly
anonymous posts to an Internet blog set up by Doug Roberts, a
computer scientist at Los Alamos. Many of the posts from Los Alamos
staff members claimed that Nanos chose to transfer blame to the
employees and that workers at the lab felt intimidated by the
director.
In a statement announcing his decision to leave Los Alamos for a
Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Washington, D.C., Nanos said the
laboratory’s staff “will always have my deepest and
most heartfelt respect and admiration.”
But despite Nanos’ departing comments, posts on the Los
Alamos blog celebrated the announcement of Nanos’ resignation
and expressed hope for changes at the lab under new interim
director Kuckuck.
“I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the
people at the lab are willing to see what (Kuckuck) is going to be
like. We’re interested in working with him to correct some of
the problems at the lab,” Roberts said.
In a statement, Kuckuck expressed interest in connecting with
the staff of Los Alamos and working with the scientists at the
lab.