ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL RIPS NNSA PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The government shutdown hasn’t stopped criticism of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s project management record, and the Albuquerque Journal weighed in yesterday, suggesting that top NNSA officials should be furloughed because of their project management woes. “Runaway regulation, excessive bureaucratic red tape and incompetence are so clogging the work pipeline that the lab and the National Nuclear Security Administration that oversees it are virtually ineffective when it comes to getting some very large and very expensive projects off the dime,” the Journal said in an Oct. 7 editorial. The editorial was sparked by a recent DOE Inspector General report on the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility at Los Alamos, which is 10 years behind schedule and $129 million over budget, but not limited to the facility. “If this was an isolated problem, it might be excused away, but it’s just the latest in a long list of behind-schedule, over-budget projects,” the paper said, citing the deferred Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and the botched Nuclear Materials Safeguards and Security Upgrade Project. “Such a pathetic history would be enough to send most American workers to the unemployment line,” the paper said. “But the NNSA has continuously turned a deaf ear to Congress’s calls for tightening up its game. Maybe it’s time to permanently furlough top NNSA officials if they can’t get the job—virtually any job it seems—done on time and under budget.”