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Two years ago, after six months of fighting off rival universities, the University of California was able to renew its contract with the most important laboratory in terms of the Manhattan Project.
Of course, the contract to the Los Alamos Lab was up for grabs because all the little snafus that occurred under the UC’s management.
Speaking of snafus, the LA Times reports that UC may have to pay more than half of the $5.8 million that it won to co-manage the lab. According to the Times, the $3 million fine that the Department of Energy is considering to assign UC is a record-breaker.
Why is DoE going to hand down such a hefty fine? It’s all because a former employee was able to walk out of the lab with a thumb drive (jump drive, USB drive, whatever you want to call it) that contained classified info. Who would have thought that such a little device can cause so many problems?
The UC said that it was going to appeal the decision, and it has been successful in the past.
UC dodged a $1.1 million fine after the National Nuclear Security Adminstration found more than a dozen safety violations at the Los Alamos Lab a few years ago. Berkeley was able to have the fines waived because it was considered a non-profit organization (really? Universities are non-profit?).
However this time the university claims that it shouldn’t be the only one responsible, especially since the new operating company, Los Alamos National Security, LLC, had already taken over the lab when the incident occurred.
“We are going to respond to the department on this matter,” said Chris Harrington, a spokesman for UC in Washington.
“Our response will point out that the university was no longer the sole manager of the laboratory when this incident occurred,” Harrington said.
Will this money come out of student pocketbooks, you ask? Harrington said that it won’t, which is good, because we don’t think students would be very happy with having to pay for the university’s fuck ups.
UC could get record nuclear fine [LA Times]
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