Labs

In an address to the press about the failed Christmas Day bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, President Barack Obama called on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to work with the national laboratories to on technology to detect explosives before explosives can get on airplanes.
Earlier this week, Congressman Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., wrote a [...]

A protracted and very partisan Senate skirmish has left hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans without unemployment benefits — an impasse that Democrats leaders are hoping to break this week.

Want to know what a top-secret truck moving “special nuclear materials” around the country looks like?
Check out this photo, which comes from a blog at the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. The photo was released after a Freedom of Information Act request from an environmental group.

U.S. Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-Albuquerque, spoke on the House floor today in favor of an amendment to an energy and water appropriations bill which would increase funding for research. Specifically, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funding would rise from six percent of the budgets of the country’s national laboratories — including Sandia and Los Alamos [...]

Congressman Ben Ray Lujan will have his first piece of legislation heard on the floor of the House this afternoon. The bill (HR 2729) would authorize funding for seven already-existing National Environmental Research Parks (NERPs), including one at Los Alamos National Labs (LANL).

Congressman Ben Ray Luján announced today that he introduced legislation designed to encourage environmental research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Oops!
That was the sound that accompanied the collective slap against the forehead from the nation’s national security community when news came out Tuesday that a 266-page report laying out details of the nation’s network of nuclear sites and programs was accidentally released publicly.

Contracts totaling more than $150 million in U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds had been signed in New Mexico so far, according to a federal database. The biggest winners: the operator of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, and an Alaska firm tapped to do repairs at Kirtland Air Force Base.

Los Alamos National Labs would get a seven percent decrease in their budget and Sandia Labs would get a slight increase in the proposed Barack Obama budget, according to John Fleck at the Albuquerque Journal.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has released an internal U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) memo that was highly critical of Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) and even threatened to pull funding for the facility if it didn’t improve its “chronic poor performance.”
But the problems appear to have already been corrected.

A 6-year old boy faces traffic court after refusing to wear his seat belt.
David Peet has caused his mother two traffic tickets because he refuses to wear a seat belt despite mom’s efforts to the contrary. As a result, a Valencia County judge has ordered the pint-sized traffic scofflaw to appear in his courtroom.

John Fleck, the Albuquerque Journal’s science/water/all-around-smart reporter, makes some trenchant observations and asks insightful questions in a post today about Los Alamos’ old plutonium lab.

U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M., announced in a press release today that $172 million in stimulus money will be spent at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, known as WIPP, in southern New Mexico near Carlsbad.

In a letter to the head of the U.S. Department of Energy, New Mexico’s junior senator urged diversification as a way to grow the role of Los Alamos and Sandia national labs.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is undergoing a month-long security review in the wake of reports that 69 computers are currently missing from the facility.