Labs On The Naughty List

Two watchdog organizations don't want to see the state's two national labs get their taxpayer-funded Christmas bonuses this year.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Washington DC-based Project On Government Oversight (POGO) wrote two letters to the federal Department of Energy this month asking it to block or reduce upcoming incentive awards to both Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sandia National Laboratories.

In LANL's case, the advocacy groups want incentives to be cut at least in half. For Sandia, they'd like to see no incentives.

Both private contractors that run the labs—Los Alamos National Security and Sandia Corporation—are eligible for incentives in end-of-the-year performance reviews.

"It's an incentive to do their job well," says Scott Kovac, a research director at Nuclear Watch.

And both advocacy groups do not, to say the least, think that the labs are doing a good job. "Both are misbehaving more than normal," Kovac says.

LANL made headlines this year when one of its waste drums stored in the state's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) ruptured and leaked radiation. The result means WIPP is closed indefinitely and will cost $500 million to reopen.

Sandia Corporation also made unpleasant headlines this year after the Department of Energy accused the private contractor, which is owned by military for-profit giant Lockheed Martin Corporation, of hiring Heather Wilson to lobby Washington to score a lucrative no-bid contract to continue running Sandia National Laboratories.

The DOE report criticized the hiring of Wilson, a former congresswoman with close ties to defense, as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Wilson denied that she worked as a lobbyist.

"These big contractors just get away with murder," Peter Stockton, a senior investigator at POGO, tells SFR.

Los Alamos is eligible for up to $40 million in incentives. Sandia is eligible for up to $9.8 million.

Santa Fe Reporter