In yesterday's report on US Senator Martin Heinrich's roundtable discussion with educators and Los Alamos National Laboratory representatives, we mentioned a recent report by federal regulators which found safety procedures at LANL to be lacking.
That report was by the National Nuclear Security Administration on LANL’s performance in 2015. These annual report cards are prepared for each of the US taxpayer-funded national labs. They not only highlight areas of excellence and areas in need of improvement, they also determine how much the private contractors that operate national labs get paid. This year’s report was completed back in January, and was held back for five months.
Jay Coghlan, director of nuclear safety organization Nuclear Watch New Mexico, says there’s no good reason to have kept this information from the public for so long, especially when we’re footing the bill for LANL’s budget. KSFR’s Kate Powell checked in with Coghlan and brings us this report.