Head of Troubled Los Alamos Lab Resigns
The former Navy admiral hired two years ago to fix security and safety breaches in the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory resigned Friday, amid continuing tumult and political controversy.
G. Peter Nanos, director of the lab, took credit in a statement Friday for restoring order and strengthening the 14,000-employee organization, but critics said the massive facility on a remote plateau in New Mexico was in greater disarray than ever and deserved to be shut down.
The lab, managed by the University of California since the invention of the atomic bomb during World War II, plays a central role in assuring the safety of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile for the Department of Energy and produces a small number of plutonium bomb components at a high-security facility.
Nanos, a retired vice admiral, tried to rein in what critics called a cowboy culture and to give scientists a dose of Navy discipline. Instead, he triggered a rebellion within some of the technical staff. An Internet petition calling for his resignation was signed by dozens of scientists, though most did so anonymously.
UC named Robert W. Kuckuck, a nuclear physicist retired from another UC-managed facility -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California -- as interim director. Livermore is the nation's second nuclear weapons design center. Kuckuck said in an interview that he expected to run Los Alamos for the next eight months, until UC's contract to operate the lab ended. UC officials are deciding whether to compete for the next contract.
Officials at UC praised Nanos, who will leave May 16, and said his decision was voluntary.
Nanos said in a written statement that he was leaving to work at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Pentagon organization that handles nuclear proliferation, testing and disarmament issues. A spokesman at the agency said Nanos did not yet have a job title but would "help plan and administer research and development directions."
Nanos was not available for interviews Friday.
When he took over at Los Alamos in January 2003, the lab was mired in financial mismanagement and allegations that its internal security was riddled with holes.
Nanos had promised to implement tough policies to fix those problems and gained strong support in Congress, but last year a series of security breaches resulted in the lab being shut down for much of the year.
