Energy Lab Finds ‘Lost’ Equipment

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says it has found all but $2 million of the $45 million worth of equipment reported by a congressional audit to be missing from the federal weapons and energy research facility.

The report by the General Accounting Office said 27,528 items, ranging from typewriters to microcomputers, were missing as of January. However, lab spokesman Jeff Garberson said Tuesday that the report is badly outdated and that an inventory search found most of the items.

Garberson said it is common for one scientist to borrow a personal computer from the office of another researcher and then to lend that equipment to a third person outside of formal inventory procedures. “It took some detective work to track it down. We’ve been doing that detective work and it’s been successful,” he said.

The search for the missing $2 million worth of equipment and materials, Garberson said, is “approaching the point of diminishing returns.” He said the missing items amounted to less than 1% of the lab’s $324-million inventory.

Lawrence Livermore, located in Livermore in Alameda County, is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by the University of California.

In hearings two years ago before a House subcommittee, there were allegations that government-owned equipment was being stolen from Livermore to finance purchases of illegal drugs. Asked to investigate, the GAO found it could not identify any losses of chemicals that could be used to make drugs.

The GAO also said it could not confirm if the laboratory was missing any highly explosive materials and could say only that the loss from the lab’s inventory of $10.2 million in precious metals was “low.”