Next Los Alamos Lab Manager to Get Hefty Pay Hike

The federal government, aiming for stronger and more effective leadership at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said Thursday that it would pay the lab’s next manager as much as $79 million annually, about nine times the maximum yearly fee it paid the University of California to run the troubled facility.

UC, which made a maximum of $8.7 million a year to run the nuclear weapons research lab in New Mexico, has not decided whether to bid on the new contract, although its regents may vote on the issue as early as next week at a meeting scheduled in San Francisco.

In announcing contract specifications in the first competition to run the facility, Energy Department officials said they were prepared to pay the dramatically higher fee to draw on the best people and resources for the job.

“Good operations and good business are not the enemies of great science. They enable it,” said Tyler Przybylek, a former general counsel for the National Nuclear Security Administration and chairman of a panel that will evaluate the proposals. The NNSA is an Energy Department agency that oversees federal nuclear labs.

The agency expects the lab’s well-respected scientific capabilities to be maintained or enhanced under the new contract, he said.

UC has run Los Alamos for the government on an uncontested basis since 1943, but the Energy Department opened the contract to bids after an array of management, safety and security problems at the lab.

Much of the facility was shut down for seven months last year after the mistakenly reported loss of two computer disks containing classified information and a laser accident that injured an intern.

The lab’s director, G. Peter Nanos, resigned this month.

UC has been preparing for a possible bid, however, and last week announced it would team with engineering giant Bechtel National Inc. and two other firms in the effort.

Earlier, UC said it also would work with a coalition of New Mexico universities in any Los Alamos bid.

Under terms of the new deal, the contractor will be required to assume more risk and to create a stand-alone pension plan to replace UC’s retirement plan, the latter likely to be a point of concern for lab employees.

On Thursday, Michael R. Anastasio, who has been designated to lead UC’s Los Alamos effort, said in a prepared statement that the university was pleased the contract specifications had been released and the competition could begin.

But Anastasio, who also heads the other UC-run nuclear weapons research facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, did not indicate whether the contract’s details would sway the regents’ decision on Los Alamos.

Defense contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. have said they will compete for the contract, and the University of Texas is expected to join Lockheed’s bid.

The current contract expires in September but is likely to be extended for several months, according to the documents released Thursday.

Bidders have until July 19 to submit proposals, and the new, seven-year contract is expected to be awarded by Dec. 1.