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Los Alamos blogger to shut down site

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
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Stephen Shankland
2 min read

A blogger whose Internet site became a forum for Los Alamos National Laboratory employees to vent about management problems said he's shutting the site down a half year from now.

Doug Roberts, who retired from LANL in 2005 after working at the New Mexico laboratory for 20 years, said Monday he'll shut down his LANL: The Real Story site on July 1. Roberts launched the site Dec. 28, 2004, as a place to publish letters critical of lab management that the lab's internal newsletter refused.

The blog drew national media attention as an aggregation of often anonymous complaints about lab director George "Pete" Nanos, who resigned in May. Since then, attention has shifted to other management concerns.

The University of California has managed LANL under contract from the Energy Department and its predecessors since 1943. However, that's changing somewhat: DOE sought bids for the newest management contract and on Dec. 21, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced the winner: a corporation called Los Alamos National Security that combines the university with Bechtel National, BWX Technologies and Washington Group International. The competition came from a University of Texas-Lockheed Martin partnership--the team Roberts favored--and discussion of the new management situation dominated the blog.

Interested parties will have to find a new forum in a few months, though.

"I did promise to keep the blog up and running until after the new contractor takes over on June 1, and I will still do that. After July 1, though, I will shut it down," Roberts said in a posting Tuesday. "Between now and July 1 I plan to gradually disengage from LANL, the blog, all the troubles on the Hill (Los Alamos); the whole enchilada. It's way past time to put Los Alamos in the rear view mirror."