Livermore Lab gets new interim chief

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Mar 16, 2006 | by Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

A 34-year veteran nuclear weaponeer took the helm of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Wednesday as the lab's interim director for at least 17 months as contractors vie to unseat the University of California as lab operator and weapons scientists compete for the first new H-bomb designs in 20 years.

Weapons physicist George Miller, 61, led Livermore's nuclear bomb scientists during some of the last bomb-design competitions with counterparts at Los Alamos during the Cold War.

Miller said he will bring an "informal" management style to the $1.8 billion-a-year weapons design lab.

"That's just the kind of person I am, but I believe strongly in delegating authority," he said. "I believe in empowering individuals and teams to do their jobs, and I oversee -- I take their temperature -- but let them do their jobs."

Miller went straight into weapons work out of graduate school at William and Mary College and spent his career at Livermore, except for a one-year stint advising former Secretary of Energy James Watkins on nuclear weapons. Much of his career was spent in Livermore's B Division, home to the weaponeers most steeped in the physics of thermonuclear ignition and burn.

He is known as blunt, forceful proponent of weapons work and in the early 1990s argued strenuously against a halt to explosive nuclear testing. In years since, he added his voice to worries that the nation's Cold War-era nuclear weapons are degrading with age and eventually could cease to be reliable.

Miller will lead the lab at least until September 2007, when the University of California's current management contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration to run Livermore ends. By then, federal officials will have decided whether a UC/Bechtel National-led team will take over management or some combination of the 20 other contractors who have said they are interested.

The university still is weighing who will lead the UC/Bechtel bid and, if the bid is successful, run Livermore. Miller brushed aside queries Wednesday about whether he wants the job as the lab's permanent director.

"Right now, I'm not focusing on that," he said. "That's not my job. My job is to run the laboratory, the UC and the Bechtel team will put together a separate team to run the future operations of the laboratory."

In 2000, when Livermore officials revealed to the U.S. Energy Department that its largest single project, the National Ignition Facility, was years behind schedule and more than $1 billion over budget, the University of California turned to Miller to save the giant fusion laser.

Then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson was incensed at earlier mismanagement of the project, and lawmakers in Congress looked at the big laser's budget, which had more than doubled. Meanwhile, Livermore executives had promised to achieve what eluded all other scientists worldwide in 40 years of trying -- a self-sustaining fusion reaction producing more energy than went into triggering the fusion.

"People could have been easily distracted," said University of California, Berkeley earth scientist Raymond Jeanloz, an adviser to the university on its weapons work. "At many points you could have seen people walking away, but he kept people really energized and focused on the goal.

"He really did an amazing job in pulling together the NIF project in a difficult time in the history of that project," Jeanloz said.

"The good news is that even if one is not a fan of NIF, I think he made sure that the American taxpayer did not pay an extra dollar for cost overruns."

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.