

But even though the timing of the news release suggested the layoffs were a direct consequence of the CMRR’s defunding, the lab has backpedaled from that assertion. At a March 13 public forum in Española, LANL Executive Director Richard Marquez said the CMRR defunding “doesn’t affect” the need to lay off employees, but added that, had the CMRR’s construction been funded, the number of employees the lab would need to cut “might have been a smaller range.” But when an audience member asked Marquez to give a number for that range, he said he couldn’t.





Maximum fee paid to the University of California when it was LANL’s operator: $8.5 million





Fee paid to Los Alamos National Security, the private conglomeration of companies that now operates LANL, in FY 2011: $74 million





$900 million is the amount spent on the CMRR so far, including construction of the Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building, meant to accompany the nuclear facility that is no longer being built. The RLUOB contains 20,000 square feet of lab space and a training facility. It goes into operation next month, and since the budget release, LANL has already been planning ways to adapt the building to the new circumstances. Although the RLUOB was designed as a support building for the CMRR, it can handle plutonium as well—as much as 8.4 grams at a time.