The Demise of the Department of Energy: A Wishful Dream
I wrote this paper in the late l993 and early 1994 time frame and sent copies of it to several California and Utah senators and comgressmen with no response. The problems are still with us but have been compounded as government continues to grow along with ignorance, apathy, and the I want something for nothing attitude. The solution remains the same, elimination of the bureaucratic quagmire.
Ideologically I am conservative, having been reared in rural America by loving and concerned parents who taught me both by precept and example the values of honesty, morality and hard work; values that dictate within my person a trust of others, a sense of right and wrong, and a hope that my efforts will be rewarded according to their merit. This inherent doctrine apparently led to a concern that there were things seriously, if not critically, wrong within and about our government. This apprehension came to a head in the 1989 to 1991 time frame when I was serving as a technical consultant on nuclear arms control at the Department of Energy in Washington DC. While engaged in bureaucratic mischief, it became obvious that things were amiss in our nation's government and after extensive consideration of possible solutions, I came to the conclusion that the only practical fix for this convoluted problem was through a massive downsizing of the federal government accomplished by closing and consolidating agencies and by eliminating 50 to 80% of the bureaucrats and staff members that are currently prowling and stalking the hallways and streets of Washington DC. Obviously, these concerns and their manifestation in a voice of warning are not peculiar to me. The multitude of concerned citizens is huge and the source of their anxiety is well documented as is witnessed by the Ross Perot movement 'United We Stand America', the Peter Grace organization 'Concerned Citizens Against Government Waste', the Martin Gross books 'The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z' and' A Call for Revolution', and so on. This great nation has many serious problems, yet, The Administration and The Congress seem obsessed with the notion that Health Care Reform is the number one issue facing this nation. This notion is fallacious. Why? Because the polls clearly indicate that the most critical issues are:
1. Government Reform (i.e. downsizing government).
2. Judicial Reform (i.e. crime, excessive lawsuits & etc).
3. Welfare Reform (i.e. restoring dignity to the poor).
Furthermore, in order to deal with Judicial Reform, Welfare Reform and with nearly everyone of the other serious problems we face, requires that we first deal with this nation's number one problem, Government Reform. In other words, concurrent with the first step toward a solution to any of the problems we face, is the need to downsize the associated federal bureaucracy and thereby greatly restrict government involvement. To establish credibility for myself and to provide light for the pathway to Government Reform, I have chosen for critique an agency with which I have had a great deal of experience, the Department of Energy.
The time has come to close down the Department of Energy. This assertion could be construed as brash or even downright irresponsible, but obviously I believe this statement to be neither irresponsible nor brash and for the following reasons. First of all, I am not advocating the closing of our National Laboratories, on the contrary I know these institutions have capable people and unique technologies which I believe will fulfill critical national needs. Second, I am not advocating the demise of our National Nuclear program; in fact, I believe a strong nuclear program is in our nation's interest. What I an advocating is the demise of an enormous bumbling bureaucratic structure, to be replaced with entities having less than one-tenth the staff and armed with clear, concise and meaningful goals. To accomplish this closure of DOE, the Nuclear Mission of our nation would be transferred to a new small office, the Office of Nuclear Affairs, and the remaining DOE missions of merit would be transferred to the Department of The Interior; clearly missions lacking merit and those redundant with other agencies would be terminated.
The advantages of an Office of Nuclear Affairs are legion but for the sake of brevity I will restrict them to a precious few. The first advantage is the consolidation of nuclear effort among agencies: At a recent (March 1994) International meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, called to discuss a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, several nations sent delegations that typically consisted of about 5 people. The United States, on the other hand, sent a delegation of 25 plus people. Why you ask? The reason is that six different US agencies felt that they needed to be represented, each by delegations of approximately 5. The solution to this wasteful approach is clear. Remove all responsibility for Nuclear Affairs from the CIA, the State Department, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Energy and then place that responsibility in the newly created Office of Nuclear Affairs. With the responsibility restricted to one office, I suspect that our delegation size would shrink along with our costs and that our ability to negotiate rapidly and rationally would grow at least a reciprocal proportion. The second advantage is the simplification of mission: The Director of the Office of Nuclear Affairs would have one clear cut mission, which would be both defined and funded by The Congress. The third advantage is the consolidation of the bureaucracies involved with the nuclear effort within the DOE: Having served 3 years on assignment at DOE Headquarters as a technical advisor, I developed a clear vision of DOE's role in Nuclear Affairs. In essence the DOE's role is nothing more than a conduit for money to the National Laboratories; with the remote DOE Operation Offices at best redundant appendages that, unfortunately, serve no useful purpose other than to provide meaningless jobs for their employees (see the attached appendix A). It is the National Laboratories that provide all of DOE's expertise in Nuclear Affairs. Therefore, the prudent approach in establishing a National Office of Nuclear Affairs would be to staff it with a Director, an Office Manager and a skeleton crew of DOE bureaucrats. The DOE technical expertise within this office would come from the National Laboratories in the form of experts on temporary assignment. To complete the staffing of this new Office of Nuclear Affairs; the other agencies, which previously operating their own nuclear programs, would send a few people to liaison between this new office and their own nuclear related programs. Other entities like the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which serve no useful purpose, would be closed down. At this point, take time and ponder the magnitude of savings and the simplicity of operation established by such a reorganization. Then, using your thoughts, apply those same principles throughout the whole of the federal government.
Appendix A
This appendix contains a paper that I prepared and then presented, at the Nevada Operations Office of the Department of Energy, at a meeting called by DOE to discuss 'Lessons Learned' as a result of conducting the Non- Proliferation Experiment, NPE. The NPE was a one kiloton conventional explosion detonated in close proximity to several previously detonated nuclear explosions of similar yield. The primary purpose for this test was to evaluate possible methods of discriminating between nuclear and conventional explosions. Also included in this appendix is my evaluation of the discussions that took place during that meeting held in Las Vegas, Nevada in late October, 1993.
Perceptions from the NPE Lessons Learned, Meeting of October 1993
The NPE Lessons Learned meeting called and administered by DOE Nevada served mostly as a forum for myself and a few others to vent some of our frustrations. However, there were certain aspects of the discussions that provided some very interesting insight; insight into what the DOE Nevada Operations Office is all about. The essence of the discussions, to which I refer, is the conclusion that DOE should have had one person in charge of the NPE. In my lessons learned paper, I alluded to this need using the analogy of the problem associated with twelve fishermen fishing the same fishing hole (i. e. no one catches any fish). At the beginning of these discussions there appeared to be tentative agreement with the position that DOE needed to have one individual in charge of the overall NPE operation. However, as the discussions continued it became obvious that no one at DOE could possible be in charge of such an experiment. Why? The answer to that question surfaced in the tepid atmosphere of the debate. When one DOE bureaucrat argued that a DOE Nevada person should have been in charge at project conception to interact with DOE Headquarters, it was pointed out that a scientific project like this one evolves and that knowledgeable scientists were needed to interact and negotiate with the approval and funding people in Washington; our conclusion was that there was no need for DOE Nevada people to be involved in the conception stage. The next conjecture by the bureaucrats was that once approval and funding were committed, then the DOE Nevada person should take over the reins. However, this proposal was short lived when it was pointed out that, because of the nature of research, this experiment and experiments like it change and often dramatically as they go forward; thus once again we discovered that there was no need for DOE Nevada involvement in the management of the project. The revelation that came to me while listening to these discussions was clear and to the point. There was no logical reason for DOE Nevada to be involved in any way in this project; this insight coupled with my evaluation of their performance trying to manage the NPE (see the Lessons Learned paper) cast that conviction in concrete.
DOE Nevada is ostensibly the manager of the Nevada Test Site and of all activities conducted there. However, as I will illustrate, that management. is in name only and the attempted implementation produces expensive redundancy and outrageous waste of both human and monetary resources. My conclusion is that DOE Nevada should be closed down and that the function of managing the NTS turned over to a small committee made up of representative from the three National Laboratories that use the Site. This committee would report directly to Headquarters in Washington DC (hopefully the new Office of Nuclear Affairs) and would be charged with coordinate all activities at the NTS. Furthermore, this management. function would not be a new one for the Labs because they have been performing it in every aspect except name.
The Non-Proliferation Experiment: Lessons Learned, 26 Oct 1993
The purpose of this presentation is not to vent frustrations but rather to express meaningful concerns that others, rightly or wrongly, refuse to articulate. As I proceed, I suspect that much of what I say will offend a goodly number of you but let me convey to you that my purpose is not to offend anyone. My purpose in this discourse is to evaluate the conduct of an experiment that has consumed nearly a year and a half of my time and as part of that evaluation I will be attacking a flawed system in which well meaning people are encouraged to make ridiculous decisions. As a precursor to my expose' on bureaucratic bungling, I would like to spend some time singing the accolades of some of the people for whom I have the highest professional respect.
First there are the two pioneers in this project Cliff Olsen and Byron Ristvet whose countless hours of research formed the basis for the experimental proposal. Byron probably has more time invested in this project than any other individual and his contributions to its success are immeasurable. The quiet contributions of Larry Gabriel and his N- Tunnel crews and the contributions of our patient and valiant vendor Alpha-IRECO are noteworthy, but the success in conducting this experiment must be attributed to the leadership of one courageous and magnanimous individual, our Test Director, Bernie Roth. Burdened and bruised but never broken, Bernie and his able crew persevered to a successful end. While others pandered the bureaucrats in their almost vindictive posture, Bernie stood his ground to gain universal respect. And on that climatic night, shot time, when bureaucrats offered themselves for praise Bernie stood modestly in the background with his hands still steady on the reins. Able leadership is in short supply and outstanding leadership is an extremely rare commodity. Bernie Roth's leadership on the NPE was by any measure outstanding.
On the measurements side there are countless heroes and if I attempted to name them all, many would be left out. However, I would like to mention a few to emphasize that quality science can still go forward, albeit slowly and expensively, in the shadows of a bureaucratic quagmire. The NPE measurements program was multi-participant and perhaps one of the most positive, if not the most positive, lesson learned was that with a little coordinating effort, the Labs, Universities, and others can cooperate effectively to produce outstanding results. An example of that cooperation is illustrated by the efforts of the Los Alamos CORRTEX team of Roger Hill, Tom McKown, Keith Alrick et al. Recognizing our need for data to characterize the blasting agent and to verify that the explosive performed as expected, the Los Alamos team volunteered to provide CORRTEX and ASM gage measurements. These data as it turned out are extremely critical to establishing an equation of state and energy yield for the blasting agent. So in every sense of the word these researchers are heroes.
Having praised in a general way those who deserve praise, I will now turn my attention to what I hope will be construed as constructive criticism of the perpetrators of the warts that surfaced during the conduct of this experiment. Keep in mind that even though these criticisms may have the appearance of a personnel attack on individuals, that is not my intent. The intent is to point out, as lessons learned, that the bureaucratic systems that encumber us and the nation as a whole are literally bankrupting this nation through a distortion of priorities and the accompanying waste of valuable resources, both human and monetary. Our fate as a nation will be no different than that of the communist world, if we continue to refuse to stem the tide of waste. There is a virus in our midst and there are those of us that are carriers and there are those of us that are panderers to its dastardly deeds. I say let's wake up, let's use this experience with the NPE as a basis to put our houses in order and thereby recognize what our priorities must be. Self interest over national interest becomes moot if we live in anarchy or if the majority of us end up being poor.
I will begin my expose' on a nostalgic note. What we now call the Non-Proliferation Experiment had its beginning on July 2nd 1992 when Jim Hannon called an 11 AM meeting wherein I was "railroaded" into the role of Chief Coordinator for the Chemical Kiloton Experiment, a project that had just received funding from DOE Headquarters. On July 8th we met with representatives from the other Labs and agreed upon the purposes and goals of the experiment and laid the groundwork for a meaningful measurements program. On July 31 st I was informed that all sorts of approvals were needed before this experiment could go forward and that a pre-approval meeting with DOE/NV was scheduled for August 11th. At this point funding was fixed at $3.8 million to LLNL and $150,000 to LANL; all other funding was to come from existing programs. On August 11 th, I received the first solid indication of the quagmire that was before us. After describing the experiment and its purposes to a room full of bureaucrats at the August 11th meeting, I began answering their questions. Many of the questions were focused on the explosive and I assured those present that this material was a blasting agent commonly used allover the world and that the explosion products were gases that we breath every day, namely water vapor, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Notwithstanding my explanation, one bureaucrat insisted that there were substantial environmental concerns that needed to be addressed. To this comment I responded, "if you consider that we are firing this shot in amongst 22 previous nuclear explosions, then to me your concern is analogous to the head scavenger being concerned if I were to drop a candy wrapper at the local garbage dump". And in my mind I thought to my self, "lets get real",
In early September we firmed up our plans that called for a calibration shot in early November and the big bang on January 29th, 1993. We also started the explosive procurement procedures and began formulating an Operating Safety Procedure with the help of Bernie Roth and his talented crew. In early October we submitted a Test Plan and a draft OSP. On October 29th the explosive vendors visited N- Tunnel to evaluate possible bids and early the next morning the 300 Ib C4 calibration experiment was successfully detonated. At this point in time, everything seemed to be moving forward smoothly. But our euphoria was short lived, because before the day was over an accident occurred during the drill back of the calibration shot and three workers were injured. And as fate would have it, this unfortunate accident was the catalyst for some of the most asinine decisions known to man. The first and certainly one of the foremost of these decisions, which I heard about second handed from what should be a good source and which was verified by subsequent actions, was that "no approval will be given to go forward with the CKE until everyone's safety questions are answered". Note that it's not just the safety concerns of the people who are directly involved that are to be answered, it's everyone's concerns. Needless to say, I was fit to be tied. Such a requirement is absurd, nevertheless our bureaucrats had us labor 10 months and waste countless tax-payer dollars trying 10 find this end of the rainbow. I know, some of you are wondering why I am classifying such a wholesome sounding requirement as the "desire to satisfy everyone's safety concerns" as absurd. The reason is that there were those who wanted to get themselves involved in the NPE who had a vested interest in stretching out the experiment for as long as was possible; and it doesn't take too much imagination to figure out who might be so motivated. Apparently unconscious of any potential problem, our bureaucrats implemented this order with veritable gusto as they quickly formed a panel of experts to evaluate safety of the CKE and then took more than a month to resume mining operations because their detectors kept picking up a few molecules of CO. In the mean time, LLNL Procurement had done a marvelous job of placing the order for explosives having miraculously breached their own bureaucratic barriers. Thus we were able to schedule a Vendor Meeting on December 11th at which time we were to answer all outstanding safety questions, so that we could complete the SP and SAR and get on with the experiment; which according to REECo could still be fired in early March in spite of the recent "foot dragging" employed by our bureaucracy. The Vendor Meeting on December 11 th appeared to be a huge success. There were over 60 people in attendance and every question that anyone in attendance had was answered. Alpha-IRECO did an exceptional job of provid1ng clearly stated answers and I naively thought to myself "now our safety problems are resolved; anyone that was listening can see that these materials are safe, are environmentally clean and are under the care of experts and the only thing outstanding is the approval of the Moran cars for transporting the blasting agent, which is a trivial matter". Unfortunately, lack of listening was the problem; none of the first line bureaucrats who are charged with making the approval decision were in attendance, instead they sent their 2nd or 3rd level emissaries some of whom used a good part of the day trying to catch up on their sleep. With the nuclear program shut down and the CKE( now NPE) one of the few things going on at the NTS, this failure to attend such an important meeting must rank fairly high on a list of bureaucratic bungling or considering the public trust, dereliction of duty seems more appropriate.
The bliss of a peaceful holiday season was rudely interrupted when in early January, I found the CKE project from all appearances hopelessly bogged down in the bureaucratic quagmire caused by that absurd decision to answer everyone's safety concerns. I was livid and attempted to attack this nonsense head on. Finally, in mid-February I was told to silence my criticism of our bureaucrats and that if I wanted to document the problems and my criticism of the bureaucracy, I had license to do that after we detonated the explosive. The position of my fearful leaders, I mean fearless leaders was, that any griping now would be counterproductive. This position seems prudent to the casual observer, but in actuality this position, taken by the Lab, is one of placating "The Boss" (in this case placating is a euphemism for pandering). The problem with this logic is that the bureaucracy is not "The Boss", the bureaucracy is the servant and like any servant needs some direction. I was willing to provide that direction, but our management even to the highest levels was not supportive, their interest was in the process--get the experiment done, cater to bureaucratic wishes and don't worry about time and money, just make a good show. While all of this was going on the explosive chamber was mined, the instrumentation was emplaced and the tunnel was shut down for the long wait. In other words, by early March we were ready for the explosive to be emplaced, and in a sensible setting would have detonated that explosive sometime in March, but because of senseless bureaucratic paperwork (some of which I will describe) the actual firing date was delayed six full months at a cost of literally millions of tax-payer dollars.
I labeled the post accident decision by our bureaucrats to answer everyone's safety concerns as absurd, because even though on the surface that desire sounds good, my fear was that in reality it would lead to answering safety concerns that would go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Not surprisingly, my fears were fulfilled in spades. Let's consider one example of the ridiculous, which was the request for SAR and asp procedures for transporting ammonium nitrate, diesel fuel and emulsion across NTS roads, when double trailer gasoline trucks regularly traverse those same roads without such written procedures. Notwithstanding this double standard, what are the odds of a problem arising that those procedures would in any way alleviate? Lottery odds or worse I can guarantee. Lottery odds mean different things to different folks; to ordinary folks lottery odds mean one chance in ten or twenty million but to the feeble-minded and the visionaries, lottery odds means the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which is just one more wager away. In my usage of lottery odds, I mean one chance in ten or twenty million. So going back to the example of the requested procedures; I submit to you, if that request isn't waste and violation of the public trust, then I don't know the definition of waste nor do I know the meaning of public trust. An example of the sublime was the request for written procedures in case of an earthquake. When I heard about that request and after I had finished counting to ten very slowly, I suggested that while preparing those procedures why not write procedures for the case of a possible meteor impact and to cover a possible invasion by extra-terrestrial beings. Interestingly enough, I had always wondered what going from the ridiculous to the sublime really meant, now I know. The basis upon which these requests were made boggles the mind, surely bureaucrats living in Las Vegas understand lottery odds and I suspect that, or I at least would hope that, none of them wager their own money on lottery odds. Yet as public servants they are willing to gamble tax-payer dollars, thousands of dollars at a shot, and waste dozens to thousands of hours of peoples time on evaluating safety concerns, where it is know ahead of time that the odds of an accident are far worse than lottery odds. I think our bureaucrats ought to be ashamed; I think we all ought to be ashamed of the waste of resources that has occurred on the NPE. That waste and waste like it, perpetrated by unconscionable bureaucracies, federal, state and local are robbing this country of its vitality. Those thousands that added up to millions of dollars that were frittered away on worse than lottery odd bets by our bureaucrats could have been used on research to answer the dozens of technical questions that will be surfaced as a result of the NPE measurements program, e. g. we could be conducting some additional conventional explosion experiments at the NTS. Or from another point of view, that wasted money could have been used to feed hungry children, educate the poor, clean up our waterways, mend our infrastructure or perhaps even applied to reducing the national debt.
Let me conclude by reiterating my intent and by making some recommendations. My intent in this expose' is to point out, as lessons learned, that the bureaucratic system that encumbers us is literally bankrupting this nation through a distortion of priorities and the accompanying waste of valuable resources, both human and monetary. Now I want to ask, can our fate be any different than that of the communist world, if we continue to refuse to stem the tide of waste and in many cases corruption. I say let's at least wake up at this level; let's use this experience with the NPE as a basis to put our individual houses in order and turn our focus to national interests over self interest before it's too late. Let me repeat, self interest over national interest becomes moot .if we live in anarchy or if we end up being poor. So what can our bureaucrats do to alleviate this problem? The answer to that question is easy to articulate but it's one many of you won't want to hear. Nevertheless, here is my answer. Our bureaucracy functions by sending a dozen folks to do the job of one; this is like having a dozen fishermen trying to fish one spot in a stream. The result is that the fishermen's lines all become tangled and the fishermen spend their entire day untangling their lines; the bottom line is that no one catches any fish. My recommendation to our bureaucracy is to downsize in a big way, in other words it's time to invoke Parkinson's Law in reverse. And then after the purge, I would recommend to those who are left that they take their public trust seriously and strive to make intelligent decisions, i. e. decisions that are in the national interest rather than in their own self interest.