In response to a safety violation and a supposed security breach this summer, Los Alamos National Laboratory has fired four people and punished eight others. In a 15 September memo to lab staff, LANL Director G. Peter Nanos wrote, “It is now time to begin conscientiously moving forward in a safe, secure and compliant manner. The period of the last several months marks a new beginning for this institution.” But many lab scientists, bitter about Nanos’s handling of the safety and security lapses, are skeptical about how new the beginning really is. “Nanos sowed the seeds of discontent, and there is now a lush garden,” says Rhonald Keinigs, a longtime LANL weapons scientist.
Nanos halted work across the lab in July, after two electronic storage devices containing classified data reportedly went missing and a student’s eye was damaged by a laser (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 57 9...
