It was announced to the public in a news release on Livermore Lab's website that,
Parney Albright announced today that he is stepping down as director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at the end of October 2013 to pursue his broader interests and contributions to the U.S. national security enterprise. Albright has served as Laboratory director since December 2011.
Albright also steps down as president of Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS), which manages the Laboratory for the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration.
LLNL News Release
While no details are given in the news release from the Lab, the rumor mill is in full swing that the LLC that manages the Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS) basically fired him because he does not "support" their favorite boondoggle and most expensive project, the National (non) Ignition Facility, enough. LLNS is a consortum made up of several large private contractors (Bechtel, Babcock & Wilcox, Batelle) and the University of California.
Apparently after he moved long time NIF Director, Ed Moses, off of the project, due to its persistent and inevitable failure, LLNS felt betrayed that Albright was not a big enough cheerleader for NIF, despite its lack of scientific achievement. It appears LLNS would rather have the lab go down with NIF (which has already spent nearly $8 billion federal dollars with very little to show for it) than bank on the other science and weapons programs that Albright attempted to promote evenly with NIF.
Of course these rumors could be totally flagrant, which is why I refer to them as rumors, but either way, it does not look good for a federal lab to abruptly loose its director of less than two years amid federal budget woes. Not to mention the Lab's nuclear weapons focus (84% of its funding is for nuclear weapons activities) is becoming more obsolete by the moment. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
