LANL Director for Mission Operations Mark Davis speaks to Los Alamo County Council Tuesday evening in White Rock. Los Alamos Reporter screenshot

BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com

Los Alamos National Lab Deputy Director for Mission Operations Mark Davis told Los Alamos County Council Tuesday evening in White Rock, that, “The heart and soul of the nuclear enterprise is right here in Los Alamos”, citing a quote from NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams.

“When I last spoke to you I talked about the dynamic geopolitical position that we found ourselves in. It’s hard to believe that a year later the situation is even more dynamic than it was last year. LANL is at the forefront of the strategic deterrence efforts that our country is undertaking,” Davis said.

“We’re now entering what we at the Lab like to call ‘the fourth age of deterrence’, so with the end of the Cold War and the foregoing of nuclear testing, we were in what we call ‘the third age of deterrence’, which is stockpile stewardship. We maintained our stockpile and didn’t build any substantially new weapons, and kind of just maintained the status quo.” he said. “Now we’re entering what we call ‘stockpile modernization period’. Our country is endeavoring to update all three legs of the triad simultaneously, with a really huge undertaking.”

Davis said couple of key things are being done to accomplish that.

“We’re obviously leveraging artificial intelligence to help us do that work. There’s an increased focus on urgency and production and really a sense of urgency to work together and collaborate, both with our federal partners and the local communities,” he said.

Davis said 2025 was a very good year at the Lab.

“We accomplished a great deal and showed a lot of progress. We met our pit production requirements and we also had significant progress with LAP4, which is the capital project to upgrade and modernize our pit production facility. The analogy I like to use when describing that effort is, it’s like you’re flying a plane full of passengers while you’re upgrading the plane. We’ve done all the easy things; we’ve replaced the carpet, we’ve covered the seats, now we’re rebuilding the engines. That’s really what we’re doing in PF4, our plutonium pit facility, so it takes a lot of collaboration, a lot of teamwork, and we’re making great strides,” he said.

Davis noted that the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project started late last year is progressing quite well.

“It’s a huge project for us – bringing a third powerline up to Los Alamos, which will enable a lot of our AI efforts going forward. With the two lines that we have now we will be nearing capacity by 2028, so we need that third powerline to to really take us to the next level,” he said. “We also have collaborated with OpenAI and Nvidia to launch AI models on our Venado supercomputer, which is the latest one we have, while at the same time, we announced the development of two next generation supercomputers, Mission and Vision, which will enable us going down the road to leverage the AI things that we learn in the future.”

Davis went on to repeat that the enterprise has shifted from a sustainment to a production and delivery focus.

“LANL plays a central role in that, and we need to really adapt quickly to the stockpile modernization effort. NNSA has recently given us some directives on how we can change our approach to how we do work, The deputy administrator for defense programs Dave Beck is visiting to talk about those efforts. They’re really focused on how we can accelerate mission delivery – how we can deliver those things the nation needs more efficiently and effectively and obviously in a reasonable cost,” he said.

Davis briefly mentioned Project Velocity, saying it is a DOE-led initiative that started earlier this calendar year to look at about 80 Orders that DOE has to see how they can be streamlined. He said that effort is ongoing and that LANL is optimistic that later this summer that project will be complete and those orders will begin to be worked into the actual work being done on a day-to-day basis.

“Pit production is accelerating. We’ve been asked to do more. It’s still up for debate but we know that we’re going to be asked to do more than we have in the past. While focusing on the production mission, we also have to maintain our heritage of science and engineering expertise, because that’s what we need for the future. We need to walk and chew gum at the same time – do all of these things simultaneously and that takes a great deal of collaboration,” Davis said…

On the budget, Davis noted that the year started out on a series of continuing resolutions.

:In January we got a full year appropriation, which is at a level that’s commensurate with the work we’re trying to do – that’s $5.5 billion – that’s a lot of money, a lot of work going on. $2.2 billion of that is just in procurement and we anticipate going forward in FY27 and beyond that national security will play a center role so budgets will stay at least at the same level, if not increase,” he said.

Davis again discussed the LANL workforce saying he thinks LANL has reached pretty much a sustained level.

“We’re growing just a bit but nowhere near the levels in 2023. This year, I anticipate that we’ll hire between 1,000 and 1,200 employees. Some of that will replace attrition, which normally is about 800-900 people, so this year we anticipate we’ll grow by a couple of hundred people,” he said.

Davis said regional partnerships are key to the Lab’s success. In FY25, focusing on project execution, LANL had $356 million in the construction spend plan.

“Going forward, we have about 1.65 million square feet in near-term construction that we have to to execute, and in the mid- to long-term the number is about 4.7 million square feet of new construction that we have to undertake. That’s a big lift for us so we’re looking for ways to become more effective and efficient.at that. Obviously the goal is to deliver these projects at the quality level that we need, on time and on budget,” Davis said. “We’re looking at commercial construction standards – how we can do things like the commercial industry does on the Lab and in some cases off the Lab. I’m sure your big concern is traffic in the area, how we get adequate housing for the workforce that we need. So we’re looking at options off the Lab – transferring some of the non- hands on work that we do off the Lab in Santa Fe or somewhere else, down the hill in Pojoaque, We’re looking at those options working with NNSA. There’s certainly nothing at the level that I can talk about but there’s discussions underway.”

Davis discussed collaboration with Los Alamos County specifically in the last few months.

“We collaborate with the fire department and police department every day to accomplish the mission… We recently did an active shooter drill in our facilities, and the fire department from Los Alamos County and the police department were involved in that…..It’s very much real life-like training. It’s really important that we do that. The type of facilities that we have to do that training at are not available really anywhere else in the local community. The fact that we can do that training together in that type of a scenario really ups our game if we have something in real life,” he said. “We recently had Wildfire Brief with LAPD, LAFD and our regional partners and the Tribes involved in that. We brought them up to the Lab to talk about the situation and what we do in the event of a wildfire. I think that just makes us better prepared for those types of events.”

He noted that at the end of May there will be a full-scale wildfire drill at the Lab.

“That will bring in once again all those regional partners – and pretty much everyone at the Lab too – to go through a wildfire scenario with injured personnel – the full gamut of things that you can imagine,” Davis said.

Courtesy LANL

Watch for story on Councilors’ questions to Mr. Davis following his presentation.