An audit of a five-year contract for a private company to manage the Sandia National Laboratory, a top research facility in the United States to counter nuclear, chemical and biological terror threats, has reached an unusual conclusion savings from the contract will exceed US government expectations, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th August, 2018) An audit of a five-year contract for a private company to manage the Sandia National Laboratory, a top research facility in the United States to counter nuclear, chemical and biological terror threats, has reached an unusual conclusion savings from the contract will exceed US government expectations, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday.
National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia took over operations of the laboratory in 2017 under a five-year, $12.7 billion contract, a press release summarizing the GAO audit explained.
"We reviewed NNSA's [National Nuclear Security Administrations] cost-benefit analysis of this contract: it mostly addressed what was legally required," the release stated. "However, we found NNSA's $16 million estimate of the contract's potential cost savings to be an underestimate. We estimated potential savings to be considerably more."
The NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the US Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.
Sandia is one of 16 national nuclear labs managed by the US Department of Energy. The labs mandate has expanded to include a number of other security related initiatives, including efforts to protect the US from terrorist strikes with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
