Charles McMillan, former top official at Los Alamos National Laboratory, fatally injured in New Mexico car crash

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — A former U.S. nuclear weapons research official at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories has died of injuries sustained in a car crash in New Mexico, authorities said. He was 69.

Charles McMillan, an experimental physicist, spent nearly 23 years in various positions at Livermore, Calif., and about 18 years at Los Alamos, where he served as director for six years before retiring in 2017.

He died in hospital after a two-vehicle crash early Friday on a stretch of road known as Main Hill, not far from the lab, police and the lab’s current director said.

“On behalf of the entire lab, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the McMillan family and the many current and former employees who worked closely with Charlie and knew him well,” lab director Thom Mason said in a statement reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican.

University of California President Michael Drake issued a statement calling McMillan “an extraordinary leader, scientist and human being who has made vast contributions to science and technology in the service of national security and the common good.”

The Livermore lab, east of San Francisco, was established in 1952 as a university subsidiary and is now federally operated. It maintains close ties to Drake’s campuses and office.

McMillan joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2006 after his friend and mentor, Michael Anastasio, became its director. McMillan served as senior associate director of weapons programs before becoming director in 2011, the New Mexican reported.

He oversaw the lab through expansion and safety incidents, including a 2014 radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico that was traced to an improperly packaged waste drum at the lab. In 2015, the National Nuclear Security Administration found the lab had violated health and safety rules and stripped it of more than $10 million in performance bonuses.

Mason highlighted McMillan’s work to develop an HIV vaccine and new modeling to better understand climate change.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico credited McMillan with “invaluable contributions to our state, to science and to our national security” and cited his work on supercomputing and artificial intelligence.

Nella Domenici, Heinrich’s Republican rival in the U.S. Senate, called McMillan’s death “a great loss to the scientific community and his family.”

Los Alamos police and fire officials said three people were treated for injuries and McMillan and a 22-year-old woman were hospitalized after the crash, which happened around 5 a.m. The cause was under investigation.