Omega’s funding was restored and increased:
https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/03/22/omnibus-bill-restores-funding-ur-laser-lab/446329002/
Does anyone know what happened to NIF’s funding in the omnibus bill?
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Omega's funding cuts and closure are to start in FY19, not FY18, so closing LLE was never part of this bill. The increase in funding from 68 to 75 million is what they were hoping for, and serves as ammunition in the upcoming battle over closure - look, you gave us an increase in FY18, but now you want to start shutting us down in FY19?
"Schumer said the funding ensures that LLE scientists and engineers stay on the job, "keeping our nuclear weapon stockpile safe and reliable while pushing the frontiers of energy research at a time when countries like China and Russia are working to beat the U.S. to new technological advances.”"
What B.S. from Senator Schumer. LLE has precious little to do with Stockpile Stewardship and contributes nothing meaningful to fusion research today. All work at LLE is unclassified !
Such profound ignorance: "LLE contributes nothing meaningful to fusion research".
They only contribute 80% of ICF/HED experiments, development of most experimental platforms, and a chunk of the workforce training.
Congress did the right thing for FY18, but they need to follow through for FY19 and beyond.
SSP would suffer badly without LLE/OMEGA. In 20 years you'd notice their absence much more than that of NIF.
"SSP would suffer badly without LLE/OMEGA. In 20 years you'd notice their absence much more than that of NIF"
Sorry, I don't buy it, and I was there. LLE cannot contribute to HED experiments that are relevant to weapons, unless LLE personnel are working at LLNL and get Q-clearances. Omega is an unclassified facility. Omega in all it's forms is a Nova class laser. Not enough UV energy to do meaningful direct drive. Shut it down. Spent the money at NIF. Do Polar Direct Drive at NIF with the LLE money if you want to be relevant.
Nonsense. LLE contributes very little of it's own ideas to fusion research, and almost nothing outside hardware development that could be done elsewhere, for example at the NIF. NLUF is important, but that could be folded into NIF too, especially if NIF streamlines and simplifies to boost it's shot rate.
A lot of the EOS work, particularly x Ray diffraction, was developed at Omega first for cost reasons. I’ve had NIF physicists tell me they would never have had their stuff work had they not gone to Omega first. It often takes hundreds of Omega shots to develop a platform. The recent papers LLE has put out EOS has been groundbreaking stuff.
These comments smack a little of resentment (jealousy?) on the part of the labs. Maybe because LLE is hiring people away from them? Livermore isn't the "Mecca" for top scientists in this field anymore.
"Livermore isn't the "Mecca" for top scientists in this field anymore."
A few Livermore colleagues have joined LLE. Good for them ! LLE would not exist if it were not for Livermore's push over the last 4 decades for high energy, high power, large aperture laser systems for fusion research, and the necessary laser science and optical engineering to support it. Let's get real here.
April 2, 2018 at 10:17 AM knows lots of talking points but apparently no science.
Well 10:17 AM has a point, but it's not 4 decades. The current Omega laser is almost 25 years old, and has been firing routinely for most of that time, so there go 2 of those decades. A period where LLNL mostly had no large laser facility, Nova having been shut down and NIF being under construction. There were important early contributions from LLE to laser fusion research, like SSD and 3rd harmonic and some spectroscopic techniques, but by the time they got their 24 beam laser operating, LLNL had already gone through several big lasers and was operating Shiva. As LLNL went towards indirect drive and LLE continued with direct drive, their paths diverged. They've never had a strong computational physics team, either.
"April 2, 2018 at 10:17 AM knows lots of talking points but apparently no science"
Apparently you don't know any science, particularly laser science. Livermore has been the lead DOE laboratory for large aperture, high energy, high power laser science and optical damage science for over 4 decades, and this continues to this day on NIF, and international collaborations on design, modeling and building of high average power, high repetition rate picosecond lasers. I don't need to write five paragraphs here.
1975 to 1987 Laser Program Annual Reports (UCRL-50021-yr), 1988 ? 1989 ?
1990 to 2017 Laser Science and Technology Program Reports (UCRL-ID-142744-yr)
2017 - 1975 = 42 years > 4 decades (Cyclops, Argus, Shiva, Nova, Novette, Beamlet, and NIF)
>2 Mega joules on target in the UV at peak powers of 500 TW, with bandwidth and beam smoothing.
April 3, 2018 at 8:20 PM
Funny, your response also contains no science. Just talking points. Do you actually have any technical knowledge?
April 3 forgot to mention the billion bucks wasted on Teller's Toy, the x-ray laser.
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