Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
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"The concern was not that the laboratories should be treated with kid gloves, but that scientists cannot work up to their creative potential if every move has to be approved and audited by regulators."
Without scientific and operational independence, no progress in any significant physics endeavor will be made. NIF campaigns were reviewed countless times by expert panels, including those from the National Academy of Sciences.
April 17, 2014 at 6:17 AM
Sorry, the "snowjob" you refer to could not have been successful without the explicit and willing complicity of the scientists. When it comes to NIF, neither the scientists nor the managers can be trusted. NIF harbors, encourages, and survives upon a culture of lies, deceit, and self-delusion.
Well, many of the experts I knew at least thought that there was a 50/50 chance of ignition with smooth enough cryo layering.
April 18, 2014 at 11:12 PM
Thanks, Pollyanna. So the only reason fusion hasn't "played a huge role" is lack of interest? Right.
April 18, 2014 at 11:19 PM
Those would be the same experts who misled all the review panels, with wildly optimistic predictions and the official Lindl line, regarding something that had never come close to being done before. They never even got close enough that cryo layer quality mattered (there is no evidence I have seen that it ever did). What the review panels did not do, and should have done, is talk to all the key people one on one in their offices, and get a clear view of what was going on. Act like an aggressive red team, and find out just how much "faith" was behind the whole official posture.
came Einstein and Bohr and all the other great people.
The only way we will make progress in science is by doing experiments. So give NIF a chance, let them continue to try to improve and learn from this.
Yes NIF is expensive, but as long as we still have enough money to blow the costs of 1 NIF in 2 month in Afghanistan, I don't really see it as that expensive.
What national security issue would that be?
And where did you get the unemployable scientists from? Having a bit of problem wit scientists? Must be from Bechtel.
April 20, 2014 at 6:59 AM
You could make that argument about any expense of a half billion dollars a year, including lighting it on fire or giving it to the Chinese. It's a question of value, where is the best place to spend that half billion dollars a year. And since it remains a huge amount of money, you could do a lot with that half billion dollars, other than spend it on maintaining NIF.
And where did you get the unemployable scientists from? Having a bit of problem wit scientists? Must be from Bechtel.
April 20, 2014 at 10:41 AM
Um, you don't think that Afghanistan is a national security issue for the US? You been asleep since 2001?
And what do you think would happen to all the NIF scientists if NIF were shut down? Instant employment elsewhere? Where?
However, Saudi Arabia -- the nation that spreads terrorist ideology around the world -- that is a big problem. Pakistan, an unstable Islamic nation with nukes is another one. And then there is the big threat of Iran.
America needs to get its key national security priorities straight. We wasted an enormous amount of 'blood & treasure' on both Iraq and Afghanistan that could have been put to better use over this last decade. We have bankrupted the nation over two wars that have done little to help make the nation more secure. Historians will probably look back on this era as being more wasteful and harmful to America than the pitiful years we spent "saving" South Vietnam.
April 21, 2014 at 10:43 PM
What nonsense. No one thinks that the government of Afghanistan is going to attack the US. However, it will gladly allow the presence, multiplication, recruiting, and training of Taliban and Al Qaida. This is why Obama called it the "right war." If you think THAT is not a national security issue for the US you are a fool.
April 22, 2014 at 7:34 PM
Because the people we were trying to support and defend make the majority of their money from the opium crop. You will never stop the drug epidemic by cutting off the supply. If the demand cannot be cut off, the destruction of lives will continue. Maybe the best that one can hope for will be a legal and closely regulated market, just like for alcohol, which although it also destroys lives, does so at a much less horrific cost to society, in gang wars and organized crime.
April 22, 2014 at 1:23 PM
And it still will, despite trillions in expenses and a decade of boots on the ground. AQ has dispersed, with major regroupings in places like Yemen and Mali, but has not gone away, and the Taliban still rule most of the region. What have we really accomplished beyond chasing Bin Laden and Co. over the border to Pakistan? That was accomplished in the first few months of the war.
I guess you believe that if your enemy is persistent and difficult to kill, you should just give up, and they'll stop trying to kill you. Not very smart.
April 22, 2014 at 8:38 PM
Please remind us how many American lives were lost protecting and defending the illegal narcotics trade in Afghanistan?
April 23, 2014 at 8:14 PM
Take your puritan moralizing somewhere else. If your kid is using, YOU are the problem, not the opium growers.
Actually, there are quite a few high paying engineering jobs in the Bay Area, even some in Livermore outside of the Labs. You might even see a few new Photonics startups in the Livermore/Pleasanton area if NIF was shut down. Sometimes it takes a layoff to get people off their skinny old butts ! Notice I didn't say "fat asses".
Only "bitter" about the absolute failure and exorbitant cost of the so-called "war on drugs." Also, not retired (yet).
April 24, 2014 at 10:19 AM
Only failing because pussies like you are too chicken to eradicate the sources. A little napalm would do wonders for discouraging the growers.
April 25, 2014 at 6:13 AM
So what? Are you in charge of telling people what they can't ingest? Or are you one who believes that only laws prevent most people from committing crimes? Or maybe you are terribly afraid that the real, ugly truth about American society would be exposed if your precious restrictions on everyone else's behavior were removed. Either way, it is clear you don't believe in personal responsibility.
April 25, 2014 at 9:20 AM
I don't give a damn about how drugs work. I do care about how personal freedom works.
Well, welcome to the off-topic zone. It appears you have an axe to grind regarding prescription drug addition. If you believe that most drug addicts are addicted to prescription drugs, you need to get better informed.
Do you mean "illegal-drug" addicts?
Or illegal drug-addicts.
The latter might include undocumented alcohol addicts.
April 30, 2014 at 1:14 PM
Drugs are bad, users should be put in jail. Alcohol is good, Jesus turned water into wine, he did not turn wheat in to marihuana. The Christian God may be a drunk but be never tokes.