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Is it time to shut the Sandia Z machine down?

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 Is it time to shut the Sandia Z machine down? Doesn’t seem like fusion is possible with pulsed power at its present levels. There is very little interest in building a new machine. Even the Z machine people admit that their technical readiness to do such a thing is very low, NIF has succeeded in providing a lot more data than Z, in fusion and EOS. Also, the Sandia corporation doesn’t give the Z people much priority. I know they are losing personal to other, more prestigious parts of the Sandia enterprise. To add insult to injury, China is rapidly building a new machine with 10x the energy output of Z. There would be no way for Sandia to match their effort at this point.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Agreed. One thing they could try to do is work with China to see if they could so some sort of joint venture.
2/06/2021 9:01 PM
Anonymous said…
9:01 PM makes a good point. I think some sort of joint venture with the Chinese would be valuable given that our own pulsed power capabilities will soon be so far behind. It would have to be sold as something like ITER - fusion for peaceful purposes. The Z machine would probably still be funded as a way of maintaining jobs in NM, although I suspect other programs might want that $100 million.
2/07/2021 7:28 AM
Anonymous said…
The Sandia Z people have had a lot of embarrassments in the recent years. One of these was the refurbishment of Z which didn’t work very well. They were expecting to double the energy of the machine, but because of unexplained losses, they get nearly the same output as before the upgrade. The second was the constant prediction of “break even” with their fusion loads. They never have achieved this and they are currently getting 100x less neutron output than NIF. Yes, they do important EOS work but the shots are few and the diagnostics lag far behind NIF. The recent advancements of the Chinese in this area are a big embarrassment to their program. They tried to use this as some sort of “Sputnik Moment” but failed to get any new funding, probably because of their previous failures and broken promises.
2/07/2021 8:12 AM
Anonymous said…
I know people in the electronics industry who have tried to offer their assistance to the Sandia Z program. They are always told to go away and often told they don’t know anything. The director of the Z program actually wrote an article where he addressed the “problem” of outsiders offering suggestions and improvements. He concluded that any outside idea, even it had merit, was a distraction. I don’t know if the NNSA a is aware of what a closed loop the Sandia Z machine has become.
2/07/2021 11:12 AM
Anonymous said…
All the National Labs have degenerated into a technical vacuum. The good pulsed power people left Sandia 20 years ago.
2/07/2021 6:50 PM
Anonymous said…
2/07/2021 8:12 AM forgot to add that they have lost some of their best people in recent years.
2/07/2021 9:17 PM
Anonymous said…
The Sandia Z machine also used to have a manager who was infamous for being hard to get along with. Nobody could disagree with him or else they would suffer his rage. He had several people under him quit who would have been the future of pulsed power in this country. I think he lost most of his group. The NNSA a should really take a close look at that program.
2/08/2021 7:15 AM
Anonymous said…
The Chinese are kicking our ass, as of the past few years, in just about everything. If we shut down all defense research that was behind China, we'd have to close almost everything. I bet in China, they don't fire you for going the extra mile or getting the job done, just because you forgot to write the correct date on your chemical bottle or you accidentally clicked on the wrong result in your Google search. I bet in China they don't have 10 support people for every scientist, and put the burden of funding the ten support people on that one scientist. I bet in China, they don't have a time card training course that says you aren't permitted to discover new inventions to benefit the tax payer using government resources. Sure, you might go to prison if you don't watch your mouth, but we're almost like that in the country now too. All of this is a hunch of course, but I'm pretty sure Robert Oppenheimer would have needed 30 years, instead of 3, if he tried to do it today with 10 times the inefficiency of government.
2/09/2021 9:12 PM
Anonymous said…

I bet in China that they do not force you to take Critical Race Theory training.
I bet in China that they do not base grant money on your race or identity.
I bet in China that that they do not discount meritocracy.
2/10/2021 10:48 AM
Anonymous said…
Your first two ignore the fact that in China other races are shipped of to camps and no one has to deal with them. You want that?
2/10/2021 5:40 PM
Anonymous said…
Your first two ignore the fact that in China other races are shipped of to camps and no one has to deal with them. You want that?

2/10/2021 5:40 PM

How come I have never heard anything like this on the news? I hear about racial issues in the US all the time so I can assume the American is the worst offender when it comes to race. American essentially ships people off to "prison camps" if you look at the prison pipeline that effects certain groups more. I think we need to look at ourselves before we judge another country.
2/10/2021 9:51 PM
Anonymous said…
The Uyghur persecution by China is well documented. It’s been covered extensively by the BBC. Do a Google search. Biden has also condemned the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.

https://www.axios.com/biden-campaign-china-uighur-genocide-3ad857a7-abfe-4b16-813d-7f074a8a04ba.html

By the way, using the phrase “I simply haven’t seen anything in the news about it” is not an argument and gets tiresome after several repetitions.

Also, if you’re going to say the labs should be used to monitor and control free speech, use some details about the labs like what directorate would do this. Simply saying “like the Manhattan project” means you don’t know anything about the responsibilities or operations of the national labs.
2/11/2021 9:44 AM
Anonymous said…
2/10/2021 9:51 PM

You watch the wrong news. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/uighurs/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html

You think things are worse here? You are very sadly undereducated about the world.
2/11/2021 5:24 PM
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