Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
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Fasten your seatbelts LLNS National Ignition Facility (NIF) & Photon Science employees, your managers were probably informed of this potential reduction in funding months ago. Is a RIF coming?
Looks like lost of cuts. Is the ICF cut that big of a deal at this point everyone knows that was coming and pits is where things are going. Of course it looks more like Savannah River to me. The LANL people are just going around say Savannah River can never do it and they are all losers. Sounds kinda of like wishful thinking to me. Savannah River has something that New Mexico does not and I will leave that for the next poster to figure out.
Since this is ICF post, I am not sure what to add other than this cut has been expected for some time. What could help, well some kind big break through could happen for some reason, I mean a real breakthrough not some, "we are so close" this "looks so promising". Like a real breakthrough such that ICF achieves real fusion at Livermore, of course that might bring in some other issues but my point is you need something big now, if you want money to come pouring back in.
Do genetic profiling with TSF and get that fusion reactor going for clean unlimited energy. Yes, we can sell that to Sen. Feinstein much easier than saying this is the substitute for real testing.
We didn't get the infinite source of energy, but hopefully we got our monies worth in the stewardship side of thing
A more likely case Omega does not get cut because they are cutting academic programs. The cuts will be NIF and Z-machine, probably going to keep both those going not hiring have few people encouraged to retire, work on pits at LANL, or do something else. It will not be pleasant but I doubt Z or NIF will just be cut.
7/12/2021 10:34 PM
I think you failed understand how any of this really works. NIF was never going to work, no one ever believed it was going to work, I can show you post after post from the blog going back to 2006 saying it was not going work and no one expects it to work. It was like the moon landing, the LHC, the bridges to nowhere ect, the space shuttle, the ISS. It was only built because it was big. No one believed we would get anything out of going to the moon with people in 1970, no one believed the space shuttle was even even remotely worth what we got out of it. It was big so it got funded. That was all the was the main reasons. LLNL needed some funding, because it was getting hard to justify two labs so the pitched something really big to keep it going and it worked. In many ways NIF achieved exactly what it was suppose to achieve.
Yes, the NIF resident and somewhat arrogant, long pampered 40-50 something leadership, tried to force the newly hired (temporary) NIF 30 somethings to monitor the damage threshold of the NIF optics, the effort was called “Laser SHIELD”, these young engineers did their job well, but the underlying design of the NIF optical system proved to be a failure in terms of achieving ignition.
Go back at least a decade earlier, including nonpublic sources, and you will learn the truth.
Fist NIF is an engineering accomplishment, and it works, lux! Second and most importantly NIF trained thousands of staff than will maintain the stockpile for the next generation this is its biggest legacy. Third, there is so much more in the realm to be explored so much more, discoveries await.
Good science does not operate according to a pre-set schedule. You cannot run discoveries on NIF according to a schedule. One must be allowed to explore the realm of possibilities, to get a more clearer grasp of what questions are out there, and to be given the opportunity to investigate these questions whether they pertain to ignition or to other fundamental physical phenomena.
Seeking ignition and an understanding of the universe on NIF is like looking for the cure to cancer. You don't stop just because you reach a point in time, despite all that has been accomplished. You keep marching forward.
From an idea, an unclear concept 15 years ago to a 100-square acre, flawlessly operating instrument assimilating amazing new technologies from material, to modelling to controls...
1.8MJ of blue light.. 500TW every 4 hours on a 3 mm target... Wow.
Brilliant.
24 beamlines 192 beams, adaptive optics, 5 MJ of capacitors, amazing 9000 pcs of 40cm x40cm Nd glass, meter-long 9000 flashlamps, literally millions of optics... Cleanest large surfaces ever produced, 1000s of times better than in wafer production.
A reliable 4K target system in a shielded 10m diameter vacuum sphere. DT targets regularly meeting exacting standards. Calibrated diagnostics systems to determine performance. Models to support interpretation.
All to the highest seismic standards, every system with a safety note, checked and rechecked.
Truly a magnificent lifetime achievemnt. Something Haussman dreamed of when he hired Emmett. What Paisner, Simmons, Hurley and Frietag strove for in setting high scientific and engineering standards. What Trenholme's team predicted.
Over 1000 labbies contributed years of their lives and many, many late nights.
Remarkable. Unprecedented. The damn thing works...it regularly meets its design specs.
Thanks for the confirmation Al.
"FIAT LUX" is fulfilled.
Now on to discoveries...
7/14/2021 10:16 AM
Not without funding.
7/14/2021 10:16 AM
Not without funding.
7/14/2021 5:25 PM
Somone always has to ruin the party.
Frankly, if laser ignition is never possible within reason, it might even make sense to shut down NIF and just get the same or similar results from Z for a fraction of the cost.
7/11/2021 1:15 PM
Really? How 'bout:
It’s time to eliminate a facility like NIF. There’s definitely no ICF future for NIF and no possibility of a future laser machine.
Use the money that would have been wasted on NIF upgrade to do real science at Rochester and Sandia.
Rochester is a huge money sink that’s protected by Senator Schumer.
7/17/2021 7:59 AM
Better yet use the money to improve the lives of millions of Americans who have been marginalized my the corrupt systems.
Omega is gong nowhere.
In any case I though Biden wants to give 4 Trillions to rebuild the nation. I think we can afford NIF, Omega and Rochester.
7/18/2021 7:30 PM
Nope. Free day care, free community college, free money for people who refuse to work, all those are more important than any stinkin' science. And who needs nuclear weapons anyway?
sayeth 7/20/2021 6:30 PM
If these facilities had anything of value to offer modern nuclear weapon research there would be no debate about their funding. Obviously, they have not stepped up to the bar, and they will be fighting over scraps at the back door for the rest of their short pitiful existence.
All of this was resolved years ago (beamlit) - there are no issues :)