LANL fellows are not happy

There is a rumor going around that the Los Alamos fellows are not very happy with Mason after a recent talk. He showed a plot of LANL publications highlighting a decline in publications compared to other labs. Los Alamos was the top lab before 2006 and then lost out to LLBL, ORNL and ANL and is now at about the same level as PNNL. At the same time the lab has grown twice the size. Sure we have a lot more people but the overall quality of the staff is much lower today. One can always argue that publications do not measure everything but anyone from LANL who has visited ANL or ORNL recently can attest that they seem like much more active and healthy places especially in terms of younger people.

Did something happened in 2006? Oh yes, that is when LANS came in. Good job. I doubt the Fellows have much power at this point, and seem like product of a bygone era who are out of touch. Maybe this is just the plan all along to make the place a PIT facility. As Greg Mello said in a recent interview about what he heard the LANL management is saying....interview a 100 and hire a 100. This does not bode well for a good science future at LANL nor an operational PIT facility. I am no fan of Mello but he has a point every now and then.

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

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...

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

LLNL un-diversity

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!

LLNL - The True Story -

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