LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.
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I was at this all star 2009 NIF
dedication. I call BS on your statement. So much so, that Senator Diane Feinstein called for a major LLNS annual award fee cut and contract extension termination when NIF FAILED reach ignition in 2012. But the “good ol’ boys” at the NNSA decided to extend the LLNS contact anyway. Soon after, Ed and Parney left LLNL.
2009 Diane Feinstein at the NIF Dedication
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gEuJ4vAmWJ8&pp=ygUYMjAwOSBuaWYgbGl2ZXRtb3JlIGRpYW5l
If you don't like it, then let the labs go back to testing.
Two LLNL projects that overlapped in time, NIF and LIFE
from Wikipedia:
“LIFE, short for Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, was a fusion energy effort run at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory between 2008 and 2013…
LIFE used the same basic concepts as NIF…but aimed to lower costs using mass-produced fuel elements, simplified maintenance, and diode lasers with higher electrical efficiency…Through 2011 and into 2012, NIF ran the "national ignition campaign"…NIF failed in this goal, with fusion performance that was well below ignition levels and differing considerably from predictions. With the problem of ignition unsolved, the LIFE project was canceled in 2013.”
While scientific discovery during that time period lead to commercial power plants in the 1950’s. What was detonated in New Mexico and later Japan were vastly different in many respects than any commercial nuclear power plant. Likewise anyone that knows anything about NIF target design and the physics of the widely published Teller Ulam design would understand what is being tested. In both cases a one time extreme event vs a controlled continuous chain reaction that must last decades.
As written above on 6/04 if you don’t like it… cool let’s pull out the oldest pit out of the stockpile and the newest one from LANL and make a few new holes in the ground at area 19. I can think of a few side tests that would go right beside these tests if we were to go back to that type of testing.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_Electrical_Generation_1950-2016.png
Like what was written above… none of that has any resemblance of what came out of the manhattan project and likewise getting back to the original point of this thread I know it’s hard for you folks to stay on topic. A commercial fusion power plant will look nothing like what is being done at NIF additionally in terms of stockpile stewardship at this point in time this is the only device that can come close to the localized energy to perform EOS experiments to verify that the models are correct. The funny thing is since ignition has been achieved the only people talking about commercial electric power generation are the folks in New Mexico….