Lab management at LANL isn't communicating, but fortunately, I can read the news. The news reports are that NNSA is moving everything not directly weapons related over to weapons. For example, non-proliferation research is getting torched. Also, energy sciences like fuel cells, solar, CINT, etc will get entirely eliminated or dramatically slashed:
https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/doe-topline-cuts-across-the-board-except-for-nuclear-weapons/
"DOE energy programs would be cut by 25%. On top of fairly consistent cuts across the board, the budget calls to fully eliminate several programs, including R&D for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies, Renewable Energy Grid Integration, Solar Energy, and Wind Energy, as well as the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.
Defense-related programs would get a 17% funding boost, almost entirely from DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which houses the nation’s nuclear weapons programs and DOE’s nuclear non-proliferation programs (though nonproliferation funding takes a cut). The NNSA budget does not fund the aircraft, submarines and missiles that make up the military’s nuclear “triad,” which are funded within the Pentagon’s annual budget, but it does fund the nuclear warheads these systems are designed to deliver."
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2025-04/news/congress-cuts-nnsa-nonproliferation-budget
"The U.S. Congress approved a $185 million cut to the defense nuclear nonproliferation budget managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in a March 14 continuing resolution that funds the federal government through Sept. 30, the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
The resolution transfers those funds instead to the NNSA’s weapons activities budget, bringing it up to $19.29 billion for the remainder of this fiscal cycle."
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There may be something to this. A new rumor is that it just got much harder for LANL personal to publish science papers in the open literature. Also travel to science conferences is being strongly curtailed and it has nothing to do with saving money. Some managers are saying off line that major cuts to science are coming and that doing science is going to bet much harder.
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