American Physical Society Fellows 2025 highlights decline of NNSA labs.
Worse year ever for NNSA labs
LANL 1
Sandia 0
LLNL 0
Comparison
ORNL 4
Fermilab 4
Brookhaven 3
LBNL 2
SLAC 1
ANL 0
PNNL 0
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...
Comments
If you wanted to do science and had a PHD remember LBNL and ORNL still offer a pension… just saying.
The quantum dot research is funded by BES and brings in money to the labs. Also the same is true for the energy grid work. Plenty of the postdocs and staff working on these projects have gotten faculty positions so would not exactly call them "failed academics". Not to mention that some of this work is indeed directly relevant to the NNSA mission, which if you thought about it for two seconds is kind of obvious.
Also your comment about "or chemistry" is so off the charts that kind of kills all your credibility. Perhaps you meant something else but when you make comments like this I have real doubts about just what you connection is to the labs. (Hint Actinide Chemistry, materials and science are kind of relevant to the NNSA labs). Now I know you have never heard of a person named Sig Hecker, but please look him. I know you have no idea of the work he did or why it is relevant. Also you might want to look up all his "publications" and the awards he got what organizations he as a fellow at, or how he was a failed academic. I am beyond amazed by how some of the new staff have so utterly little knowledge of the history of the labs, what they did, how they did it and how it all fits in. Also how is that you do not understand that "huge breakthroughs in classified or export controlled research" are universally tied to some aspect of open research either before or after the breakthrough.
In any case the decline in awards of NNSA science is disconcerting because it likely reflects the overall quality of all the science done at the labs.
Absolutely false all around. Quantum computing, quantum dots, shocks, novel computing, particle detectors have and are contributing and in fact have a number classified, research components. Lots of work is funded by BES, NSA and DARPA. And yes there are lot of reason for it being done at NNSA labs. This is top of the fact that it is looking more and more like QC is going to be a major computing platform and approach the labs better be ready because our enemies certainly will be.
"The question should be asked why it needs to be done at NNSA labs instead of universities or Office of Science labs. "
Kind of obvious why. In words of Fred Durst, "just think about you'll get it"
"Some chemistry is obviously relevant, but a lot isn't. "
I am rather confident that the work done LLNL and LANL in chemistry is very relevant, very very relevant. I suspect that you are just in some tiny bubble at one the labs and simply not aware of all the chemistry that needs to be done
"The fact of the matter is that there are more than a few scientists at these labs that couldn't get a job at a university. "
I am not sure how you quantify this but most scientists who are leading a group can get faculty jobs. In fact I know a whole lot of them that had offers, came from academic places or had offers from industry that is research based. Now this is not all of the scientists and techs at the labs but if you have any familiarly with universities they also have large non-faculty members as scientists, techs and so on. I get the feeling you have no idea of what academic science looks like
"If you are working at LANL or LLNL trying to exclusively do open science, it's almost certainly because you didn't get tenure or didn't get a good job in the first place."
This makes no sense. (1) There is mission science that is open science. (2) Most scientists who do open science usually also do some direct mission work. (3) The "did not get tenure" one is just crazy. Yes many lab scientists have had faculty offers, some came from academic positions. Yes the labs are better than a lot academic places and I know you seem to be unaware of this but there is certain research that the labs are the best places do this work. This would include laser fusion, shocks, actinide science, computational physics, materials modeling, continuum mechanics, plasma physics, materials science, radiation damage, extreme environments, and so on.
"Lastly, funding source is irrelevant."
This is again a profoundly ignorant statement. Funding is relevant and the labs have alway had funding from a number of sources, including private companies. Remember that point from about about how the labs do certain science better than anyone else? Well there are very good reasons these places want to work with the labs. And believe it not some of this work ties in with many other aspects of the national security of the nation.
" I don't care if it's funded by the Royal Society or James Simons. If it doesn't directly support the national security work in a concrete way, it doesn't need to be done here."
From the sounds of it you do not actually understand what is national security work, how it supported, its underpinning , or that implications of some part of mission work for another part. Also I am guessing you are not in any kind of position to say what is or is not in direct support of the national security work.
Your attitude is not shared amongst many people at NNSA. It just seems as completely naive and out of touch with long history of research and research developments at the labs.
Not true at all. Maybe you missed the memo, but NNSA labs are now about pit production, LEP and ICF. Open science, even most closed science for that matter, is clearly being pushed aside in favor of other priorities. That said, I know your position is essentially a religion, so I don't expect you to read the tea leaves.
You still need lots of science for this especially ICF and LEP. Even Pit Production has and needs science. In case you forgot Rocky Flats had some classic papers.
That being said, I agree that less science will wanted or needed, but even with these changing priorities you will have to havre some science. For example ICF is pretty much just science.
I also agree that science could be reduced in the future directions of the labs and it does seem like the quality of the science is declining as seen by the reduction of publications, awards, people leaving and so on. This may be very short sighted what is going on. Oddly enough there is an also a huge push for AI, but for that you have to science so I have no idea what the actual goal is.
Those days have been over for at least 10 years or more. Where have you been? The number of Chinese postdocs and have heading down for years now. Even in universities that has been true. Same with Russian postdocs. Do you know anyone with postdocs at the labs or at universities. This is well documented and discussed extensively on academic blogs for years.
" unlimited funding for renewable energy, for example, are over."
There was never "unlimited funding for renewable energy". How on earth did you get this idea. Sure it got cut just recently but it was never that much money at the NNSA labs. This is more of an issue with DOE and office of science labs, such as (yes this is a real lab) NREL. (look up what that stands for).
Not to mention that if the pendulum swings that money will likely come back if the political climate changes but who knows when. Of course AI money is now up and many of the climate large scale simulation guys are already jumping on that band wagon. Also you forgot that fusion is going up and that is essentially a clean energy direction. Have you ever heard of NIF, (look it up).
"the audacity to pretend that it will be 2008 again"
Science at LLNL and LANL are in much better shape today than 2008. That was not long after Bechtel took over and LLNL had to have RIFFS and LANL a VSP. In fact 2006-2013 were some of the worse times at the labs in terms of science or many other things with a combination of cuts and the new privation model. Most people would be happier in 2025 as opposed to 2008. Again with AI there is still lots of opportunities. Are you retried before 2008 or got hired just recently. It was such an odd statement make for anyone who was at the labs in 2008.
"Rather, the focus needs to be on working to apply the open science to make quantifiable advancements in national security programs."
That has always been the case.
I am utterly amazed just how out of it some of the posters are. Have you been retired since 2000 or something? I get that some people have have limited information but geez some of this stuff is just in la la land.
Are you a real person or a bot? I am starting to think bot.
The issue has been the overhead rates have just gotten bigger and bigger. The money just does not go very far any more. In say 2004, people would be one one or two charge codes but now people on on 6 or even 8 codes and nothing gets done. This is not just true on the open science side it is true across the lab. The inefficiencies have just gotten out of hand and everyone feels this. Unless you are overheard support staff person who gets to work offsite most of the time, the lab has become very hard places to do any work. Now to be fair there is plenty of support staff that are also suffering. These are usually the admin that have to work onsite and have deadlines. They complain all the time how hard it is to get things done.
The only people that seem happy are the offsite support people. You can never get hold of them. When you do they are either eating when you talking with them, have some TV show on in the background, some loud noise from other people talking. They always say by Friday this will be done. On that Friday at 4.58pm you get an email saying maybe next week and the process repeats.
In short I do not think science is special, it is everything.
Also if you are going into a pit working conditions then again this could all be a different story, but those workers are in a different category than the traditional lab people, so you would have to compare more to working at places like Hanford, or Pantex so someone who knows better about this comparison should speak up how the labs would compare to these places.
In all my years at LANL I have known many tenured faculty come to the lab to be staff. In some cases they may have been at a smaller place or one that simply did not offer the best research opportunities but there are also plenty from some good places as well.
I think meet only one person who was not tenured and that is why they went to LANL. They did not get tenure at Harvard and ended leaving LANL to become faculty at Cornell.
In short I have simply cannot figure out how you came up with "you didn't get tenure" so they is why you are at LANL. How on earth did you come this conclusion?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-make-golden-dome-announcement-tuesday-us-official-says-2025-05-20/
LLNL and LANL not listed for the proposed “Golden Dome”. Not the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) days anymore. Maybe the Labs are in deep decline.