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See Hardware Section 8, BG/Q Networks

Read the NISPOM and JFAN security guides. No external devices can be brought in to secured areas. No USB sticks, no media without a lengthy process to scan and check in the data. Nothing leaves the secured area without being shredded. We had some hefty machinery built to munch up everything from memory and CD/DVD media to hard drives and LTO tapes.

So "congress"? Yes, but we already know that cesspool for what it is. Secured areas like LANL? Not a chance.

Times have changed. Dunno about LANL, but at LLNL:

https://csp-training.llnl.gov/CS0149-W/non-gov_respons.html

That's nice when you actually get something that is probabilistic. I see some suggestive frequentist studies in your links. But nothing particularly interesting.

For example, an 80% chance of the West Russian heat wave means even by the logic of the algorithm a 20% chance of the heat wave being normal, which is way too high for the claims made. After all, all you have to do is go over a few heat waves and pretty soon, you'll find that 80% chance. I think that was what was done there, probably unintentionally.

No, look at the work involved. There is simply no way to do that, it takes too many compute hours

I notice throughout your examples of research a remarkable confusion of algorithm with fact. I too can make an algorithm that takes current data and portrays in some extreme way.

I'm calling you on this. Do it. Produce, or show someone elses results, that reproduce the historical record matching a current climate model, that doesn't show 1.5-6 degrees climate sensitivity for GHG doubling.
You may take as input to your model: (1) bathymetry and topography (2) land use, (3) ocean and atmosphere starting conditions, eg. the Levitus dataset, (4) volcanic and aerosol inputs, (5) solar output for the 1950-2000 period, ie. the inputs that went into the CMIP5 intercomparison project. Do it to at least a 5 degree global resolution, 5 vertical layers atmosphere, 5 ocean, monthly time resolution.

People dismiss models as "you can make a model do what you want", but no, you can't. We've done model intercomparison projects, comparing model output to observed records. NOBODY HAS MANAGED TO PUT TOGETHER A NON-GHG BASED MODEL THAT MATCHES THE OBSERVATIONS.

To be taken seriously, your model also needs to match the paleontological record, or give a plausible account thereof: ie. match the mean and variance in temperature records, globally and to at least a continental resolution.

Yes, clearly all of the NNSA security forces are nothing more than mall rent-a-cops. That would explain consistently performing at the top of SWAT competitions year after year after year...

Insightful? Christ, people, we've had fusion bombs for sixty years; that's what a "hydrogen bomb" is. The comment is crackheaded, not insightful.

From https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/

National Security
How can we ensure the nation's security without nuclear weapons testing? Maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile as a deterrent against foreign aggression has been a mainstay of national policy since the end of World War II. No new nuclear weapons are currently being built, however, and the existing weapons cannot be tested under a nuclear testing moratorium established by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. To ensure the continuing reliability of the nuclear stockpile, Lawrence Livermore and other national laboratories are developing sophisticated supercomputer simulations to determine the effects of aging on nuclear weapons components as part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Stockpile Stewardship Program. NIF will be able to provide data for those simulations by replicating the conditions that exist inside a thermonuclear weapon. In addition, the Photon Science & Applications program is developing a number of innovative technologies for homeland security and national defense.

They then go on to claim that

By demonstrating the ability to attain fusion ignition in the laboratory, NIF will lay the groundwork for future decisions about fusion's long-term potential as a safe, virtually unlimited energy source.

but that is a byproduct, not what the NIF is designed for.

The NIF is financed out of the bomb making budget. You appear not to know that.

Amusing that my comment is currently:

    30% Troll
    20% Overrated
    10% Flamebait

Some of the newer technologies not only allow much smaller feature sizes than the current 20nm, but will also allow stacking of components

Sure we can stack them, but can we cool them?

Is there anything carbon nanotubes can't do? Besides, of course, have an acronym that you don't mistake for a naughty word.

These are pretty interesting and informative (to me at least) wrt where current energy resources come from and where they go.

https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/

NIF has three missions:

- National security (stockpile stewardship
- Basic fusion science
- Understanding the origins of the basic building blocks of the universe

That's it.

I hate to break it you you, but much of what we do in basic science research is dual-use. It can be used for military applications, or purely scientific applications. Doing stockpile stewardship without nuclear tests is not "getting around" nuclear test ban treaties. It's maintaining the integrity of our increasingly smaller nuclear stockpile as a credible deterrent.

This overwhelming deterrent capability is part of the reason why the world has seen no major global conflict for seven decades, and has had the longest period of peace without global conflict for over five centuries. Tens of millions of people died in WWI and WWII.

We maintain a credible deterrent so it's clear that no one can ever strike us first without the certainty of themselves also being destroyed -- and if our principles and ideals and those of our allies are something you care about, then that should be important to you.

The world is changing, and some might say that the general "cyber" and information threats will more important than nuclear. China certainly seems to think so. Then again, China is also building out its nuclear weapons capabilities and stockpiles as the rest of the world, including the US, disarms. No worries, right? Delivery systems that can rain down nuclear warheads on targets anywhere in the world is just for "peaceful regional defense", right?

A world where the US doesn't maintain an overwhelming deterrent to forces which espouse principles and ideals counter to those of freedom and liberal democracy is not a pretty place.

(Note to people who think that the US is what's wrong with the world: you are sorely in need of historical perspective -- or, any perspective. The US is not perfect, but the US and West has done far more for the benefit of human life and humanity, on the whole, than any other nation, especially those with Communist, Socialist, or totalitarian systems of government. Wake up.)

NIF has three missions:

- National security (stockpile stewardship
- Basic fusion science
- Understanding the origins of the basic building blocks of the universe

That's it.

I hate to break it you you, but much of what we do in basic science research is dual-use. It can be used for military applications, or purely scientific applications. Doing stockpile stewardship without nuclear tests is not "getting around" nuclear test ban treaties. It's maintaining the integrity of our increasingly smaller nuclear stockpile as a credible deterrent.

This overwhelming deterrent capability is part of the reason why the world has seen no major global conflict for seven decades, and has had the longest period of peace without global conflict for over five centuries. Tens of millions of people died in WWI and WWII.

We maintain a credible deterrent so it's clear that no one can ever strike us first without the certainty of themselves also being destroyed -- and if our principles and ideals and those of our allies are something you care about, then that should be important to you.

The world is changing, and some might say that the general "cyber" and information threats will more important than nuclear. China certainly seems to think so. Then again, China is also building out its nuclear weapons capabilities and stockpiles as the rest of the world, including the US, disarms. No worries, right? Delivery systems that can rain down nuclear warheads on targets anywhere in the world is just for "peaceful regional defense", right?

A world where the US doesn't maintain an overwhelming deterrent to forces which espouse principles and ideals counter to those of freedom and liberal democracy is not a pretty place.

(Note to people who think that the US is what's wrong with the world: you are sorely in need of historical perspective -- or, any perspective. The US is not perfect, but the US and West has done far more for the benefit of human life and humanity, on the whole, than any other nation, especially those with Communist, Socialist, or totalitarian systems of government. Wake up.)

NIF has three missions:

- National security (stockpile stewardship
- Basic fusion science
- Understanding the origins of the basic building blocks of the universe

That's it.

I hate to break it you you, but much of what we do in basic science research is dual-use. It can be used for military applications, or purely scientific applications. Doing stockpile stewardship without nuclear tests is not "getting around" nuclear test ban treaties. It's maintaining the integrity of our increasingly smaller nuclear stockpile as a credible deterrent.

This overwhelming deterrent capability is part of the reason why the world has seen no major global conflict for seven decades, and has had the longest period of peace without global conflict for over five centuries. Tens of millions of people died in WWI and WWII.

We maintain a credible deterrent so it's clear that no one can ever strike us first without the certainty of themselves also being destroyed -- and if our principles and ideals and those of our allies are something you care about, then that should be important to you.

The world is changing, and some might say that the general "cyber" and information threats will more important than nuclear. China certainly seems to think so. Then again, China is also building out its nuclear weapons capabilities and stockpiles as the rest of the world, including the US, disarms. No worries, right? Delivery systems that can rain down nuclear warheads on targets anywhere in the world is just for "peaceful regional defense", right?

A world where the US doesn't maintain an overwhelming deterrent to forces which espouse principles and ideals counter to those of freedom and liberal democracy is not a pretty place.

(Note to people who think that the US is what's wrong with the world: you are sorely in need of historical perspective -- or, any perspective. The US is not perfect, but the US and West has done far more for the benefit of human life and humanity, on the whole, than any other nation, especially those with Communist, Socialist, or totalitarian systems of government. Wake up.)

...and it's one of the most impressive scientific endeavors we've undertaken.

Yes, one of it's missions is "stockpile stewardship" -- maintaining the integrity of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing, via simulations and tests.

But it also has a goal of initiating "ignition": a sustained ("sustained" being relative, here) fusion reaction which produces more power than was put in.

Even if there is no immediate practical application, understanding various aspects of fusion, and the science it takes to get there, is critical to our energy future.

In short, like many military and national security projects, this is a truly dual-use.

The NIF just made history by firing its 192 beams to deliver more than 500 terawatts and 1.85 megajoules of energy to its target -- more than 1000 times the power the United States uses at any particular instant, and more than 100 times the power of any other laser.

We do need science like NIF, and I'm still pained by the US decision to kill the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), what was to be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- significantly more so than the LHC -- after 14 miles of tunnels were dug and over $2 billion spent.

I hope this article wasn't unintentionally accurate when it called the SSC the "high water mark of American science"...(must see photos by the way).

We NEED big science.

...and it's one of the most impressive scientific endeavors we've undertaken.

Yes, one of it's missions is "stockpile stewardship" -- maintaining the integrity of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing, via simulations and tests.

But it also has a goal of initiating "ignition": a sustained ("sustained" being relative, here) fusion reaction which produces more power than was put in.

Even if there is no immediate practical application, understanding various aspects of fusion, and the science it takes to get there, is critical to our energy future.

In short, like many military and national security projects, this is a truly dual-use.

The NIF just made history by firing its 192 beams to deliver more than 500 terawatts and 1.85 megajoules of energy to its target -- more than 1000 times the power the United States uses at any particular instant, and more than 100 times the power of any other laser.

We do need science like NIF, and I'm still pained by the US decision to kill the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), what was to be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- significantly more so than the LHC -- after 14 miles of tunnels were dug and over $2 billion spent.

I hope this article wasn't unintentionally accurate when it called the SSC the "high water mark of American science"...(must see photos by the way).

We NEED big science.

...and it's one of the most impressive scientific endeavors we've undertaken.

Yes, one of it's missions is "stockpile stewardship" -- maintaining the integrity of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing, via simulations and tests.

But it also has a goal of initiating "ignition": a sustained ("sustained" being relative, here) fusion reaction which produces more power than was put in.

Even if there is no immediate practical application, understanding various aspects of fusion, and the science it takes to get there, is critical to our energy future.

In short, like many military and national security projects, this is a truly dual-use.

The NIF just made history by firing its 192 beams to deliver more than 500 terawatts and 1.85 megajoules of energy to its target -- more than 1000 times the power the United States uses at any particular instant, and more than 100 times the power of any other laser.

We do need science like NIF, and I'm still pained by the US decision to kill the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), what was to be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- significantly more so than the LHC -- after 14 miles of tunnels were dug and over $2 billion spent.

I hope this article wasn't unintentionally accurate when it called the SSC the "high water mark of American science"...(must see photos by the way).

We NEED big science.

...and it's one of the most impressive scientific endeavors we've undertaken.

Yes, one of it's missions is "stockpile stewardship" -- maintaining the integrity of the United States nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing, via simulations and tests.

But it also has a goal of initiating "ignition": a sustained ("sustained" being relative, here) fusion reaction which produces more power than was put in.

Even if there is no immediate practical application, understanding various aspects of fusion, and the science it takes to get there, is critical to our energy future.

In short, like many military and national security projects, this is a truly dual-use.

The NIF just made history by firing its 192 beams to deliver more than 500 terawatts and 1.85 megajoules of energy to its target -- more than 1000 times the power the United States uses at any particular instant, and more than 100 times the power of any other laser.

We do need science like NIF, and I'm still pained by the US decision to kill the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), what was to be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- significantly more so than the LHC -- after 14 miles of tunnels were dug and over $2 billion spent.

I hope this article wasn't unintentionally accurate when it called the SSC the "high water mark of American science"...(must see photos by the way).

We NEED big science.

Ugh ....
Maryland - Goddard Space Flight Center
New Mexico - AF Research Lab - Space Vehicles, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs
Colorado - Ball, Raytheon, etc
California - JPL, Livermore Labs and way too many others to list
Virginia - Navy Research Lab, Wallops Island
Texas - UT Dallas, Texas A&M, Johnson Space Center, many more
Arizona - Orbital Sciences Corp., GD, etc
Tennessee - Oakridge
Alabama - U.S. Space and Rocket Center
Utah -Space Dynamics Laboratory, L3
Florida - Kennedy, ATK and many more
Alaska - Kodiak Island

The space industry is spread out over the entire country. This list could go on and on. Saying it is only Florida and Texas that benefit is mildly absurd. I agree with the idea, but it isn't nearly as narrow as that.

Seeing a lot of discussion, but not much real information here, so I'll contribute.

For starters, here is the website: https://lasers.llnl.gov/

And here is a page of that site that has some explanation about how it works: https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/nic/icf/how_icf_works.php

I've actually toured this facility, and it was pretty damn cool. A few points that stuck in my memory:

The generally do one shot each night. They prep it during the day, then they all go home and it goes off at night with not many people there, because that's safer.

The electricity usage is intense but very short, lasting only around 20 billionths of a second. They do this by charging up their capacitors and then discharging them very rapidly. They said the air conditioning for the building actually uses more power than the laser.

They talk about the "seven wonders of NIF", which are seven advances in materials and technology that were made during the project which made it all possible. I thought the rapid crystal growing was pretty wicked. Info on them here: https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/seven_wonders.php

In the actual ignition step itself, while you might think you shine the powerful laser on the thing you want to heat up, that's actually not how it works. They have the thing they want to heat, and near it (like 1mm) is this little metallic trough thing. They blast the laser into the trough thing and when the light hits that it creates microwaves, and the microwaves heat the target. Of course by the time it's done all those parts are completely vaporized.

Also of interest, around April this year the place was shut down for maintenance for a month. For about two weeks during that period some filming for the next Star Trek movie took place inside the NIF facility. So check out the pix and see if you can spot the NIF scenes when the movie comes out. It does kinda look like the engine room of a starship: https://lasers.llnl.gov/multimedia/photo_gallery/target_area/?id=5&category=target_area Obviously, the whole lab is full of nerds who like Star Trek, but they were not allowed to see what was going on.

Seeing a lot of discussion, but not much real information here, so I'll contribute.

For starters, here is the website: https://lasers.llnl.gov/

And here is a page of that site that has some explanation about how it works: https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/nic/icf/how_icf_works.php

I've actually toured this facility, and it was pretty damn cool. A few points that stuck in my memory:

The generally do one shot each night. They prep it during the day, then they all go home and it goes off at night with not many people there, because that's safer.

The electricity usage is intense but very short, lasting only around 20 billionths of a second. They do this by charging up their capacitors and then discharging them very rapidly. They said the air conditioning for the building actually uses more power than the laser.

They talk about the "seven wonders of NIF", which are seven advances in materials and technology that were made during the project which made it all possible. I thought the rapid crystal growing was pretty wicked. Info on them here: https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/seven_wonders.php

In the actual ignition step itself, while you might think you shine the powerful laser on the thing you want to heat up, that's actually not how it works. They have the thing they want to heat, and near it (like 1mm) is this little metallic trough thing. They blast the laser into the trough thing and when the light hits that it creates microwaves, and the microwaves heat the target. Of course by the time it's done all those parts are completely vaporized.

Also of interest, around April this year the place was shut down for maintenance for a month. For about two weeks during that period some filming for the next Star Trek movie took place inside the NIF facility. So check out the pix and see if you can spot the NIF scenes when the movie comes out. It does kinda look like the engine room of a starship: https://lasers.llnl.gov/multimedia/photo_gallery/target_area/?id=5&category=target_area Obviously, the whole lab is full of nerds who like Star Trek, but they were not allowed to see what was going on.

Seeing a lot of discussion, but not much real information here, so I'll contribute.

For starters, here is the website: https://lasers.llnl.gov/

And here is a page of that site that has some explanation about how it works: https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/nic/icf/how_icf_works.php

I've actually toured this facility, and it was pretty damn cool. A few points that stuck in my memory:

The generally do one shot each night. They prep it during the day, then they all go home and it goes off at night with not many people there, because that's safer.

The electricity usage is intense but very short, lasting only around 20 billionths of a second. They do this by charging up their capacitors and then discharging them very rapidly. They said the air conditioning for the building actually uses more power than the laser.

They talk about the "seven wonders of NIF", which are seven advances in materials and technology that were made during the project which made it all possible. I thought the rapid crystal growing was pretty wicked. Info on them here: https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/seven_wonders.php

In the actual ignition step itself, while you might think you shine the powerful laser on the thing you want to heat up, that's actually not how it works. They have the thing they want to heat, and near it (like 1mm) is this little metallic trough thing. They blast the laser into the trough thing and when the light hits that it creates microwaves, and the microwaves heat the target. Of course by the time it's done all those parts are completely vaporized.

Also of interest, around April this year the place was shut down for maintenance for a month. For about two weeks during that period some filming for the next Star Trek movie took place inside the NIF facility. So check out the pix and see if you can spot the NIF scenes when the movie comes out. It does kinda look like the engine room of a starship: https://lasers.llnl.gov/multimedia/photo_gallery/target_area/?id=5&category=target_area Obviously, the whole lab is full of nerds who like Star Trek, but they were not allowed to see what was going on.

Seeing a lot of discussion, but not much real information here, so I'll contribute.

For starters, here is the website: https://lasers.llnl.gov/

And here is a page of that site that has some explanation about how it works: https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/nic/icf/how_icf_works.php

I've actually toured this facility, and it was pretty damn cool. A few points that stuck in my memory:

The generally do one shot each night. They prep it during the day, then they all go home and it goes off at night with not many people there, because that's safer.

The electricity usage is intense but very short, lasting only around 20 billionths of a second. They do this by charging up their capacitors and then discharging them very rapidly. They said the air conditioning for the building actually uses more power than the laser.

They talk about the "seven wonders of NIF", which are seven advances in materials and technology that were made during the project which made it all possible. I thought the rapid crystal growing was pretty wicked. Info on them here: https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/seven_wonders.php

In the actual ignition step itself, while you might think you shine the powerful laser on the thing you want to heat up, that's actually not how it works. They have the thing they want to heat, and near it (like 1mm) is this little metallic trough thing. They blast the laser into the trough thing and when the light hits that it creates microwaves, and the microwaves heat the target. Of course by the time it's done all those parts are completely vaporized.

Also of interest, around April this year the place was shut down for maintenance for a month. For about two weeks during that period some filming for the next Star Trek movie took place inside the NIF facility. So check out the pix and see if you can spot the NIF scenes when the movie comes out. It does kinda look like the engine room of a starship: https://lasers.llnl.gov/multimedia/photo_gallery/target_area/?id=5&category=target_area Obviously, the whole lab is full of nerds who like Star Trek, but they were not allowed to see what was going on.

Well said. Also, NIF defines "ignition" as "achieving nuclear fusion burn and gain", i.e. getting more energy out than you put in. They create fusion all the time, they just have not passed that breakeven point yet. There is lots of great info on their site: https://lasers.llnl.gov/

LLNL is run by the University of California system? Is that why the URL is http://www.llnl.gov/ and the front page clearly states that it is run by the DOE for the National Nuclear Safety Administration?

It does not say that it is "run by the DOE." You made that up, or are illiterate. It says it is run for the DOE:

Operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration

And it says that because the DOE owns the lab, which is operated by contract:

https://www.llnl.gov/about/mgtsponsors.html

The LLNS management team includes Bechtel National, University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, Washington Division of URS Corporation, and Battelle.

Government Owned, Contractor Operated. The Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility managed through a contract between the LLNS Board of Governors and the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

(Emphasis theirs.)

In case you're wondering, here's what LLNS, LLC (http://www.llnsllc.com/) has to say for itself:

Our team includes Bechtel National, University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, the Washington Division of URS Corporation, and Battelle. Our cutting-edge science is enhanced through the expertise of the University of California and its ten campuses and our team's affiliation with The Texas A&M University System.

(Emphasis mine.)

You may also find the History section enlightening.

LLNL is run by the University of California system? Is that why the URL is http://www.llnl.gov/ and the front page clearly states that it is run by the DOE for the National Nuclear Safety Administration?

It does not say that it is "run by the DOE." You made that up, or are illiterate. It says it is run for the DOE:

Operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration

And it says that because the DOE owns the lab, which is operated by contract:

https://www.llnl.gov/about/mgtsponsors.html

The LLNS management team includes Bechtel National, University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, Washington Division of URS Corporation, and Battelle.

Government Owned, Contractor Operated. The Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility managed through a contract between the LLNS Board of Governors and the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

(Emphasis theirs.)

In case you're wondering, here's what LLNS, LLC (http://www.llnsllc.com/) has to say for itself:

Our team includes Bechtel National, University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, the Washington Division of URS Corporation, and Battelle. Our cutting-edge science is enhanced through the expertise of the University of California and its ten campuses and our team's affiliation with The Texas A&M University System.

(Emphasis mine.)

You may also find the History section enlightening.

LLNL is run by the University of California system? Is that why the URL is http://www.llnl.gov/ and the front page clearly states that it is run by the DOE for the National Nuclear Safety Administration?

It does not say that it is "run by the DOE." You made that up, or are illiterate. It says it is run for the DOE:

Operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration

And it says that because the DOE owns the lab, which is operated by contract:

https://www.llnl.gov/about/mgtsponsors.html

The LLNS management team includes Bechtel National, University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, Washington Division of URS Corporation, and Battelle.

Government Owned, Contractor Operated. The Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility managed through a contract between the LLNS Board of Governors and the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

(Emphasis theirs.)

In case you're wondering, here's what LLNS, LLC (http://www.llnsllc.com/) has to say for itself:

Our team includes Bechtel National, University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, the Washington Division of URS Corporation, and Battelle. Our cutting-edge science is enhanced through the expertise of the University of California and its ten campuses and our team's affiliation with The Texas A&M University System.

(Emphasis mine.)

You may also find the History section enlightening.

You mean like these projects?

LLNL is run by the University of California system? Is that why the URL is http://www.llnl.gov/ and the front page clearly states that it is run by the DOE for the National Nuclear Safety Administration?

1. The definition of "ignition" here means laser energy onto target vs. fusion power out. Current laser technology is not efficient enough at the high powers needed for ICF. It's still meaningful because in laser fusion the target physics is largely separated from the lasers so once the principles work an improved laser can be developed.
2. The glass lasers used in NIF need to cool down for several hours between firings, whereas in a power plant the lasers need to fire at 10-15 Hz. High-power solid state lasers need development.
3. The indirect drive scheme used in NIF is too inefficient to be used in a power plant. NIF uses a hohlraum to create a uniform implosion, but the conversion of laser energy to x-rays on the target is only a few percent.

I've been around NIF and it is an amazing machine. It's also designed (and funded) to study warm dense matter physics like equations of state at high density for nukes, not fusion. Use of NIF for fusion is a great side-benefit and hopefully they can get useful data from it.

The HiPER project to design a fusion reactor based on fast ignition has been though an initial concept design phase, but is now waiting further development. There is still a lot of research which needs to be done in target physics, lasers, and materials before ICF is ready to build an ITER-like machine

The physics behind the ITER tokamak on the other hand is quite well understood at this point. Sure there are outstanding issues which are still being worked on (ELMS, divertor detachment, RWM control spring to mind) but we're pretty confident it will work. The design of ITER started in 88, and before that the INTOR project in '78, but it has taken a long time for politicians actually put some serious resources behind it. Hopefully it won't take that long for ICF projects like HiPER to be taken seriously and funded at a level which will make them happen

https://www.llnl.gov/str/pdfs/04_96.2.pdf

What were the scientists thinking?

I bet they were thinking, "Hey let's name it after the town in which we work.

I live in Livermore and work at LLNL so I'm getting a kick out of these comments...

What were the scientists thinking?

I bet they were thinking, "Hey let's name it after the town in which we work.

Why the sarcasm? GP was talking about getting the USA to fund fission, while ITER is mostly run by the europeans (although the US does have a small stake), so I didn't consider ITER that relevant to the conversation.

NIF on the other hand is completely US based. Which is why I supplied a link to the NIF site at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in my comment. Once NIF is complete, the follow up project (called LIFE: https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/) is intended to design a commercializable system.

My understanding is that NIF is well on track, and that NIF will probably show a fusion reaction that gives off more energy than is required to maintain the reaction by the end of this year or early next year. So the current belief in NIF circles is that it will be only 10-20 years before the first commercial plants go online. Which is why I said construction might start in the next decade.

I agree with your last statement - that we will still need renewables and fission to maintain our current standard of living until that time.

The US is. There is great work going on right now. Check out https://lasers.llnl.gov/

It has taken years to build, but it is currently being brought fully online, and we should see a successful fusion experiment later this year, or early next year, and with any luck - commercial reactors based on this design will start being built in the US within the decade.

I assume this is an epic troll, but am going to give an honest answer anyway, because there are some legitimate questions buried in there.

I work with a aggregate.org a university research group which has a decent claim to having built the very first Linux PC Cluster, set some records with them (KLAT2 and KASY0 were both ours), and still operates a number of Linux clusters, including some containing GPUs, so I feel like I have some idea of the lay of cluster technology. It is *way* overdue for an update (and one is in progress, we swear!), but we also maintain TLDP's widely circulated Parallel Processing HOWTO, which was the goto resource for this kind of question for some time.

In a cluster of any size, you do _not_ want to be handling nodes individually. There are several popular provisioning and administration systems for avoiding doing so, because every organization with a large number of machines needs such a tool. The clusters I deal with are mostly provisioned with Perceus with a few ROCKS holdovers, and I'm aware of a number of other solutions (xCat is the most popular that I've never tinkered with). Perceus can pass out pretty much any correctly-configured Linux image to the machines, although It is specifically tailored to work with Caos NSA (Redhat-like), or GravityOS (a Debian derivative) payloads. Infiscale, the company that supports Perceus, releases the basic tools and some sample modifiable OS images for free, and makes their money off support and custom images, so it is pretty flexible option in terms of required financial and/or personnel commitment. The various provisioning and administration tools are generally designed to interact with various monitoring tools (ex. Warewulf or Ganglia) and job management systems (see next paragraph).
Accounting and billing users is largely about your job management system. Our clusters aren't billed this way, so I can't claim to have be closely familiar with the tools, but most of the established job management systems like Slurm, and GridEngine (to name two of many) have accounting systems built in.
The "standard" images or image-building tools provided with the provisioning systems generally provide for a few nicely integrated combinations of tools, which make it remarkably easy to throw a functioning cluster stack together.

As for GPUs... be aware that the claimed performance for GPUs, especially in clusters, is virtually unattainable. You have to write code in their nasty domain-specific languages (CUDA or OpenCL for Nvidia, just OpenCL for AMD) and there isn't really any concept of IPC baked in to the tools to allow for distributed operations. Furthermore, GPUs are also generally extroridnarly memory and memory bandwidth starved (remember, the speed comes from there being hundreds of processing elements on the card, all sharing the same memory and interface), so simply keeping them fed with data is challenging. GPGPU is also an unstable area in both relevant senses: the GPGPU software itself has a nasty tendency to hang the host when something goes wrong (which is extra fun in clusters without BMCs), and the platforms are changing at an alarming clip. AMD is somewhat worse in the "moving target" regard - they recently deprecated all 4000 series cards from being supported by GPGPU tools, and have abandoned their CTM, CAL, and Brook+ environments before settling on OpenCL, and only OpenCL. Nvidia still supports both their C

utter rubbish, you can't weaponize a fusion system designed for power generation, an electrical powered compression system that needs large buildings or many buildings isn't going into the volume of bucket for icbm launch nor into a briefcase.

Nobody is trying to weaponize NIF. However, even the NIF website explains that one of their missions is to support stockpile stewardship:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/national_security/

I'm proud we built the world's most powerful laser, the National Ignition Facility... instead of being proud of something as stupid as military might

You might want to recalibrate your pridometer. The NIF's primary mission is what's euphemistically referred to as "stockpile stewardship" - keeping ageing thermonuclear weapons in tip-top megadeath condition. Any studies of nuclear fusion which don't occur with of chunks of plutonium being the spark plug are kind of a long way down the list.

Fortunately nuclear weapons have nothing to do with military might so carry on Science!

mdsolar has it right. Nuclear is 20% of electricity generation, and electricity is about 40% of total energy use, so ... do the math.

For more details, see here:
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2009/LLNL_US_Energy_Flow_2009.png

Obsolete information. People are largely unaware of the full gamut of renewable energy technologies. Even so, the Department of Energy did an extensive study that said that Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota could supply the country's full energy needs from wind energy alone, but we're not just talking solar panels and turbines.

We could slash building energy requirements drastically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_solar_building_design
Move to peer-to-peer microgrids which by the redundancy of many diverse small energy sources would fill gaps in baseload, reduce the need for redundant large powerplants and losses to electric resistance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/09/uk-island-micro-grid-wales
Consider alternatives for urban and suburban transit that would on today's grid be the equivalent of 300MPG cars: http://www.jpods.com/
For 24/7 baseload, use offshore wind and concentrated solar thermal: http://www.solarreserve.com/
Not to mention use solar thermal for hot water, a highly affordable approach: http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=12850

These are proven solutions with excellent working examples. You can also look at kites: http://ecoble.com/2008/08/26/wind-power-generated-from-kites/ for cheaper material costs or extending power generation to altitudes where the wind is constant, panels of windbelts for smaller-scale solutions as on http://www.humdingerwind.com/ and artificial photosynthesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis

They're also making great strides towards net-positive fusion using lasers: https://www.llnl.gov/str/Petawatt.html

I think the full range of these makes nuclear strictly a question of how to use the remaining nuclear fuel to the fullest extent with less waste left over. I don't understand the enthusiasm for nuclear in the light of the above, or the recent disasters.

Whatever happened to just carbon fuel cells?

from 2005: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7891-coalpowered-fuel-cell-aims-for-efficiency.html

and some unknown date: https://www.llnl.gov/str/June01/Cooper.html

Yes Conservative hate science. There is no fudging of numbers. The fudging of number, data is not available, model source isn't avail is simply a LIE constantly repeated by conservative in hopes that repeating the lie often enough will make people think it is true. The data, the source code for the analysis tools and the source for the models are all freely available for download both in raw and processed form. See www.ncdc.noaa.gov for the both the raw and processed data and http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ for the both initialization data, model output and model source code. The data and software have been freely available for over 20 years. Next lie that documents that Conservatives hate science : Steve McIntyre requested that his followers purposely, with malice of forethought send 10's of thousands of FOIA requests with the expressed purpose of preventing climate scientists,the victims, from doing their work. Steve McIntyre LIED both in his multiple FOIA requests and on his webpage, claiming he needed the YAMAL tree data from Briffa, when in point of fact McIntyre had had the data for over five years before he started on the campaign to flood scientist with FOIA. Then there is Singer and Christy who continue to publish good science documenting that global warming is occurring and that their data proves it. Christy has testified under oath in court that Hansen is correct about the hockey stick temperature curves. On the other hand these "conservative" scientists discard any sense of reality when they talk to "conservatives' and use their error filled results, that they admit to the scientific community is wrong, to "prove" global warming doesn't exist. Maybe you don't understand when McIntyre says on his webpage on June 14 2011 that IPPC scientists should be killed that McIntyre as a conservative is making death threats. Please point to a climate science web site that makes the same death threats. Don't bother there aren't any Please go learn the documented facts before repeating the lies of those who profit from your lack of knowledge and understanding Please poin

You mean this data?

And just how much nuclear do we use in the US? Despite having few reactors overall, they make a lot of energy.

have your students look into distributed computing, and pick a project, then run work units and compete against each other, or join each class as a team and have thoes teams compete. BOINC comes to mind. I would get them to learn a little about distributed computation, pick some task that would take one student a day to complete, then have them break it down into N-1 student chunks of work, and have the last student act as the co-ordinator, moving data back and forth and compiling the complete and final answer. https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/ LLNL has a nice introduction. you could also show how different living organisms like bees and ants work together. An example of a large project that would take one student a long time would be to build a model of the International Space Station. Building each single peice wouldn't take a student that long, and then they can put all the peices together in class, and now you have some more artwork to hang in the class room too.

Plan for things to fail, and when they do, you won't be in such a panic.

As for:

on all likely relevant platforms, processes hold resources, not threads. So killing a thread doesn't do anything to help with resource management and/or reclamation.

The open group disagrees

The pthread_detach() function shall indicate to the implementation that storage for the thread thread can be reclaimed when that thread terminates. If thread has not terminated, pthread_detach() shall not cause it to terminate. The effect of multiple pthread_detach() calls on the same target thread is unspecified.

So does the Comp Sci department at Temple U pthread_detatch

You can mark for deletion and reclaim the storage and other resources associated with a thread (of course, after it has terminated executing) with the command:

#include

int pthread_detach(pthread_t thread);

This command will not terminate a thread that is executing, only indicating that we want to reclaim automatically its storage when it terminates execution. Other ways of reclaiming the resources of a thread are:

• If the thread was created with attribute set to PTHREAD_CREATE_DETACHED, or
• If this thread is waited for with a pthread_join call.

So does the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory pthread_exit() is the way to claim thread-local data.

Regardless of the method of thread termination, any cancellation
cleanup handlers that have been pushed and not yet popped are executed,
and the destructors for any existing thread-specific data are executed.

Normally, you also write clean-up routines for closing file handles, freeing up any manualy malloc'd memory and returning it to the arena, etc.

And Apple here

Because POSIX creates threads as joinable by default, this example changes the thread’s attributes to create a detached thread. Marking the thread as detached gives the system a chance to reclaim the resources for that thread immediately when it exits.

and even the Aussies at Cardiff U agree pthread_destroy() that you can free up all memory allocated, so as long as you clean up the stuff YOU allocated, and allow the library to free up the stuff allocated at thread creation and initialization.

So, what relevant platforms don't support pthreads?

The big secrets are out. Everybody understands generally how an atomic bomb works. There remain smaller secrets, along the lines of construction tips. Machining plutonium is very difficult; in addition to being radioactive and poisonous, it has weird physical properties - it expands when heated, but doesn't contract fully when cooled, because the crystalline structure changes. The detailed techniques for doing that and compensating for the changes aren't public knowledge. Exactly how plutonium behaves when compressed by a shock wave is still being studied. The tricks by which atomic bombs are made smaller and more efficient are not well known. There are neutron reflectors, tampers, and such. The data from the experimental work to develop those items is still classified.

Developing that data independently requires a sizable research operation. All the big nuclear powers had to build big R&D operations to struggle with those problems. (Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea probably used leaked data from one of the big powers.)

The interesting question with this guy is whether this guy fed the FBI real classified data, or just faked up some plausible design numbers.

The first REAL fusion reactor is in a series of tests right in in Livermore, CA. Here's the link to their lastest progress,

https://lasers.llnl.gov/

They expect to have a reaction that gives off many times more energy than it takes to produce THIS YEAR!!!

So what does this mean for the National Ignition Facility that aims to make a laser 60 times more powerful than any previous?

• A gas is a compressible fluid.

  But it cannot be treated as such when the density gets too low. You couldn't treat the edge of the atmosphere as a fluid. I don't care what it is when I use a CFD, only what it behaves like.

  • The most general solvers are the most handicapped. Even the ridiculously costly commercial solvers (Ansys, Fluent, etc.) solve a limited number of problems. I was working on a project that attempted to numerically simulate the effect of electromagnetic waves on the brain. Obviously, you need to solve the Maxwell's equations in horrible medium that is your brain. That's when I realized how woefully indadequate the commercial solvers (that claim to simulate the problem) are.

  My brain's a medium? I thought I heard some dead people in there. :)

  Seriously, I entirely agree. I don't for a moment pretend that I'm anything like up enough on PDEs or high-end maths problems (it's been a while) to identify the best packages either. The best I can do is say such software exists. I'll list here the packages I list and use - not just for PDEs but for maths and logic problems as a whole. I'll leave it to you and others skilled in the subject to pass judgement on their quality.

  • ATLAS - A nice, optimized BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra System) implementation
  • HOL4 - Higher Order Logic proof assistant
  • Hypre - Preconditioner for linear equation solvers
  • LAPack - Linear Algebra Package that runs over BLAS
  • ScaLAPack - Subset of LAPack optimized for highly parallel computers
  • Overture - A PDE solver
  • PHAML - A PDE solver for 2D elliptic partial differential equations
  • SUNDIALS - An expansive (and rather nice) PDE solver
  • VSIPL++ - Nice little signal processing library

• A gas is a compressible fluid.

  But it cannot be treated as such when the density gets too low. You couldn't treat the edge of the atmosphere as a fluid. I don't care what it is when I use a CFD, only what it behaves like.

  • The most general solvers are the most handicapped. Even the ridiculously costly commercial solvers (Ansys, Fluent, etc.) solve a limited number of problems. I was working on a project that attempted to numerically simulate the effect of electromagnetic waves on the brain. Obviously, you need to solve the Maxwell's equations in horrible medium that is your brain. That's when I realized how woefully indadequate the commercial solvers (that claim to simulate the problem) are.

  My brain's a medium? I thought I heard some dead people in there. :)

  Seriously, I entirely agree. I don't for a moment pretend that I'm anything like up enough on PDEs or high-end maths problems (it's been a while) to identify the best packages either. The best I can do is say such software exists. I'll list here the packages I list and use - not just for PDEs but for maths and logic problems as a whole. I'll leave it to you and others skilled in the subject to pass judgement on their quality.

  • ATLAS - A nice, optimized BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra System) implementation
  • HOL4 - Higher Order Logic proof assistant
  • Hypre - Preconditioner for linear equation solvers
  • LAPack - Linear Algebra Package that runs over BLAS
  • ScaLAPack - Subset of LAPack optimized for highly parallel computers
  • Overture - A PDE solver
  • PHAML - A PDE solver for 2D elliptic partial differential equations
  • SUNDIALS - An expansive (and rather nice) PDE solver
  • VSIPL++ - Nice little signal processing library

• A gas is a compressible fluid.

  But it cannot be treated as such when the density gets too low. You couldn't treat the edge of the atmosphere as a fluid. I don't care what it is when I use a CFD, only what it behaves like.

  • The most general solvers are the most handicapped. Even the ridiculously costly commercial solvers (Ansys, Fluent, etc.) solve a limited number of problems. I was working on a project that attempted to numerically simulate the effect of electromagnetic waves on the brain. Obviously, you need to solve the Maxwell's equations in horrible medium that is your brain. That's when I realized how woefully indadequate the commercial solvers (that claim to simulate the problem) are.

  My brain's a medium? I thought I heard some dead people in there. :)

  Seriously, I entirely agree. I don't for a moment pretend that I'm anything like up enough on PDEs or high-end maths problems (it's been a while) to identify the best packages either. The best I can do is say such software exists. I'll list here the packages I list and use - not just for PDEs but for maths and logic problems as a whole. I'll leave it to you and others skilled in the subject to pass judgement on their quality.

  • ATLAS - A nice, optimized BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra System) implementation
  • HOL4 - Higher Order Logic proof assistant
  • Hypre - Preconditioner for linear equation solvers
  • LAPack - Linear Algebra Package that runs over BLAS
  • ScaLAPack - Subset of LAPack optimized for highly parallel computers
  • Overture - A PDE solver
  • PHAML - A PDE solver for 2D elliptic partial differential equations
  • SUNDIALS - An expansive (and rather nice) PDE solver
  • VSIPL++ - Nice little signal processing library

'Not having read TFA, I could be wrong, but it sounds like an array-based detection system.'

You're spot on. There's a better article than TFA at LLNL Public Affairs:

https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2010/NR-10-05-02.html

Looks like they're using a Nimblegen platform, at least in the original version of the array:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18478124

One application is screening human vaccines for contamination with various viruses:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20375174

The device is not 3-inches long. The consumable portion is 3-inches long. This is like saying that my HP color printer is only 3 inches long: The printer is actually 2 feet long, but the cartridge is only 3 inches. Also, the odds are that it requires additional processing before it even gets to the device.

I'm not knocking what they have done -- just knocking the oversimplified press releases.

Here is the original press release from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory