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The Political Assault On Los Alamos National Laboratory
Harperdog writes "Hugh Gusterson has a great article on the troubles at Los Alamos over the last decade. Since the late 1990s, nuclear weapons scientists at the US Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory have faced an unanticipated threat to their work, from politicians and administrators whose reforms and management policies—enacted in the name of national security and efficiency—have substantially undermined the lab's ability to function as an institution and to superintend the nuclear stockpile."
Can't get rid of them, Canada is just waiting to invade.
Are atomic weapons still needed ? i think they aren'T.
Perhaps we should ask Pakistan, China, and North Korea. And Iran. And India. Who else? Rogue Soviet sympathisers?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Are atomic weapons still needed ? i think they aren'T.
Perhaps we should ask Pakistan, China, and North Korea. And Iran. And India. Who else? Rogue Soviet sympathisers?
You could argue that maybe those nations wouldn't be so trigger-happy to get a nuke if they weren't constantly being threatened by the other guys who already have nukes. But yeah, genie, bottle, cat, bag, all that stuff. It would be nice if we could get a global agreement to settle all conflicts by a good Unreal Tournament Deathmatch, but it's not going to happen.
...the idea of disappearing into a cloud of vapour at any time doesn't scare me anymore. I grew up with dive-under-the-desk drills, "Protect And Survive", "Threads" (which terrified me the first time I watched it) and "When The Wind Blows" (which made me cry). I'm so used to Government using scare tactics to get its own way I'm slap happy to them.
What does frighten me is the fact that people are still scared of what TPTB to put it bluntly, won't ever do because they have too much to lose; TPTB know people are scared because people are dumb, panicky animals and that is ripe material to rob, rape and pillage.
You can't rob, rape and pillage radioactive ash.
Those who have everything they want at a whim are more afraid of losing it than those who have to scrimp, save, recycle, reuse and fight for it. I don't know why, it's just the way I see it. Probably some primal thing which says "You can't take it with you - you leave this world as you entered it, cold and naked." Or maybe I've just accepted the inevitability of corporeal mortality.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over. It could easily be argued that this is a little excessive unless aliens invade that can survive 100 nuclear obliterations of the earth and still pose a threat to what's left of the US by then (hint: which would be ash and dust and a few scraps of metal).
There may be a need to hold some weapons as deterrent - nobody really argues that once they have the capability - but do you *really* need the ability to kill everyone on the planet, yourself included, several hundred times over? Hell, even just knocking it down to "twice over" is more than enough security and needs a nuclear budget only 1/50th of what it is now.
Even the UK has the power to obliterate the planet if it really came to it, and we only have something like 5% of the US arsenal still active.
Plus, a single nuclear detonation as an act of war will pretty much end the planet. That's *why* the US/UK still have nuclear weapons - to say "Try it, even against only one country in a small way, and we'll just take everyone out." - which puts the fear of Armageddon into any idiot that things their Northern/Southern neighbours don't respect them enough. There's only been two quite small nuclear bombs dropped as an act of aggression in the entire history of the planet - both on Japan - which ended WW2 almost instantaneously. The next one pretty much *starts* and
*ends* WW3.
Nobody with a brain is saying "get rid of all nuclear weapons". They're saying "Why the hell do you need *THAT* many when just one might end the world and just 2% of your stockpile will guarantee the end of the world on its own?", especially when your taxes are PAYING for those things to be guarded in case someone rogue *does* steal them. The more of them that exist, the more chances of accidents, terrorism, thefts, rogue agents, etc. being successful. Scrap most of them safely and get on with life with the same assurance that you can eliminate all life that you had before.
Being "a pleasure to work with" isn't a requisite for being a good administrator, it's true, but taking such an adversarial attitude to personnel that a mass staff revolt is launched is a sign that one is clearly not appropriate for the job.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Given the nature of the work and it's importance to National Security (I won't argue that point) the work of the individuals at LANL should be supervised and standards maintained; no question about it. I do agree that congress and previous administrations have over-reacted to situations but then again, we're talking about the stewardship of the nuclear arsenal here. Also, when have we never seen congress over-react to an even perceived problem where national security is concerned. The people who work at LANL have to be creative in what they do because since the Test Ban treaties they're work focuses on more theoretical simulations than actually getting to set off a nuke, and creativity and discipline don't necessarily go hand in hand, that also has to be realized. Leslie Groves had the same problems when they were building LANL and the first atomic weapons and he constantly was frustrated with the scientists because of the cultural differences between the military and academia. Despite all of this and under the tightest security all it took was a few sympathetic individuals to let the secrets out that gave the Soviets a huge leap in their project.
I think what has to happen with places like Livermore and LANL is that congress and the administration have to work to maintain the secrecy necessary to protect the stockpile but also let the people flourish within the confines of the work being done. Those individuals realize the importance of the work and do their best day in and day out to do that job well, so it's not wholly necessary to put clamps on them that create barriers to their well being and satisfaction with their work.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
One wonders if Richard Feynman could work there now if he were still alive, given his hobby of safecracking and lockpicking to leave prank notes. But hey, it's not like they were doing anything important, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#The_Manhattan_Project
Anyone know if there are any eccentrics left at the labs, or has it really been purged of 'weird people' like Feynman?
The article is spot-on. I was there for Act 1 and Act 2, and left when Act 3 was imminent. Those few left at LANL who I know have confirmed the accuracy of the paper about Act 3.
Israel, UK, France.
face it, this stone's been turned, and it can't be turned back. even if we abandon nuclear weapons today, the knowledge exists to make them again (as it should - to ignore all of nuclear physics would be a bad idea).
in this game, anyone who can wipe out millions of people at the touch of a button is going to hold some sway. so these weapons are desirable, and always will be, even if the rest of the world is playing along.
and not to sound far-right, but i think a nominal deterrent is needed as well. the USA's policy of consolidating, simplifying and idiot-proofing it's arsenal is not a bad one. not so much having the stockpile, but having the ability to churn out cheap, simple, reliable nukes at a moment's notice is useful, as well as a small number of "active" nukes just in case anyone gets any ideas.
of course, if everyone had nukes, the world would be less safe. but they say that about handguns, too.
*trollface.png*
The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over.
Quit with the massively overblown hyperbole. If what you were saying was true, and about 2000 warheads was enough to "destroy the world several hundred times over", the would would have been dead and gone a long time ago. Hiroshima would have taken out China and Siberia, too, and Trinity would have wiped out the US. Obviously, that didn't happen.
Nuclear weapons aren't magic "drop one and you wipe out and sterilize everything within a thousand miles" bombs. Yes, they're powerful--more so than people realize, in some ways--but in other ways, they aren't nearly as powerful as common "wisdom" would suggest.
Honestly, 2000 warheads is barely enough for a credible deterrent at all. Yes, the goal of a deterrent is to convince the other guy that you can bomb him back to the middle ages if he does something you don't like, but that takes a lot more than sprinkling five or six devices across the country and calling it done. A credible deterrent plan targets not population, but industrialization, transportation, and military facilities; you want to take out everything that makes it possible for him to fight a war or live in anything close to modern comfort. That takes a lot more than a handful of devices. Something like a railyard or airfield is probably going to take a few successful hits to truly render it unusable.
And then, of course, you can't just sit with the number you came up with there. Next, you have to consider redundancy; a good number of your warheads will fail to initiate, get shot down, or have a delivery failure (the rocket blows up, bomber aborts or is shot down, submarine doesn't get the message or is sunk, etc). And after that, you have to plan for maintenance; a very rough estimate is that a third of your stockpile will be out of service at any given time for maintenance (subs have to go into port for refits; bombers, missiles, and warheads themselves need maintenance and overhauls, etc.).
Remember, the goal isn't to try to be scary. Rather, the goal is to have enough to convince the other guy that he absolutely cannot win under any circumstance, so he shouldn't even think about it. We had that in the past. We might still have it. But we might not. And as long as politicians keep making cuts not based on what makes strategic sense, or with a coherent goal and policy in mind, but rather just trying to score political points by cutting back to some arbitrary number they pulled out of their ass, we make the risk of that happening greater.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
> face it, this stone's been turned, and it can't be turned back. even if we abandon nuclear weapons today,
> the knowledge exists to make them again (as it should - to ignore all of nuclear physics would be a bad idea).
The same is true for crossbows, but I don't see anyone rushing to equip armies with them. And before you say it's not the same thing, you need to go and examine the history of the crossbow, because it absolutely was the atomic bomb of its era. So basically I think this is a terrible argument.
The Bomb is an outdated weapon. The same is true of MBT's, heavy SP artillery and many other weapon systems. We're already at the point where a weapon that can't be carried on a Twin Huey is a useless weapon - so the M777 and Hummer-based drones are much, much more valuable than the Crusader and Abrams. And as that evolution continues, I suspect the war of the future is going to look more like stuxnet and less like The Bulge, and that evolution will continue. It will continue to be bloody, ever more so, but the way that damage will be delivered with be with precision, not area effects. The Bomb is the ultimate area effect weapon.
And that's assuming the war that the US next fights won't be on the balance sheet rather than in the skies. I believe all evidence suggests this is the real threat and that spending time and effort worrying about the atomic maginot line weakens the US's attempts to move into the future.
> nominal deterrent is needed as well. the USA's policy of consolidating, simplifying and idiot-proofing it's arsenal
It's not a bad idea, by any means. Cheap too.
There is the question of how many weapons are needed, and also the conversation about demasting them. It seems entirely reasonable to me that 50 strategic warheads kept in secure off-site storage (as opposed to mounted in missiles) is just as much a deterrent as 10000 warheads ready for 10 minute launch. And not just today, in the 1960s as well.
Removing them from the missile would be a clear message to the world that the US does not consider other people a threat to their existence (which is the case) as well as provide another level of escalation (or sabre rattling if you prefer) that doesn't exist now.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is far more likely to actually be working with classified documents that if released or stolen would prove to be terribly harmful to the US than, say, what happened to the State Department recently. What Wen Ho did was not like "driving 80 miles per hour in a school zone," rather it was like driving 100mph through a residential neighborhood while dozens of kids were walking across the street as their bus was unloading. It's so reckless and irresponsible that "even if he didn't kill someone," it shows an unacceptable lack of concern for the safety of others and his community.
I know many slashdotters like to chuckle about overclassification, but consider where he was working. Is it really wrong for the federal government to put its boot firmly up the ass of a scientist who works at one of our two nuclear weapons laboratories when he thinks basic procedures are beneath him?
> The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over
> which would be ash and dust and a few scraps of metal
Hmmm, let's use math instead of guesses.
The area of "complete distraction" effect of a modern warhead is about 3 miles radius. The area of the Great Britain is about 90,000 square miles, so that means we would need 30,000 nuclear warheads to destroy the UK to the level you're talking about. For the US you would need over 1 million warheads.
So, you're wrong.
About 20 seconds of effort yields the following: The total number of warheads of all levels of readiness stands at 9,962 warheads (with another 589 in "inactive stockpile" waiting to be dismantled). That is plenty to lay waste to any major country but hardly enough to destroy the world's military forces, let alone the world itself.
The 2% of the stockpile you recommend would be about 200 warheads, which might be enough to deter Iran, but not (in my opinion) China -- and certainly not both at once.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
What happened to Wen Ho Lee was the DOE director Richardson, a cabinet level Hispanic, former UN ambassador, former congressman, was widely expected to the the vice presidential running mate. This happened on his watch and the republicans were determined to destroy him for something that was not even his fault (the infractions occured before his time in office). He in turn massively over reacted. The FBI went nuts. Wen Ho Lee was put in solitary confinement and only allowed to have one book at a time. I've no doubt Wen Ho deserved jail time, but even the judge who let him out said he had be abused by the process. But the over reaction continued to play out politically and the lab was the loser.
If one employee acts like a child and hates a manager, even two or three.... sure.
However, most people don't just act like that. I have known and seen places erun by good but tough managers, they are respected as good, even if tough. They don't inspire this sort of response in most people.
A couple of bad apples is on the bad apples. Larger numbers? Thats the manager. Just because you are a hardass doesn't mean you are good at it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
On December 10, 1999, Lee was arrested. Described as an extreme danger to US national security, he was held in solitary confinement for 278 days awaiting his day in court. When he was finally brought to trial, the case against him rapidly fell apart; 58 of the 59 counts against him were dropped, and he was released with time served for one count of mishandling classified information.
The case did not "fall apart" when it went to trial, because it never went to trial. I'm also struggling to comprehend how the case could have "fallen apart", because they found classified information in his house and his unclassified computer, and what other evidence do you need for charges of mishandling classified information? (note: the case did "fall apart", in that he should have been charged with much more but wasn't, but the 59 charges were legit)
Here's how espionage cases against people with clearances are always handled : you are charged with whatever crime you are guilty of, then are offered a plea deal for a lesser offense in exchange for two things. First, you must honestly relate everything you leaked, so the damage to national security can be assessed, and then you must promise a newly discovered silence about matters classified. For obvious reasons the vast majority (I can't think of any who haven't in recent history) of the accused take the plea deal and never go to court.
Except for Wen Ho Lee. He refused to plea down to a lesser charge (in this case a single charge), as most of these people do. So they stuck him in solitary, because without agreeing to #2 he was still a threat to national security. Finally, after 278 days he relented and accepted the plea deal. He got off lucky, because the FBI botched the investigation and he could have been prosecuted for a good bit more -- export violations for one, for discussing nuclear information with Chinese scientists.
The arrogance charge is right on the money. The relaxed attitude toward the law from people at the lab is astounding. The mere fact that Wen Ho Lee has become something of a martyr is proof.
I just read the entire paper. Before reading it I was neutral and largely ignorant of Los Alamos' problems and culture. After reading it I tend to believe that the culture there is indeed one of arrogance and privilege and that the author, Gusterson, is their mouthpiece.
The paper is not even close to a scientific treatment. It is a series of conclusions, allegations, and characterizations more suited to a letter to the editor (or a Slashdot rant like this one) than a NSF funded study report. He never once describes the scientific culture that is the subject, nor does he analyze it. Nor does he analyze the management. He simply hurls characterizations and insults at it. The paper reads like a list of grievances brought forward by a shop steward.
To use Gusterson's words against him. He says, "Recent condenmations of Los Alamos have been based on remarkably thin cartoonish descriptions of its culture." But his paper does exactly that, it seems to be based on remarkably thin cartoonish descriptions of the management.
I'm still ignorant of the actual culture at Los Alamos. However, if there was a calcified culture of arrogance and privilege, and that culture sent forth someone to present their views, I would expect it to sound exactly like Gustafson's paper. If that paper were the only evidence, I would say "Fire them all."
I would also point out that the British had a lot of success against the French sticking to the longbow which they had been using for years before the crossbow came along. Yes the cross bow had more range and did more damage per a shot, but in the time it takes to reload the long bow men could have run the distance and the next reload they would have got several shots off. Also the shortbow (basically shortened version of the longbow could be used from horseback).
The longbow is also much harder to learn. The reason us english used them well was something to do with the amount of legal encouragement we were given to use them. This apparently included crazy laws preventing us from doing anything else at certain times (on sundays or holidays) and making sure all practice ranges were over 220 yards long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow
Also, your impression that longbow men moved is not accurate. The best plan was for the longbowman to sharpen a very big stick and plunge it into the ground next to him at 45 degrees. He then sharpened the other end too then stood just behind it. The stick had to be sturdy enough such that a horse charging it could not break it and close enough to the stick next to it that a horse could not get through the gap. He then just sat there and made arrows until the battle commenced and some fool walked in range.
Also, longbowman were not exactly useless when it came to close combat as the hammer they used for driving stakes into the ground was nasty if you clobbered someone with it. They also had a useful little short handled axe for making arrows. They were also unarmoured since they had no need for it so much more manoeuvrable than anyone who had survived walking through their hail of arrows.
I dont read
...these labs don't exist for the pleasure of working there. And nerds clearly still don't have a clue of how they are perceived by the rest of society.
In a real sense they do exist for the pleasure of working there; because the primary societal goals for which the labs were created can only be accomplished by people who are motivated by the pleasure of their work. The motivations of people like Oppenheimer, Feynman, Hasslacher, et al. are not generally money, they are motivated to understand nature, to work with similarly talented people, and to be recognized within that peer group for their work. Acknowledgment outside the peer group is largely unimportant, which means even if they spent the time to consider how they are perceived by the rest of society, they would not especially care. These are not easy people to manage towards goals other than their own, and it takes someone like Oppenheimer who was both in the peer group and an excellent manager to do so. It may also take an existential situation like was faced in WWII.
To give people an idea of just how sensitive this type of data is, this is basically what is already known publicly about making a lightweight fusion-boosted warhead that can be put on a rocket:
The ideal fissile material is Plutonium-239. It should contain less than 10% Pu-240 and ideally less than 2% Pu-240
This can be made in research reactors, using technology available in public literature.
The amount used in a simple implosion bomb is 4-6kg
It can be extracted from spent nuclear fuel by a solvent extraction process using the PUREX process ( which is again described in open litterature )
A 2-point explosion system can be made by using an air-gap lens. Detailed analysis of how such a lens could be shaped is available in open litterature.
Boosting the device is best done with an equal mixture of pressurized Deuterium and Tritium. About 5 grams total is needed.
Deuterium is readily available on the open market, and Tritium can be produced from lithium in a research reactor.
The plutonium can be stabilized in its delta phase by addition of about 3% gallium.
To prevent oxidation the plutonium can be gold plated.
Now, however:
Optimal yield is achieved when the deuterium-tritium reaction burns close to completion while the fissile material is still in a dense configuration. This means the fission chain reaction ought to start early enough to heat the hydrogen isotopes to ignition temperature quickly, but not too early as that may result in inefficient compression. The exact timing of the initiating neutron pulse is therefore very important, and depends on the precise characteristics of the bomb. Determining the optimal timing is believed very difficult without nuclear testing.
If the information he copied detailed the dimensions, composition and timing of the fission primary, then such information leaking to the public would essentially allow anybody that acquired weapons grade plutonium and tritium to create a highly compact nuclear warhead, small enough to fit on a rocket or easily hidden in a small space. The very first device to make use of this technology had a weight of about 40 pounds, and a yield similar to that of the Hiroshima bomb.
The US is actually on a trajectory for fossil fuel independence thanks largely to fracking, horizontal drilling and improved seismic analysis tools. The U.S. is already producing so much natural gas its becoming a net exporter.
A Goldman Sachs estimate has the U.S. becoming the world's #1 producer by 2017. If the U.S. reduces consumption with things like improved fuel efficiency it could eventually break even, something Presidents have promised but failed to deliver since the 70's
North Dakota's fields are putting out so much oil they are having pipeline capacity problems. Production from Texas and California's ancient oil fields is also booming. Drillers passed over rich, shallow deposits in Santa Barbara fields because it was hard to tap. With current technology its producing windfalls. California just sacked the commissioner that was blocking new drilling permits so its probably going to throw open the doors to new production.
@de_machina