Group

In reading one of our local papers, I noticed an article today about
"Plutonium". http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyhera...news/ci_4745782

A comment made by U.S. Rep Ellen Tauscher, the Alamo Democrat whose district includes Lawrence Livermore and the Calif campus of Sandia Nat. Labs
brings a question to my mind. I am just a layperson. A person who likes to
keep up with what is going around them.

Her comment was

It is possible to modernize the nation's aging weapons labs and factories without designing new bombs and warheads, but the new arsenal is critical, she argued to keeping those facilities working on CHALLENGING SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS.
The best case for the relevance is to make sure we have the finest minds in the world coming to the lab, and the best way to do that is to have the best science in the world.
So this is what we do with the BIGGEST LASERS IN THE WORLD, the biggest
computers in the world and the smartest scientists in the world and at the same time take down the Numbers of the stockpile and the maintenance costs.


Can someone please tell me in this story about whether plutonium is aging or not
and about keeping up with the Joneses just What the heck other than tracking
does making sure we have the BIGGEST LASERS IN THE WORLD????

See, I see a sentence like this, and I know this statement is REALLY APPLIED TO
THE WORKING ON CHALLENGING SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS, and not specifically
what the article is written about.

But this laser technology scares the heck out of me. The new crystals they have
developed of YCOB to create green infrared and such tells me that their is
so much going on at our government that one hand does not know what the
other hand is doing. The other fact that scares me, is the fact about private
investors lending a hand. When a place like LLNL signs a contract to do some
experimenting with a private investor footing the bill does not mean that
the government doesn't have its hand in it. It means the government isn't
required to report to the DOE or other departments about the experiment
because of course they are not the ones doing the funding. And just like
any contract if a clause is added by the private investor that everything
remains confidential then WHO REALLY IS KEPT ACCOUNTABLE AND WHY
SHOULD A GOVERNMENT AGENCY SUCH AS THIS BE ALLOWED SUCH A
LOOPHOLE TO DO EXPERIMENTS THROUGH THE BACK DOOR BUT STILL AT
THE GOVERNMENT FACILITY????
Doesn't this leave open the door that nothing gets written down, nothing gets
reported, especially along the lines of any spills or particles that might be
let loose during an experiment searching for alternative energy sources and
nanoparticles??????

Again, I am just a layperson, a citizen of the United States voicing my concerns.

Plutonium is radioactive and so turns into other elements over a period of time. This means that a nuke built in the 70s might no longer work now if the plutonium has decayed into less fissionable materials inside the warhead. At the very least it's yeild will have gone down.

Lasers allow for experiments into fusion, high speed data communication, weapon targetting, mapping, data storage and investiagation into new material properties.

ALP

If you read that article then you would of known that they have given the
shelf life of plutonium, which before was only about 45 years, NOW 90 YEARS.

But that is a sort of incomplete list of how lasers are being applied in the
world of Changing Science. So what about the other applications lasers
are being used for?

Dvd players!

Nessus

Are you referring to DVD's (and TV's, computers, remote controls)
and lasers to the theme that Big Brother is watching?????

In the design of bombs, materials are included in the design that produces more Plutonium as it ages. The intent is obvious. Without testing they have turned to other methods to assure function.

tl

Just because the article says as they build new weapons which include
Plutonium and they say that it is kinda hard to know if the devices
will work because theoretically they cannot test them, does not
in any mean that they won't try creating smaller versions of the
actual devices and testing them instead. THEY WILL DO WHATEVER
THEY WANT TO ACHIEVE WHATEVER THEY WANT WHETHER
THEY ARE ALLOWED TO DO SOMETHING OR NOT.