Stupak

There is a story about how Congress is currently viewing the funding at LANL and by implication other national labs.

This story refers to comments by Congressman Stupak about the need for the existence of Los Alamos National Lab at all. He asks what work that is being done at Los Alamos cannot be done elsewhere. Part of the answer includes some supercomputer simulations, some plutonium work, DAHRT and other big ticket instruments.

Even this work could be done elsewhere but only at very large cost in building new equipment.

For Livermore, NIF comes to mind. The sales pitch to Stupak would have to be:

1. This work can't be done elsewhere because ......
2. This work is critical to the nation now because ......

It is in the second bullet point that Livermore seems to be faltering in the face of Congressional inquiry.

A number commenters on this article on the blog LANL: the Rest of the Story seem to have forgotten that Stupak and others control the purse strings so that annoying them is a bad idea. They also seem to have forgotten that Stupak could move a number of LANL programs to Livermore or beyond.