[FRIAM] Fwd: NO LANL IN SANTA FE! Wednesday, 12; 00 outside SF City Hall; bring friends

[Marcus Daniels]

Ed writes:

“In area in which I’ve worked, there have been large expensive projects at the labs, the quality has been mediocre and the labs are almost totally unrepresented in open conferences and journals. A related issue is that the cost of doing science at the labs is ridiculously high, another consequence of their welfare status. Under the present management, many of the scientists have to seek external funding but the cost of a lab scientist is usually two to three times higher than for a university researcher. Not a good argument for bringing a lab to SF.”

Generally, it is not practical to be funded at LANL without the DOE (or DOD) funding structure.   That leads to a tendency for staff to attach themselves to large block-funded projects (or money drained from block-funded projects) which may have dubious technical leadership.  Even some senior scientists have to do this.

For physicists and computational people that work 30 or 40 years at the lab, and like that lifestyle – recognizing they will have to cooperate with some projects they don’t care about – LANL is a decent place to do that.   A long career has opportunities that come and go and come back.  The whole system has been built to raise a family on a single income and, unlike LLNL, there’s a recognition it is the only real game in town.  Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and Albuquerque will probably continue to be how they are for decades, and it won’t be like Seattle or San Francisco.   There’s a fix for that:  Moving.

Marcus
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