This story is actually some what near and dear to my heart, not for my passion for the subject, but because of one of the people involved. Senate Republicans, namely Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), are denying $141 million in funding to the National Ignition Facility, a project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California's Bay Area that has already had $2.8 billion invested in it over the years.
Essentially, the NIF is 152 big lasers that meet at one point to create one giant laser beam. The point of this project is to study the release of massive amounts of energy and to create fusion reactions without radioactive fallout. The project is near completion, and a lack of funds will push the project back by years.
While attending the University of California, Davis, I took a class in the physics department on nuclear arms and policy. That class was taught by Dr. Richard Freeman, the university's Edward Teller Chair of Physics. Dr. Freeman has worked on the NIF project since its inception. Dr. Freeman is also an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons and the inept missile defense shield.
Senator Domenici is engaging in bullshit politics. He says that the NIF project takes needed funds away from testing and maintaining our nation's aging nuclear arsenal. This is nonsense. NIF is not only a clean-energy project, it allows scientists to simulate nuclear explosions without the concomitant radioactive fallout. Basically, when the NIF is finished, we'll be able to accurately test performance and readiness without having to detonate weapons (and thus not violate treaties like the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) and without potentially further irradiating any citizens, flora, or fauna.
Ah, but here's where we get to the meat of Domenici's real problem with the NIF. Without NIF, such testing would be conducted at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, both of which are located in New Mexico. Currently, New Mexico's economy is in the toilet, due in no small part to Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat. Senator Domenici is using his position as chairs of the Senate Energy Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water to try and inject some much-needed cash into his state.
Senator Domenici doesn't give a flying rat's patootie about the viability of our nuclear arsenal. NIF is a project that can kill two birds with one stone - one step closer to a clean, renewable energy source AND a way of testing nuclear fusion reactions (like those found in nuclear weapons). One of the big problems with testing the viability of nuclear weapons is how to do so without detonating the damn things. NIF takes a big step forward in creating accurate simulations. $141 million is peanuts in the scope of the 2006 budget, with a potential payout well beyond its investment. The real problem Domenici has with NIF isn't that it takes money from testing our arsenal, it's that NIF is located in Livermore, California and not Albuquerque, New Mexico.