#oraun

[quotes-of-anime-blog]

You rich bastards.

- Haruhi Fujioka

[rye-flower]

[jkmhoffman]

workers-charge-us-nuclear-weapons-are-stressed-out-and-unhappyEnvironment

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/workers-charge-us-nuclear-weapons-are-stressed-out-and-unhappyEnvironment → Military, Top Stories Scientists in Charge of US Nuclear Weapons Are Sad —By Dana Liebelson | Fri Oct. 25, 2013 8:01 AM PDT 1 Nuclear workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos National Laboratory/Flickr There's been no shortage of scandals at US nuclear sites recently—two top nuclear military commanders were fired this month and a nuclear security chief was let go over the summer after his Montana base flunked a safety test—but now, there's evidence of another management problem. According to an internal government report obtained by Secrecy News last week, nuclear workers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California are depressed about their jobs. "There is a sense of increased stress and reduced morale among LLNL technical employees in the weapons program, stemming from a (perceived, at least) combination of reduced resources and increased work requirements," notes the August 2013 assessment of the lab. "We recommend attention to the potential danger that activities that are important for long-term stockpile stewardship may be dropped in favor of seemingly urgent near-term requirements." There's always the chance that nuclear scientists might be sitting on warheads reading "The Hollow Men" and listening to Josh Ritter (below), depressed that they're babysitting aging weapons that could destroy humankind. But it's more likely that America's "great speedup" has managed to make its way to US nuclear labs. As Mother Jones reported back in 2011, while overall American productivity has skyrocketed since the 1970s, only the top one percent of earners are seeing the gains. For everyone else, wages have remained frustratingly stagnant. Naturally, the potential consequences of an administrative assistant at McDonalds feeling overworked are not quite the same as a guy in charge of the US nuclear stockpile. "This reminded me of the time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when there was some danger that engineers might be tempted to shop their expertise around and take it to other governments, which posed a proliferation hazard," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. He adds that "I wouldn't overstate its significance, but it's out of the ordinary and I don't recall seeing these concerns about morale before." While this is only a brief evaluation of one nuclear site, it's hard to imagine that things have gotten much better since August. During the government shutdown, 6,000 employees at LLNL were forced to suspend their research and several other nuclear labs shut down. There has also been a series of cost overruns and a high-profile, embarrassing security breach at a different nuclear site last year, which involved an 82-year-old nun. LLNL did not respond to a request for comment. "All the sites are having trouble," Aftergood adds. "This is a small window into a world that we don't normally see."

[jkmhoffman]

Norman_Foster_Ramsey_Jr

http://www.atomicheritage.org/mediawiki/index.php/Norman_Ramsey http://www.thirdage.com/news/norman-foster-ramsey-jr-nobel-prize-winning-physicist-dies-aged-96_11-07-2011 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Inventions_of_Norman_Foster_Ramsey_Jr#slide1<a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Inventions_of_Norman_Foster_Ramsey_Jr#slide1"></a> Contents [hide] 1 Early Life 2 Manhattan Project 3 Later Years 4 Resources Early Life Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr. was born August 27, 1915 in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Columbia University in 1935 with a degree in mathematics, then received a second bachelor's degree in physics from Cambridge University in 1937. While working toward his physics Ph.D. at Columbia, which he received in 1940, he worked under Isidor I. Rabi on magnetic resonance. Manhattan Project In 1940 Ramsey went to the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he led the group researching radar with a 3-centimeter wavelength. He left for Los Alamos in 1943, where he served under William S. Parsons in Project Alberta to determine how the atomic bomb could be delivered to its target. He determined that the B-29 was the only United States aircraft that would be feasible to carry the bomb, and even so would require extensive modification to do so (via a program known as Silverplate). Ramsey also planned atomic bomb test drops that used replicas of the Fat Man plutonium bomb known as "pumpkin bombs" for their orange color. Later Years After World War II, Ramsey moved to Harvard University in 1947 and taught there for 40 years. He helped to found Brookhaven National Laboratory and served as the first chairman of its physics department. He also served as chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission and played a vital role in the creation of Fermilab. Ramsey retired from Harvard in 1986, but has continued his activity in physics, receiving the 1988 National Medal of Science. He shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method, which led to the development of the hydrogen maser and the cesium atomic clock. Ramsey passed away on November 5, 2011. Resources Norman F. Ramsey - Autobiography [1] Norman Ramsey and the Separated Oscillatory Fields Method [2] Oral History Transcript — Dr. Norman Ramsey [3]