Today in “the grift just keeps getting worse”, we have TAE, a fusion startup, merging with Trump media. This one kind of hurts since I did some work with them in grad school. www.reuters.com/business/tru...

An absolutely horrifying event. My sincerest condolences to Professor Loureiro’s family and I hope the perpetrator is caught immediately. abcnews.go.com/US/mit-profe...

It's pretty wild committing to and from the birth place of nuclear weapons while listening to @iwriteok.bsky.social talk about it on his podcast. I am big fan of BTB, but wasn't sure if I should give the nuclear war episodes a listen.

I just had a car dealership knock $750 off for getting a PhD. It was all worth the five and a half years guys! It was all for this! 😂

It’s fun to be back at the @UofR LLE and doing laser wakefield based radiography again. Fingers crossed we get some good images out!

Today is my first day as a staff scientist. After literal decades of school, I finally have a “real” job.

I just saw an add on broadcast TV to join ICE… Christ man, I never thought I would see adds for the modern day Gestapo on live TV but I suppose I should have expected it. Also $50K signing bonus plus more than scientist pay!? I see where all of our deficit spending is going now days.

I picked up some light reading for the weekend. I'm excited to learn just how nuts those 50's/60's weapons scientists were!

Welp, the tariffs got me. I ordered some optics from France(literally the only supplier in the world for these parts) and they are now hundreds of dollars more expensive and massively delayed in customs. Are we winning yet Donnie?

I finally got to see the NIF today and just… wow. What a massive scientific cathedral! I also really like how they kept the target holders from the first burning plasma and ignited shots! Those are great pieces of history.

I have finally been in a truly autonomous car (Waymo)! It’s a very neat and seamless experience, although notably more expensive and less responsive than Uber/Lyft. The cars a nice though, and drive quite well.

I was lucky enough to be able to see the SLAC facility (LCLS-II and I) yesterday. These are honest to god x-ray lasers! I would argue that this is probably the most useful scientific facility this country has made yet.

I just had the most Bay Area experience ever. I went to a coffee shop where the coffee was made and served by a robot! The bot proceeded to spill everywhere and the coffee cost more than just going to Starbucks, so I think barista jobs remain safe.

It’s always fun to get to see accelerators, especially such historic machines! This is using the steel from one of Lawerence’s original cyclotrons to make the Crocker cyclotron at Davis. It’s used for space radiation, isotope production, and eye cancer treatment.

I signed my Scientist 2 conversion paperwork today at LANL! It’s been a whirlwind post-doc, but I’m excited to stay on and work on modernizing our nations radiographic capabilities. I’ll do some fusion and pure accelerator physics on the side as well.

This is a really, really big deal. A top Republican NRC appointee has resigned in protest over what the admin, and DOGE in particular, are trying to do to them. This is a bad sign for both nuclear safety and the industry. kaufman.substack.com/p/a-top-us-n...

80 years on from Trinity, the true start of the Atomic Age. Here’s hoping none of us ever get to see the terrifying beauty of one of these monsters in the open. Credit @wellerstein.bsky.social awesome article for the quote!

Interesting thought for yall. If companies like @KairosPower provide a large enough enriched Li-7 supply, designs for mobile, lithium cooled reactors like the LCRE could become practical. Could be fun to reconsider at least! www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

I waited to write a 4th of July post until I got proper riled up on sun and cheap beer. "July 4th is wrong this year, it feels like there's nothing to celebrate." Not true. This is the easiest Independence Day we might have ever had. Do you believe in freedom from tyrants? Then this Bud's for you.

If you go to any 4th of July parties today, I urge you to play this song and make any confederate flag waving weirdos cry. m.youtube.com/watch?v=DhSz...

And my latest paper has finally been published! This was based on an INFUSE grant from the DOE to investigate powerful THz sources with TAE Technologies. pubs.aip.org/aip/pop/arti...

One year(ish) into being at LANL and I’m batting 250/330 (depending on how you want to count) on LDRDs. It would be nice to hit off even more, but it feels good to get one the first time around as is! Now to actually accomplish what I claimed we could…

🗽Unlike most states, New York can directly order the construction of a nuclear plant. As @fredstaffordcs.bsky.social points out, Hochul doesn’t have to beg private developers to do it. This is abundance. 🔌💡 www.wsj.com/business/ene...

In today’s tiny bit of good news, I just had a paper accepted for publication! It always feels so damn good when you get that email.

Some more...anodyne...☢️ commentary, perhaps ill timed, but I was reminded today. The public comment period for the NNSA draft Environmental Impact Statement for the new Savannah River plutonium pit facility is open for another month. I encourage followers to write in support of the project. 🧵

After ~52 hours of travel I have *finally* made it home. The CDG airport really does its best to ruin my trips and this time was an exceptionally unpleasant example. Paris should probably level that place and try again.

Weddings in India really are as hectic, big, and amazing as everyone says they are. I’m feeling very blessed to be able to attend one.

I’ve learned a couple of things so far in India. First, the food rocks as you would expect. Second, the people are all incredibly friendly. Third, the taxi drivers all have the divine protection of Vishnu, since nothing else would keep them alive driving like that.

#nukesky thought experiment for yall. The year is 2031 and President Buttigieg (a hopeful future) has ordered an underground nuclear test. You are given the privilege to push the button. What do you say as you do it? I would go for “flame on” just because it’s so stupid no one would believe it.

So in when talking about nuclear power in the long term, seawater extraction often comes up. A slightly less often discussed aspect is the Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROI) of this process. This tell us if the whole thing is even worth thinking about. 1/6

So I agree with everything in this article but another wild bit to consider is that the inflation adjusted funding *just* for liquid metal cooling work in 1982 was equivalent to the entire DOE NE budget in 2023. If we want exotic reactors, we need to spend the money. China sure is!

Wild stat I heard this morning. During an ignited NIF shot, the shell explodes back outwards at >1000 km/sec and reaches that speed from stagnation (basically 0 speed) in <50 picoseconds… This translates to 2 *peta* Gs of acceleration! This is so fast that many of our radiography techniques blur…

So does the pope coming from Chicago mean that I should start betting on the Bears and Cubs? Are we about to see an era of divine right for Illinois sports?

I know there has been a lot of discourse about grifting with this current admin, but here is yet another example of waste at best and a grift at worst. Lunar He3 is not a resource worth going after, period. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

New film digitized: "Target for Antares (1978)" This one covers laser fusion and shows the intricate process they use for building Deuterium-Tritium fusion fuel targets. This was in support of the Antares laser fusion facility at Los Alamos. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoHr...

This is so so incredibly funny

Wild paper I was recently pointed to. "Energetic Charged Particle Beams for Disablement of Mines". The idea is to shoot a high energy (~250 MeV) electron beam into the soil and detonate a mine from afar! You could also use the beam to help detect mines. 1/4 www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

So missile defense is a big topic thanks to “Golden Dome” and it has a lot of arms control advocates up in arms. Although I think the admin is 1) dumb and 2) poisoning the well on BMD, this is a good time to consider Alvin Weinbergs idea of “Defense Protected Build Down”.

Rules to live by!

Today in “Make China Great Again” policies….

Since a certain nuclear start-up is talking a lot about synthetic fuels from nuclear, I wanted to take another look at the economics of the whole idea and what it would take to make it make sense. I am basing this all off this wonderful paper looking into this idea for aircraft carriers. 1/8

My team was awarded time at the SLAC 20 GeV accelerator and the BNL joint CO2 laser + electron accelerator today. Feels good for so many proposals to get accepted and I’m excited to get to use such impressive machines! We hopefully will have some amazing results to show next year.

When discussing countries returning to nuclear testing, we often focus on China, Russia, and the U.S., but that of course misses other players. In light of all of the Trump and Russia threats to Europe, does anyone have a read for how confident France is in their stockpile?

You probably won't believe how desperate Starliner's flight to the space station got last summer ... arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

Nice break down of the tough spot that Europe is in. I agree with the conclusions, although I worry that other nations in Europe may disagree. There is no immediate break out risk, but a decade out may be a more “exciting” time.

I have (finally) submitted a paper from my time here at LANL. Fingers crossed this goes through smoothly!

Fundamental science underlies basically all of modern society, including all applied research. When it suffers, we all do www.wired.com/story/nist-d...

Boy I love how the current admin has burned our allies in ways that would take decades of effort to fix. I’m sure this won’t go badly at all…. 🤦

CONFIRMED: China built and has brought to full power the world's first-ever thorium-containing molten salt reactor, the TMSR-LF1. Initial criticality occurred on Oct 11, 2023. Full power on June 17, 2024. Pa-233 from thorium was detected Oct 8, 2024. www.gen-4.org/resources/we...