I have heard that their internal review processes for papers have started telling people to not say stuff like "XYZ may be useful for climate research" or "this is an alternative energy source that's environmentally friendly." Like they are literally discouraged from talking about climate stuff at all lol.
Wouldn't surprise me. Getting rid of the other research programs won't be great for the labs though. The weapons research has a bunch of weird incentives because of the geopolitical context it exists in. The goal usually isn't to operationalize research, it's to have credible evidence of a functioning nuclear program, maintain the arsenal, and act as a jobs program for nuclear physics. The other programs act as a way to operationalize things in socially acceptable ways. If you get rid of them, I suspect the labs aren't going to be better-off for it even with more funding.
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I have heard that their internal review processes for papers have started telling people to not say stuff like "XYZ may be useful for climate research" or "this is an alternative energy source that's environmentally friendly." Like they are literally discouraged from talking about climate stuff at all lol.
Wouldn't surprise me. Getting rid of the other research programs won't be great for the labs though. The weapons research has a bunch of weird incentives because of the geopolitical context it exists in. The goal usually isn't to operationalize research, it's to have credible evidence of a functioning nuclear program, maintain the arsenal, and act as a jobs program for nuclear physics. The other programs act as a way to operationalize things in socially acceptable ways. If you get rid of them, I suspect the labs aren't going to be better-off for it even with more funding.