IBM Wins Two Supercomputer Contracts Worth $325 Million

In a Department of Energy deal worth $325 million, IBM will build two massive supercomputers called Sierra and Summit that combine a new supercomputing approach from Big Blue with Nvidia processing accelerators and Mellanox high-speed networking.

The companies and US government agency announced the deal on Friday ahead of a twice-yearly supercomputing conference that begins Monday. The show focuses on the high-end systems -- sometimes as large as a basketball court -- that are used to calculate car aerodynamics, detect structural weaknesses in airplane designs and predict the performance of new drugs.

The funds will pay for two machines, one for civilian research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and one for nuclear weapons simulation at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. They'll each clock in with a peak performance surpassing 100 petaflops -- that's a quadrillion calculations per second as measured in the Top500 list that ranks the world's fastest machines. Trying to do that with modern laptops would take something like 3 million of them, Nvidia estimates.

link.

DOE NNSA Begins Upgrading B61 Nuclear Bombs

The United States has begun work to upgrade the B61 gravity bomb family under a life extension programme for the ageing nuclear weapon.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency within the US Department of Energy (DoE), oversees nuclear modernisation and has forecast the overall programme could cost around USD8.1 billion through 2024.

Frank Klotz, under-secretary for nuclear security and the NNSA administrator, called the B61-12 life extension element of the programme "key for the NNSA" over the next decade, and noted that the project is now in an engineering and development phase with successful integration trials having been conducted so far on the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16C Fighting Falcon aircraft.

link.

DOE & NSF Both Fund Dark Matter Experiments

For a change, U.S. particle physicists are savoring some good news about government funding. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Friday that they will try to fund two major experiments to detect particles of the mysterious dark matter whose gravity binds the galaxies instead of just one. The decision allays fears that the funding agencies could afford only one experiment to continue the search for so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. It also averts having to choose between the two leading WIMP-search teams in the United States.

"We have the opportunity right now for the U.S. experiments to push further in sensitivity and possibly make a discovery," says Richard Gaitskell, a physicist at Brown University and a member of the team developing a WIMP detector called LZ, one of the two leading projects. "There's a real commitment from the community and the funding agencies." Blas Cabrera, a physicist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and spokesman for the rival SuperCDMS experiment, says that having to pick only one team “would have been a grave mistake."

For decades, astronomers and astrophysicists have reasoned that some sort of otherwise unobservable dark matter provides most of the gravity that keeps the galaxies from flying apart. Physicists hope to identify that stuff by detecting particles of it floating around us. For example, dark matter could consist of WIMPs, hypothetical particles that would barely interact with ordinary matter and weigh much more than protons.

link.

US Costs for ITER Fusion Reactor Grows Enormously

ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in Cadarache, France, aims to prove that nuclear fusion is a viable power source by creating a "burning plasma" that produces more energy than the machine itself consumes. Although that goal is at least 20 years away, ITER is already burning through money at a prodigious pace. The United States is only a minor partner in the project, which began construction in 2008. But the U.S. contribution to ITER will total $3.9 billion—roughly four times as much as originally estimated—according to a new cost estimate released yesterday. That is about $1.4 billion higher than a 2011 cost estimate, and the numbers are likely to intensify doubts among some members of Congress about continuing the U.S. involvement in the project.

The United States and ITER share a complicated history. The project was first proposed in 1985 as a joint venture with the Soviet Union and Japan. The United States backed out of that effort in 1998, citing concerns over cost and feasibility—only to jump in again in 2003. At the time, ITER was envisioned to cost roughly $5 billion. That estimate had grown to $12 billion by 2006, when the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and United States signed a formal agreement to build the device. The United States agreed, essentially, to build 9% of the parts for the reactor, at whatever price was necessary.

ITER was supposed to start running by 2016. Since then, however, the project has been plagued by delays, cost increases, and management problem. ITER is now expected to cost at least $21 billion and won't turn on until 2020 at the earliest. And a recent review slammed ITER's management.

The cost of the U.S. contribution has increased, too, although by how much has been unclear. Officials with U.S. ITER had not released an updated cost profile for several years, until Ned Sauthoff, project manager for U.S. ITER at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, did so yesterday. Speaking to a meeting of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee in Rockville, Maryland, Sauthoff reported that the total cost of the U.S. contribution would be $3.9 billion by the time the project is done in 2034. The schedule assumes that ITER won't start running until 2024 or 2025. In comparison, an April 2011 funding profile pegged the cost of U.S. ITER at $2.5 billion.

link.

CERN Hears Snowmass and Wants to Build 80 km, 100TeV TLEP Collider

Not content with the 27-kilometre-round Large Hadron Collider, researchers at CERN have their sights set on a new beast of a particle collider that could have a circumference of 80 to 100 kilometres.

The nuclear research organisation announced that it was hatching plans for an ambitious successor to the LHC with an international study called the Future Circular Colliders (FCC) programme, which will kick off with a meeting next week.

The idea is to consider different hadron collider designs similar to the existing LHC but more powerful—much more powerful. CERN wrote it was looking for a collider “capable of reaching unprecedented energies in the region of 100 TeV.” The existing LHC will reach a maximum of around 14 TeV (tera electron Volts).

link.

Sounds like the SSC!  Even down to the length!  Our tunnel is partially built!  C'mon!  Let's get into a science race with the Euros!  F*ck the EU!  Ahem.  ;)

Report: Fisker Automotive's DOE Loan Sold To Hong Kong Tycoon Investor Group

An investor group led by Hong Kong tycoon Richard Li is the likely winner of a government loan owed by Fisker Automotive, the now-dormant maker of plug-in hybrid sports cars, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Energy picked Li's group after an auction held Friday to sell the green-energy loan. The DOE and Li are now nailing down the final details of the sale, which has not yet closed, the people said.

Buying the loan would allow Li, the youngest son of Asia's richest man and an early Fisker investor, to restructure Fisker unencumbered by the obligations of the DOE funds and potentially avoid a bankruptcy filing that would wipe out equity investors.

Sources familiar with the company have said however that reviving Fisker outside of a bankruptcy would be an expensive and difficult process.

link.

Will the Chinese Resurrect Fisker Automotive?

The U.S. Department of Energy will consider bids to purchase Fisker Automotive's government loan on Friday in what could be the start of a lengthy and expensive process to revive the dormant green-car startup.

Fisker, which has not built a car in about 15 months, does not have enough money to pay millions in outstanding bills. The company laid off most of its employees in April after running short of cash, a month after co-founder and executive chairman Henrik Fisker resigned.

The Department of Energy (DOE) said last month that it planned the auction after "exhausting any realistic possibility" that it could recoup the entire $168 million still owed by Fisker.

Bids to buy Fisker's DOE loan were due October 7 and an auction is still planned for Friday, despite a U.S. government shutdown that began 10 days ago.

Prospective bidders had to offer at least $30 million to qualify, with 10 percent down due with the bid, two people with knowledge of the process said on Thursday.

But restarting the company will cost considerably more. A reinstatement of Fisker's original plan to build several models could cost up to half a billion dollars, according to people familiar with the company's finances.

The sources declined to be named because details are confidential. The Energy Department declined to comment on the details of the bidding process. Fisker and its restructuring firm Kirkland & Ellis could not be immediately reached for comment.

U.S. officials could select a winner as soon as next week. DOE and the winner will then pin down the final details of the note sale. A public announcement may come later this month.

DOE extended a $529 million loan to Fisker in 2009 under a U.S. program to promote green vehicles. But after Fisker missed performance targets, DOE froze its credit line in June 2011 after Fisker drew down $192 million.

[...]

At least three groups have sought to buy Fisker this year, including German investment group Fritz Nols AG. Fritz Nols was among those who submitted a formal bid to buy the DOE loan this week, two of the sources said. The firm declined to comment.

A team that includes Chinese auto supplier Wanxiang Group and former General Motors Co executive Bob Lutz also submitted a bid this week, one person familiar with the matter said. Pin Ni, head of Wanxiang's U.S. division, declined to comment. Lutz could not be reached for comment. This group previously tried to buy the automaker for $20 million.

[...]

Previously, another group led by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li proposed buying Fisker's government loan for between $25 million and $30 million.

link.

At the Day Job: LBNL's NERSC Releases 10 Year Plan

In its recently released strategic plan, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) outlines its goals for the next 10 years. The high-end scientific production computing facility for DOE’s Office of Science, NERSC supports 4,500 users working on more than 700 research projects and contributes to an average 1,500 publications annually. Go here to download the report.

PDF here.

DOE's Joint Bio Energy Institute and NERSC Advance Cellulosic Biofuel Production

Advanced biofuels – liquid fuels synthesized from the sugars in cellulosic biomass – offer a clean, green and renewable alternative to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Bringing the costs of producing these advanced biofuels down to competitive levels with petrofuels, however, is a major challenge. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a bioenergy research center led by Berkeley Lab, have taken another step towards meeting this challenge with the development of a new technique for pre-treating cellulosic biomass with ionic liquids - salts that are liquids rather than crystals at room temperature. This new technique requires none of the expensive enzymes used in previous ionic liquid pretreatments, and makes it easier to recover fuel sugars and recycle the ionic liquid.

"Most of our ionic liquid efforts at JBEI have focused on using enzymes to liberate fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass after pretreatment, but with this new enzyme-free approach we use an acid as the catalyst for hydrolyzing biomass polysaccharides into a solution containing fermentable sugars," says Blake Simmons, a chemical engineer who heads JBEI's Deconstruction Division and was the leader of this research. "We're then able to separate the pretreatment solution into two phases, a sugar-rich water phase for recovery and a lignin-rich ionic liquid phase for recycling. As an added bonus, our new pretreatment technique uses a lot less water than previous pretreatments."

Simmons is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research that has been published in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels. The paper is titled "Production and extraction of sugars from switchgrass hydrolyzed in ionic liquids." Co-authoring it were Ning Sun, Hanbin Liu Noppadon Sathitsuksanoh, Vitalie Stavila, Manali Sawant, Anaise Bonito, Kim Tran, Anthe George, Kenneth Sale, Seema Singh and Bradley Holmes.

With the burning of fossil fuels continuing to add 9 billion metric tons of excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year, the need for carbon neutral, cost-competitive renewable alternative fuels has never been greater. Advanced biofuels, produced from the microbial fermentation of sugars in lignocellulosic biomass, could displace gasoline, diesel and jet fuel on a gallon-for-gallon basis and be directly dropped into today's engines and infrastructures without impacting performance. If done correctly, the use of advanced biofuels would not add excess carbon to the atmosphere.

Environmentally benign ionic liquids are used as green chemistry substitutes for volatile organic solvents. While showing great potential as a biomass pretreatment for dissolving lignocellulose and helping to hydrolyze the resulting aqueous solution into fuel sugars, the best of these ionic liquids so far have required the use of expensive enzymes. Recent studies have shown that acid catalysts, such as hydrochloric or Brønsted, can effectively replace enzyme-based hydrolysis, but the subsequent separation of sugars and ionic liquids becomes a difficult and expensive problem can require the use of significant amounts of water.

Guided by molecular dynamics simulations carried out at DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), Simmons and his colleagues at JBEI solved this problem by deploying the ionic liquid imidazolium chloride in tandem with an acid catalyst.

"Imidazolium is the most effective known ionic liquid for breaking down lignocellulose and the chloride anion is amenable with the acid catalyst," Simmons says. "The combination makes it easy to extract fermentable sugars that have been liberated from biomass and also easy to recover the ionic liquid for recycling. By eliminating the need for enzymes and decreasing the water consumption requirements of more traditional ionic liquid pretreatments we should be able to reduce the costs of sugar production from lignocellulose."

Complete separation of the pretreatment solution into sugar-rich water and lignin-rich ionic liquid phases was attained with the addition to the solution of sodium hydroxide. The optimized sodium hydroxide concentration for both phase separation and sugar extraction was 15-percent, resulting in the recovery of maximum yields of 54-percent glucose and 88-percent xylose. The JBEI researchers believe these sugar yields can be increased by optimizing the process conditions and using more advanced methods of phase separation and sugar recovery.

LBL Researcher Seeks to Make Mitochondria Free!

[Bustamante's] lab has entered the field of synthetic biology and is working towards creating a living organism by furnishing mitochondria with the genes that might make them independent from their host cells. Mitochondria are energy-generating organelles that are found inside the cells of all eukaryotic organisms such as plants, animals, and humans. They are thought to be descendants of a bacterium that was engulfed by another cell at some point during the evolution of life. Since then, mitochondria have lost most of their genes and cannot live independently anymore, but rely on their host cell for survival. Research in the Bustamante lab aims at reintroducing the essential genes into mitochondria that will make them independent once again, to gain a better understanding of the minimal set of genes that constitutes life.

The link is more a profile of Dr Bustamante than about his research.  However, I couldn't resist the idea of Berkeley espousing freedom for mitochondria!  Synthetic Biology Shall Set You Free!!!

ahem.

Oak Ridge National Lab Offline

A highly sophisticated cyber attack -- known as Advanced Persistent Threat or APT -- forced Oak Ridge National Laboratory to shut down all Internet access and email systems over the weekend.

Those restrictions will remain in place until lab officials and others investigating the attack are sure the situation is well controlled and manageable, ORNL Director Thom Mason said today.

Mason said he expects that email functions may be restored Tuesday on a limited basis, with no attachments allowed and restrictions on length. He said he couldn't speculate on when Internet access will be restored fully, even though the shutdown limits many of the lab's functions.

"We made the decision (at about midnight Friday) to close down the connection to the Internet to make sure there was no data exfiltrated from the lab while we got the system cleaned up," he said.

The lab's cyber specialists had been monitoring the attack and recommended further action after it looked like efforts were underway to remove data from ORNL systems, Mason said.

Mason said the APT at ORNL is similar to attacks in recent times on Google, a security company known as RSA and other government institutions and corporations.

"In this case, it was initiated with phishing email, which led to the download of some software that took advantage of a 'zero day exploit,' a vulnerability for which there is no patch yet issued," he said. The vulnerability involved Internet Explorer, he said.

bah.

Lab Scientists Discover Inexpensive Catalyst for H2 Production

Hydrogen would command a key role in future renewable energy technologies, experts agree, if a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it can be developed. An important step towards this elusive goal has been taken by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley. The team has discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst that can effectively generate hydrogen gas from water.

"Our new proton reduction catalyst is based on a molybdenum-oxo metal complex that is about 70 times cheaper than platinum, today's most widely used metal catalyst for splitting the water molecule," said Hemamala Karunadasa, one of the co-discoverers of this complex. "In addition, our catalyst does not require organic additives, and can operate in neutral water, even if it is dirty, and can operate in sea water, the most abundant source of hydrogen on earth and a natural electrolyte. These qualities make our catalyst ideal for renewable energy and sustainable chemistry."

Karunadasa holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and UC Berkeley's Chemistry Department. She is the lead author of a paper describing this work that appears in the April 29, 2010 issue of the journal Nature, titled "A molecular molybdenum-oxo catalyst for generating hydrogen from water." Co-authors of this paper were Christopher Chang and Jeffrey Long, who also hold joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley.

No time...

I wonder how much this effects the energy requirements though for its production.

DOE Lashes Out at ITER Management

A US government official has lashed out at what he sees as the mismanagement of ITER—a multibillion dollar project to prove that controlled thermonuclear fusion can work.

Speaking at a Department of Energy (DOE) advisory committee meeting, William Brinkman, the director of the DOE's office of science, told fusion researchers that he wanted to see the entire project's management reformed. The international organisation responsible for ITER is too weak, Brinkman believes (and, incidentally, so do we).

"If I could get my hands on the person who proposed the current management structure I would strangle him," Brinkman told the assembled scientists, according to Fusion Program Notes, which covers all things fusion.

He also confirmed that ITER now appeared set for a 2019 start date—ten months later than planned. We previously reported the proposed 2019 start date in a story about Europe's efforts to reform management of its portion of the ITER project.

Already 10 months behind schedule. Are we seeing another NIF situation?

Chu, Congress at Loggerheads Over H2 Cars

Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to kill research and development on cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells, but a spending bill approved by the House this month and another scheduled for a Senate vote this week would restore funding for the program.

Mr. Chu has said that hydrogen fuel cells are an impractical technology for vehicles, partly because they would require the creation of a network of hydrogen fueling stations.

A Nobel-Prize winning physicist and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which conducts federal energy research, Mr. Chu argues that improved internal-combustion engines and plug-in electric vehicles are more realistic technologies for cutting oil consumption over the next 20 to 30 years.

This is another time that I am in disagreement with Dr Chu.

It wouldn't be as hard to work this out. There are already hydrogen generators using natural gas. It wouldn't be as large a leap once these are in place to start putting in storage and whatnot. It's not a trivial thing, but successful transitions do take place.

PNNL's New Supercomputer

The newest supercomputer in town is almost 15 times faster than its predecessor and ready to take on problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry. The $21.4 million Chinook supercomputer was built by HP, tested by a variety of researchers, and has now been commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

Housed at EMSL, DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on the PNNL campus, Chinook can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, ranking it in the top 40 fastest computers in the world (see the Top 50). Its predecessor, EMSL's MPP2, could run 11.2 trillion calculations per second.

The Office of Biological and Environmental Research within DOE's Office of Science funded EMSL's supercomputer upgrade. Although housed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, scientists the world over can use Chinook, competing for time through a peer review process. Users generally conduct research that supports the DOE's missions in energy, the environment, or national security.

"When combined with EMSL's experimental capabilities, the new Chinook supercomputer will provide scientists from academia, national laboratories, and industry with an unprecedented research tool," said Anna Palmisano, DOE Associate Director for Biological and Environmental Research. "This new supercomputer will allow scientists to develop a molecular-level understanding of the complex biological, chemical and physical processes that underlie the environmental and energy challenges facing DOE and the nation."

Chinook is fast and dexterous. Its designers tailored its architecture to handle scientific problems whose complexity require more than just power or speed. For example, climate scientists who are trying to understand the tiniest particles in the atmosphere or chemists watching how atoms tug at each other in a molecule need a different kind of supercomputer than physicists studying questions like the birth of the universe.

Chinook's top job is to run NWChem, a computational chemistry program that allows researchers to simulate and predict the chemistry within and between molecules. But a wide variety of programs can run on the supercomputer. Scientists are using Chinook to tackle problems such as:

Gas hydrates: Pockets of fuels such as methane are often found deep under the sea, trapped in a lattice of water molecules. Researchers hope to understand these gas hydrates both as a fuel source and as a way to store fuels. But for such a simple molecule, water has pretty complex chemistry. Researchers are using Chinook to help understand how water molecules form stable clusters. The work also gives researchers insight into how small particles in the air form clouds or break them up.

Bacterial transformers: Communities of bacteria live and grow in the soil. And some bacteria have a taste for metals, a talent that can be used to clean up toxic substances in contaminated ground. Researchers use Chinook to understand the inner workings of these bacteria and how they form communities in order to take advantage of their clean-up skills.

Green plastics: Industrial chemists can turn propane gas into plastics and generate only water as a byproduct with the help of compounds called catalysts. Chinook is helping scientists develop a new catalytic material based on small clusters of platinum atoms that does this at least 40 times more efficiently than older materials.

Mmmmm. NWChem.

*zips lips from a sysadmin POV*

Actually, it's not bad. not like Gaussian or some of the bioinfomatics stuff that is often a bazillion nested perl scripts. (ARGH!)

Ford, Nissan, and Tesla Get Gov Dev Loans

The Energy Department said Tuesday it would lend $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Co. and provide about $2.1 billion in loans to Nissan Motor Co. and Tesla Motors Inc., making the three automakers the first beneficiaries of a $25 billion fund to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the loan recipients at Ford's Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn. The loans to Ford will help the company upgrade factories in five Midwest states to produce 13 fuel-efficient vehicles.

Nissan was receiving $1.6 billion to retool its plant in Smyrna, Tenn., to build advanced vehicles and build a battery manufacturing facility. Tesla would get $465 million in loans to build electric vehicles and electric drive powertrains in California.

I have to wonder if Tesla is on the slow climb into becoming one of the big auto producers in the country. I have to admit that I am a little surprised that Nissan got the loan though. Not really objecting, just surprised.

Yucca Mountain Project to be Shuttered?

For two decades, a ridge of volcanic rock 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas known as Yucca Mountain has been the sole focus of government plans to store highly radioactive nuclear waste.

Not anymore.

Despite the $13.5 billion that has been spent on the project, the Obama administration says it's going in a different direction.

It slashed funding for Yucca Mountain in its recently announced budget.

And on Thursday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain site no longer was viewed as an option for storing reactor waste, brushing aside criticism from several Republican lawmakers.

Instead, Chu said the Obama administration believes the nearly 60,000 tons of used reactor fuel can remain at nuclear power plants while a new, comprehensive plan for waste disposal is developed.

[...]

Obama's 2010 budget calls for scrapping all spending on Yucca Mountain except for what is needed to answer questions from the NRC on the license application "while the administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal."

*sighs*

Now I'm torn here.

There have been some less than reassuring bits coming out of the Yucca Mountain Project. There are a few geology 'hmmms.' However, some of that is equivocal.

On the other hand, this is a case of without this, the nuke industry restart will stall at best. Nuclear waste needs a long term solution. In 4, 8 years we're not likely to have a replacement for burying it, unless Dr Chu has an ace up his sleeve. (which I doubt) Since this is one of the known technology ways we can fight global warming, it's rather depressing that Obama has decided to go this route.

Someone's gonna get 'screwed.' NM has already taken in the WIPP. NV, being one of the least populated and uninhabitable states, needs to pony up.

However, my irritation and depression from this decision aside: Senator McCain, knock-off the "Mr Chu" bit. While Chu doesn't have PhD-itis, if you want to be formal with him, the man's damn well earned his doctorate and a Nobel Prize. Some modicum of respect is required and has been freakin earned. Dr Chu it ought to be. Or should we start referring to you as 'Mr McCain' from now on?

Sec Chu Floats Carbon Tax

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has floated the idea of a carbon emissions tax to fight global warming, in an interview with The New York Times Thursday.

During the US presidential campaign, the notion was kept largely on the back burner as candidates were reluctant to promote the idea of costlier energy at a time when gasoline prices were soaring.

But since President Barack Obama's administration took office in January, Congress has been working on setting up a system for swapping greenhouse gas emissions quotas similar to the one used in the European Union.

And Chu said "alternatives could emerge, including a tax on carbon emissions," the Times reported.

That's my guy!

Now, Dr Chu, about our sister labs...don't do it!

This Is A *REALLY* Bad Idea

It has been reported in several places that the Obama administration is considering transfering LANL and LLNL from the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense.

...

I cannot explain how bad of an idea this is.

The Bush administration's stupidity wrt the management changes (UC to contractors) was bad enough. It axed hundreds of researcher jobs at LANL and LLNL. Now if the Labs are transfered to the Pentagon, the science there is simply dead. The purpose of the labs would simply be weapons production and research only. Los Alamos would devolve into a nuke production/research facility and really, at that point, why have LLNL and LANL...

...

I cannot even express how depressed this makes me.

Guess Obama really is putting science back in its proper place.

Oh and Chu! How could you?!

Note: This is posted on my time. No opinions here are LBNL's or NERSC's. However, as Chu knows from many an all hands, keeping an LBLer from calling people on the carpet is nigh on impossible.

Go, Boss! Go!

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu promised Tuesday that if confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.

But he also told lawmakers that he views nuclear power and coal as critical parts of the nation's energy mix and said he was optimistic that ways can be found to make coal a cleaner energy source by capturing its carbon dioxide emissions.

Chu, nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Energy Department, appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he received immediate support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Committee chairman, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Chu has "the insight and vision" to press Obama's energy policies at the department. Bingaman said he saw no serious opposition to Chu's nomination and that a committee vote approving his selection would like occur later this week.

Chu, a Chinese-America who has been director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004, told senators that climate change is "a growing and pressing problem" and the nation's dependence on oil represents a threat to the U.S. economy and security.

Of the risks from global warming, Chu said: "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic disruptive changes to our climate system in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the committee's ranking Republicans, also called Chu well qualified, but pressed him on his position on offshore oil development and nuclear energy.

Chu said nuclear energy produces a fifth of the nation's electricity and 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity and "is going to be an important part of our energy mix." About domestic oil production, Chu reiterated Obama's views that some expansion of offshore oil and gas development should be included as a broader energy plan.

But Chu sidestepped Murkowski's question on whether he would oppose any reinstatement of a broad ban on offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. "Improvements in energy efficiency is the one single factor that can most reduce our dependency on foreign oil," said Chu.

A widely respected scientist who shared a Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, Chu has been a strong advocate for more energy-related research, especially work on advanced biofuels and solar energy technologies. He has said that scientific research is key to tackling climate change, which he has argued cannot be ignored.

But Chu, when pressed by senators, also said coal must not be abandoned as a primary source of energy, although he promised that research into capturing carbon emissions — pollution linked to climate change — would be pursued aggressively.

"Some people think perhaps we can turn off coal," said Chu. "Even if we do it, China and India will not."

Damned smart man.

(and a nice guy too)