Check this post from the excellent LANL insider blog called LANL The Real Story.
A scientist at State University of New York in Binghamton has achieved table top nuclear fusion in by heating a dueterium gas soaked lithium tantalate crystal. They are only heating it to 7ºC. It only produces a very small amount of neutrons, but you have to start small.
I used to work at a place in Los Alamos called the Black Hole. I had read recently that they were raided by the FBI who took a bunch of joke items that Ed Grothus had on display for years. The man is always trying to hold Ed Grothus down!
This is from the Santa Fe New Mexican (bugmenot reg. required):
FBI agents seized a small computer hard drive marked "secret," two rolls of printed stickers reading "secret" and a Verbatim-brand 8 mm tape from a business that for years has sold recycled equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory and other places.
An agent confiscated the items Tuesday and gave Black Hole Store and Museum owner Ed Grothus an itemized receipt listing the things taken, Grothus said.
Grothus said Friday that the items have been a big joke in his store for years.
"I had for years been jesting" that they were missing tapes from the federal nuclear-weapons lab and said he added the printed tape labels reading "secret."
A shipment of Uranium and Thorium ore (not highly radioactive) was seized in Brazil. The ore is not dangerous and would require processing and enriching to be used in a nuclear device. [reuters]
When i heard about the security problems at LANL and about how some newly appointed Bush cabinet members were going to strip The Regents of the University of California control of the Lab i hypothesized that Haliburton would get the contract... i was wrong, but big surprise that one of the main bidders was the University of Texas... several other bidders are also from Texas, including Texas A&M... i really hope it goes back to UC.
Last week, LANL was closed upon a security review from National Nuclear Security Administration director and Bush appointee, Linton Brooks and Bush apointee Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow who are now back in DC. The reason for closing the all nonessential sections of the lab (even high security areas like the museum and cafeteria) was a missing removable storage device that contained classified material.
From the Albuquerque Journal:
The incident is the latest in a series of embarrassments that have prompted federal officials to put the Los Alamos management contract up for bid for the first time in the 61-year history of the lab that built the atomic bomb.
Gee, I wonder if Haliburton wil get the contract worth billions of dollars? We're going to start a new cold war.
According to a contractor, the Department of Energy wasted vast amounts of money, spending $4.8 million on a system that should only have cost $50,000.
