America's Nuclear Weapons Scientists Are Stressed and Sad

America's nuclear scientists aren't happy, according to a recently-declassified report by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where many of the country's nuclear scientists work.

Over a three-day meeting in late August, nuclear weapons scientists said 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."

It's unclear why there are increased work requirements for our nuclear scientists, but according to an earlier report released by the Federation of American Scientists, the number of American deployed nuclear warheads has actually increased over the last six months. That's in spite of America's New START treaty with Russia, which calls for an offensive arms reduction. Russia has held up its end of the bargain as the country has steadily reduced the number of nuclear launchers and warheads it has deployed.

It's unclear what damage unhappy nuclear scientists can cause (defect to North Korea, maybe?), but LLNL is taking their complaints seriously. According to the memo, the laboratory "recommend[s] 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."

A story by the Associated Press last month said that "virtually every major project under the National Nuclear Security Administrations oversight is behind schedule and over budget," which is the result "of years of lax accountability and nearly automatic annual budget increases."

The LLNL memo's findings likely aren't due to budget issues: The NNSA weapons budget increased from $6.87 billion in 2011 to $7.21 billion in 2012 to $7.58 billion in 2013. So maybe there's other reasons our scientists are sad.

I'm about to venture into the land of conjecture, but maybe LLNL scientists are stressed out because they never get to play with their toys, unlike other scientists. Last year, then-head of the NNSA Thomas D'Agostino told me that the number of nuclear weapons scientists with any arms testing experience is rapidly dwindling due to mass retirements. Underground nuclear weapons testing stopped in the early 1990s.

"I would say five years from now, [scientists with testing experience] would no longer be active employees of our laboratories," he said. The number of scientists left who have ever actually exploded a warhead "may be down to the low teens," he added.

Either way, we probably don't want stressed and sad nuclear scientists. Maybe they'll be feeling refreshed after a couple week furlough? Or maybe we can just let them blow up an asteroid or two.