Technical team to assess capability needs for Lab's role as Plutonium Center of Excellence

David L. Clark to lead institutional plutonium science strategy

David L. Clark has been selected to lead the technical team that will develop an institutional plutonium science strategy.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is the Plutonium Center of Excellence for the DOE complex and has under its mission the responsibility to lead science, engineering and technology development across a broad range of plutonium-centric programs.

As part of these efforts, Charlie McMillan, Principal Associate Director for Weapons Programs (PADWP), and Terry Wallace, Principal Associate Director for Science, Technology and Engineering (PADSTE), have chartered the development of an institutional plutonium science strategy. The strategy will provide a road map for plutonium research and development efforts across the Lab's three mission pillars: Nuclear Deterrence, Global Threat Reduction and Energy Security.

From the Seaborg Institute

David L. Clark, who has been the Director of the Seaborg Institute at Los Alamos for over a decade, will lead this effort. He will organize and lead a multi-organizational technical team to develop the institutional plutonium science strategy and assess capability needs for LANL’s role as the Plutonium Center of Excellence for the DOE Complex. The Institutional strategy will include:

• the Laboratory's enduring roles in plutonium science and the technical, programmatic, and funding relationships between those capabilities that support plutonium science;
• assessment of LANL core capabilities and programs in plutonium science (Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Nonproliferation, Safeguards, Nuclear Energy, Plutonium-238 capabilities, Nuclear Forensics and Basic Energy Science research efforts in plutonium- or actinide science);
• needs and priorities for resources to maintain the Laboratory's plutonium science leadership role;
• personnel, facility, and instrumentation investments to successfully address those issues;
• strategic partnerships required to meet program objectives;
• an implementation plan, including formulation of institutional investment strategies impacting plutonium science.

Effort to be reviewed by fall 2010

Preliminary planning for development of the plutonium science strategy will begin in October 2009. The planning process and assessment of the plan by an external review panel will be complete by September of 2010.

Clark received his Bachelor's in chemistry in 1982 from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry in 1986 from Indiana University. Clark was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford before joining Los Alamos National Laboratory as a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow in 1988. He became a Technical Staff Member in the Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Division in 1989. Since then he has held a number of technical leadership positions at the Laboratory for both Nuclear Weapon’s and the Office of Science programs. He is currently a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Laboratory Fellow.

Related Links

• Seaborg Institute at Los Alamos