Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
10/2/2015
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) this week honored former director John Foster with the newly established John S. Foster Jr. Medal at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. The medal will be awarded annually “to honor those who have made significant contributions to nuclear security through individual efforts, team building and leadership,” LLNL Director Bill Goldstein said. Foster became LLNL director in 1965 and “led team efforts that made a major breakthrough in nuclear weapon design that is the basis for all modern U.S. nuclear weapons,” later joining the Department of Defense to become director of defense research and engineering, according to the lab.
Upon accepting his award, Foster called on the government to eliminate restrictions that prevent nuclear weapons lab scientists from designing new nuclear warheads and developing prototypes. The end of the Cold War prompted the U.S. to reduce its nuclear stockpile and stop producing new weapons, but “the logic for those restrictions has run its course,” Foster said. He added that “to improve the capability to adapt without returning to nuclear testing, the U.S. government should promptly remove the restrictions in the interest of international stability.” Foster also offered several recommendations to the government and defense industry to foster innovation. “Innovation requires the commitment of adequate resources,” he said. “This is the management’s function, and lack of resolve regarding those resources can severely damage the environment that we know that we must have.” Citing the history of technological competition between LLNL and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Foster said “nothing focuses innovators more, or better than competition.”
During the ceremony, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz highlighted the “culture of innovation at our national laboratories” that has contributed to the development of current initiatives like the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which maintains and modernizes the U.S. nuclear stockpile without nuclear explosive testing. National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Frank Klotz lauded Foster’s “work in creating modern, smaller nuclear warheads” that would influence the development of weapons systems, including cruise missiles and aerial bombs.
