[jcranmer]

The national labs aren't purely--or likely even mostly--dedicated to nuclear research. Instead, they cover a lot of the basic science research. These supercomputers will likely be used for projects like exploring cosmological models, or studying intramolecular interactions for chemical compounds, or fine-tuning predictions about properties of the top quark, etc.

[gibolt]

Because these are so linked to research, everyone and their cousin is vying for time on them. Even though it may be massive, no individual will get anywhere near peak.

[convolvatron]

usually on the DOE machines some time is reserved for 'hero runs', but its generally only the classified stockpile work that qualifies

[gh02t]

Oak Ridge in particular is in DoE Office of Science. They do some national security work, but their primary focus is basic science. Some of the national labs do primarily do nuclear weapons related research, but not Oak Ridge. Frontier is only doing unclassified work, primarily basic science and engineering.

[dekhn]

Right; the labs most associated with nuclear work are LLNL and LANL. Both have had, IIRC, clusters configured for dual work- they could be partitioned between confidential and public work. The lab I wortked at, LBL, only did non-conf work but I know that LLNL took our codes and used them for nuclear simulations... errr, stockpile stewardship using multiphysics combustion codes.

[gh02t]

Oak Ridge does not do dual-use on the big leadership facilities, it's not really feasible with how they operate. I think Frontier can technically handle "moderate" data (e.g. export controlled), but not classified. It's meant for open science.

[omniglottal]

Didn't LANL get renamed to LANS?

[gh02t]

No, LANS was the name of the LLC that used to run LANL (which lost the contract a few years ago hence past tense), but the name of the lab itself is [still] LANL. The way the labs are run only a few people in the top leadership roles change if the management company running it changes; grossly oversimplifying they're basically interchangeable and come and go while the technical side of the labs themselves remain stable.

[briffle]

I didn't know that, thank you for clarifying for me!