United States Senator Chuck Schumer says he’s launching a three-pronged push to protect and expand the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The Trump Administration’s budget included plans to shut down the laser lab over a three-year period.
The U.S. Senate Minority Leader says he’s not only pushing to keep the lab funded, but to actually increase the funding for critical work being done in the lab. Schumer said he will “vaporize” any efforts to cut or eliminate the University of Rochester facility.
Schumer says the work of the laser lab is absolutely critical to America’s nuclear defense. Since the end of underground nuclear testing, experiments done using the OMEGA laser facility are how the military is able to confirm that America’s stockpiled nuclear warheads would work if needed. He says 80 percent of that testing is done in Rochester.
Schumer said he’ll urge Congress not only to restore the Trump budget cuts, but add $75 million more to the LLE facility in the coming months.
Schumer and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter invited the administrator of the U.S. Department of Energy to tour the LLE and see first-hand that it’s a world-class laser lab and vital to American scientific achievement.