Q&A with Thomas Mason | Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory talks about nuclear modernization | News [Video]

At the Nuclear Deterrence Summit in Washington, D.C., in January, Denver Gazette correspondent Jim Carrier sat down with Thomas Mason, the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A native of Nova Scotia, Mason, 60, a PhD condensed-matter physicist, was appointed in 2018 after 10 years of directing the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

These excerpts from their conversation were edited for space and clarity.

The Denver Gazette: Way back in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the bomb, the lab really didn’t know what to do with itself.

Thomas Mason: At the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of hope. The Soviet Union is collapsed. Maybe we’re transitioning to a world where there will be less need for the iron fist of deterrence, if you will. There was hope for a peace dividend.

It was only, in the last 10 or 15 years that things started to shift …