This isn't the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. I'd guess a fair amount of respondents are just trying to recruit people to come work at DOE National Lab j

This isn't the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. I'd guess a fair amount of respondents are just trying to recruit people to come work at DOE National Lab jobs. Personally I think the US needs a new independent energy research program if it wants to keep up with China - the DOE's record on fossil fuels is a bad joke (look into their "Clean Coal" partnerships and FutureGen, the fabled zero-emission coal-hydrogen nonsense plant they poured billions of dollars into). Their renewable energy programs have always been miniscule in comparison (to be fair, any major DOE efforts towards renewable energy tech would have led to threats of budget cuts by Congressional politicians in the pay of the oil/gas/nuclear/coal sectors). The high-energy physics and materials sciences divisons are not bad and have a decent track record, however. I suppose people will always be needed to maintain the nuclear stockpile and deal with the huge piles of highly hazardous waste, as well. Sounds pretty boring to me.