When they need to get away from it all, Bruno and Korbie Le Galloudec have a special place to escape to. It’s beautiful, filled with wondrous creatures and serene.
“No one can talk to you there,” Korbie said. “It’s an immersive experience that changes every time.”
Best of all this place is easy to find — it makes up three-quarters of the Earth’s surface and is a mere 50 miles from Livermore.
“A day in the ocean feels like a week on land,” Bruno said.
The couple, who met in the control room of the National Ignition Facility, are avid scuba divers and underwater photographers. Bruno also is a scuba instructor. He estimates he’s helped more than 100 people become certified divers through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, or PADI.
“Bruno and I are adventurers and explorers by nature. We can’t be astronauts, so we discover the sea instead,” Korbie said.
From student to teacher
As a child, Bruno loved being in the water. He started casually scuba diving as a teen in his native France. College and work took him away from the ocean — he spent 13 years at the Nevada Terrawatt Facility in Reno.
He returned to scuba in 2011 when he moved to California to work at LLNL. He and his then 11-year-old daughter got their PADI Open Water Diver certification together and then their Advanced Open Water Diver certification. He later trained his other daughter and Korbie’s daughter.
Bruno continued with his scuba training, became a rescue diver and then a divemaster. “I was driven by safety, especially because I was diving with my children,” he said. “The more you train, the better you are able to take care of yourself and others.”
In 2018, he became a dive instructor at Dive N Trips in Pleasanton. He teaches a few classes each year, which take place over the course of a month with a combination of classroom and open water sessions. He also guides beginners on ocean dives, most frequently in Monterey Bay. As an instructor, Bruno helps others discover their own passion for scuba diving.
“I love starting with someone who has never breathed underwater. Maybe they’ve snorkeled and want to go deeper. It’s amazing to watch them progress, even after just the pool sessions. I love watching their eyes light up as they become more aware of the environment and more comfortable,” he said.
A control room romance
Between teaching and personal diving trips, Bruno probably spends a month out of each year in the ocean. When he’s not under the sea, he’s the group leader for Pulsed Power Systems in NIF&PS and the subject matter expert for the power conditioning system at the National Ignition Facility.
That’s how he met Korbie, who was a NIF shot director at the time. She’s now the chief engineer for High Energy Density Science in the Weapons Physics and Design Program, which means she is responsible for ensuring successful execution of the HEDS experiments at the NIF.
“I think we might be the first control room romance,” she said. “Every time I directed a shot, I’d be interacting with Bruno and his team as we prepared. One day I invited him to a trivia night outside of work.”
Dating Bruno meant becoming a scuba diver. She’d done snuba, in which you breathe through a regulator connected to an air supply at the water’s surface and was eager to go deeper.
“The world underwater is amazing. Every time we dive, we discover something new,” she said. “Cold water and warm water are different environments, just like on land. The animals and foliage change. And they change with the seasons.”
Korbie’s favorite place to dive is in the Caribbean and her favorite sea creature is a shark. “They are amazing, like the grizzly bears of the sea,” she said. “They come in so many varieties with different personalities. Nurse sharks are like dogs while white tip and black tip sharks are more like black and brown bears.”
Bruno has a hard time naming a favorite place to dive, but he’s partial to the Point Lobos State Natural Reserve in Monterey, especially in the winter months. “Every place is different and wonderful,” he said. “I love wreck diving because it’s not about the wreck, it’s about the creatures that inhabit it.”
One of their most unusual diving experiences was during a magnitude 4.7 earthquake in Honduras. “Something felt weird and out of place in the water,” Bruno said. “That was a first for us.”
The couple also are avid underwater photographers. Korbie leaned from her father, who was a photography instructor at Bradley University. They sign their photos “Brubie” – a combination of their names that began as a nickname from friends when they were dating.
In 2023 and beyond, they are looking forward to repeat dives, like Catalina Island, which they’ve dove eight times already, and new adventures like the Philippines and Australia. On land, it’s about continuing to advance fusion ignition at the NIF.
“I’m so proud to be a part of this,” Korbie said. “The fact that we can now reach even more extreme regimes for even more significant stockpile stewardship work and provide a proof of principle for the possibility of clean energy, it’s just amazing.”
“I’ve been working in this business for 31 years,” Bruno said. “Edouard Fabre, the director of the Laboratory for the Use of Intense Lasers who first hired me out of engineering school, said he hoped I would see this day before I retire. So, it’s magical and very rewarding. And now there are so many exciting challenges and new things to learn.”
