Los Alamos Press Highlights

Los Alamos un-crackable cyber technology close to commercialization

Quantum cryptography is not a household term — but very soon it could change the way your smartphone, your ID card and other electronics are protected from hackers.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has been working on this technology for the past 18 years and is working on a patent.

Current cybersecurity technology has relied on “hard math problems,” said Jane Nordholt, a technical staff member in Applied Modern Physics at Los Alamos (full story).

A similar story appeared in Government Security News

Biofuels expert to share vision

Sayre’s experience in the field includes his current position as director of the Biofuels Project at the New Mexico Consortium, working in conjunction with Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a former member of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center where he served as director of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels between 2008 and 2011 (full story).

Carbon nanotubes offer prospects for novel thin-film solar cells

A research group from the Los Alamos National Laboratory has shown for the first time that bundles of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can not only generate electron-hole pairs (excitons) when exposed to light but also separate these charge carriers.

This latter feature is critical in the PV context, as to create a current, the electrons and holes must be separated in the brief time before they combine and are absorbed back into the material (full story).

LANL posts ‘banner year’

In a year when Los Alamos National Laboratory was closed for more than a week while narrowly escaping the Las Conchas Fire, the laboratory completed its most profitable year yet, earning nearly $84 million in fees (full story).

LANL achieves wastewater milestone

Millions of gallons of industrial wastewater will be recycled at Los Alamos National Laboratory as the result of a long-term strategy to treat wastewater rather than discharging it into the environment.

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, which issues permits for industrial and sanitary wastewater discharges, recently approved the removal of four more outfalls from the Laboratory’s permit (full story).

Energy plan could boost small reactor research at SRS

A new funding initiative unveiled last week by Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu could accelerate efforts by private companies to build small modular nuclear reactors at Savannah River Site. . . .

“There is no test model yet,” said Forrest Rudin, vice president of business operations for Denver-based Hyperion Power Generation Inc., one of several companies that have expressed interest in using SRS as a research and development site. . . .

But, Rudin said, the pre-conceptual design, aided by research conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is about 95 percent complete. “So we’re now at the stage where we start true engineering, doing drawings from the Los Alamos design, and actively seeking commercial investment.” (full story)

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