Los Alamos Press Highlights

 
Secret Los Alamos tunnel revealed

For decades, area residents whispered about what the government was doing deep inside the walls of Los Alamos Canyon.

“They would keep gold in there,” said David Roybal, a Los Alamos resident. “That’s all I remember people saying.”

Last fall, the federal government declassified the 230-foot-long tunnel located at the base of Los Alamos Canyon to cut the costs of maintaining the once-heavily guarded facility. (full story)

 
Los Alamos National Lab improves biomass-to-fuel process

One of the more promising roads toenergy independence leads away from crude oil and into the forests and fields. For years, scientists have been seeking efficient means to convert nonfood-based biomass into fuels and chemical feedstocks, reducing fossil-fuel dependence and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Los Alamos scientists and collaborators in Canada published an article in Nature Chemistry this week that outlines an efficient means to convert nonfood-based biomass into fuels and chemical feedstocks. (full story)

 
Los Alamos: National security, broad array of work, excellence

While Los Alamos remains in the national defense and nuclear business, it, like Sandia, does much more. Website wandering at www.lanl.gov uncovers some of the diversity.

LANL.gov states the mission as "scientific inquiry supporting nuclear deterrence, reducing global threats, fostering energy security." The Science and Innovation tag on the top left of the lanl.gov home page lists a dozen "capabilities." (full story)

 
LANL associate director to chair scholarship campaign

Nan Sauer, Associate Director for Chemistry, Life and Earth Science at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is chairing the 2013 employees’ scholarship campaign.

Laboratory employees contributed $273,300 to the campaign last year, and Los Alamos National Security, LLC, through its employee gift-match program, gave $250,000. (full story)


Senator Martin Heinrich visits WIPP

Heinrich co-authored a letter withSen. Tom Udall requesting funding in the DOE’s Defense Environmental Cleanup 2014 budget of at least $255 million for cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Heinrich said the completion of the defense legacy waste cleanup at Los Alamos is an important commitment that Congress and DOE havemade to the community and the state, and he believes it should remain a topfunding priority for the DOE. (full story)

Electric Grid Security

Recently a Los Alamos National Laboratory quantum cryptography (QC) team successfully completed the first-ever demonstration of securing control data for electric grids using quantum cryptography. (full story)



 
Talking about Mars

Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Roger Wiens talks about the NASA Mars Curiosity rover, its journey to Mars and some of its discoveries on the Red Planet thus far in a series of Frontiers in Science presentations beginning May 7 in the Duane Smith Auditorium at Los Alamos High School. After the talk, Wiens will sign copies of his book “Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity.” (full story)



 
Also appearing this week in the Los Alamos Monitor:

LASO employee wins top NNSA award
Cary Bronson is the top federal security professional of year

Cary Bronson of the Los Alamos Field Office Security Operations Team is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Federal Security Professional of the Year.
Bronson provides federal oversight of the nuclear Material Control and Accountability (MC&A) operations and programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

This story also appeared in the Los Alamos Daily Post

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