Nuclear weapons laboratories say “fiscal realities” weigh on U.S. arsenal Directors of the three U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories said today they are worried the nation’s fiscal troubles and a lack of political consensus may threaten their ability to maintain the stockpile of warheads. (Full story)
Links to written testimony by the three lab directors (Note: link only works internally)
Senate resumes New START hearings The Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened its 12th hearing on the New Strategic Arms Treaty Thursday by welcoming testimony from U.S. nuclear lab directors. (Full story)
Alternative nuclear fuel is surprisingly reactive 
Uranium nitride, a nuclear fuel that might one day offer a more efficient alternative to the uranium and plutonium oxides now used, has been given a boost by research that has illuminated its reactive properties….
Uranium nitrides are denser and more stable, and conduct heat better than mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuels – properties that suggest the fuels could run cooler in reactors to generate more energy, says Jaqueline Kiplinger at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Now – working with Robert Thomson and other colleagues at Los Alamos, – Kiplinger has synthesised a molecule complex that is the first known to contain just a single, isolated uranium-nitride bond. (Full story)
Elusive terminal uranium nitride foundResearchers in the US have discovered a new way to create the elusive discrete form of uranium nitride. The compound is important because its ceramic state, uranium mononitride, is a candidate for nuclear fuels of the future. (Full story)
Uranium azide photolysis results in C–H bond activation and provides evidence for a terminal uranium nitride Uranium nitride [U≡N]x is an alternative nuclear fuel that has great potential in the expanding future of nuclear power; however, very little is known about the U≡N functionality. We show, for the first time, that a terminal uranium nitride complex can be generated by photolysis of an azide (U–N=N=N) precursor. (Full story)
Lab nabs top tech awards; LANL has won 117 of these awards since 1978 A super high speed camera. Green explosives. A way to pull fuel from algae using sound waves. Those are a few of the projects that netted five top awards for Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists. (Full story)
High-tech gizmo takes high-speed, X-ray images of explosions Mikro, a decade-old company…in Albemarle County, grabbed a piece of the spotlight last week when a project it was a part of won a prestigious contest for new innovations. The winning gizmo, developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is a camera that can create high-resolution, high-speed X-ray images of explosions. It was one of 100 exceptional new devices announced as winners of R&D Magazine’s R&D 100 contest. (Full story)
Governments fund pilots to test smart grid potentialSmart grid technology, bringing end-to-end intelligence to electricity supply networks to better manage demand, has caught the imagination of governments, utility companies and consumers alike, in both developed and developing countries.
...New Mexico has attracted $30 million in funding over four years from Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), along with participation of 19 Japanese companies, the State of New Mexico government, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the US Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories. (Full story)
Mathematics could be anti-terror tool U.S. researchers say those fighting the war on terrorism may soon have a new weapon to add to their arsenal -- mathematics….
"If you have a mathematical model that can describe the structure of a terror network -- and the model works -- then you can predict the future," says Alexander Gutfraind, a mathematician at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. (Full story)
Harry Potter exhibit opens in New MexicoLos Alamos, N.M., is hosting the exhibit “Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine” through Aug. 9. (Full story)
To subscribe to Los Alamos Report, please send an email and include the words "subscribe losalamosreport" in the body of your message; to unsubscribe, include "unsubscribe losalamosreport".
Please visit www.lanl.gov
Follow us on Twitter!
