LANL deploys Appro Xtreme-X™ supercomputer

Technicians work to install the last sections of Mustang. LANL photo.

This deployment represents approximately $10 Million in production computing capability. The Xtreme-X™ Supercomputer will be used to address LANL's HPC needs for unclassified scientific computing.

Named "Mustang" by the LANL Institutional Computing Program it will provide high performance computing resources to a variety of activities at Los Alamos including ocean, wildfire, plasma physics, materials and nuclear energy. The Climate, Ocean, and Sea Ice Modeling (COSIM) project, a part of the climate modeling program in the DOE's Office of Science, is a partner with Institutional Computing in this acquisition. (Full Story)

An additional story also appeared in HPC Wire



Multibillion-dollar nuke lab advances

Phase three of the CMRR project - the Nuclear Facility – will be built next door to the Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Buliding, or RLUOB shown here. LANL photo.

Project a decade in making, decade from opening - Los Alamos National Laboratory is moving forward with plans to build a controversial $5.8 billion nuclear lab.

The National Nuclear Security Administration Thursday issued the formal orders needed to begin taking bids for final design and construction of the lab, called the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility. (Full Story)


Sellers to become LANL deputy director

Elizabeth Sellers.

Elizabeth (Beth) Sellers has been named the new deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and is scheduled to start December 5. Current Deputy Director Ike Richardson will be taking an overseas project leadership position with Bechtel. (Full Story)

Also from the Monitor this week:

Sayre joins LANL for plant research

Richard Sayre. LANL photo.

Richard Sayre, one of the nation's top specialists in algae and energy-producing plant research, has joined the Bioscience Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory to help boost cutting-edge research in this area.

Cited by Nature magazine as “one of five crop researchers who could change the world,” Sayre brings a crew of postdoctoral researchers and a range of funding to LANL. (Full Story)

More from the Monitor:

LANL raises breast cancer awareness

"As a breast cancer survivor, I know how a diagnosis of breast cancer can impact not only the person receiving the diagnosis, but their family members, friends and coworkers," said Wynona Holton of LANL's System Integration Group. (Full Story)



ASM International names 26 new Fellows

Robert D. Field. LANL photo.

Robert D. Field, Los Alamos, N.M.: Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. For applied research of superalloys, intermetallic compounds, and beryllium alloys, dislocation and deformation analysis, and characterization of deformation mechanisms. (Full Story)



Nuclear weapons pits converted into plutonium oxide

NNSA's technologies are designed to disassemble nuclear weapons pits and convert the plutonium metal into plutonium oxide suitable for feed for the MOX facility, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory is expected to convert at least two metric tons of plutonium by 2018.

The goal of the plutonium oxide shipments from Los Alamos is that they will be blended with depleted uranium and turned into MOX fuel for use in domestic nuclear reactors. (Full Story)



ApocalypsEV-1: The Electric Car for the End of the World

The ApocalypseEV-1. Image from Michael and Kenny Ham.

Your neighborhood is in flames, the roads destroyed and there are least a dozen hungry zombies gnawing their way through your back door. You need a getaway car, and Michael and Kenny Ham might have just the machine for you.

"We came up with the concept for the ApocalypsEV-1 around the time Harold Camping was predicting the rapture," Michael Ham says. Ham is a physicist in computer vision research at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)



Raman reveals danger inside plastic bottles

Raman spectroscopy can give detailed information about chemicals behind a barrier, says Freek Ariese of VU University, in Amsterdam.

David Moore of Los Alamos National Laboratory thinks the use of Raman spectroscopy is an "interesting experiment" but questions its applicability in the real world. The method won't work, he says, if the explosives are hidden in metal or cardboard. (Full Story)



LANL completes razing of building

Demolition activities ended in early summer. LANL photo.

"After we removed all regulated, hazardous materials such as asbestos, our team was able to recycle about 95 percent of the building," Darrik Stafford, LANL's project director for the demolition, said in a news release. (Full Story)


The birth of America’s best cheeseburger

J. Robert Oppenheimer and Army General Leslie Groves visit ground zero following the Trinity test. Chances are they probably stopped at the Owl Cafe in San Antonio NM for green chile cheesburgers on the way back to Los Alamos. LANL photo.

Let me tell you a story about the history of America. About drunken physicists, the atom bomb and the greatest cheeseburger in the world.

At 5:30 a.m., July the 16th, 1945, the United States detonated the world’s first implosion-design plutonium bomb. (Full Story)


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A first use of oil- and gas-produced water as a medium for algae

Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Eldorado Biofuels, both members of NAABB, have located and analyzed potential locations in New Mexico and Texas that are viable sources of produced water.

Future work includes bench-scale testing at LANL and Texas Agrilife to be followed by a second pilot-scale test this fall. The treatment methods will be adjusted to improve algal growth, total biomass produced and oil yields (full story).

Potential key found for unlocking biomass energy

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have found a potential key for unlocking the energy potential from non-edible biomass materials such as corn leaves and stalks, or switch grass (full story).

Los Alamos researchers engineer magnetic algae

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have genetically engineered “magnetic” algae to investigate alternative, more efficient harvesting and lipid extraction methods for biofuels. The researchers seek to reduce the cost of algae-based biofuel production.

By inducing paramagnetic properties in algae, a permanent magnet-based separation could provide a low-cost alternative to current technologies, the researchers suggest (full story).

Antineutrino detectors can spot the destruction of weapons grade plutonium

One of the problems in dismantling nuclear weapons is what to do with the leftover weapons grade plutonium.

The issue of verification keeps nuclear proliferation experts awake at night. So they've been busy looking for a way for observers to tell what a reactor really is burning.

Anna Hayes and friends at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico say they've come up with just such a technique: the trick, they say, is to look for the antineutrinos that the reactor produces (full story).

LANL sets waste hauling record

Los Alamos National Laboratory has set a new LANL record for the amount of transuranic (TRU) waste from past nuclear operations shipped in a single year to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, NM. In fact, the lab has shipped record numbers of transuranic waste each of the past three years (full story).

Also from the Monitor this week:

LANL announces fund recipients

"Our Venture Acceleration Fund program provides much-needed capital to these promising companies, reducing their risk without the strings typically attached to equity investments," said David Pesiri, the Laboratory's Technology Transfer Division leader (full story).

NNSA disassembles nuclear weapons pits

LANL: Initial feedback for MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility is completed

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced this week that it had successfully disassembled nuclear weapons “pits” and converted them into more than 240 kg of plutonium oxide, an initial step in permanent plutonium disposition.

The certified oxide is an initial source of feed for NNSA’s Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility, which is currently under construction at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The disassembly, conversion and certification, which were completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a significant accomplishment in an ongoing effort to safely dispose of surplus weapon-grade plutonium (full story).

Report: Water safe to drink despite ash from fire

Study says contamination from Las Conchas Fire rarely hit hazardous levels

Filter-clogging ash washing down in stormwater from the Jemez Mountains after the Las Conchas Fire prompted Santa Fe water managers to stop diverting from the Rio Grande a half-dozen times this summer.

But overall, the levels of contaminants in the water were rarely above drinking-water standards after the fire, according to a report on toxins in Rio Grande water to the Buckman Direct Diversion project board Thursday. The board consists of representatives from Santa Fe city and county, which jointly oversee the river diversion project, which began treating river water for the municipal drinking water system in January.

Radionuclides, polychlorinated biphenyl, cyanide and other compounds were found in the sediment that swirled in flood water down into the Rio Grande, but only rarely at levels that exceeded drinking water standards, according to city, state and Los Alamos National Laboratory officials. Naturally occurring uranium also was found in the sediment (full story).

Laser uranium enrichment returns from the dead

The Los Alamos National Laboratory first developed molecular enrichment in the 1970s, seeking a more energy-efficient process to produce nuclear-reactor fuel.

It used a 16-μm laser source to selectively excite uranium hexafluoride (UF6) molecules containing fissionable U-235 (full story).

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President Obama honors outstanding early-career scientists

Presidential Early Career Award recipient Evgenya Simakov. LANL photo.

President Obama today named 94 researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, including Dr. Evgenya I. Simakov of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"It is inspiring to see the innovative work being done by these scientists and engineers as they ramp up their careers—careers that I know will be not only personally rewarding but also invaluable to the Nation," President Obama said. (White House News Release)

This news also appeared on the PhysOrg website and in the Los Alamos Monitor



What about the nuclear option for spaceflight?

Artist's concept of a nuclear rocket. NASA image.

"Nuclear propulsion should be included when considering deep-space travel," said Princeton physicist Gene H. McCall, retired chief scientist for the Air Force Space Command and a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"The engines could also be used for years as a power source for establishing a base on the moon or Mars, or any long-term base where gathering power from the sun would be difficult.” (Full Story)


Experts offer measures to save lives after nuclear explosion

Air Force personnel don protective equipment in a nuclear attack drill. USAF photo.

Local governments and communities today are not well equipped to deliver preparedness knowledge before or after an incident, according to Schoch-Spana, a member of the Nuclear Resilience Expert Advisory Group that prepared the document.

"The bottom line is the only way for us to be prepared is to know what to do in advance," Tammy Taylor, head of the Nonproliferation Division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and member of the advisory group, told the audience. (Full Story)


Mars rover to sport UNM-made devices

ChemCam is tested at JPL. JPL photo.

Among the many tools on the "Curiosity" is the brand new ChemCam instrument, developed by a joint US-French team led by Dr. Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and included UNM professors and students from the Institute of Meteoritics (IOM). (Full Story)


Biosensor to help detect disease

Los Alamos National Laboratory successfully completed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Biomagnetics Diagnostics, Inc., in June 2011.

The CRADA was created to continue work on developing a commercial product that could detect a specific biomarker in urine that could aid in the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection. However, a commercially available product has not yet been built or clinically tested. (Full Story)


Building a microgrid

Construction of the Microgrid is underway. ABQ Journal photo.

The project is being carried out by NEDO, a quasi-government agency from Japan, along with the state, Mesa del Sol, Public Service Company of New Mexico, Sandia and Los Alamos national labs and Los Alamos County. (Full Story)


The arXiv at 20: a global resource

Cornell professor Ginsparg started arXiv while at LANL. Cornell photo.

As the e-print arXiv of scientific publications celebrates its 20th anniversary, what started as an effort to "level the playing field" for researchers has created a whole new playing field on which the white lines are still not clearly drawn.

"But what I was trying to do was set up a system that eliminated the hierarchy in my field," said Paul Ginsparg. As a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, "I was receiving preprints long before graduate students further down the food chain." (Full Story)


Seashore to host global climate research

The Cape Cod National Seashore will be a research site for a yearlong global study to improve the forecasting of hurricanes, droughts, smog and other climate events.

Starting in July 2012 at a site near the Highland Center in Truro, researchers will be measuring the amount and composition of tiny dust particles blown this way and out to sea.

The scientists are part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility, the largest funded climate change research project in the world. It involves 350 scientists at permanent sites all over the globe, according to project manager Kim Nitschke from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)


Research from Los Alamos National Laboratory provides new data on microbiology

"The importance of soil fungi in complex carbon degradation and the recent identification of genes involved in this process have sparked considerable interest in examining fungal gene expression in situ . Expression of target eukaryotic genes is commonly examined using reverse transcription PCR, during which single-stranded complementary DNA is synthesized from an oligo primer and the gene of interest is subsequently amplified by PCR using gene specific primers," researchers in Los Alamos, New Mexico report. (Full Story)


Can the tree whisperer save our forests?

A Pine beetle and larvae at the Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton, Alberta. Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal

The dry spell descended on the Southwest in the mid-1990s, after twenty years of wet weather, and didn't let go until 2005. At the Los Alamos National Laboratory, ecologist David Breshears could look out his window at a pinyon study plot the size of a football field and actually watch the trees die.

"I would see the trees go from vibrant green to pale, gasping green to pale brown to dropping all their needles," he remembers. Between 2002 and 2003, the die-off was so extensive that patches of graying trees could be seen from outer space. It extended over 4,600 square miles, an area the size of Germany's Black Forest. (Full Story)


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Too hard for science? Peter Watts - Fusing brains

“One could always resort to doing these experiments as simulations,” says Peter Watts, science fiction author and one-time marine mammal biologist. For instance, Luis Bettencourt at Los Alamos National Laboratory has discussed the progress that has already been made towards computer simulation of whole brains. “It’s not doable now, but in a decade or two, who knows?” Watts says (full story).

Also in Scientific American, this look back at the “physicist’s physicst” Robert Wilson, who served at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project

Protons and Pistols: Remembering Robert Wilson

One day in 1969, the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy convened in Washington, DC, to hear testimony from a number of scientists concerning a proposed multimillion dollar particle accelerator to be built in Batavia, Illinois.

Physics had enjoyed strong government support for two decades in the wake of the Manhattan Project, which helped bring an end to World War II​. But many in Congress simply couldn’t see the point of spending all that money on a big machine that didn’t seem to benefit US national interests in quite the same way.

Wilson, to his credit, answered just as bluntly: “No sir, I don’t believe so.”

“Nothing at all?” Pastore asked.

“Nothing at all.”

Pastore pressed further: “It has no value in that respect?”

And then Wilson knocked it out of the park. . . (full story).

Astronomers find extreme weather on an alien world

A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has observed extreme brightness changes on a nearby brown dwarf that may indicate a storm grander than any seen yet on a planet. Because old brown dwarfs and giant planets have similar atmospheres, this finding could shed new light on weather phenomena of extra-solar planets. Co-authors include Didier Saumon at Los Alamos National Laboratory (full story).

Two exhibits to open at Bradbury

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Bradbury Science Museum will unveil two exhibits next week and hosts a talk about Manhattan Project physicist Richard Feynman on Sept. 29. The trinitite exhibit uses the famous green glass produced by the first atomic device test at Trinity Site to tell a story about the scientific method (full story).

Lab completes dump site excavation

Los Alamos National Laboratory announced Thursday it has completed excavation of its oldest hazardous waste dump, known as Area B.

The excavation removed about 43,000 cubic yards of toxic debris and soil from the 6-acre site, which was used from 1944-48 during Manhattan Project nuclear research and production. . . .

To protect workers and the public, the excavation was done under special metal structures equipped with special filters and fire and dust suppression systems (full story).

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