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Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Plutonium halts clean-up at Los Alamos National Laboratory

    Discovery of a pipe with a high level of plutonium-239 at a clean-up site at Los Alamos National Laboratory has forced officials to shut down operations.

    The pipe, which was dug up by an excavator three weeks ago, had plutonium-239 that exceeded the amount lab officials had expected and that was allowed above the ground, lab spokesman Fred deSousa said Friday.

    The lab had estimated about 200 grams of plutonium-239 over the 6-acre clean-up site. The pipe alone alone had 42 grams, or about 1.6 ounces.

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  • LANL attracts record number of student interns

    LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — It was a record summer for students at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

    More than 1,300 students interned in technical and nontechnical fields and a record 415 postdoctoral students are working at Los Alamos this year.

    The lab's Education and Postdoc Office program manager, Dave Foster, says student interns and postdoctoral students contribute significantly to lab work. He says they also enhance their own academic and research skills while offering a pipeline for potential lab hires.

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  • CMRR funding fight heads to Senate

    Ignoring a White House veto threat, the Republican-controlled House approved a $642 billion defense budget Friday that breaks a deficit-cutting deal with President Barack Obama and restricts his authority in an election-year challenge to the Democratic commander in chief.

    The House voted 299-120 for the fiscal 2013 spending blueprint that authorizes money for weapons, aircraft, ships and the war in Afghanistan — $8 billion more than Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in the clamor for fiscal austerity.

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  • NNMCAB celebrates new Pojoaque home

    The Northern New Mexico Citizen’s Advisory Board (NNMCAB) played host this week to about 50 people who turned out to celebrate the opening of the NNMCAB’s new office in Pojoaque.

    The office building is located at 94 Cities of Gold Road, next to the Pojoaque Visitors Center, and it serves as administrative office, meeting place and reading room for regulatory documents associated with environmental work at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

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  • Bradbury joins Blue Star Museum program

    Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Bradbury Science Museum is partnering with the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families Foundation and the Department of Defense in the Blue Star Museums program to host active duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day, May 28, through Labor Day, Sept. 3.
    Joining more than 1,500 participating museums throughout the United States, “Bradbury Science Museum is excited and proud to be part of the Blue Star Museums program as a way to thank our nation’s military personnel – and their families – for their service,” said Bradbury Science Museum Director Linda Deck.

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  • CMRR funding still alive

    After a House Rules Committee vote, funding for the proposed Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement facility is still alive for FY2013

    The battle in Washington continued this week in the House as Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sponsored an amendment that would have nixed Rep. Mike Turner’s (R-Ohio) amendments from last week that would breathe new life into the CMRR project.

    Markey’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act did not make it out of the House Rules Committee. The entire bill, however, is being debated in the House.

    Turner’s amendments, meanwhile, made it through.

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  • LA scientist heads to India for climate-monitoring research

    Manvendra Dubey, a Los Alamos National Laboratory climate scientist, has received a J. William Fulbright scholarship to conduct monsoon-related research in India.

    The Divecha Center for Climate Change and Center for Atmospheric Science at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will host the researcher in late 2012 for several months.

    Dubey will give lectures on the role of atmospheric science in developing technologies to solve environmental problems, such as acid rain, air pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change. He will identify leading scientists at Indian institutions for collaborative research opportunities to expand atmospheric observations of air quality and climate change.

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  • Ohio Rep. pushes funding move

    More details have emerged from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) after it marked up the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) when it comes to the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility.

    Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) submitted two amendments. The first of them would appropriate $160 million to the CMRR-NF for FY2013.  That’s $60 million more than HASC Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) recommended in his mark-up on Monday.

    A couple of weeks ago, the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee provided zero funding for CMRR-NR in its FY 2013 bill. 

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  • CMRR project may not be dead yet

    The House Armed Services Committee took another look at the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility and voted 38-24 to authorize the project.

    The amendment was a part of $643 billion defense bill passed by the committee early Thursday morning. There still is a long way to go. The bill still has to be passed by the House and the Senate.

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  • Researchers test theory of planets

    Recent research by Jarrett Johnson and Hui Li of LANL’s Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology group suggests that the first planets in the universe formed well after the first generations of stars.

    The scientists calculated the minimum metallicity that must be present in the dusty disks surrounding newborn stars in order for planets to take shape.
    Astronomers use the term “metallicity” to refer to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, such as oxygen, silicon and iron. Because the heavy elements required for assembling the cores of planets were not produced in the Big Bang, they must have been produced instead by fusion reactions within early generations of stars and supernovae.

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