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Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Judge tosses CMRR lawsuit

    The timing was rather ominous.

    A couple of hours before the first public hearing regarding the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit that sought to halt development of a $5.8 billion plutonium laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

    U.S. District Court Judith Herrera ruled a new environmental analysis and planned hearings should be adequate to address new concerns about earthquake dangers.

    Understandably, the Department of Energy was happy with the decision.

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  • Judge throws out case over Los Alamos nuclear plan

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday threw out a lawsuit that sought to halt development of a $5.8 billion plutonium laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory, saying a new environmental analysis and planned hearings should be adequate to address new concerns about earthquake dangers.

    Plaintiffs, however, said they would boycott the public hearings, claiming construction of the lab is already a done deal.

    "The public record is replete with Administration statements saying it is not going to reconsider its commitment to this project," Greg Mello of the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group in an email about why the group wouldn't attend public hearings.

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  • NNSA names new manager

    The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Site Office (LASO) named Timothy O’Leary its new Assistant Manager for Business Administration Friday.

    “We are very fortunate to have someone of Tim’s caliber on the LASO staff,” said LASO Manager Kevin Smith.

    “Tim has already had a remarkable and successful career and I fully expect him to have an immediate and positive influence on our Site Office business operations and to open new doors for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

    Most of O’Leary’s career has been with the U.S. Coast Guard, and included command of two Coast Guard Cutters.

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  • CMRR meetings set to begin Monday

    Starting Monday, the general public will get the chance to speak their mind about the Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement project.

    The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Site Office has extended the public comment period and added a fourth public meeting for the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the CMRR project – Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF).

    The comment period was extended by 15 days, making it a 60-day comment period. The formal comment period opened April 29. A public meeting in Albuquerque has been added, in addition to those alreadyplanned in Los Alamos, Espanola and Santa Fe.

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  • Lab touts pollution reductions

    POJOAQUE — Denny Hjeresen of the Los Alamos National Laboratory probably summed it best Tuesday night at the Cities of Gold conference room when in the middle of his presentation, he said, “we have the most sampled sites on earth.”
    Hjeresen, the division leader for environmental protection at LANL, was describing how the lab is complying with a new EPA storm water permit that regulates runoff at several hundred Cold War-era environmental sites.
    The lab was required to install and certify completion of baseline control measures at all 250 site monitoring areas (SMAs), which includes 405 total sites by May 1.

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  • Bradbury to host updated supercomputing exhibit

    For decades, Los Alamos National Laboratory has been synonymous with supercomputing, achieving a number of milestones along the way. Those milestones and more are now showcased in a new, updated supercomputing exhibit on display at the Laboratory’s Bradbury Science Museum.
     The grand opening of the exhibit, which features a lecture and reception, is from 4 to 6 p.m. on May 26 at the museum. The general public is invited.
     “I’m so thrilled that the exhibit is upgraded now,” said Linda Deck, director of the museum.

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  • LANL earns volunteer award

    Los Alamos National Laboratory has earned an award as the top corporate volunteer organization among large employers in VolunteerMatch’s network of more than 140 leading companies and brands.
    Debbi Wersonick of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Community Programs Office, coordinator of volunteer programs at the Laboratory, traveled to Chicago to receive the Corporate Volunteer Program of the Year Award, given by the San Francisco-based nonprofit organization for outstanding achievement and results in program reach, connection rate, volunteer hours tracked per 1,000 employees, and volunteer impact.

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  • NNSA unveils strategic plan

    The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today released its new 2011 Strategic Plan, which details how NNSA will invest in the future, build the nuclear security enterprise required to implement President Barack Obama’s nuclear security agenda and enhance global security, and continue to improve the way it does business.  
    As we work to build “OneNNSA,” a single integrated enterprise that is organized to successfully complete the NNSA mission, the 2011 Strategic Plan will serve as an outline of NNSA’s goals for the next decade and a guide for its planning, programming, and budgeting processes.
    In a message included in the Strategic Plan, Administrator Thomas D’Agostino writes:

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  • Another truck uncovered at TA-21

    Workers cleaning up Material Disposal Area B at Technical Area 21 off DP Road have finished 80 percent of their excavation.
    And surprise, surprise, guess what excavators have unearthed in the past month?
    Another truck.
    “This one was really mangled,” said Patricia Jones, who works in the environmental programs division for the Recovery Act projects at LANL. “Nobody took a photo of it.”
    There were photos taken of another truck unearthed a couple of months ago that were published in the Los Alamos Monitor.
    For years rumors have been circulating about a truck, which hauled the original device to the Trinity Bomb site in 1945 and was later buried in a landfill at what is now known as TA-21 just off DP Road.

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  • Researchers investigate Greenland ice-mass

    Warming in the Arctic during the past several decades has caused Greenland’s ice sheet and outlet glaciers to thin and retreat. The lost ice mass makes a growing contribution to global sea-level rise.
    Sebastian Mernild of the Laboratory’s Computational Physics and Methods group, William Lipscomb of the Lab’s Fluid Dynamics and Solid Mechanics group, and collaborators have investigated ice-mass loss for the Mittivakkat Gletscher, the only glacier in Greenland with long-term observations of both the surface mass balance (the difference between ice mass gained by snow accumulation and that lost to various processes) and glacier front fluctuations.

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