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Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • CMRR Draft Supplemental EIS available online

    The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced that the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Nuclear Facility portion of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory is now available online.
     
    The CMRR would replace the 60-year-old Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building used for analytical chemistry and materials characterization critical to NNSA national security missions that require nuclear materials handling, processing and fabrication including stockpile management, nonproliferation and counterterrorism.
     

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  • Cheaper hydrogen fuel cells close to reality

    Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have developed a way to avoid the use of expensive platinum in hydrogen fuel cells, the environmentally friendly devices that might replace current power sources in everything from personal data devices to automobiles.
    In a paper published today in Science, Los Alamos researchers Gang Wu, Christina Johnston, and Piotr Zelenay, joined by researcher Karren More of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, describe the use of a platinum-free catalyst in the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell.
    Eliminating platinum — a precious metal more expensive than gold — would solve a significant economic challenge that has thwarted widespread use of large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems.  

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  • LANL statistician receives Governor's Award

    The New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women selected Los Alamos National Laboratory research statistician Christine Anderson-Cook as one of 20 women to receive the 26th Annual Governor’s Award for Outstanding New Mexico Women.
    An awards banquet is scheduled for May 6 at the Hotel Albuquerque.
    “We are extremely proud of Christine’s accomplishments, both as an outstanding research statistician and as an excellent role model for women in science,” said Computer, Computational and Statistical Sciences Division Leader Stephen Lee.  

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  • Intern housing shortage continues to tax resources on Hill

    Hundreds of college students from across the country flood the local community each summer to intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory. LANL interns often encounter a lack of student housing and this year is no exception.

    Betsey Suarzo has been the housing coordinator of UNM-LA’s 64 efficiency apartments on 9th Street for eight years.

    “I’m getting a lot of e-mails and phone calls from lab students interested in renting apartments in UNM-LA housing and I’m telling them to send me their information and I’ll put them on the waiting list,” Suarzo said.

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  • Study points to vulnerabilities of plutonium facility in seismic event

    Los Alamos National Laboratory officials are looking at ways to strengthen the structure of its plutonium processing building in response to a study that shows it would be vulnerable to significant damage in the event of a major earthquake.

    LANL adopted an updated site-wide seismic hazard analysis standard in 2007. In response to that effort, LANL’s Seismic Analysis of Facilities and Evaluation of Risk (SAFER) Project has been conducting a detailed multiyear analysis of the seismic design loads on every existing facility at the site. New or proposed facilities are designed to meet the latest seismic response criteria.

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  • Electrical problem shuts down work at TA-21

    It’s been awfully quiet at TA-21 this week.
    And it’s not because of the latest discovery last Friday when a 1940s-era truck was unearthed by an excavator working at the site.
    Fred DeSousa of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Communications Department on Thursday morning confirmed there was a problem with the transformer on site.
    “We didn’t have any electricity and we use that to run the air filtration system,” DeSousa said. “We can’t do any work inside the enclosures unless we have an air filtration system.”
    DeSousa said the problem occurred Saturday afternoon when the winds were high.

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  • LANL selects two small businesses for monitoring work

    Los Alamos National Laboratory today announced it has selected two small businesses to compete for up to $80 million in well drilling and groundwater monitoring work.
    The work will strengthen the Lab’s ability to address groundwater monitoring requirements and contribute important data to LANL’s investigation of Cold War-era waste sites.
    “Being able to efficiently drill new wells that produce quality groundwater samples is critical to completing our cleanup goals,” said Michael Graham, the Lab’s associate director for Environmental Programs. “And the fact that this work will go to local businesses is great.”

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  • U.S. District Court to hear CMRR case

    Two weeks from today, Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group and his lawyers will be in a U.S. District Court room in Albuquerque.

    At 9 a.m. on April 27, Judge Judith Herrera will be hearing arguments from the Los Alamos Study Group and the Department of Energy.

    According to court documents, the complaint seeks a declaratory judgment and mandatory injunction requiring DOE to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), by preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) regarding the proposed Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos and its many subprojects.

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  • Examining privatization impacts on national labs

    Jeff Colvin, a staff physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, was in town Thursday, but he wasn’t here to talk science.
    He spent a little over an hour discussing what he views as the ill-effects privatization has had on the DOE/NNSA Labs. About 40 people were in attendance to listen at the Best Western Hilltop Hotel Thursday night.
    After it was over, he made a plea to those in attendance, who were mostly employees of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
    “The other way to support that privatization has been disastrous to the labs and move forward with de-privatization is to join the union,” Colvin said.

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  • Workers find truck buried in TA-21

    It's nothing short of urban legend around here.

    For years rumors have circulated about a truck, which hauled the original device to the Trinity Bomb site in 1945, and was buried in a landfill at what is now known as TA-21 just off DP Road. Lore has it that the truck was so "hot" with radioactivity that after being driven back to Los Alamos--following the first successful test of an atom bomb--it had to be disposed of in some fashion. 

    On  Friday, excavators working the project uncovered a truck buried beneath the westernmost square building on the site, according to Los Alamos National Laboratory spokesperson Fred DeSousa.

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