Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory will begin pumping tests in two groundwater monitoring wells this summer located on lab property within a chromium plume in the regional aquifer.
The purpose of the pumping tests is to refine understanding of the plume properties within the regional aquifer and evaluate the potential for large-scale pumping to remove chromium. Chromium concentrations in the plume exceed state and federal standards for groundwater.
“These pumping tests are a key step in identifying measures to address the plume,” said Pete Maggiore, assistant manager for environmental projects at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Field Office. “Data from this testing will be used to recommend a final remedy which we will then submit to the state.”
The chromium investigation is part of environmental work being conducted under the 2005 Consent Order between New Mexico, the lab and the Department of Energy. Under the Consent Order process, the state will select a final remedy after input from the public.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan told a gathering of energy executives Tuesday that securing the electrical grid is a major concern right now and it’s only going to become more serious.
“If you look back at the last year, there were several hundred attacks on critical infrastructure,” McMillan said, addressing attendees at the Deloitte Energy Conference near Washington, D.C. “More than 40 percent of those attacks were on the energy sector.”
Resilience and reliability of the electrical grid have become key energy security concerns at the Laboratory and are important focus areas in global security. Experience with massive amounts of data, complex systems and security technology involved in nuclear weapons research are now providing insights for grid security, McMillan said.
“In the time it takes me to say this sentence, the external firewalls of Los Alamos will be challenged hundreds of times by adversaries. Our systems, and yours, are very attractive.” McMillan said. “But encrypting control signals on the grid is particularly challenging because any encryption scheme must be able to meet competing standards for very rapid response and high security.”

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — Congress has approved an additional $19 million for nuclear waste cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The New Mexico congressional delegation on Wednesday announced the approval of a "reprogramming" request by the Department of Energy to transfer money from other programs to ensure the lab can meet its promise to remove thousands of barrels of radioactive waste by 2014.

The potential dangers of the waste, which is stored above ground, made national headlines in 2011 when the Las Conchas fire raged near the lab.

The Obama Administration had requested $239 million for the cleanup in the fiscal year 2013 budget. But a continuing budget resolution froze the cleanup funding level at $189 million and sequestration cuts further reduced that figure to $173 million.

Watch for more details on this developing story in the Los Alamos Monitor.

Los Alamos National Laboratory announced Monday that for the first time, irradiated uranium fuel has been recycled and reused for molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) production, with virtually no losses in Mo-99 yields or uranium recovery.

This demonstrates the viability of the separation process, as well as the potential for environmentally- and cost-friendly fuel recycling. Medical isotope production technology has advanced significantly now that scientists have made key advances in separating Mo-99 from an irradiated, low-enriched uranium (LEU) solution.

Low-Enriched Uranium as a Source of Mo-99

Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) is the most commonly used medical isotope today, accounting for about 50,000 medical imaging procedures daily in the United States. Tc-99m is derived from the parent isotope Mo-99, predominantly produced from the fission of uranium-235 in highly enriched uranium targets (HEU) in aging foreign reactors. The North American supply of Tc-99m was severely disrupted when the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Canada experienced an outage several years ago.