Today's News

Los Alamos High School student, Charles Mielke has been awarded an all-expense paid trip summer study trip to Germany.

Mielke was selected as a national winner after scoring in the 98.53 percentile on the Level III 2013 National German Exam for High School Students sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of German. 

Nearly 23,000 students participated in the program. After qualifying with a high score on the National German Exam, he or she submitted responses to several short essay questions in German and in English and was then interviewed by a committee comprised of high school teachers and college professors of German. 

Valley Meat Company in Roswell has become the focal point for arguments over horse over-population in the same way ants become the focal points of bored boys with magnifying glasses. There’s more heat than light.

In the back-and-forth chatter, I’m hearing a lot of arguments that don’t hold water. And, even if the determined Rick De Los Santos manages to open his plant, it doesn’t solve all of our horse problems. 

The most ironic argument against a slaughterhouse for unwanted horses is that the noble animal is a western icon, a star in the Taming of the West. Somebody needs to read more history. To pioneers, the army and Indian tribes, horses were transportation. When a horse was used up, it was eaten: Meat’s meat.  

Has anyone ever told you New Mexico is the most corrupt state in the nation? I’ve heard it for years, including from an FBI agent, who investigated our financial corruption mess. 

Since I was a kid, I remember hearing that some powerful New Mexican, maybe Dennis Chavez, as saying that if you want to get a degree in political corruption, go to Chicago. If you want to get a Master’s Degree, go to Louisiana. But if you want a doctorate, go to New Mexico. 

If you ask people from the East Coast, they’ll probably tell you that New York and New Jersey are the most corrupt states. It just depends on where you’re from. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced 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.