National Laboratory

DOE’s New Energy Efficiency Standards Will Help Americans Save Money, Reduce Carbon Pollution

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DOE News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In support of the President’s Climate Action Plan, the Energy Department has announced two new energy efficiency standards.

The new standards for general service fluorescent lamps (GSFLs) and automatic commercial ice makers (ACIMs) are the ninth and tenth standards to be finalized in 2014. Altogether, the 10 standards finalized this year will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 435 million metric tons and save American families and businesses $78 billion in electricity bills through 2030.

“As part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the Read More

LANL Performance Takes Hit From WIPP Incident Despite Exceeding Expectations In Many Areas

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LANL Director Charlie McMillan

LANL News:

Despite high praise for the majority of the work performed by Los Alamos National Laboratory meeting or exceeding expectations, the Laboratory is taking a significant funding hit for Fiscal Year 2014.

LANL Director Charlie McMillan sent a memo to employees Monday informing them that the Laboratory received a rating of “unsatisfactory” in operations and infrastructure from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) annual performance review. The low rating is primarily due to the breached drum incident in February at the Waste Read More

Robot Explores Under-Ice Habitats In The Arctic

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Nereid Under Ice vehicle being deployed from the Polarstern during summer 2014. Photo by Chris German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

EOS News:

  • The Nereid Under Ice vehicle is helping scientists to explore regions under Arctic sea ice and the biological phenomena that are present there.
 
By RANDY SHOWSTACK
Earth & Space Science News

A new underwater vehicle has successfully demonstrated that it can explore physical and biological phenomena in undisturbed areas beneath sea ice. It has also shown that a thriving biological realm of algae and other creatures exists

Read More

Former Employee Files Suit Against LANS, Co-workers

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By CAROL A. CLARK
Los Alamos Daily Post

A former Los Alamos National Laboratory employee filed suit Dec. 11 in First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe against Los Alamos National Security, LLC and three co-workers.

Suzanne D. Coyne issued the complaint against LANS and three co-workers including Nicholas Degidio, Gail McGuire and Jackie Little. Coyne’s husband Robert J. Coyne Sr., joined her in the court action filed through their attorney, Paul W. Grace, Esq.

Grace spoke with the Los Alamos Daily Post and said that the complaint he filed on behalf of his clients is grounded on the wrongful

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Big Win: Manhattan Project National Historical Park Established!

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Courtesy/NTHP

 

By Nancy Tinker, Senior Field Officer, and Denise Ryan, Director of Public Lands Policy

Big news on the National Treasure front — the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Act was passed in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 on Friday, December 12, 2014.

With this action, Congress has authorized the establishment of a new National Park commemorating the history of the Manhattan Project. Comprised of the three laboratories whose work was dedicated to accomplishing the Manhattan Project’s mission, the new national Read More

Udall, Heinrich Announce $324 Million For WIPP

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U.S. SENATE News:

Legislation signed by president includes $104 million more than administration’s budget request

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich announced that the president has signed legislation providing $324 million for recovery and operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad.
 
Earlier this year, Udall, a member of the Appropriations Committee, and Heinrich had requested the funding to ensure recovery efforts can continue so the facility can safely resume operation and accept waste from Los Alamos National
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Dateline Los Alamos: Top Science News Of 2014

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LANL postdoctoral researcher Elena Guardincerri, right, and undergraduate research assistant Shelby Fellows prepare a lead hemisphere inside a muon tomography machine, which can peer inside closed containers and provide detailed images of dense objects such as nuclear materials or other items of interest. The detector, developed at Los Alamos, uses muons — tiny particles generated when cosmic rays interact with Earth’s atmosphere — to do its work, providing a simple, passive system that can be used to thwart nuclear smugglers or look inside the cores of damaged nuclear Read More

Mysteries Of ‘Molecular Machines’ Revealed

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A picture of a membrane protein called cysZ determined with Phenix software using data that could not previously be analyzed.Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Scientists are making it easier for pharmaceutical companies and researchers to see the detailed inner workings of molecular machines.

“Inside each cell in our bodies and inside every bacterium and virus are tiny but complex protein molecules that synthesize chemicals, replicate genetic material, turn each other on and off, and transport chemicals across cell membranes,” said Tom Terwilliger, a Los Alamos National Laboratory Read More

False Radiological Alarm In WIPP Underground

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WIPP News:

At approximately 7:40 a.m. today, a portable continuous air monitor (CAM) alarm activated in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) underground.

Shortly after the alarm, Radiological Control (Rad Con) Technicians wearing appropriate personnel protective equipment, entered the underground, performed radiological surveys, collected additional air monitoring data and examined the CAM before declaring it a false alarm. As a precautionary measure, all WIPP personnel were evacuated from the underground when the initial alarm was received.

Personnel exiting the underground Read More

One Million Curies Of Radioactive Material Recovered

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Rick Day of LANL’s International Threat Reduction Group and the Off-Site Source Recovery Project (OSRP) holds a non-radioactive training mockup of what a typical cobalt-60 source might look like. The source is similar to what OSRP team members recovered from a site in Maryland in late 2014, putting the number of Curies recovered as part of the project above 1 million since the project began in 1999. OSRP recovers and disposes of unwanted radioactive sealed sources, eliminating a potential threat that could be used by terrorists to create ‘dirty bombs.’ Courtesy/LANL Read More