World

Korea Increases Support of NNSA’s Anti-Nuclear Smuggling Efforts

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DOE and Korean officials sign a memorandum of understanding in 2010. Courtesy/NNSA News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Republic of Korea announced Wednesday that the Republic of Korea renewed its partnership to combat nuclear smuggling with a $300,000 contribution to support NNSA’s ongoing nonproliferation work in Azerbaijan.

The funding, provided by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and facilitated by the U.S. Department of State’s Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative (NSOI), will be used for the installation of radiation Read More

Exploiting the Power of IBM Blue Gene/Q Supercomputers

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Sequoia supercomputer. Photo by Bob Hirschfeld/LLNL

NNSA News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Breaking new ground for scientific computing, two teams of Department of Energy (DOE) scientists have for the first time exceeded a sustained performance level of 10 petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second) on the Sequoia supercomputer at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL.)

A team led by Argonne National Laboratory used the recently developed Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Codes (HACC) framework to achieve Read More

Traveling the World

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Jason, Sydney and Kerri Frazier prepare to spend the next two years traveling the world. Photo by Teralene Foxx

 

By Teralene Foxx
Los Alamos

Our youngest daughter, Kerri  (1991 graduate of Los Alamos High School) and her husband Jason Frazier told us six years ago they were planning on quitting their jobs, selling everything, and sailing around the world when they were in mid-life. 

All I could think of was pirates, large waves and being cramped together on a small boat for days. That is something I could not imagine. 

It certainly did not appeal to me, but it was their lives. Read More

Self-taught African Teen Wows MIT

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Kelvin Doe. Courtesy/www.adamcohn.com

NIST News:

Kelvin Doe, 15, is an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters.

Completely self-taught, Doe has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, DJ Focus.

Doe became the youngest person in history to be invited to the “Visiting Practitioner’s Program” at MIT.

https://twitter.com/usnistgov/statuses/272068305299333120 Read More

NNSA Delivers W76-1 Units to Navy for 2012

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W76-1 units. Courtesy/SNL

NNSA News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced that it delivered all of its scheduled W76-1 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile warhead units to United States Navy in FY 2012.

“As our stockpile ages, we have to put ourselves in a position where the president can be certain that it is safe, secure and effective,” said NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Don Cook. “Our continued success with the W76-1 Life Extension Program is key to the United States’ nuclear deterrent. As we move forward with other life Read More

LANL’s Ward Hawkins to Speak on Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

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LACACIS News:
 
Ward L. Hawkins, Program Manager for Nuclear Testing Limitations at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will present a talk at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27 at an open meeting of the Los Alamos Committee on Arms Control and International Security.
 
Hawkins talk, “CTBT On-Site Inspection: The Final Verification Measure” will provide general background information on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a detailed description of the On-Site Inspection verification regime.
 
The public is invited to attend Hawkin’s talk, which will be held in
Read More

US, Kazakhstan Commission Radiation Detection Systems Aimed at Preventing Nuclear Smuggling

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Anne Harrington. Courtesy/NNSA

NNSA News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Kazakhstan Customs Control Committee (KCCC) recently held a ceremony to commission the specialized radiation detection equipment at Astana International Airport – a significant milestone in the joint effort to prevent the illicit trafficking of nuclear and other radioactive materials.

The ceremony recognized the effective ongoing cooperation between the U.S. and the Republic of Kazakhstan, along with the generous financial contributions from New Zealand, Read More

Clouds Could Explain How Snowball Earth Thawed Out

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Giant snowball created by Oxford students. Courtesy photo

AGU News:

Glaciation events during the Neoproterozoic (524-to-1,000 million years ago) and Paleoproterozoic (1,600-to-2,500 million years ago) periods – events that
spawned ice ages that persisted for millions of years at a time – may have seen glacier ice encircle the planet in a frosty planetary configuration known as a
Snowball Earth.

Whether the planet could have existed in such a state, however, is a matter of considerable debate.

An elevated planetary albedo, caused by the planet being covered in reflective Read More

Ocean Salinity Trends Show Human Fingerprint

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AGU News:

WASHINGTON – Changes in ocean salinity over the second half of the 20th Century are consistent with the influence of human activities and inconsistent with natural climate variations, according to a new study.

Observed changes agree with computer modeling of salinity trends in a steadily warming world, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, climate researcher David Pierce, the study’s lead author.

Ocean salinity changes are driven by the world’s patterns of evaporation and rainfall, which themselves are changing.

Observations over recent Read More

NNSA Completes 50th Shipment Under Threat Reduction Program

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NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. Courtesy/NNSA

NNSA News:

Cooperative Program Removes Highly Enriched Uranium from Uzbekistan

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the successful removal of 72.8 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) spent fuel from the Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Today’s announcement marks the 50th shipment under NNSA’s cooperative program with Russia to return Russian-origin HEU.

Since the program began 10 years ago, NNSA and its Russian counterparts have closely cooperated Read More