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LANL Workforce Reporting Tool

The LANL Workforce Reporting Tool compiles and analyzes workforce demographics and attributes as presented in the annual Stockpile and Stewardship Management Plan (SSMP) over FY15-21 using MicroStrategy, a data analytics and visualization software. There are three major employee populations included in the tool: 1) LANL’s regular (permanent) employees; 2) LANL’s entire workforce (regular, craft, contractors, students, post doctorate students, limited term employees, and lab associates); 3) The Nuclear Security Enterprise’s (NSE) permanent career employees (combined and site-by-site).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Briefing Book: Office of Experimental Sciences

Key to OES science is the advancement of experimental capabilities and vibrant partnerships with other elements of NNSA’s Defense Programs. OES fosters an experimental portfolio that spans the space from small scale studies utilizing tabletop instruments through complex and dynamic high energy density; hydrodynamic; and subcritical experiments on flagship national facilities like Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), National Ignition Facility (NIF), Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories, Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT), and the U1a Complex in Nevada. Essential to meeting the deterrence challenges that drive OES is a functional strategy for integration of OES with Defense Programs pursuits in modeling and simulation, engineering and technology maturation, and stockpile and production modernization.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Field Testing of Earth Penetrators [Slides]

This presentation outlines a series of experiments Los Alamos National Laboratory led as part of the Stockpile Responsiveness Program in 2019. The mid-scale experiments were designed to exercise case geometry perturbations and assess their performance characteristics with respect to mitigating penetrator angle of attack. The material was prepared for an HDBT workshop held at LANL January 19th, 2023.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Pits 101: The four types of nuclear weapons modernization activities

We learned why we don’t need plutonium to make new pits in an earlier edition of Pits 101, but why do we need new pits from a national security standpoint? A plutonium pit, or the core of a nuclear weapon, is like a weapon’s battery. The pits that Los Alamos will make in coming years will be like new batteries for nuclear weapons in the existing stockpile. Pit production is mandated in order to meet Department of Defense (DOD) requirements by our primary customer, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. NNSA’s mission is to “deliver safe, secure, reliable warheads for an effective nuclear deterrent.” As Marv Adams, head of NNSA Defense Programs, describes, it’s a mission that is simple to state, but challenging to deliver.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

TRUST Nonlinear Dynamics (ND) Report: FY22

The objective of the Delivery Environments (DE) Testbeds to Reduce Uncertainty in Simulations and Tests (TRUST) work package, is to quantify and help increase confidence in specific areas of computational and experimental capabilities that are applicable to current and future delivery environments. More complete quantification of confidence in experimental and computational capabilities and the sufficient increase of confidence in those capabilities is critical to improving weapons engineering design, qualification, and assessment efforts that are relevant to the current and future stockpile. This work will use and provide feedback on analysis tools and experimental results databases for efficient and responsive engineering which are currently under development: engineering common model framework (ECMF), engineering quantification of margins and uncertainties (EQMU), and the test information management system (TIMS). Additionally, this work is being used to test a newly available framework in W-13, Weapons Analysis for Verified Engineering Simulation (WAVES).

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Mitigation of cross-beam energy transfer with laser bandwidth [Slides]

Control of laser-plasma instabilities (LPI) is critical for inertial fusion. Future stockpile stewardship experiments on the NIF will require increased fusion yield (up to 10 MJ), which will require higher laser energy and intensity and will have a higher LPI risk. To be successful, we need to understand the nonlinear behavior of LPI and develop an improved capability for modeling and mitigating LPI in ICF experiments.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

FY22 Year End Report of Delivery Environments Predictive Capabilities Use in Analysis of SRP Programs

As was established in a previous milestone report for FY20, W-13 continues to be tasked with analyses that require knowledge of in-flight environments and require an in-house capability to generate such environments. To this end, FY21 work included obtaining and benchmarking the use of such tools for an in-house capability. With these tools available for analysis tasks, FY22 work has been to continue the development of analysis for Responsive Development Experiment (ReDX) flights in the Stockpile Responsiveness Program (SRP). While no flights were executed in FY22 that leveraged internal flight analysis., this report shows that both CBAERO and TAOS were used in W-13 under the Delivery Environments Program for the FY22 milestone in order to predict the flight environments of ReDX flight 3 and determine preliminary environments of the Calypso flight vehicle which includes a deployable heat shield.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Recommended Representative Isotopic Compositions for Potential VTR Pu Supplies

This document recommends isotopic compositions to represent selected Pu supplies that might be made available for use in VTR driver fuel. These compositions are intended to be conservative representations suitable for determination of environmental impacts associated with use of the selected Pu supplies, but not upper bounds of all possible compositions. The selected Pu supplies under consideration are themselves representations of a more complicated set of possibilities, defined in a manner to allow efficient but conservative analysis of impacts. The source definitions to be considered are as follows: 1) Foreign sources of reactor-grade plutonium. This material would be provided as polished material in an oxide form and is assumed to be transported from Europe (France or England); 2) Domestic, non-weapon sources of plutonium such as unused FFTF fuel, Hanford metal (stored at SRS), and various oxides; 3) Domestic sources of weapons-grade plutonium, including metal from dismantled pits and otherwise excess to stockpile needs.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Secure Storage: Historical Documentation of TA-08-0032, TA-11-0036, TA-22-0016, TA-22-0023, TA-22-0025, TA-22-0035, TA-37-0006, TA-37-0009, and TA-37-0020

The U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Los Alamos Field Office (NA-LA), is pursuing the decommissioning and demolition (D&D) of facilities contaminated with high-explosives residues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Laboratory or LANL). This effort affects nine facilities associated with high-explosives and detonator research, development, and storage: Technical Area (TA) 8 Facility 32 (TA-08-0032), TA-11-0036, TA-22-0016, TA-22-0023, TA-22-0025, TA-22-0035, TA-37-0006, TA-37-0009, and TA-37-0020. All nine facilities proposed for D&D have been evaluated for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and determined eligible. NA-LA previously requested the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) to concur with the NRHP-eligibility determinations of these nine properties presented in four reports: (1) TA-08-0032 was determined eligible for listing in the NRHP in the report, From Ranching to Radiography: An Assessment of Historic Buildings at Anchor West Site (TA-8), Vol. 1 (McGehee et al. 2008a). The SHPO concurred with this eligibility determination on November 26, 2008. (2) TA-11-0036 was determined eligible for listing in the NRHP in the report, ESA Division’s Five-Year Plan: Consolidation and Revitalization at Technical Areas 3, 8, 11, and 16, Vol. 1) (McGehee et al. 2003). The SHPO concurred with this eligibility assessment on June 22, 2003. (3) TA-22-0016, TA-22-0023, TA-22-0025, and TA-22-0035 were determined eligible for listing in the NRHP in the report, DX Division’s Facility Strategic Plan: Consolidation and Revitalization at Technical Areas 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 22, 36, 39, 40, 60, and 69, Vol. 1 (McGehee et al. 2005a). The SHPO concurred with these eligibility determinations on April 18, 2006. (4) TA-37-0006, TA-37-0009, and TA-37-0020 were determined eligible for listing in the NRHP in the report, High Explosives and the Nuclear Stockpile: An Assessment of Historic Buildings at Magazine Area C (TA-37), Vol. 1 (McGehee et al. 2008b). The SHPO concurred with these eligibility determinations on April 17, 2008. In a letter dated January 24, 2020, NA-LA acknowledged that the D&D of these nine NRHP-eligible facilities was an adverse effect that requires resolution through mitigation. NA-LA proposed the use of standard mitigation practices as defined in the Programmatic Agreement (PA) among the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Los Alamos Field Office, the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Concerning Management of the Historic Properties at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico. The PA states that adverse effects to NRHP-eligible buildings and structures will be resolved according to the standard practices defined in Part II, Section 10, of the Laboratory’s Cultural Resources Management Plan, A Plan for the Management of the Cultural Heritage at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico (Purtzer et al. 2019), and Section 2.B of Appendix D of the PA itself. The standard practice documentation package includes the following components: (1) Interior and exterior photography and production of archival-quality digital photographs; (2) Documentation and curation of historically significant equipment and artifacts; (3) A list of all known drawings for the property; (4) Reduced-scale reproductions of selected drawings for the property; (5) A location map that shows the location of the property relative to the entire Laboratory property; (6) Reproduction of historical TA maps; (7) A TA map that depicts the footprint of each eligible and non-eligible facility; and (8) An expanded historic context that uses oral-history interviews, if available. On March 3, 2020, the SHPO concurred with the adverse effect determination and the mitigation plan. The documentation package, as previously described, is provided in Volumes 1 and 2 of this report.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Extraction, Separation, and Production of High Purity Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals from Coal-Based and Related Resources

The general objectives of this project are to develop concepts for rare earth metal and critical mineral production from coal-based and related (minerals associated with coal) resources and incorporate them into a Technical Research Plan with an associated overall flow sheet. The project team has extensive expertise in market evaluation, mineral separation, leaching, chemical separations, alternative metallothermic reaction technology, electrowinning, and electrorefining that was critical to the success of the proposed project. The project included critical industrial partners needed for project success. The project team has extensive expertise in market evaluation, mineral separation, leaching, chemical separations, alternative reduction technology, electrowinning, and electrorefining as well as appropriate pilot-scale facilities to enable this project. The project encompassed broader opportunities for developing domestic resources of REE/CM materials for a more resilient, diverse, and secure supply chain for REE/CM materials with built-in redundancies and appropriate resource stockpiles. The production of REE/CM materials will help to revitalize and rebuild world-class American manufacturing capacity and the related workforce through new jobs and infrastructure. Furthermore, due to the nature and location of the production sites, economic growth in diverse communities of color and economically distressed areas will be cultivated. Finally, this technology can be applied to reuse and remediate coal waste tailings for REE/CM production.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Demonstration of the Blending of the H-Canyon 2nd U Cycle with Natural U to Produce a HALEU Solution

Continued growth in the demand for high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) is projected to support the conversion of US high performance research reactors from high to low enrichment and the development and deployment of a new generation of advanced reactors. Current options to meet the growing US need for HALEU include (1) blend-down of excess of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the nuclear weapons programs, (2) blend-down of HEU metal from other stockpiles, or (3) recycle of irradiated HEU recovered from spent nuclear fuel (SNF). The recycle of HEU from SNF has been performed at the Savannah River Site (SRS) H-Canyon facility for nearly two decades to produce 4.95 wt % U-235 for sale and subsequent use in fuel for Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reactors. The HALEU produced in H-Canyon will not exceed the U-236 concentration limit in the ASTM C1462 standard for U metal enriched to more than 15% and less than 20% U-235, which applies to advanced reactors.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Multi-shock design tools in double shell models

The essence of the project was to implement a program in python that demonstrated certain models put forth by fusion physicists. Across the time spent at Los Alamos National Laboratory, much was spent programming. Though fundamentally programmatical in nature, the task contained considerable difficulty hid within mathematically deriving and manipulating the models while maintaining data discretization. The result of solving these complications gave invaluable experience in applied mathematics. The final product, a piece of lengthy code, ended up having the full range of desired capabilities, with plans for more. Given the laser power history from a pulse shot on NIF, Omega, or any other Inertial Confinement Fusion facility, the code maps the terrain of radiation temperature inside the hohlraum throughout the period of the shot. Additionally, shock wave convergence prediction was implemented as additional capability. As the name of the project suggests, this tool acts as a compass of direction for researchers designing laser power profiles. Further development of this tool will undoubtedly assist in the research conducted on single and double-shell indirect ICF, consequently expanding the capabilities of operating stewardship over the national nuclear stockpile.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Fission with Exotic Nuclei (Full Technical Report)

Despite its importance for stockpile stewardship or nuclear forensics, data on fission is fragmentary: most experiments have only been performed on stable actinide nuclei and are often incomplete, and theoretical simulations often contain many parameters hard to constrain, which results in large uncertainties. Consequently, nuclear libraries have large gaps for important isotopes. The goal of this project was to prepare to take advantage of the unprecedented yields of radioactive isotopes at the upcoming DOE Facility for Rare Ion Beams and to leverage recent progress in the field of machine learning to develop a comprehensive program of fission studies that could address some of the most pressing problems in nuclear fission over the next several decades. Our project leveraged synergies between experimental nuclear physics, nuclear theory, and data science expertise at LLNL. On the experimental front, our main objective was to develop in-house expertise for inverse kinematics reactions with relativistic beams as well as to field and test new detectors to perform correlated measurements of fission properties. On the theoretical side, the objective was to develop a novel, high-fidelity and scalable approach of fissionfragment calculations based on emulating computationally expensive, quantum-mechanical calculations of nuclear properties with deep neural networks.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

LANL Test Engineering’s Structural Dynamics Research and Development Efforts [Slides]

LANL's priority roles are serving as a nuclear weapons design agency and a nuclear weapons production agency; addressing nuclear threats; and performing national security science, technology, and engineering. LANL’s Test Engineering organization serves the national mission of maintaining a strategic nuclear deterrent by providing high-quality, empirical evidence through the execution and assessment of weapons system and component testing. Shock and vibration environmental testing provides one key piece of evidence for evaluation and qualification of these systems and components in the service environments incurred during a lifetime in the stockpile. LANL’s Test Engineering group continuously pursues research and development in structural dynamics to improve shock and vibration testing capabilities, processes, and analysis techniques to increase the fidelity of service environment recreations in laboratory testing settings. This talk will highlight several ongoing projects to represent these R&D efforts.

42 ENGINEERING↗

FY23 Year End Report of Delivery Environments Predictive Capabilities Use in Analysis of SRP Programs

As was established in a previous milestone report for FY20, W-13 continues to be tasked with analyses that require knowledge of in-flight environments and require an in-house capability to generate such environments. To this end, FY21 work included obtaining and benchmarking the use of such tools for an in-house capability. With these tools available for analysis tasks, ongoing work has been to continue the development of analysis capabilities and understanding while specifically using the tools for Responsive Development Experiment (ReDX) flights in the Stockpile Responsiveness Program (SRP). In FY23, design and analysis of ReDX flight 3A continued while targeting an FY24 launch date. This report shows that a variety of vehicle characterization and flight analysis tools were used in W-13, under the Delivery Environments Program. This work was performed in order to aid in vehicle design by predicting flight stability, trajectory, and induced environments while adapting to a series of changing internal payload configurations that resulted in significant changes to mass properties and associated flight stability.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

2022 Annual Site Environmental Report for Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Sandia Field Office administers the contract and oversees contractor operations at Sandia National Laboratories, California. Activities at this multiprogram engineering and science laboratory support the nuclear weapons stockpile program, energy and environmental research, homeland security, micro- and nanotechnologies, and basic science and engineering research. The U.S. Department of Energy and its management and operating contractor are committed to safeguarding the environment, assessing sustainability practices, and ensuring the validity and accuracy of the monitoring data presented in this annual site environmental report. This report provides a summary of environmental monitoring information and compliance activities that occurred at Sandia National Laboratories, California during calendar year 2022 unless noted otherwise. General site and environmental program information is also included. This report was prepared in accordance with DOE O 231.1B, Environment, Safety and Health Reporting.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

A glimpse of stars the size of dust particles

The Nuclear Imaging System (NIS) is an important diagnostic tool used to study nuclear fusion implosions at a research facility in California. There a capsule the size of a flea is compressed until it reaches the size of a speck of dust. As the capsule collapses on itself and ignites under extreme temperature and pressure, NIS detects particles emitted from that process at a scale that would correspond to watching a 32-inch TV screen from 100 miles away. My work involves taking snapshots of one of the most minuscule, fleeting and amazing experiments on Earth in order to ensure the safety and reliability of the US nuclear stockpile and get closer to developing a new form of clean energy.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗