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U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm virtually visited Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) on Monday, June 14, 2021, to learn more about programs at LANL that support Department of Energy (DOE) missions – from stockpile stewardship to the geology on Mars.
Slides for a presentation discussing the history and mission of Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well as the career highlights of some of its current employees.
This presentation covers recent light-element standards-related work at Los Alamos. Points include sections on the updated R-Matrix Analyses/Evaluations. Includes charts on cross sections and system analysis and elastic scattering.
This report describes the emissions of airborne radionuclides from operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for calendar year 2023 and the resulting off-site dose from these emissions. This document fulfills the requirements established by the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants in 40 CFR 61, Subpart H – Emissions of Radionuclides other than Radon from Department of Energy Facilities, commonly referred to as the Radionuclide NESHAP or Rad-NESHAP. Compliance with this regulation and preparation of this document is the responsibility of LANL’s Rad NESHAP compliance program, which is part of the Environmental Protection and Compliance (EPC) Division. The information in this report is required under the Clean Air Act and is being submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Headquarters and EPA Region 6. The highest effective dose equivalent (EDE) to an off-site member of the public was calculated using procedures specified by the EPA and described in this report. LANL’s EDE was 0.43 for 2023. The annual limit is 10 millirem per year, established by the EPA in 40 CFR 61 Subpart H. All measured air emissions are modeled to a single location, known as the Maximally Exposed Individual (MEI). During calendar year 2023, LANL continuously monitored radionuclide emissions at 28 “major” release points, or stacks. The Laboratory estimates emissions from an additional 59 “minor” release points using radionuclide usage source terms in lieu of stack monitoring. Also, LANL uses an EPA approved network of air samplers around the Laboratory perimeter to monitor ambient airborne levels of radionuclides. To provide data for dispersion modeling and dose assessment, LANL maintains and operates several meteorological monitoring towers. From these various systems, a comprehensive evaluation is conducted to calculate the MEI dose for the Laboratory. The MEI can be any member of the public at any off-site location where there is a residence, school, business, or office. In 2023, this MEI location was a business at 129 New Mexico State Road 4 (NM-4), located in the northern end of White Rock. The primary contributors to the off-site dose at this location are the ambient air data at that location combined with the collected potential emissions from unmonitored (minor) sources. Overall, the MEI dose in 2023 is similar to that which has been observed in recent years, and it remains well below the EPA’s 10 millirem per year limit. Doses reported to the EPA for the past 10 years are shown in Table E1.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) plans to demolish Building 23-620, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) J-3 Office Building (Nevada State Historic Preservation Office [SHPO] Resource No. B15283) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in Nye County, Nevada. The NNSA/NFO is implementing a long-term project to modernize the town of Mercury for future mission needs. The project is considered an undertaking subject to review under Title 54 of United States Code (USC) § 306108, commonly known as Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, Title 54 USC § 300101, et seq., and its implementing regulations, Title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR) Part 800. In 2018, Desert Research Institute (DRI) completed an architectural survey of the town of Mercury. This effort resulted in the identification, recordation, and evaluation of the Mercury Historic District (MHD, SHPO Resource No. D230), including the identification of its contributing elements (Reno et al. 2018). The MHD was recommended eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP, National Register) under the Secretary of the Interior’s (SOI) Significance Criteria A and C, as defined in 36 CFR Part 60.4, as a significant concentration of buildings and structures with a direct and important association with Cold War-era nuclear testing from 1951 through 1992. It has not been evaluated under Criteria B and D to date. As part of a larger modernization program for Mercury, the NNSA/NFO and the SHPO executed the 2018 Programmatic Agreement between the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer regarding Modernization and Operational Maintenance of the Nevada National Security Site, at Mercury in Nye County, Nevada (Mercury PA). The Mercury PA includes streamlined Section 106 procedures for undertakings in the MHD based on contributing element categories. Building 23-620 is identified in Appendix C of the Mercury PA as a Category I contributing element, indicating that it might be individually eligible for the NRHP. It is a historic property for the purposes of Section 106 compliance and subject to the stipulations of the Mercury PA. Per Stipulation VI of the Mercury PA, when the Area of Potential Effect (APE) for an undertaking includes Category I elements, the NNSA/NFO must evaluate the Category I elements for individual NRHP eligibility under all of the SOI Significance Criteria prior to initiating any activity that may affect the elements. The purpose of this report is to evaluate Building 23-620 as a potential individually eligible historic property in fulfillment of Stipulation VI of the Mercury PA. The evaluation detailed herein concludes that Building 23-620 is not individually eligible for listing in the NRHP. Although it retains aspects of integrity and continues to contribute to the MHD, it is not individually significant under any of the SOI Significance Criteria.
This Unreviewed Disposal Question Evaluation (UDQE) assesses whether the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Regulated Asbestos-Contaminated Low-Level Waste (LANL000000029, Revision 5 [LANL 2017]) is suitable for shallow land burial (SLB) at the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site (RWMS) on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). Disposal of the LANL Regulated Asbestos-Contaminated Low-Level Waste meets all U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Manual DOE M 435.1-1, Radioactive Waste Management Manual, Chapter IV, Section P performance objectives (DOE 1999). The LANL Regulated Asbestos Contaminated Low-Level Waste is recommended for acceptance without conditions.
This presentation covers the political and scientific events leading up to the creation of the Manhattan Project. The creation of the Manhattan Project’s three most significant sites--Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford--is also discussed. The lecture concludes by exploring the use of the atomic bombs at the end of World War II. The presentation slides include three videos. The first is a short clip of the 100-ton Test. The 100-Ton Test was history’s largest measured blast at that point in time; it was a pre-test for Trinity, the world’s first nuclear detonation. The second clip features views of Trinity followed a short statement by the Laboratory’s first director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The final clip shows Norris Bradbury talking about arms control.
Here, our goal is to test the newly developed OPLIB opacity tables from Los Alamos National Laboratory and check their influence on the pulsation properties of B-type stars. We calculated models using MESA and Dziembowski codes for stellar evolution and linear, nonadiabatic pulsations, respectively. We derived the instability domains of β Cephei and SPB-types for different opacity tables OPLIB, OP, and OPAL. As a result, the new OPLIB opacities have the highest Rosseland mean opacity coefficient near the so-called Z-bump. Therefore, the OPLIB instability domains are wider than in the case of OP and OPAL data.
The gapstick is a high explosive (HE) sensitivity test recently developed at Los Alamos. The experiment design was motivated by the traditional gap test and consists of a series of HE and inert pellets in a rate stick configuration. The inert pellets are made increasingly longer so that eventually the attenuated shock is unable to initiate the next HE pellet. While the gapstick is a mechanically simple experiment it poses several challenges for numerical simulation. In particular, accurately modeling the HE initiation and detonation phenomena requires a reactive burn model with sufficient mesh resolution to capture the reaction scales. In this work, the Scaled Uniform Reactive Front (SURF) and Arrhenius Wescott-Stewart-Davis (AWSD) burn models are used for simulations of a PBX 9501 (95 wt% HMX, 5% binder) gapstick. Furthermore, the material model for the inert pellet material, Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF), has a direct influence on the shock propagation and a new equation of state (EOS) calibration for PVDF is developed using available Hugoniot data. Despite some challenges, the simulations are able to reasonably predict shock transit velocities and detonation failure in the gapstick.
The Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan for the Metals Fabrication Shop at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
This is the PDF of a powerpoint presentation from a teleconference on Los Alamos programming models. It starts by listing their assumptions for the programming models and then details a hierarchical programming model at the System Level and Node Level. Then it details how to map this to their internal nomenclature. Finally, a list is given of what they are currently doing in this regard.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Laboratory) generates radioactive waste as a result of various activities. Operational or institutional waste is generated from a wide variety of research and development activities including nuclear weapons development, energy production, and medical research. Environmental restoration (ER), and decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) waste is generated as contaminated sites and facilities at LANL undergo cleanup or remediation. The majority of this waste is low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and is disposed of at the Technical Area 54 (TA -54), Area G disposal facility.
A presentation by Lab Historian Alan Carr discussing the role of Los Alamos in the later cold war.
The construction industry can be fraught with cost, schedule, and scope overruns. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a Department of Energy (DOE) / National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facility located in Northern New Mexico, seems to be particularly vulnerable to cost and schedule overruns. Since Triad National Security, LLC acquired the management and operating (M&O) contract for LANL in 2018, the group has been striving to reduce the cost of construction across the forty square-mile campus.
The pyrochemical metal production operations that occur in the Plutonium Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory perform plutonium purification with the aim to provide plutonium metal for a variety of defense- and non-defense missions within the National Nuclear Security Administration. The demands and constraints associated with the pyrochemical processing of plutonium are complex, making decision analyses challenging for program managers who require plutonium production for their mission applications. The construction of a discrete-event simulation process model is proposed to measure and report the process capacity, material throughput, equipment requirements, and dose accumulation for operators of the pyrochemical metal production operations. The process model, constructed in the ExtendSim™ software, will represent the cause-and-effect relationships between the pyrochemical processing environment and the process constraints, including criticality limitations, material control and accountability measures, chemical analysis requirements, and equipment availability. An accurate representation of the pyrochemical metal production process capacity through simulation modeling will be helpful to program managers in their efforts to forecast plutonium availability for mission applications. Furthermore, the proposed process model will be vital for future analyses that will measure the interactions between the pyrochemical metal production operations and the aqueous reprocessing operations and their ability to minimize transuranic waste disposal.
In 2022, nonviable avian eggs and one nestling were opportunistically collected at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) near open detonation sites located at Technical Area (TA) 16 burn grounds, TA-36 Minie, and TA-39 Point 6. Samples were evaluated for inorganic elements (mostly metals) or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Three western bluebird (Sialia mexicana) egg samples were collected from TA-16 burn grounds. One deceased mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides) nestling sample was collected from TA-36 Minie. One ash-throated flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens) egg sample was collected from TA-39 Point 6. Concentrations of inorganic elements (i.e., mostly metals) observed in this study were compared with the regional statistical reference level (RSRL), which is the upper-level bounds of background concentrations (mean + three standard deviations = 99% confidence interval). Several inorganic elements were not detected in avian eggs. All of the inorganic elements that were detected were below the RSRL and the lowest observable adverse effect level (LOAEL), when available. No PFAS compounds were detected in the mountain bluebird nestling sample collected from TA-36, and the majority of PFAS compounds were not detected in the western bluebird egg sample from TA-16. These data suggest that inorganic element and PFAS concentrations in eggs and nestlings are not of ecological concern. More data are needed to make a robust assessment and to evaluate trends over time.
Waste disposals at Material Disposal Area G (MDA G) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) occur primarily in a series of long, rectangular pits into which layers of waste have been emplaced beginning in the late 1950's. MDA G is situated in north-central New Mexico on top of Mesita del Buey, a narrow 3 km long mesa in the Parajito Plateau. The mesa is composed primarily of volcanic tuff from two principle volcanic eruptions in the Jemez Mountains which deposited the Otowi and Tshirege Members of the Bandelier Tuff. The Cerros del Rio Basalt underlay the tuff units and extends down for approximately 200 meters. The water table lies within the basalts at around 300 m below the surface of the mesa. The local climate is temperate and semiarid, averaging around 34 cm of precipitation per year. Ambient subsurface moisture conditions are dry, with water content typically below 10%. During disposal operations, open pits are subject to enhanced infiltration compared to the final covered configuration due to the unvegetated disturbed surface and precipitation events. Additionally, water added to the pits during disposal operations for tasks like waste compaction and dust suppression introduces additional moisture to the system during disposal operations that could potentially provide a pathway for contaminants in the waste zone to migrate through the unsaturated zone. Modeling was conducted using the HYDRUS-2D/3D software to evaluate the spatial extent of saturation changes and fluxes across geologic layer interfaces in the unsaturated zone throughout the life cycle of a waste pit. A general 2-dimensional framework was developed that included a cross section of a waste pit and the underlying geologic units. Several geological layerings were developed to represent the variation across the mesa at Area G. The model was run stochastically for hundreds of realizations to understand how variations in hydraulic parameters (e.g., porosity, saturated hydraulic conductivity, Van Genuchten parameters, etc.) and operational parameters (e.g., pit open period duration, pit depth, initial saturation of the waste zone, etc.) affect the extent of saturation changes and fluxes in the deep unsaturated zone. Distributions for these parameters were developed based on available site data. Results of the unsaturated zone modeling indicate that a significant amount of water can reach the lower unsaturated zone under some circumstances, particularly when the amount of water introduced during pit operations is high. A statistical study of modeling results was performed to develop a regression that describes the variations of water flux in time at the geological layer interfaces. These statistical model results will be used to evaluate solute transport in a future effort. (authors)
Snow/ground interface temperature measurements were collected at two sites in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Data were collected from November 29, 2023 to April 8, 2024 using iButton Link DS1921G-F5# Thermochron miniature temperature sensors (https://www.ibuttonlink.com/products/ds1921g). These sensors are a cost-efficient way to collect snowpack temperatures at a higher spatial resolution than what is normally achieved. iButton data were collected every 3 hours from a total of 19 iButtons. iButtons were placed in pairs, with one iButton placed at the ground surface and another buried 1 - 5 cm below the ground surface. One buried iButton did not successfully collect data, and therefore was excluded from this dataset. Data were collected throughout the snow cover season so that snowpack characteristics could be derived using the temperature data. Specifically, this dataset was used as a validation source for a novel machine learning approach to estimating snow depth (see related publication). Sensors were placed in areas with bare ground or minimal grass coverage, located away from any large vegetation. At Site A (TA51), manual snow depths were collected as validation data. These measurements were taken next to iButtons periodically throughout the winter, and notes on other precipitation types were also recorded. At Site B (TA6 Meteorological Station), a nearby sensor collected snow depths throughout the winter. This dataset contains one *.csv file of snow/ground interface temperatures at two sites, one *.csv file of manually collected snow depths, and one *.kml file of sensor locations. The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments: Arctic (NGEE Arctic) was a 15-year research effort (2012-2027) to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research.The NGEE Arctic project had two field research sites: 1) located within the Arctic polygonal tundra coastal region on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and the North Slope near Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and 2) multiple areas on the discontinuous permafrost region of the Seward Peninsula north of Nome, Alaska.Through observations, experiments, and synthesis with existing datasets, NGEE Arctic provided an enhanced knowledge base for multi-scale modeling and contributed to improved process representation at global pan-Arctic scales within the Department of Energy’s Earth system Model (the Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM), and specifically within the E3SM Land Model component (ELM).