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Nuclear Data Covariances and Sampling

In this report, we present an overview of the task of producing sample nuclear data sets for the purpose of exploring the effects of nuclear data uncertainties on physics simulations. These sample data sets (or, as we sometimes call them variations) are produced based on uncertainties specified in the ENDF/B-VIII nuclear data library, although the principles discussed here apply to sampling based on similar libraries, such as JENDL. The uncertainties in ENDF and similar libraries are given in the form of mean values (a mean vector) and a covariance matrix. The components of the mean vector are what are normally thought of as the values of the nuclear data (cross sections, $\bar{v}$, the prompt fission neutron spectrum, etc.) and the covariance matrix contains the information about the uncertainties in these values and correlations between them, including correlations across different energies in a single channel and correlations across different channels.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Area’s earliest inhabitants become valuable part of Lab workforce

By the time the then-secret laboratory was established in Los Alamos in 1943, the nearby pueblos we know today were well-established communities. To complete its wartime mission to build the world’s first nuclear weapons, the Laboratory needed many workers for all aspects of the project. As such, many Native Americans were hired to work at the Lab in various roles, such as technicians, researchers, machinists, and support staff. By the end of the Manhattan Project in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, many friendships had been forged between employees from the pueblos and other workers at Los Alamos. This was evidenced by gatherings, such as a post-war celebration at the San Ildefonso Pueblo, as well as individual relationships between Lab staff and pueblo residents. Meanwhile, pueblo residents remained on as valuable members of the post-war Lab staff with additional workers hired as well. In honor of November’s Native American Heritage Month, staff at the National Security Research Center are taking a look back to LANL’s early workforce and the contributions -- both to our mission and our cultural enrichment -- made by Native Americans.

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Final Reports of the 2020 Los Alamos National Laboratory Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop

For the past ten years, the workshop has been bringing a highly talented and diverse group of student every summer. Students work in teams of two, alongside typically two mentors, on research projects reflecting a broad range of topics within computational physics. In addition, students attend a series of lectures on topics within computational physics, facility tours, and networking events. The program lasts ten weeks, with this year’s workshop running from June 8 to August 14. At the end of the summer, students give a final presentation, along with a written report. Those reports are what make up the remaining sections of this document. Admission to the workshop is by a competitive process, with the mentors forming the selection committee. One of the important accomplishments of the workshop has been to create a student pipeline from diverse schools that sometimes are not normally tapped by LANL recruiting. Many workshop students maintain a continuing relationship with LANL, returning as students interns, post-doctoral researchers, and staff members. Additionally, workshop alumni act as ambassadors for LANL. The result is a wider awareness both of LANL as a potential employer, and of the technical work that happens at LANL. This year, the workshop format was changed in several ways, in order to accommodate the off-site, virtual format. Students worked on LANL virtual desktop systems remotely, also accessing LANL HPC resources. In order to facilitate communication, student were given accounts on both Webex, a video teleconferencing platform, and Mattermost, an online team collaboration and chat platform, similar to Slack. Daily communication between students and mentors was primarily on Mattermost, with Webex conferencing as needed. The lectures were all done on Webex. Given the difficulty of the virtual format, and a concern that students might have video teleconferencing burn-out after an academic semester largely moved to that format, all lectures were optional this year. In spite of this, the attendance was generally high. Lecturers were asked to try to move to a more high-level, ”What is it?,” format. Once again, the students did a tremendous job. Over the course of ten weeks, they did important research across a staggering array of disciplines. The following pages contain the final report for each team’s research efforts. We hope you will find reading them as exciting as it was for us to produce them.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

LANSCE Module 1 Capacitor Room Failure [Slides]

At ~3:30 am on Sunday, high-voltage line in capacitor room overheated to the extent that the poly insulating material caught fire and dripped melted insulation onto equipment below. LAFD responded and, per pre-incident planning, waited for AOT personnel to respond to the area. AOT personnel, safed equipment and waited with LAFD for fire to “burn out”. Using an IWD, AOT personnel safely re-entered the area after conducting hazards analysis and engaging SMEs, re: controls for combustion products and COVID-19 hazards. Recovery action took several days with a focus on getting it right. Beam re-start decisions were made with impacted organizations and considering AOTRFE personnel.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

The British Mission at Los Alamos [Slides]

Fission was first produced in Nazi Germany in 1938. Einstein warned FDR in a letter dated August 2, 1939, but Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. In spring 1940, the Frisch-Peierls Memo was completed. The Battle of Britain began in July 1940. The attached detailed report concerns the possibility of constructing a ‘super-bomb’ which utilises the energy stored in atomic nuclei as a source of energy. The energy liberated in the explosion of such a super-bomb is about the same as that produced by the explosion of 1,000 tons of dynamite.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Ghost particles and Project Poltergeist: Long-ago Lab physicists studied science that haunted them

A neutrino is a tiny, almost massless particle that travels at near light speeds. They were first formed in the early universe and are continually being produced in the nuclear reactions of stars, like the sun, and nuclear reactions on earth. The existence of these “ghost particles” was incredibly difficult to detect, but doing so has helped scientists better understand fundamental principles in physics. Los Alamos Manhattan Project scientist Frederick Reines, along with his colleague Clyde Cowan, is credited with the experimental discovery of the nearly massless elementary particle after his team definitively proved the neutrino’s existence in 1956. Reines received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

MST e-News (Fall 2020)

As we just closed the fiscal year, I have been reflecting on the state of the division, and in particular, the health of our budget, staffing plans, and infrastructure. As many of you know, the division has grown in both budget and workforce. Since 2018, the division has grown from 150 to 174 permanent staff (but note, with students, post docs, and contractors—we are a division of 218). As one might imagine, our budget has grown significantly too. In 2018, at year end, we had a budget of $85 million. While I am still collecting some final numbers, all projections indicate that we closed out FY20 at $115 million. This growth has occurred primarily in our applied energy programs as well as Pu Sustainment. However, it is important to note that there have been important contributions to this growth across much of the portfolio, including in our OES, BES, and LDRD programs. With that said, to support this programmatic growth, as a division we have done a tremendous amount of hiring to grow while outpacing attrition. At the same time, we have been establishing numerous new capabilities at TAs -3, -35, and -55. While this is exciting, it means we have some things to carefully consider. We have had numerous capability investments (i.e., new microscopes at TAs -3 and -55, new mechanical testing capabilities at TAs -3 and -35, and new synthesis capabilities across the division). But we are starting to feel the real crunch of the limitations of our aging facilities. Still more, even with this substantial growth, we continue to hire. And I believe that we really need to spend time thinking about mentoring, career development, and retention of our most important investment—our staff.

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Preserving Manhattan Project historic sites

Beginning in 1943, Project Y – the code name for Los Alamos during World War II – transformed the isolated Pajarito Plateau. The sounds of construction equipment replaced the voices of the Los Alamos Ranch School boys and local homesteaders. Construction crews hurriedly built many structures on mesa tops and in the canyons of Los Alamos. Countless concerns flooded Manhattan Project staff, but designing structures to withstand the test of time was not one of them. The top-secret race to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany was on and everyone felt the pressure. Over the next 75 years, some of the structures slumped into disrepair from exposure to the harsh northern New Mexico environment - concrete cracking and spalling, wood frames rotting. That’s where Los Alamos National Laboratory’s historic preservation team enters the Manhattan Project story.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Los Alamos National Laboratory Campus Master Plan Communication Strategy

The purpose of this Campus Master Plan (CMP) Communication Strategy is to establish an appropriate approach to communication that ensures the comprehensive site planning (henceforth campus master planning) process and associated products for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) site are effective and sustainable.

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Science Resource Office Peer Review and Metrics Factsheet [Slides]

The Science Resource Office-Peer Review and Metrics (SRO-PRM) Team hosts and maintains LANL's central repository for Science, Technology, and Engineering (STE) data. The Team tracks, integrates, analyzes, and reports qualitative and quantitative data measuring performance, quality, impact, and productivity. These metrics are indicators of the effectiveness and impact of STE efforts.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

2020 LLNL Nuclear Science and Security Summer Internship Program

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Nuclear Science and Security Summer Internship Program (NS 3 IP) is designed to give graduate students an opportunity to come to LLNL for 8–10 weeks of hands-on research. Students conduct research under the supervision of a staff scientist, attend a weekly lecture series, interact with other students, and present their work in poster format at the end of the program. Students also have the opportunity to meet staff scientists one-on-one, participate in LLNL facility tours (e.g., the National Ignition Facility and Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry), and gain a better understanding of the various science programs at LLNL. Due to the travel and access restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 NS 3 IP was organized as an “all-virtual” internship program. With LLNL’s extensive institutional support, students accessed the laboratory’s cyberinfrastructure through a secure virtual desktop environment and all seminars, mentor interactions, summer presentations, and laboratory tours were performed remotely. While this virtual internship format did not allow for hands-on laboratory research projects, both the interns and their mentors constructed creative research projects that maximized student exposure to nuclear science research that is relevant to DTRA and LLNL interests in nuclear security.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Finding of Adverse Effect and Mitigation Documentation for the Stormwater Drainage and Street Systems, Substation Foundations, and the Bus Parking Lot in Mercury, Area 23, Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada

The U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) proposes to grade the block on the southeast corner of Mercury Highway and Ranger Avenue and demolish an adjacent street segment in the town of Mercury at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in Nye County, Nevada. The purpose of this letter report is to submit documentation related to the finding of effect for the undertaking and mitigation of four resources on and adjacent to the block that will be affected by planned activities to modernize parking and infrastructure in central Mercury. Two of these resources are portions of the street system and the stormwater drainage system, which are elements of the town’s infrastructure. The foundations of an old electrical substation and the bus parking lot will also be replaced by new parking or landscaping. This submission is intended to comply with the stipulations in the 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, hereafter referred to as the Mercury PA. The town of Mercury and the immediate surrounding area have been designated the Mercury Historic District (SHPO Resource #D230), which is a property eligible to the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A and C for its importance in supporting nuclear testing and scientific research from 1951 through 1992. During the initial architectural survey (Reno et al. 2018), all four resources were identified as contributing to the eligibility of the district.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Tribal Colleges and Universities/Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (Q4 FY2020 Progress Report)

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) initiated the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Plan (MSIPP) to 1) align investments in a university capacity and workforce development with the NNSA mission to develop the needed skills and talent for NNSA’s enduring technical workforce at the laboratories and production plants, and 2) to enhance research and education at under-represented colleges and universities. Out of this effort, MSIPP launched a new consortium in early FY17 focused on Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) known as the Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (AMNI). This consortium has been extended for FY20 and FY21. The following report summarizes the status update during this quarter.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

UC LANL Postdoc Entrepreneur Fellowship Cohort Four

Three Laboratory postdoctoral researchers have been selected for this year's cohort of Entrepreneur Fellows. The six-month fellowship program - a joint initiative of the University of California and Los Alamos, now in its fourth year - supports early career scientists explore applications and evaluate market opportunities for their technologies. The Lab selects Entrepreneur Fellows based on the potential for their projects to have both scientific and commercial impact. The fellows receive six months of facilitated training and mentoring, as well as funding to engage in customer discovery, market exploration and technology advancement

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

The Old Post

Motorcycle Safety Committee Newsletter encouraging safe riding habits and raising awareness for motorcyclists at LANL, LLNL and INL.

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