Friday, October 14, 2011


LANL deploys Appro Xtreme-X™ supercomputer

Technicians work to install the last sections of Mustang. LANL photo.

T
his deployment represents approximately $10 Million in production computing capability. The Xtreme-X™ Supercomputer will be used to address LANL's HPC needs for unclassified scientific computing.


Named "Mustang" by the LANL Institutional Computing Program it will provide high performance computing resources to a variety of activities at Los Alamos including ocean, wildfire, plasma physics, materials and nuclear energy. The Climate, Ocean, and Sea Ice Modeling (COSIM) project, a part of the climate modeling program in the DOE's Office of Science, is a partner with Institutional Computing in this acquisition. (
Full Story)

An additional story also appeared in
HPC Wire



Multibillion-dollar nuke lab advances

Phase three of the CMRR project - the Nuclear Facility – will be built next door to the Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Buliding, or RLUOB shown here. LANL photo.

P
roject a decade in making, decade from opening - Los Alamos National Laboratory is moving forward with plans to build a controversial $5.8 billion nuclear lab.


The National Nuclear Security Administration Thursday issued the formal orders needed to begin taking bids for final design and construction of the lab, called the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility. (
Full Story)


Sellers to become LANL deputy director

Elizabeth Sellers.

Elizabeth (Beth) Sellers has been named the new deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and is scheduled to start December 5. Current Deputy Director Ike Richardson will be taking an overseas project leadership position with Bechtel. (Full Story)

Also from the Monitor this week:


Sayre joins LANL for plant research

Richard Sayre. LANL photo.

R
ichard S
ayre, one of the nation's top specialists in algae and energy-producing plant research, has joined the Bioscience Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory to help boost cutting-edge research in this area.

Cited by Nature magazine as “one of five crop researchers who could change the world,” Sayre brings a crew of postdoctoral researchers and a range of funding to LANL. (
Full Story)

More from the Monitor:


LANL raises breast cancer awareness


"As a breast cancer survivor, I know how a diagnosis of breast cancer can impact not only the person receiving the diagnosis, but their family members, friends and coworkers," said Wynona Holton of LANL's System Integration Group. (Full Story)



ASM International names 26 new Fellows

Robert D. Field. LANL photo.

R
obert D. Field, Los Alamos, N.M.: Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. For applied research of superalloys, intermetallic compounds, and beryllium alloys, dislocation and deformation analysis, and characterization of deformation mechanisms. (
Full Story)



Nuclear weapons pits converted into plutonium oxide

N
NSA's technologies are designed to disassemble nuclear weapons pits and convert the plutonium metal into plutonium oxide suitable for feed for the MOX facility, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory is expected to convert at least two metric tons of plutonium by 2018.


The goal of the plutonium oxide shipments from Los Alamos is that they will be blended with depleted uranium and turned into MOX fuel for use in domestic nuclear reactors. (
Full Story)



ApocalypsEV-1: The Electric Car for the End of the World

The ApocalypseEV-1. Image from Michael and Kenny Ham.

Y
our neighborhood is in flames, the roads destroyed and there are least a dozen hungry zombies gnawing their way through your back door. You need a getaway car, and Michael and Kenny Ham might have just the machine for you.


"We came up with the concept for the ApocalypsEV-1 around the time Harold Camping was predicting the rapture," Michael Ham says. Ham is a physicist in computer vision research at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. (
Full Story)



Raman reveals danger inside plastic bottles

R
aman spectroscopy can give detailed information about chemicals behind a barrier, says Freek Ariese of VU University, in Amsterdam.


David Moore of Los Alamos National Laboratory thinks the use of Raman spectroscopy is an "interesting experiment" but questions its applicability in the real world. The method won't work, he says, if the explosives are hidden in metal or cardboard. (
Full Story)



LANL completes razing of building

Demolition activities ended in early summer. LANL photo.

"A
fter we removed all regulated, hazardous materials such as asbestos, our team was able to recycle about 95 percent of the building," Darrik Stafford, LANL's project director for the demolition, said in a news release. (
Full Story)


The birth of America’s best cheeseburger

J. Robert Oppenheimer and Army General Leslie Groves visit ground zero following the Trinity test. Chances are they probably stopped at the Owl Cafe in San Antonio NM for green chile cheesburgers on the way back to Los Alamos. LANL photo.

Let me tell you a story about the history of America. About drunken physicists, the atom bomb and the greatest cheeseburger in the world.


At 5:30 a.m., July the 16th, 1945, the United States detonated the world’s first implosion-design plutonium bomb. (
Full Story)


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