National Laboratories

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) said this week that its High Performance Computing facilities team has performed a redesign for its Trinity supercomputer that saved the Department of Energy facility approximately $2.6 million in material and labor costs. In 2014 supercomputer company Cray Inc. received a $174 million, multiyear, multiphase contract to provide the […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has taken effective corrective actions following a radiological material exposure incident at one of its facilities in 2012, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Inspector General found in an Aug. 2 report. The report highlighted an August 2012 radiological incident at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center in […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has implemented new criticality safety controls at its Plutonium Facility (PF-4) after completing a causal analysis on a nuclear material movement error last month, according to lab spokesman Kevin Roark. A Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) site representative report for the week ending July 8 found that workers […]

A new research capability funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is being dedicated this week by the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Washington State University, NNSA announced Thursday. This new Dynamic Compression Sector (DCS) is intended to support NNSA’s stockpile stewardship mission in addition to the Department of Defense’s national security […]

A new thermal neutron source at the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) in South Carolina began operations at the end of June in support of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s tritium mission, the lab announced last week. The neutron source, which cost $3.1 million to design and install, was built by Adelphi Technologies and is […]

National Security Technologies (NSTec) is seeking information on the design and suppliers of unmanned aerial systems (UAS). NSTec, the management and operations contractor at the Nevada National Security Site, is particularly interested in heavy-lift fixed-winged vertical operating drone platforms, according to a request for information posted Monday. The contractor is seeking drone designs that meet technical […]

National Security Technologies (NSTec) is seeking information on the design and suppliers of unmanned aerial systems (UAS). NSTec, the management and operations contractor at the Nevada National Security Site, is particularly interested in heavy-lift fixed-winged vertical operating drone platforms, according to a request for information posted Monday. The contractor is seeking drone designs that meet technical […]

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a process to capture carbon dioxide and transform it into carbon monoxide using sunlight. The resulting carbon monoxide can be converted into fuels much easier that carbon dioxide, which is not particularly chemically reactive, according to an […]

Incumbent Lockheed Martin said Monday it has teamed with the Purdue, New Mexico State (NMSU), and New Mexico Tech (NMT) universities to bid on the Sandia National Laboratories management and operations contract. The announcement clarifies the cooperative arrangement that was still unclear when Lockheed announced early last month its intent to bid to retain the contract. […]

The Nevada National Security Site’s 2016 full-scale exercise, intended to test the facility’s emergency response capabilities, highlighted a deficiency in providing sufficient information to off-site emergency management organizations, hindering their ability to respond to site emergencies with consequences beyond its boundaries, the Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) found in a new report. This issue […]

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and three universities have been named new Energy Frontier Research Centers for radiochemistry research to support the Department of Energy’s cleanup program. The DOE Office of Science plans to award $40 million over four years to the national lab in Washington state and Florida State University, Ohio State University, and […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex must ramp up maintenance at its existing uranium operations facilities to meet mission needs until new plants, including the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), are available, the Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office (IG) found in a report released Tuesday. Y-12’s enriched uranium processing operations are housed in the aging 9212 […]

Responses to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) request for proposals for the Sandia National Laboratories management and operations contract were due Wednesday. The agency did not offer information about the proposals – particularly the names of the bidding companies and the number of bids received – but said it expects to make a selection by the […]

Responses to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) request for proposals for the Sandia National Laboratories management and operations contract were due Wednesday. The agency did not offer information about the proposals – particularly the names of the bidding companies and the number of bids received – but said it expects to make a selection by the […]

The Energy Department and its contractors are discussing amongst themselves different approaches to a series of safety procedures for treating the problematic stream of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that caused the 2014 radiation leak at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. According to a June 10 site weekly […]

National Security Technologies (NSTec) this month is celebrating 10 years of service as the management and operating contractor for the Nevada National Security Site, with additional operations across the country including in Los Alamos and Albuquerque, N.M.; Santa Barbara and Livermore, Calif.; and Washington, D.C. NSTec, which employs 2,100 of the 2,900 total NNSS employees, supports […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has issued consent orders to Los Alamos National Security (LANS) and National Security Technologies (NSTec) for the loss of contamination control of highly enriched uranium at the Nevada National Security Site’s National Criticality Experiments Research Center at the Device Assembly Facility (DAF) in June and October of 2014, according to two […]

The Sandia National Laboratories is seeking a commercial partner for the development of a market-ready physical security analysis software package, according to a special notice posted last week. The collaboration, which would be based on Sandia’s security analysis methodologies, would yield commercial software with applications that involve nuclear power plant security, material control and accounting, […]

The Department of Energy has awarded a grant of up to $3 million to start a five-year radiochemistry training program for graduate students at Washington State University. The campus in Pullman is about 125 miles east of the Hanford Site. The grant comes from DOE offices of Environmental Management and Nuclear Energy funds, with both […]

The Sandia National Laboratories is seeking a commercial partner for the development of a market-ready physical security analysis software package, according to a special notice posted last week. The collaboration, which would be based on Sandia’s security analysis methodologies, would yield commercial software with applications that involve nuclear power plant security, material control and accounting, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has issued consent orders to Los Alamos National Security (LANS) and National Security Technologies (NSTec) for the loss of contamination control of highly enriched uranium at the Nevada National Security Site’s National Criticality Experiments Research Center at the Device Assembly Facility (DAF) in June and October of 2014, according to two […]

A subcontractor at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) broke a finger June 15 while performing routine maintenance on a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system at the lab’s Energy Innovation Laboratory, an Energy Department spokesperson at the Idaho Falls facility said Monday. It was the second work accident involving a worker’s hand at Idaho in June — […]

New Mexico and the Energy Department have formally agreed on the campaign-style approach the federal agency must follow for an estimated 19-year legacy waste-cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), making official a document the state believes — despite deep grass-roots skepticism from some quarters — will persuade Congress to open the funding taps. The 2016 consent order finalized […]

Despite some obstacles, such as the slow pace of approval of new security clearances, Consolidated Nuclear Security is more than halfway to its goal of hiring 1,150 employees in fiscal 2016. CNS is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s managing contractor at two key nuclear weapons facilities: the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has awarded South Carolina State University (SCSU), a historically black institution in the city of Orangeburg, a two-year contract to evaluate the agency’s University Consortia on Nuclear Security. The contract, awarded by NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (NA-22), is worth $173,940, according to an award […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has dedicated a new supercomputing facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. The $9.8 million facility houses supercomputing systems that support the agency’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program, a key component of the Stockpile Stewardship Program that certifies the reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. […]

The advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico slammed the state’s new rules for cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory Wednesday in a long-telegraphed dressing down of the revised consent order between DOE and Sante Fe. “The new Consent Order is a giveaway to the Department of Energy […]

Todd Wright has been promoted to general manager and executive vice president of AECOM’s Nuclear and Environment Strategic Business Unit effective immediately, the Los Angeles-based construction and engineering giant announced Wednesday. Wright, previously director of the Energy Department’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina and managing director of the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom,will oversee […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has awarded South Carolina State University (SCSU), a historically black institution in the city of Orangeburg, a two-year contract to evaluate the agency’s University Consortia on Nuclear Security. The contract, awarded by NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (NA-22), is worth $173,940, according to an award […]

A subcontractor at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) broke a finger June 15 while performing routine maintenance on a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system at the lab’s Energy Innovation Laboratory, an Energy Department spokesperson at the Idaho Falls facility said Monday. It was the second work accident involving a worker’s hand at Idaho in June — […]