Historic Events: TA-55 Conducts Tours for the News Media

Who would have believed even five years ago that Los Alamos National Laboratory would open its "inner sanctum," the rooms of Building PF-4, to journalists-with cameras! But now New Mexico and national news media representatives have seen a glimpse of the facility and the role it plays in its primary national security mission and in support of national and international goals: space exploration, nuclear energy, prevention of the proliferation of nuclear materials, and handling and disposal of the radioactive materials that are the legacy of fifty years of nuclear weapons activities.

Joe Martz and Stephanie Hale of NMT-5, Dennis Brandt of NMT-4, Steve Schrieber of NMT-2, and Jim Danneskiold of PA-1 served as hosts for the historic New Mexico media tour on November 16 and the national media tour on December 12. The latter tour included representatives from NBC television with 37 million viewers, Time magazine with 15 million readers, and the Los Angeles Times with 3.5 million readers.

The hosts, aided by several escorts from the plutonium facility, helped the journalists go through the elaborate security procedures to enter PF-4 and the radiological monitoring procedures to exit the facility. While inside, the journalists heard presentations on plutonium machining, cost-effective and efficient ways to remove plutonium from scrap or residue, and how to extract actinides from waste to minimize the processing and storage of such wastes. More than a dozen experts did their best to explain in simple terms highly technical processes such as nondestructive assay, magnetic separation, and the hydriding-dehydriding process. Following the highly successful tour of December 12, Laboratory Sig Hecker and Division Director Bruce Matthews held an informal news conference in the auditorium to answer questions left over from the presentations and to help the journalists see the work of TA-55 in the context of nationally and internally important goals.

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