Moderate
LANSCE providing beam
to users
After a successful, scheduled outage for routine maintenance and facility improvements, the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center at Technical Area 53 is up and running.
On July 1, LANSCE began beam delivery at both the Weapons Neutron Research Facility and the Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron Scattering Center, meeting LANSCE Director Paul Lisowski's stated goal of making neutrons and protons available to users by that date. July 1 also marked the start of the Lujan Center's scheduled National User program.
"LANSCE employees should be extremely proud of the hard work that has been done over the last several months, getting the accelerator, beam lines and instrumentation ready for operation, and completing important upgrades and construction," Lisowski said. "We have met our goal of providing neutrons and protons to all LANSCE users by July 1 and will continue to work hard to ensure safe, reliable operation for all users -- both internal and external to the Laboratory."
LANSCE comprises a high-power 800-million-electron-volt proton linear accelerator, a proton storage ring, production targets at the Lujan Center (LANSCE-12) and the Weapons Neutron Research Facility, and a variety of associated experimental areas and spectrometers. LANSCE provides proton beams for dynamic experiments that support defense science research at the Weapons Neutron Research and the Proton Radiography facilities, and for production of ultra-cold neutrons for basic science experiments at the WNR.
For its two national user programs, LANSCE produces intense beams of pulsed neutrons at both the Lujan Center and the Weapons Neutron Research Facility, which provide the Laboratory and U.S. scientific community with the capability to perform experiments that support both defense and civilian research.
"We want everyone at the Laboratory and all of our colleagues across the nation and internationally to know that the Lujan Center is open for research," Alan Hurd, director of LANSCE-12 said. "We've successfully dealt with the infrastructure and facility issues that have been a problem in past years and we're working as hard as we can to get reliable neutrons out to all of our users."
This year's run cycle at the Lujan Center represents the first full cycle since 1997. Full run cycles, around six months in duration, have not been possible the last few years due to facility upgrades and safety concerns that kept the facility in stand-down mode. An abbreviated run cycle was conducted last year for a limited number of users. Re-establishing the Lujan Center as a reliable provider of neutrons for research was one of the key directives that emerged from a February 2001 report on LANSCE's Lujan Center by the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, known as BESAC.
During the 2001 run cycle at the Lujan Center, more than 100 experiments are scheduled to run on six user-program instruments. Experiments, which range from studies of new materials to biological protein studies, typically run from two to 10 days and often involve teams of researchers. In this year's cycle, 30 percent of Lujan Center users are from divisions across the Laboratory, and the remaining 70 percent are from external experimental teams.
The external teams represent approximately 35 U.S. academic institutions, five national laboratories, seven foreign academic institutions, two members of industry and two U.S. government agencies. International users come from Germany, Slovenia and Japan. The Lujan Center expects to host approximately 150 unique users over the five-and-a-half-month run cycle that ends in mid-December.
Holger Kohlmann, a postdoctoral researcher from the High Pressure Science and Engineering Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas was one of several external users who conducted experiments at the Lujan Center during its first week of operation this year. Kohlmann's experiment used the Lujan Center's High Intensity Powder Diffractometer to study the crystal structure and bonding of highly pressurized metal hydrides, materials that could be used to store hydrogen for possible use in fuel cells or other energy-conversion devices.
"We had a really successful run at Lujan," Kohlmann said. "We had extremely good support from the Lujan scientists who worked with us into the evenings and even on the July 4th holiday. The beam was up four-and-a-half of the five days we were there, which allowed us to meet all our goals."
--David Lyons
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Four of the six fastest supercomputers in the world are in use at laboratories operated for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), according to a recent rating by the University of Tennessee and the University of Mannheim, Germany. For more information, see the NNSA news release (Adobe Acrobate required). |
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Phil Thullen, deputy director of the Laboratory's Environment, Safety and Health (ESH) Division, is scheduled to be on KRSN at 7:40 Monday morning. He will talk with KRSN's Mark Bentley about driving and traffic safety and about road striping improvements that are taking place around the Laboratory. KRSN can be heard at 1490 AM. |
Newsday writer, book author to speak at Lab Monday on global health
Laurie Garrett, a science writer for Newsday and author of two books on global health, will talk at a Director's Colloquium at 1:10 p.m. Monday (July 23) in the Administration Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3. "Global Health at a Turning Point?" will explore the decline of public health resources around the world, which coincides with a multi-billion-dollar United Nations program this year intended to battle tuberculosis, malaria and HIV in poor countries.
The talk, which is unclassified and open to the public, will be broadcast live on LABNET Channel 9. For more information, see the Wednesday's Daily Newsbulletin.
Editor's Note: This news story was written for the Daily Newsbulletin by Monica Wenzel of the Environmental Science and Waste Technology (E) Division.
Lab lights the way in energy conservation
There's a revolution of sorts underway in the traffic signal light industry and the Laboratory is taking part.
Utilities and Infrastructure (FWO-UI), Systems Engineering and Maintenance (FWO-SEM) and Johnson Controls Northern New Mexico have combined forces to install new energy efficient Light Emitting Diode lights in place of conventional light bulbs inside traffic signals on Lab property.
Used as indicator lights on all sorts of electronic devices and moving-message panels, the LED's use only about 10 percent of the total energy of a conventional incandescent light bulb. When a current passes through an LED, less energy is spent making heat to generate light. Also, despite using 100 fewer watts than conventional light bulbs, LED's are much brighter.
The new traffic lights are made from many small LEDs that are clustered together to make a single light source. Richard Fox, an engineer from FWO-UI, and Danny Grijalva, traffic signal technician specialist from FWO-SEM, are working together to upgrade traffic signals on Laboratory property. The LED traffic signals are a major part of the upgrade project.
According to Fox and Grijalva, when the sun hits the traffic signals and creates a glare, the light from conventional light bulbs is difficult to see. However, the LEDs are much brighter so the glare isn't as much of a problem.
"The drawback to the LEDs is the expense," said Fox. "They cost $150 to $300 each, depending on the manufacturer, and green LEDs are $100 more than the red and yellow." "The up-front cost is much more, but we should start realizing the savings. The conventional incandescent light bulbs were being replaced every year which required major time and labor."
"Also, safety is a large part of the project," Grijalva explained. "When a conventional traffic light bulb burns out the respective traffic signal indicator no longer works. But when a single element in an LED cluster burns out the light is still bright and functional because the other LED's still work."
Large cities like Denver have switched to LED traffic signals. Smaller cities, such as Santa Fe, also are switching to LED traffic signal lights.
For more information, contact Fox at 7-9116 or write to fox@lanl.gov by electronic mail.
For more information on energy conservation visit the Environmental Stewardship Office (E-ESO) at http://emeso.lanl.gov online.
DOE Pulse highlights Energy Department Laboratories
The latest issue of DOE Pulse is available online. Pulse is an online newsletter about accomplishments at the Department of Energy's national laboratories. The highlights are short, written to be interesting and very understandable.
In addition to the highlights, each issue features two longer articles -- one about a researcher and one about a multilabcollaborative effort.
Some of the headlines in this issue are "Clean electric power from dirty coal," "Firm applies ANL sensor to sintering process" and "Scientists push enzyme evolution into high gear."
Also featured in this issue is an initiative between Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories for a National Wildfire Prediction Program. The national resource would combine and leverage components of a multi-year wildfire model effort at the Laboratory and the existing capabilities of the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center at LLNL to predict the behavior of wildfires and prescribed burns.
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Industrial psychologist and team management expert Sean Joyce evoked both laughter and contemplation from the audience at his presentation, "Managing Change in a Challenging Environment" on Wednesday in the Administration Building Auditorium. Personality differences can enhance an organization's ability to develop new ideas and better solutions to problems, Joyce said. The talk was sponsored by the Business, Operations (BUS) Division. Photo by LeRoy N. Sanchez, Public Affairs |
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On today's bulletin board |
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Commuter's Corner | Parking areas around TA-3 | Parking shuttle routes (pdf) or jpeg |
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