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Tuesday, Dec. 2, 1997
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The Laboratory will close at
11 a.m. today because of
bad weather and road conditions.
Los Alamos Public Schools will be dismissed at noon.
Two Lab employees to serve on DOE advisory committee
Two Laboratory employees are serving on a Department of Energy advisory committee that will make recommendations on the safe use and handling of beryllium.
Alex Romero of Internal Assessments (AA-2) and Rich Mah of Materials Technology: Metallurgy (MST-6) were appointed to the DOE Beryllium Advisory Committee by Energy Secretary Federico Peña.
The 35-member committee includes representatives from DOE, industry, academia, the national laboratories and private citizens, said Romero. Former DOE Assistant Secretary for environment, safety and health Tara O'Toole was chairperson of the advisory committee.
Romero said Peña has asked the committee to complete its work and make its recommendations to assist DOE in writing a department-wide beryllium safety rule and have it in place by November 1998. "We are not to write the rule, only to provide expertise in our profession," said Romero, who is an industrial hygienist by profession.
He added that the department can accept or reject the committee's recommendations.
Environment, safety and health experts at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., will draft the beryllium safety rules. The rules will address controlling hazards for the handling and use of beryllium; medical surveillance requirements for people who use it; training, including how to recognize hazards of using beryllium; and industrial hygiene and air sampling requirements, said Romero.
Beryllium is a metal that is used in nuclear weapons, aircraft parts and golf clubs, among other things. It acts primarily as a lightweight strengthening material; its sturdy composition makes it a useful material for such things as spacecraft and satellites, said Romero.
Beryllium is used at the Lab and at Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge national labs. It was used at Rocky Flats in Colorado and at some DOE defense facilities.
Romero said exposure to beryllium manifests itself in respiratory problems. People who work with beryllium and become sensitized to it may develop chronic beryllium disease if beryllium particles are small enough to be inhaled. About 1 to 5 percent of the population may be sensitized to beryllium, according to DOE. Currently, the acceptable level of beryllium is two micrograms per cubic meter; this standard was established more than 40 years ago.
But Romero said a lack of consistent and comprehensive data makes it difficult to determine if this level is adequate or should be changed. "The tricky thing with beryllium is there's been a case of a student who worked in a beryllium area for three weeks and became sensitized to beryllium," said Romero.
"Secretaries who worked near beryllium areas but didn't actually work with it have been sensitized to beryllium," he added.
The DOE last summer drafted an interim chronic beryllium disease prevention program to reduce the number of workers exposed to beryllium, to minimize the levels of beryllium exposure and potential exposure, and to establish medical surveillance protocols to ensure early detection of beryllium disease.
The interim program is part of DOE Order 440.1, "Worker Protection Management for DOE Federal and Contractor Employees."
A new $13 million beryllium facility is under construction at Technical Area 3. The state-of-the art facility will incorporate equipment and operations to support beryllium technology and manufacturing missions assigned to the Lab by DOE as part of its non-nuclear reconfiguration.
Facility operations will include a full range of powder preparation, plasma spray, evaporation, casting, pressing, machining, coating, welding, brazing and manufacturing processes.
A team of engineers and health specialists have spent three years designing the facility with the goal of eliminating beryllium aerosol exposure to workers and the environment.
The 16,000-square-foot building -- an existing building that has been decontaminated and is being remodeled into the new facility -- also will have state-of-the art heating and ventilation systems. The system's purpose is to keep beryllium away from workers through general room ventilation and exhaust. A high-pressure, high-velocity exhaust system will capture particulates and aerosols at the point of generation and remove them from the environment.
--Steve Sandoval
Laboratory recognizes World AIDS Day
The Lab recognized the 10th annual World AIDS Day Monday by distributing a flyer with information on acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
The flyer includes information about how AIDS particularly affects children.
The theme of World AIDS Day is "Give Children Hope in a World with AIDS," said Debbi Wersonick of the Diversity Office. The flyer notes that of the 1.5 million people who died of AIDS in 1996, 350,000 were children under age 15.
World AIDS Day is sponsored by the United Nations.
This year, some 400,000 children under age 15 became infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, the precursor to AIDS. By the end of the year more than 1 million children under age 15 are expected to be living with the virus.
Two 12-foot-by-12-foot quilts, each containing eight individual panels, were scheduled to be hung in the Otowi Building Monday, but the quilts were misplaced or removed from a vehicle in Santa Fe last week. The quilts are part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Names Project.
Call the Diversity Office at 7-8695 or Bob Guidice at 466-1503 in Santa Fe for information on the quilts.
More information on World AIDS Day can be found at http://www.cdc.gov:80/nchstp/hiv_aids/wad97/index.htm on the World Wide Web.
--Steve Sandoval
Community environmental meeting slated for Wednesday
The Laboratory is sponsoring a community environmental meeting Wednesday at San Ildefonso Pueblo to provide an update on the Lab's Environmental Restoration (EM/ER) Project activities.
The meeting is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Tewa Center at the nearby pueblo. San Ildefonso Pueblo is located off NM 502 just east of Los Alamos. The meeting is open to the public.
Members of the public can see displays on ER programs and projects beginning at 6 p.m. ER staff also will talk about control of surface water run-off from ER projects and about the canyons restoration projects, said Victoria George of the ER project office.
For more information, contact Carmen Rodriguez of the Community Involvement and Outreach (CIO) Office at 5-6770, or 800-508-4400.
Researchers propose alternative fusion reactor
Researchers from the University of California at Irvine and the University of Florida are proposing a colliding beam fusion reactor they describe as an alternative to the Tokamak design. Writing in Science magazine, the researchers say the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which uses the Tokamak design, is an important research facility, but would not lead to a viable reactor. More information is available in a UC news release.
Lab wins Corporate Challenge for fourth consecutive year
For the fourth consecutive year, the Laboratory won the United States Corporate Athletics Association's fall Corporate Challenge Cross Country and Racewalk Championship in Albuquerque.
The Lab easily outdistanced Sandia National Laboratories to win the Division 1 level Nov. 2 in Albuquerque. The association is a nonprofit organization devoted to friendly athletic competition and lifelong fitness.
The Lab scored 304 points to Sandia's 118 points. Honeywell Corp. and the Bureau of Indian Affairs won divisions II and III, respectively, of the Corporate Challenge.
The Lab team was again supported by morale funds from the Human Resources (HR) Division.
Last spring, the Lab won its fifth consecutive Corporate Challenge spring event, defeating Sandia National Laboratories and Intel Corp.
The fall Corporate Challenge consisted of a 3-mile cross country run and a 2-mile racewalk, said Roger Johnston of Advanced Chemical Diagnostics and Instrumentation (CST-1) and the Lab's corporate challenge coach.
The following Lab employees won their age group:
Fox had the fastest 3-mile time of any female runner, 19 minutes 58.4 seconds, while Wilkinson had the fastest 2-mile time of any female walker, 19:09.
The next Corporate Challenge events are next May in Albuquerque and include 5- and 10-kilometer runs, a 3-kilometer walk, track and field events and coed and mixed age relay races, said Johnston.
For more information or to get on the Corporate Challenge mailing list, contact Johnston at 7-7414, or write roger_johnston@lanl.gov.
--Steve Sandoval
Senior DOE policy adviser resigns
C. Kyle Simpson, who has served in a number of senior positions at the Department of Energy during the past five years, has resigned to join private industry. Simpson most recently was Secretary of Energy Federico Peña's senior adviser on energy issues. More information is available in a DOE news release.
Lab highlighted in news articles
Laboratory employees and their research, and Lab programs and projects are highlighted in several recent newspaper, journal and news magazine articles. Below are some of the topics and where the articles appeared.
-- The New York Times on Oct. 21 and the Oct. 22 Albuquerque Journal, Santa Fe New Mexican and Los Alamos Monitor all published news articles about how the Laboratory is working with A. D. Little and the Department of Energy on a new electric car. The Boston-based company's innovation makes electric current by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water. The system mixes oxygen with fumes from gasoline to break up complex hydrocarbon molecules into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The Lab built a device that accepts the carbon monoxide, which is a pollutant, and adds a second oxygen atom to turn the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide.
-- The Nov. 1 Albuquerque Journal and Oct. 28 Los Alamos Monitor both published stories on how scientists from the Lab and Sandia National Laboratories successfully unfurled the 35-foot antenna on the FORTE satellite, the most important milestone for FORTE, which stands for Fast On-orbit Recording of Transient Events. The FORTE satellite, launched Aug 29, is a lightweight satellite designed to test technology to monitor compliance with arms control treaties. FORTE's instruments will detect, record and analyze bursts of radio energy arising from near Earth's surface. It also will gather data on the physics of lightning and the ionosphere.
-- Aviation Week and Space Technology in its Oct. 20 issue reported on a new technique patented by Lab researchers that hides secret information in the electronic "noise" associated with the transmission of data and electronic images. Ted Handel of Weapons Design Technologies (NIS-9) is the project leader for the technology that can be used on a desktop personal computer and uses less memory than most word processing programs.
-- The Oct. 27 Albuquerque Journal and Albuquerque Tribune reported on Lab scientists working with other laboratories and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to build the first spaceship to collect pieces of the sun and return them to Earth. The Genesis mission is scheduled to launch in January 2001; Los Alamos scientists will build scientific instruments to be carried on board the craft. The California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are collaborating with the Lab on the two-year space mission.
-- Former Laboratory Director Sig Hecker's selection for "Distinguished Life Membership" by the ASM Materials Information Society was reported in the Oct. 23 Los Alamos Monitor.
-- Science Teacher in its Oct. 1 publication reported on a Lab-developed technology that can help physicians treat a range of disfiguring skin diseases. The radio frequency device delivers precisely controlled, localized heat to a small area of tissue to destroy malignant cells, while allowing healthy surrounding cells to regenerate. The technique is seen as an alternative to other, more expensive and sometimes toxic treatments for these types of skin diseases.
-- Scientific American in its Nov. 1 edition published a report on the Laboratory's proton radiography exeriment in which Lab researchers used protons from a linear accelerator to photograph the detonation wave from a small-scale explosion. The technology could assist the Lab in its stockpile stewardship mission. John McClelland of Subatomic Physics (P-25) is the leader of the proton radiography project. The Albuquerque Journal published a similar story on Aug. 25.
-- The Oct. 16 Los Alamos Monitor and Oct. 21 Santa Fe New Mexican published stories on the Lab's selection of ICF Kaiser Engineers Inc., Morrison Knudsen Corp. and Los Alamos Technical Associates to conduct the Lab's environmental restoration and cleanup projects for the next five years. The Albuquerque Journal published a similar story two days later.
-- The Oct. 10 Los Alamos Monitor published a story on a recently released Department of Energy report on the Laboratory's economic impact to Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Rio Arriba counties. The report, compiled for DOE by New Mexico State University, noted the Lab's $3.2 billion impact in 1996 is nearly one-third of the fiscal economic activity for the three counties last year.
-- The Oct. 9 Rio Grande Sun published a photograph and cutline of former Laboratory Director Sig Hecker signing a cooperative agreement with officials of the Northern Rio Grande Intergovernmental Council. The agreement pledges cooperation between the entities on environmental, cultural, economic and safety issues. Also pictured in the photo was Taos Mayor Fred Peralta.
-- The Oct. 7 Los Alamos Monitor, Albuquerque Tribune, Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican all published stories on new Laboratory Director John Browne's appointment. Regents of the University of California approved Browne's selection the previous day.
-- The Oct. 8 Los Alamos Monitor and Oct. 9 Albuquerque Journal both carried stories on the Laboratory's $3 million contribution to the newly created Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation.
-- DOE This Month, in its Sept. 1 edition, published a story on how Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories are reducing nuclear danger in the world by assisting in safeguarding fissile materials and nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. The article highlighted Los Alamos' lab-to-lab program with former Russian nuclear weapons labs.
-- The same issue of DOE This Month also carried a story on a new Lab technology that can trap organic contaminants in water. The reusable polymer-based materials called nanosponges are highly effective in cleaning up organic contaminants. Laboratory polymer chemist DeQuan Li of Bioscience/Biotechnology (CST-4) is the lead researcher on the project.
-- Geotimes, in its Oct. 1 issue published a story on how Lab scientists are working with other scientists to use fossilized rat urine to measure radioactive chlorine 36, which in turn may provide a new way to date fossils. Lab hydrogeologists June Fabryka-Martin and Jake Turin, both of Environmental Science and Waste Technology (CST-7) have been collaborating with hydrologists at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.
-- The Oct. 9 Los Alamos Monitor and the following days' Albuquerque Journal both published stories on one of the largest environmental clean-up projects at the Lab to date, a scrap pile 12 to 14 feet deep at Technical Area 16. Most of the material to be cleaned up is scrap metal and building debris.
--Compiled by Steve Sandoval
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