Delivering success

Advancing scientific and technological knowledge requires a wide variety of elements, alloys, and compounds. The Los Alamos National Laboratory employees responsible for procuring and delivering these materials play an essential role in ensuring the Lab achieves its goals.

Each year, the Lab receives more than 2.5 million pieces of mail. Deliveries include items ranging from classified, hazardous, and radioactive materials to textbooks and historical films.

Joe Abeyta, the operations manager for the Logistics division Packaging and Transportation group, helps ensure the Lab’s researchers stay supplied with necessary materials. This group is just one part of the Lab’s complex distribution chain.

Abeyta says finding, purchasing, transporting, and distributing certain materials requires knowledge of processes and security requirements. Radioactive materials, such as uranium for fuel fabrication research, are often transferred within the Lab or obtained from other Department of Energy or National Nuclear Security Administration facilities.

For materials that are easier to procure and are widely produced, the Lab prioritizes finding local vendors. “This is part of our commitment to supporting our state economy and being a force for good,” says Frances Chadwick, Los Alamos staff director.

Once suppliers are identified and materials are procured, most materials are either physically shipped to or electronically processed at the Lab’s central warehouse.

“Everything that comes to the Lab gets distributed through this warehouse, and everything that goes out of the Lab comes through this warehouse to get shipped around the world,” says Traballis “Trae” Rouse, the group leader for Materials Management.

Along with controlling warehouse operations, Rouse manages a fleet of transportation vehicles tasked with nonnuclear deliveries ranging from mail to construction materials and pieces of heavy equipment. He also oversees a team responsible for transporting classified material to a secure vault until the recipient can collect it.

Regardless of what Lab employees are delivering, safety remains the top priority. “We aren’t ever pressured to trump safety and security with delivery speed,” Abeyta says.

At the end of the Lab’s supply chain are people like Aiping Chen—a scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), where researchers frequently work with rare or unique materials. Chen says Los Alamos’ procurement expertise and ability to transfer materials between groups helps facilitate experiments. “There are some materials that are much easier to obtain internally through the Lab where externally you might not even be able to get them,” he says.

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's Pulsed Field Facility—known as the MagLab—is also home to exploratory materials research. Researcher Eric Bauer works with uranium compounds. “We use fairly high purity depleted uranium for basic research on quantum materials and unconventional superconductors,” he says. He adds that Los Alamos is one of the few locations in the world authorized to procure, handle, and investigate these types of materials.

Bauer’s research could be critical for quantum information and quantum computing, the next big step in computing capabilities. But his work depends on the availability and timely delivery of necessary supplies.

“We know things grind to a halt if our Logistics groups don’t execute,” Rouse says. “The foundation has to be laid to support the Lab’s mission scope.” ★