Modular units crossing “Valley of Death” for Air Force use ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If a nuclear device were to unexpectedly detonate anywhere on Earth, the ensuing effort to find out who made the weapon probably would be led by aircraft rapidly collecting airborne radioactive particles for analysis. Relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — equipped […]
Category Archives: Nuclear Weapons
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Northrop Grumman, GE partnerships tap wide range of Sandia Labs expertise
November 5, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has signed a pair of cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) that could broadly add to the Labs’ research into combustion, defense, energy and nuclear security. The umbrella CRADAs, which enable Sandia and its partners to pursue multiple projects in a variety of categories, are with Northrop Grumman Information […]
Dry-run experiments verify key aspect of Sandia nuclear fusion concept
September 17, 2012 – 5:00 am
Scientific “break-even” or better is near-term goal ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Magnetically imploded tubes called liners, intended to help produce controlled nuclear fusion at scientific “break-even” energies or better within the next few years, have functioned successfully in preliminary tests, according to a Sandia research paper accepted for publication by Physical Review Letters (PRL). To exceed scientific […]
Colorful light at the end of the tunnel for radiation detection
June 29, 2012 – 8:30 am
Sandia seeks commercialization partners for promising “spectral shape discrimination” technology LIVERMORE, Calif.— A team of nanomaterials researchers at Sandia National Laboratories has developed a new technique that could make radiation detection in cargo and baggage more effective and less costly for homeland security inspectors. Known as spectral shape discrimination (SSD), the method takes advantage of […]
Award-winning Sandia Labs engineer trods global path of nonproliferation
June 27, 2012 – 8:30 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Adam Williams of Sandia National Laboratories won a 2012 Black Engineer of the Year Award for his work in international security and nonproliferation. Williams was named Most Promising Engineer-Government in the prestigious BEYA program, which recognizes some of the nation’s best and brightest engineers, scientists and technology experts. The awards are sponsored […]
Sandia Red Storm supercomputer exits world stage
June 26, 2012 – 9:27 am
From helping destroy an errant satellite to aiding a foundering computer company, forerunner machine was without peer ALBUQERQUE, N.M. — A celebration at Sandia’s Computer Science Research Institute in mid-May wrote finis to Red Storm, the Sandia-designed and Cray Inc.-built supercomputer, one of the most influential machines of its era, with 124 descendants at 70 […]
Sandia wins four R&D 100 Awards
June 20, 2012 – 12:14 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers — competing in an international pool of universities, corporations and government labs — captured four prestigious R&D 100 Awards in this year’s contest. R&D Magazine presents the awards each year to researchers whom its editors and independent judging panels determine have developed the year’s 100 most outstanding advances in […]
National Nuclear Science Week celebrates nuclear everything from energy to safety to medicine
January 19, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Each day during National Nuclear Science Week, Jan. 23-27, some 250 middle school and high school students will pack the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History for hands-on activities that span the breadth of the nuclear world. They will work on everything from atomic modeling and chain reactions to workshops on […]
Sandia’s Annular Core Research Reactor conducts 10,000th operation
October 31, 2011 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – With a muffled “pop,” a flash of blue light and a few ripples through 14,000 gallons of deionized water, Sandia National Laboratories’ Annular Core Research Reactor (ACRR) recently conducted its 10,000th operation. “The ACRR has been a real workhorse for Sandia, and labs leadership and the nation rely on these experiments and […]
Big machines: two radiation generators mark major milestones in helping protect the U.S.
September 7, 2011 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Two remarkable pulsed-power machines used to test the nation’s defenses against atomic weapons have surpassed milestones at Sandia National Laboratories: 4,000 firings, called ‘shots,’ on the Saturn accelerator and 9,000 shots on the HERMES III accelerator. Saturn — originally projected to last 5 to 10 years — began operating in 1987. Its major […]
New thermal battery manufacturing method to be industrialized under Sandia, ATB research agreement
June 1, 2011 – 11:45 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — A new thin-film coating process for manufacturing thermal batteries used in nuclear weapons and other munitions that was invented at Sandia National Laboratories will be industrialized under a new corporate partnership with a Maryland company. The process could lead to create lighter batteries in a variety of shapes for future applications. A […]
Second Z plutonium “shot” safely tests materials for NNSA
May 11, 2011 – 7:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that researchers from Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories have completed their second experiment in the past six months at Sandia’s Z machine to explore the properties of plutonium materials under extreme pressures and temperatures. The information is used to keep the U.S. nuclear […]
Local college receives a piece of Sandia/California history
March 23, 2011 – 9:29 am
LENS machine to assist future generations of welders LIVERMORE, Calif. — Las Positas College, located just a few short miles away from the Sandia/California campus, might be a close partner of Sandia’s in the near future as the lab continues to pursue academic and industry collaborators on its new open campus. But even with an […]
Sandia seeds culture of nuclear energy safety and security
March 7, 2011 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The growing interest among Middle Eastern nations in establishing nuclear power programs prompted a Sandia National Laboratories team to conceive and lead development of a new institute that will seed and cultivate a regional culture of responsible nuclear energy management. The Gulf Nuclear Energy Infrastructure Institute (GNEII), the product of three years […]
Sandia security experts help Kazakhstan safely transport, store Soviet-era bomb materials
February 8, 2011 – 4:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Sandia National Laboratories team helped reach a major milestone in the nation’s nuclear nonproliferation efforts by working with the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan to move nuclear materials — enough to build an estimated 775 nuclear weapons — to safety. Sandia provided security and logistics expertise to complete the transfer across […]