LIVERMORE, Calif. — Every day at ports of entry, hundreds of thousands of vehicles and containers cross into the country. Since 9/11, all incoming vehicles and containers at land crossings, rail crossings, mail facilities and shipping terminals are scanned by Customs and Border Protection officers to detect potential threats, including radiation. It is now time to […]
Search Results for: Z
What if the secret to your brain’s elusive computing power is its randomness?
September 7, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If you’ve ever asked a car mechanic how long a part will last until it breaks, odds are they shrugged their shoulders. They know how long parts last on average, and they can see when one is close to breaking. But knowing how many miles are left is extremely difficult, even using […]
Look who’s turning 25
September 2, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is celebrating 25 years of research conducted at its Z Pulsed Power Facility — a gymnasium-sized accelerator commonly referred to as Z or the Z machine. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, only a limited number of former leaders of the pulsed power program at Sandia will gather Friday to share […]
Sandia uncovers hidden factors that affect solar farms during severe weather
August 31, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers combined large sets of real-world solar data and advanced machine learning to study the impacts of severe weather on U.S. solar farms, and sort out what factors affect energy generation. Their results were published earlier this month in the scientific journal Applied Energy. Hurricanes, blizzards, hailstorms and wildfires […]
Pathways to production
August 30, 2021 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Biologists at Sandia National Laboratories developed comprehensive software that will help scientists in a variety of industries create engineered chemicals more quickly and easily. Sandia is now looking to license the software for commercial use, researchers said. Sandia’s stand-alone software RetSynth uses a novel algorithm to sort through large, curated databases of […]
Extending nuclear power accident code for advanced reactor designs
August 24, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Nuclear power is a significant source of steady carbon-neutral electricity, making the design and construction of new and next-generation nuclear reactors critical for achieving the U.S.’s green energy goals. A number of new nuclear reactor designs, such as small modular reactors and non-light water reactors, have been developed over the past 10 […]
Sandia brings best cybersecurity minds to bear in national policy talks
August 23, 2021 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Sandia hosted a series of virtual cybersecurity events, called Meetings of the Minds, to pull together the best thinking on how the nation should respond to changing threats. The first one was held Dec. 6, 2020, and the second on May 26. The first event brought together experts from Sandia; Bob Kolasky, the […]
With redesigned ‘brains,’ W88 nuclear warhead reaches milestone
August 16, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories and its nuclear security enterprise partners recently completed the first production unit of a weapon assembly responsible for key operations of the W88 nuclear warhead. “The arming, fuzing and firing assembly is the brains of the warhead,” said Dolores Sanchez, senior manager of the W88 Alteration 370 for Sandia. […]
Engineer at Sandia Labs turns error detection into ‘secret language’ for data security
August 9, 2021 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Research into software error detection has led one Sandia National Laboratories engineer to develop a method — it works like two friends who speak their own language — to enhance the protection of digital content like email and social media messaging. Celestino Corral is an electrical engineer who began working on error […]
Sandia joins 16 national labs on transgender-inclusive, name-change process for papers
July 28, 2021 – 8:22 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories joins 16 other Department of Energy national laboratories and many prominent publishers, journals and other organizations in scientific publishing in announcing the beginning of a partnership to support name-change requests from researchers on past published papers. This agreement will allow researchers who wish to change their names to claim […]
Imaging tool under development exposes concealed detonators — and their charge
July 22, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Behold the neutron, the middle child of subatomic particles. At times overshadowed by its electrically charged siblings the proton and the electron, neutrons quietly play important roles in national security. They start nuclear reactions for weapons and power plants. They bombard materials for nuclear safety tests. And now they have a new […]
Sandia designs better batteries for grid-scale energy storage
July 21, 2021 – 9:07 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have designed a new class of molten sodium batteries for grid-scale energy storage. The new battery design was shared in a paper published today in the scientific journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Molten sodium batteries have been used for many years to store energy from renewable sources, […]
New weapons testing capability produces richer data, saves time, cost
July 20, 2021 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — A team of Sandia National Laboratories engineers developed a new testing capability in support of its nuclear weapons mission. The team completed their first combined-environments test on a full-scale weapons system at the Sandia Superfuge/Centrifuge complex in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a successful test, weapons engineers simulated three environments — acceleration, vibration […]
Sandia-led center to advance understanding of new solar panel technology
July 8, 2021 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Department of Energy recently awarded $14 million to form a Sandia National Laboratories-led center to improve the understanding of perovskite-based photovoltaic technologies and determine the best tests to evaluate the new solar panels’ lifetimes. The efficiency of perovskite-based solar cells has reached 25%, approaching the levels of common crystalline silicon-based solar […]