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Tag Archives: stockpile

Scorpius images to test nuclear stockpile simulations

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — One thousand feet below the ground, three national defense labs and a remote test site are building Scorpius — a machine as long as a football field — to create images of plutonium as it is compressed with high explosives, creating conditions that exist just prior to a nuclear explosion. These nanosecond […]

Sandia, Intel seek novel memory tech to support stockpile mission

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In pursuit of novel advanced memory technologies that would accelerate simulation and computing applications in support of the nation’s stockpile stewardship mission, Sandia National Laboratories, in partnership with Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs, has announced a research and development contract awarded to Intel Federal LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of […]

Expanding testing capacity for Sandia weapons modernization programs

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and Department of Energy’s under secretary for nuclear security, joined Sandia National Laboratories Deputy Labs Director Dori Ellis and other Sandia leaders today for a tour of the newest facility in nuclear weapons systems engineering at Sandia’s California site — the Sandia […]

Lightning lab: Recreating nature’s big show for research

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories creates lightning in a lab to evaluate how anything from sensitive nuclear weapons components to entire buildings will hold up against the worst that nature might throw at them. “Sandia’s primary mission is to assure an ‘always/never’ operating condition for nuclear weapons,” said Larry Schneider, senior manager of Sandia’s […]

Hardware from old nuclear weapons systems becomes valuable teaching resource

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is preserving the history of nuclear weapons in hardware developed since the start of the nuclear era as a way to connect new generations of weapons engineers to the engineering work of past generations. “Tremendous amounts of knowledge are represented by this hardware, and being able to pick up […]

Explosive Destruction System begins first stockpile project

Unit will lead destruction of munitions at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot LIVERMORE, Calif. — This week the Explosive Destruction System (EDS), designed by Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Army, began safely destroying stockpile chemical munitions. The project to destroy 560 chemical munitions at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado with […]

Studies look at long-term aging of electronics in nuclear weapons

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is studying how environments, including radiation that originates from a nuclear weapon itself, could affect the performance of electronics in the W76-1 warhead as they age. Sandia, which is responsible for most non-nuclear components in U.S. nuclear weapons, is helping replace W76 warheads in the nation’s stockpile with a […]

Wind tunnel tests support improved aerodynamic design of B61-12 bomb

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories has finished eight days of testing a full-scale mock unit representing the aerodynamic characteristics of the B61-12 gravity bomb in a wind tunnel. The tests on the mock-up were done to establish the configuration that will deliver the necessary spin motion of the bomb during freefall and are an […]