LOS ALAMOS LAB DESCRIBES DAMAGE TO MONITORING STATIONS FROM DISASTER

FROM:  U.S. LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory describes storm damage to environmental monitoring stations, canyons
Stations supporting Santa Fe water utility returned to service

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Sept. 20, 2013—Hours after a disaster declaration by Los Alamos County, Los Alamos National Laboratory officials on Friday described “millions” of dollars in damage to environmental monitoring stations, monitoring wells, access roads and badly eroded canyon bottoms.

“Last week we experienced an epic event,” said Dave McInroy, the laboratory’s program director for environmental corrective actions. “We received more than 7-and-a-half inches of rain in a four-day period and more than an inch-and-a-half in one hour on Sept. 13th. None of our recorded history has shown anything like this.”

The average precipitation for a full year in Los Alamos is about 14 inches. Although Lab facilities on mesa tops suffered relatively little damage, canyons on Lab property received large, damaging floods.

In a briefing for reporters, McInroy said torrential flooding in canyons

 Damaged 75% of the Lab’s canyon access roads
 Wiped out a number of the Lab’s 200-plus automated stormwater samplers – field crews are still totaling the numbers on foot or all-terrain vehicle because access roads are impassible, and
  Re-routed stream channels that eroded into infrastructure, including monitoring wells.
At its peak, the estimated water flow coming from three canyons that cross the Laboratory combined to eclipse the flow rate of the nearby Rio Grande.

Three monitoring stations which support the Santa Fe public water utility were damaged last Friday and two have been returned to service.

“When you look at what happened to those two stations last Friday, to have them back up and running today is outstanding,” said Pete Maggiore, manager of the Environmental Projects Office for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Field Office.

In other cases, the force of the water bent steel and broke chains anchoring the samplers to concrete in the canyon bottoms.

Although the stormwater moved a large amount of sediment down previously cleaned-up canyons, McInroy said risk to the environment or people is extremely low. He credited the Lab’s four grade-control structures, built across canyon bottoms, with trapping sediment, maintaining stability in key portions of canyons and reducing the force of the water moving downstream.

For years, sampling has shown no health risks due to floods and associated sediment in the canyons.

Lab experts will be working in the coming weeks to collect samples of sediment deposits and further assess potential changes to the conditions prior to the floods. All sample results will be posted to the public Intellus New Mexico database.

McInroy said the Lab has filed documents with the New Mexico Environment Department and the EPA notifying the agencies of an interruption in the Lab’s required monitoring work. Assessments in the coming days and weeks will determine when that work can resume.

LANLSAYS WILDFIRES MAY CONTRIBUTE MORE TO GLOBAL WARMING THAN HAD BEEN THOUGHT

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Wildfires May Contribute More To Global Warming Than Previously Predicted

Particle analysis shows “tar ball” effect is significant

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 9, 2013—Wildfires produce a witch’s brew of carbon-containing particles, as anyone downwind of a forest fire can attest. A range of fine carbonaceous particles rising high into the air significantly degrade air quality, damaging human and wildlife health, and interacting with sunlight to affect climate. But measurements taken during the 2011 Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos National Laboratory show that the actual carbon-containing particles emitted by fires are very different than those used in current computer models, providing the potential for inaccuracy in current climate-modeling results.

“We’ve found that substances resembling tar balls dominate, and even the soot is coated by organics that focus sunlight,” said senior laboratory scientist Manvedra Dubey, “Both components can potentially increase climate warming by increased light absorption.”

The Las Conchas fire emissions findings underscore the need to provide a framework to include realistic representation of carbonaceous aerosols in climate model, the researchers say. They suggest that fire emissions could contribute a lot more to the observed climate warming than current estimates show.

“The fact that we are experiencing more fires and that climate change may increase fire frequency underscores the need to include these specialized particles in the computer models, and our results show how this can be done,” Dubey said.

Aerosol samples revealed “tar balls” in the skies

Conventional wisdom is that the fire-driven particles contain black carbon or soot that absorbs sunlight to warm the climate, and organic carbon or smoke that reflects sunlight to cool the climate. But in a paper just published in Nature Communications the scientists from Los Alamos and Michigan Technological University analyzed the morphology and composition of the specific aerosols emitted by the Las Conchas fire.

Las Conchas, which started June 26, 2011, was the largest fire in NM history at the time, burning 245 square miles. Immediately after Los Alamos National Laboratory reopened to scientists and staff, the team set up an extensive aerosol sampling system to monitor the smoke from the smoldering fire for more than 10 days.

High-tech tools enable analysis of smoke samples

Dubey, along with postdoctoral fellow Allison Aiken and post-bachelor’s student Kyle Gorkowski, coordinated with Michigan Tech professor Claudio Mazzoleni (a former Los Alamos Director’s fellow) and graduate student Swarup China to perform this study.

The team used field-emission scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X ray spectroscopy to analyze the aerosol samples and determined that spherical carbonaceous particles called tar balls were 10 times more abundant than soot.

Furthermore, the bare soot particles, which are composite porous fractal structures made of tiny spherical carbon, are modified significantly by the organics emitted by the fire. About 96 percent of the soot from the fire is coated by other organics substances, with 50 percent being totally coated. Furthermore, the complexity of the soot can be categorized into 4 morphological structures as “embedded,” “partly coated,” “with inclusions” and “bare.”

What was missing from the modeling and why it matters

Why is this important for climate? Dubey noted that, “Most climate assessment models treat fire emissions as a mixture of pure soot and organic carbon aerosols that offset the respective warming and cooling effects of one another on climate. However Las Conchas results show that tar balls exceed soot by a factor of 10 and the soot gets coated by organics in fire emissions, each resulting in more of a warming effect than is currently assumed.”

“Tar balls can absorb sunlight at shorter blue and ultraviolet wavelengths (also called brown carbon due to the color) and can cause substantial warming,” he said. “Furthermore, organic coatings on soot act like lenses that focus sunlight, amplifying the absorption and warming by soot by a factor of 2 or more. This has a huge impact on how they should be treated in computer models.”

This experimental research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

NEW LASER TO HELP SEARCH FOR SMUGGLED NUCLEAR MATERIALS

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Using Laser-Driven Neutrons to Stop Nuclear Smugglers

Los Alamos shows first nuclear material detection by single short-pulse-laser-driven neutron source

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 4, 2013—Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have successfully demonstrated for the first time that laser-generated neutrons can be enlisted as a useful tool in the War on Terror.

The international research team in February used the short-pulse laser at Los Alamos’s TRIDENT facility to generate a neutron beam with novel characteristics that interrogated a closed container to confirm the presence and quantity of nuclear material inside. The successful experiment paves the way for creation of a table-top-sized or truck-mounted neutron generator that could be installed at strategic locations worldwide to thwart smugglers trafficking in nuclear materials.

"We have demonstrated for the first time a novel approach for generating a record number of neutrons driven by a laser directed into a beam over a very small area that could provide proof positive of a large variety of nuclear items," said Los Alamos physicist Andrea Favalli, an Italian researcher who led the February experiment.

For the experiment, researchers at Los Alamos’s TRIDENT facility focused an extremely short and intense laser pulse onto an ultra-thin foil of deuterated plastic—a material in which hydrogen atoms within the foil were replaced with deuterium isotopes. To put the extraordinary experimental parameters in perspective, the power of the TRIDENT pulse is 50 times greater than the entire production of worldwide electrical power packed into a burst of energy lasting only one-half of one-thousandth of a billionth of a second (0.5 picoseconds). The TRIDENT beam is focused at the target into a spot 12 times smaller than a human hair. The thickness of the laser-target foil (0.3 microns) is about 300 times thinner than a human hair.

When this tremendous laser burst hits the foil target, it transfers much of its energy into the deuterium nuclei—the hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron—accelerating those particles into a beam traveling at about one-tenth of the speed of light into a second metal target located five millimeters beyond the foil. When the fast-moving deuterons slam into the secondary target, they create a blizzard of very fast moving neutrons (up to 40 billion of them, moving at a fraction of the speed of light) in a directed bunch lasting a billionth of a second, in a cone with an angle of about 30 degrees.

In fact, the TRIDENT laser is so good at producing neutrons that it has shattered the previous world record number of neutrons in a laser-generated beam, and drove those neutrons to an energy of more than 150 million electron volts (150 MeV), or more than ten times the energy of neutrons from D-T fusion as produced in devices such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

In the current experiments, the research team demonstrated that these laser-produced neutrons can be used to search for hidden nuclear material. Neutrons are a good choice as a probe because they can penetrate most materials very easily. If the neutrons encounter some nuclear material (like uranium or plutonium) they cause fission and more neutrons are released. Some of these released neutrons are produced over a period of seconds, which allows them to be measured after the initial neutron burst is finished. These ‘delayed neutrons’ are a good measure of the presence of nuclear material because very few other materials produce them.

The scientists interrogated a closed container with nuclear material inside and an empty closed container and then compared the results. They found that the laser-driven-neutron-interrogation method not only confirmed the presence of nuclear material, but it told them the quantity as well.

"This is something that has never been demonstrated before," Favalli said. "Up until this experiment, nuclear material detection with a single laser-generated neutron pulse was merely an idea. Our team invented the concept, fabricated all the materials necessary for the experiment, and confirmed our results within three weeks from start to finish. This is a little bit like the original days at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It is very exciting!"

Detecting and interdicting clandestine nuclear material using active interrogation has been somewhat impractical up until now because doing so would require a giant, stationary facility or long measurement times with less powerful neutron generators. The TRIDENT experiment shows promise for the development of a small, portable neutron interrogator that could be used at border crossings or elsewhere. Neutron interrogation can also be used in other applications such as materials science or the biological sciences, and the use of lasers could make the technique practical in other laboratories and universities.

Andreas Favalli and Martyn T. Swinhoe of the Safeguards Science and Technology Group at Los Alamos led the research activities. The team was composed of scientists and postdoctoral researchers from several Los Alamos divisions, as well as M. Roth from the Technical University of Darmstadt. The full research team also includes J. S. Bridgewater, D. Henzlova, K. Ianakiev, M. Iliev, K. Falk, J. C. Fernandez, D. Gautier, R. P. Johnson, D. Jung, T. Shimada, N. Guler, C. E. Hamilton and S. Croft (now of Oak Ridge National Laboratory).

Los Alamos National Laboratory is patenting the process.

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY DIRECTOR COMMENTS ON SECURING THE GRID

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Los Alamos Director Echoes Cyber Concerns
Securing the grid will be key for energy security going forward

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.,May 21, 2013—Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan told a gathering of energy executives today that securing the electrical grid is a major concern now and it’s only becoming more serious.

"If you look back at the last year, there were several hundred attacks on critical infrastructure," McMillan said, addressing attendees at the Deloitte Energy Conference near Washington, DC. "More than 40% of those attacks were on the energy sector."

Resilience and reliability of the electrical grid have become key energy security concerns at the Laboratory and are important focus areas in global security. Experience with massive amounts of data, complex systems and security technology involved in nuclear weapons research are now providing insights for grid security, McMillan said.

"In the time it takes me to say this sentence, the external firewalls of Los Alamos will be challenged hundreds of times by adversaries. Our systems, and yours, are very attractive." McMillan said. "But encrypting control signals on the grid is particularly challenging because any encryption scheme must be able to meet competing standards for very rapid response and high security."

McMillan showed a Los Alamos device called a QKarD that uses principles of quantum cryptography to send secure signals at the speed of light. Single photons are used to produce secure random numbers between users, and these random numbers are then used to authenticate and encrypt the grid control data. QKarD was successfully tested recently at the University of Illinois to send signals between grid components separated by more than 12 miles of optical fiber.

Securing grid control systems with quantum cryptography would make them far less vulnerable to those attempting to interfere with signals between generators, control centers and substations.

For more information on QKarD:
LANL Developing Quantum Encryption to Secure Communications Networks (Power Magazine, May 20, 2013
Quantum cryptography put to work for electric grid security (Los Alamos National Laboratory news release February 2013)
The work has led to 27 U.S. and foreign patent applications and the Lab’s Technology Transfer Division is receiving inquiries from companies within the electric-grid control industry.

Photo information: 1. Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan (right), with, from left, Anthony Cugini of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Thom Mason of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Tomas Diaz de la Rubia of Deloitte Consulting LLP. 2. Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan displays a QKarD, a Los Alamos device that uses quantum cryptography to transmit secure signals between sender and receiver.

COMPUTER MODELING SHOWS HOW HEPATITIS C DRUG WORKS

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Computer Modeling Reveals How Surprisingly Potent Hepatitis C Drug Works

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Feb. 19, 2013—A study by researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and a multinational team reveals how daclatasvir, a direct-acting antiviral agent in development for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), targets one of its proteins and causes the fastest viral decline ever seen with anti-HCV drugs – within 12 hours of treatment.

Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus affects about 150 million people worldwide. It is the leading cause of cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver transplants and results in some 350,000 deaths worldwide every year.

The team’s work reveals that daclatasvir has two primary modes of action against HCV and also provides a more accurate estimate of the HCV half-life. Until 2011, treatment options were limited and offered modest effectiveness; fewer than half of treated patients were fully cured of the virus. In the last decade, active research on understanding the mechanisms of HCV replication resulted in the discovery of direct acting antivirals targeting all stages of the viral replication process.

The new mathematical analysis of the rapid viral decline observed after one dose of daclatasvir reveals that the drug blocks two stages of the viral lifecycle and that the HCV half-life in serum is four times shorter than previously thought according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

The NS5A protein within the hepatitis virus is a specific target for drug development. The first NS5A inhibitor, daclatasvir, developed by Bristol Myers Squibb, showed one of the most potent effects in combating HCV; one dose led to a thousand-fold decrease in viral levels within about 12 hours. Oddly, however NS5A has no known enzymatic functions making it difficult to understand its mode of action and design optimal drug combinations.

"Unraveling how this drug could cause such a rapid drop in the amount of virus in an infected person’s blood could greatly enhance our ability to design optimal drug therapies and ultimately cure this disease," said Alan Perelson, senior author on the paper and a senior fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A mathematical method called "viral kinetic modeling" aims to characterize the main mechanisms that govern the virologic response to treatment. It is instrumental in understanding HCV pathogenesis and in guiding development of a variety of anti-HCV agents.

Until now, viral kinetic models did not take into account the intracellular events during viral replication and infected cells were considered as "black boxes" whose viral production was partially shut down by treatment.

The researchers demonstrated that understanding the effects of daclatasvir in vivo requires a novel modeling approach that incorporates drug effects on the HCV intracellular lifecycle. They used this new model to characterize the viral kinetics during daclatasvir therapy and they showed that this compound efficiently blocked two distinct processes, namely the synthesis of new viral genomes (like other antivirals) but also the release of the virus from infected cells.

As a consequence of this unique mode of action, the viral decline observed during treatment with daclatasvir allowed for more precise estimation of the HCV half-life in serum, about 45 minutes, instead of the previously estimated 2.7 hours. This implies that the daily viral production; and thus the risk of mutations conferring drug resistance, is four times larger than previously thought.

　

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY'S 2013 GIVING CAMPAIGN

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Record $3.1 million pledged during Los Alamos National Laboratory’s 2013 employee giving campaign
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, December 17, 2012—Los Alamos National Laboratory employees have again demonstrated concern for their communities and those in need by pledging a record $2.13 million to United Way and other eligible nonprofit programs. Los Alamos National Security, LLC, which manages and operates the Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration, plans to prorate its $1 million match among the selected nonprofit organizations, bringing the total donation to $3.1 million.

"I am again touched by the generosity of our employees," said Los Alamos Director Charlie McMillan. "In a challenging year for the Laboratory, they have come through for Northern New Mexico. It speaks to their pride in where they work and live."

"I am truly impressed with the level of participation we achieved during this year’s employee giving campaign. The leadership and dedication across the Lab in supporting the campaign along with all the special events, really made a difference," said Paul Henry, Los Alamos’s principal associate director for Capital Projects and this year’s campaign champion. "The employees at the Lab should be very proud of the fact that we achieved 21 percent participation and raised more than $3.1 million."

Laboratory employee contributions will fund a wide range of programs offered by eligible nonprofit organizations.

THE IBEX SPACECRAFT MISSION

The following excerpt is from the Los Alamos National Laboratory website:

"IBEX Probe Glimpses Interstellar Neighborhood
EMBARGOED until 1 p.m. EST on January 31, 2012
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, January 31, 2012—Space scientists, including researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, today described the first detailed analyses of captured interstellar neutral atoms—raw material for the formation of new stars, planets and even human beings. The information was presented in Washington, D.C., at a press conference sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Researchers at the conference presented data from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), which directly sampled material carried from outside our solar system across the galaxy by solar and stellar winds. Full details of the research comprise a six-paper special section in the February edition of Astrophysical Journal Supplements.

IBEX was launched in October 2008 and has maintained an elliptical orbit around Earth ever since. The space probe uses a pair of special cameras, one of which was developed to a large degree at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to sample neutral atoms reaching Earth’s surroundings from the edges of the solar system and its immediate neighborhood.

Earth is mostly shielded from direct bombardment by interstellar particles because the solar wind—a blast of charged particles emanating from the surface of the Sun—creates a protective bubble around us that deflects charged particles back into space. Without this bubble, called the heliosphere, Earth would be pummeled by cosmic radiation. IBEX provides the first global view of the outer boundary of this protective bubble.
IBEX also provides a direct sample of the surrounding neutral gas, which blows as an interstellar wind through the solar system.

“Interstellar particles are the raw stuff that form stars, planets, and even us,” said Eberhard Moebius, a University of New Hampshire professor and IBEX team member currently on sabbatical at Los Alamos. UNH developed key systems of IBEX’s second camera. “In the beginning there was only hydrogen and helium. These two elements formed the first stars. When those stars collapsed and died, they spewed their material, including new elements created through the process of nuclear fusion, out into space. We can tell a lot about the evolution of our universe and perhaps gain insight into other galaxies and planetary systems by analyzing these particles.”

With the capacity to detect and analyze helium, hydrogen, neon, and oxygen, IBEX has been able to provide researchers with more information about our galactic neighborhood and raise some pressing questions about it. The IBEX research team has been able to characterize the ratio of oxygen to neon in Earth’s present location and compare it to other data. The IBEX observations suggest that the ratio of neon to oxygen in material emanating from outside our solar system is larger than the ratio from within our solar system and also the Milky Way—our home galaxy—as a whole.

The ratio difference may suggest that the Sun’s present location differs from its birthplace, or that a significant amount of oxygen might be bound up in grains of dust floating in interstellar space. Regardless of which hypothesis is correct, the IBEX mission findings are significant because this is the first time scientists have been able to gain direct quantitative measurements of the hydrogen, oxygen, and neon flow from outside our solar system, along with far more detailed observations of the interstellar helium flow.
Which leads to another interesting IBEX discovery:

The IBEX team has learned that the interstellar wind blows at about 52,000 miles per hour—about 7,000 miles an hour slower than previously measured.

IBEX takes advantage of a nature-provided “speedometer” for the interstellar wind by observing the degree of deflection of the gas on its journey into the solar system and past the Sun. The Sun’s gravity deflects slower atoms to a stronger degree than it deflects faster atoms. IBEX is able to measure the flow direction in Earth’s orbit with high precision, therefore providing the true speed and direction of the interstellar wind. With this tool, the researchers have been able to gain a better understanding of where Earth currently resides relative to known nearby clouds of interstellar material within our home planet’s galactic neighborhood.
These nearby interstellar clouds are denser than the surrounding space and are moving at substantial speeds. Astronomers have measured the speed of many neighboring clouds and wondered about Earth’s position among the closest clouds because the previously known interstellar wind speed did not match with any of the closest clouds. However, the new IBEX observations place the solar system within what is called the Local Interstellar Cloud.

Astronomers tell us that Earth is traveling near the edge of this cloud and will leave it at any time within the next few thousand years—just the blink of an eye on astronomical time scales. When this occurs, the heliosphere, the protective bubble surrounding us, may expand significantly since it will be less constrained by the sparsely populated region it enters. On its journey roughly in the direction of the center of the Milky Way, Earth and our solar system will meander toward and into the next cloud over, called the G cloud (named for the cloud toward the galactic center).

Just three and a half years into the IBEX mission, at a time when the two Voyager spacecraft are due to exit the heliosphere within the next decade, who knows what other surprises researchers will uncover about our solar system and its immediate neighborhood? Only time will tell.

“How wonderful it is to see that some of the same technologies developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory for keeping our nation safe are being used to understand how Earth keeps itself safe from the turbulent forces of the universe and to gain a better understanding of our place in the galaxy,” said Los Alamos’s Herb Funsten, part of the original research team responsible for development of one of IBEX’s cameras.

Caption:  An artist's conception of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft."