About LANL
About Our Capabilities, Facilities, and Staff
"Los Alamos National Laboratory plays an indispensable role in building America as a science and technology powerhouse, and our staff are an incredible resource to the nation and the world." Michael Anastasio, Dir.
Solving Complex R&D Problems with Special Blend of Staff, Capabilities and Facilities
Now in its seventh decade, LANL remains among a very few laboratories that can bring great breadth of fundamental and discovery science, technology, and engineering rapidly together to create tangible solutions for national security needs.
Our staff, working with partners throughout science and industry, must be able to deliver today's solutions while maintaining the depth of capabilities to deliver the next generation of discoveries.
Los Alamos has demonstrated a cycle of innovation where we have developed world-leading capabilities and facilities in response to urgent, unique missions. We also spin out new discoveries that lead to emerging missions.
Being able to integrate and apply our capabilities rapidly to new challenges will be a key advantage in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Our Science, Technology and Engineering Priorities
Science that Matters
- Information science and technology enabling integrative and predictive science
- Experimental science focused on materials for the future
- Fundamental forensic science for nuclear, biological, and chemical threats
How We Work
- Collaborate, partner and team to make decisive contributions to our sponsors
- Outstanding operational excellence for safety, security, and efficient pursuit of ST&E for our missions
Transform Our Scientific Campus
- Campus for 2020 (consistent with complex transformation)
- Modern science facilities: LANSCE refurbishment, CMR replacement, Science Complex
- Signature facilities for experimental science (MaRIE) and computational science (Roadrunner)
More About This Science
Sequestration Analysis Technologies Quantify Prediction Uncertainty and Report About Data
Los Alamos was formed in the crucible of national need during World War II, with a mission to produce the world's first fission weapon. Robert Oppenheimer, the Laboratory's first director, recognized that while the "mission" could define the product, the scientific path to producing the product was unpredictable. To succeed, the Laboratory would need a broad scientific base and the best and brightest people. Oppenheimer established and fostered those "capabilities," and Los Alamos built the first atomic bomb in just two and a half years.
In the succeeding decades, the challenges presented to Los Alamos changed, but the Laboratory's solid scientific and engineering capabilities allowed it to be responsive to national need. In 1962 President Kennedy visited Los Alamos and expressed the rationale for the Laboratory: "It is not merely what was done during the days of the second war, but what has been done since then, not only in developing weapons of destruction which, by irony of fate, help maintain the peace and freedom, but also in medicine and space and all other related fields, which can mean so much to mankind."
Today, the Laboratory's mission is undergoing tremendous change because of major new challenges to national security. Access to energy resources is now of vital concern, and research is needed to develop and perfect alternative, renewable energy sources. Just as important is the exchange of information, which is one of the central pillars of the nation's economy and which relies on an infrastructure of databases, communication satellites, and the Internet, all built in the last 30 years. The need to protect that fragile infrastructure and maintain the command and control of our utilities poses a tremendous security challenge.
Los Alamos is being asked to provide powerful solutions to these new problems, and as in Oppenheimer's time, innovation will be central to our efforts. The Laboratory's innovative spirit is much in evidence at the Trident facility, in the Milagro project's detection of high-energy gamma rays, and in the development of web-based research tools, all addressed in this issue of 1663. Our response to the nation's call is still only as good as the capabilities we have built here. Creativity and innovation are our greatest capabilities.
Capturing Carbon
Research focus to remove greenhouse gases for cleaner air
Quick read
Technology helps capture carbon dioxide. The goal? Meet energy needs, reduce global warming and protect the planet.
How do you simultaneously power and protect the planet? Eighty-six percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels, a cause of global warming. While reducing fossil fuel use may ultimately be the answer to many of the world's energy and environmental problems, removing pollution from the air decelerates climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a fossil fuel byproduct that absorbs and emits heat, average 27 billion metric tons annually. Activities such as deforestation or the burning of coal and gas have increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 35 percent since the Industrial Revolution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Carbon capture and storage is becoming a popular technique to fight global warming. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) researchers developed a myriad of technologies to decrease greenhouse gases, including turning emissions into fuel and development of a comprehensive risk-assessment program to ensure safe and effective containment.
Capturing and storing (sequestering) CO2 prevents it from reaching the atmosphere. While multiple methods exist, such as storing the gas in plants, the best current sequestration method is geologic: bury it.
In the sequestration process, CO2 is contained at the industrial source, compressed and converted to a fluid and injected deep underground into porous rock. There are many risks to be factored, including potential chemical reactions, toxic gases escaping through faults or fractures, freshwater contamination, pollution of nearby natural gas deposits, and ecosystem changes. Selecting, engineering, and regulating geologic sites requires informed decision making.
"There's uncertainty in how fast CO2 can be injected into a given hole, how fast it will move through porous rock, how fast it will mineralize, and how fast it might leak up through different pathways," said Los Alamos hydrogeologist Philip Stauffer. "We're trying to reduce those uncertainties so decision makers can act on a known level of risk."
Implementing carbon sequestration on a grand scale is a daunting challenge. The method has been used for decades but not at the magnitude needed to affect climate change. Global carbon dioxide storage capacity estimates range up to 10 trillion tons and officials worldwide are opting for this solution to the climate crisis. In 2008, the EPA proposed regulation to create a framework for safe CO2 capture.
The Lab scientists are looking to the future-hundreds of years-to perfect CO2 storage; most importantly, making sure it is secure. Increasing the time stored and volume of sequestration multiplies risks, so Los Alamos researchers (also experts at hazardous waste storage) are applying varied capabilities to tackle the carbon sequestration challenge and keep the world safe.
Lab scientists developed a framework and working computer model called CO2-PENS (Predicting Engineered Natural Systems), as well as complex parallel computer codes, to evaluate potential problems and optimize site selection and techniques. This system combines theory, field and laboratory experiments, observation, and computation to predict earth materials' responses (underground and terrestrial) to CO2 storage. While individual predictions were made for various subsurface processes before this technology existed, there was no accurate way to compile and analyze all the complex data that is dynamically linked-until now.
LANL's sequestration analysis technologies quantify prediction uncertainty and report when more data (e.g., experiments, additional site sensors) is required to increase accuracy, leading to safer results. Additionally, the program analyzes hard-to-define economic risks for particular sequestration plans.
Fossil fuel emissions are a major focus for Los Alamos. Researchers are tackling monumental challenges, from developing world-class monitoring techniques to developing environmentally friendly, nonpolluting energy sources-even turning CO2 into renewable fuels with the Lab's new lauded technology, Green Freedom. An innovator in science, technology, and engineering, Los Alamos is creating a myriad of methods that lead the way to save our environment and secure our future.
Ark of a different sort
Honored researcher supports South African AIDS program
When Bette Korber won the coveted E. O. Lawrence award in 2004, she and her husband decided the right thing would be to give something back . . .
Currents, the Laboratory's monthly employee magazine, highlighting people in the workplace.