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Friday, May 16, 1997

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Something's in the air
African American Diversity Working Group seeks nominations
Laboratory expert speaks at League of Women Voters forum
Reports and papers being solicited for tri-lab engineering conference

Something's in the air

Carbon monoxide is a potentially deadly, colorless, odorless gas that results from the incomplete burning of heating fuels. Carbon monoxide poisoning causes half of all poisoning deaths in the United States each year. Carbon monoxide warning monitors potentially could save thousands of lives a year. The current commercial sensor technologies detect carbon monoxide rather slowly at levels of hundreds of parts per million, concentrations many times above the dangerous exposure threshold limit determined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. David Watkins and other Lab researchers in Electronic and Electrochemical Materials and Devices (MST-11) have developed inexpensive, solid-state ceramic carbon monoxide sensors that can detect this gas in air at concentrations hundreds of time lower than what existing sensors can detect and with a response time of seconds rather than hours. Yet, the projected cost and packaging and power requirements of the ceramic sensors is very similar to currently available devices.
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African American Diversity Working Group seeks nominations

The Laboratory's African American Diversity Working Group is accepting nominations from employees interested in serving on the group.

The working group was created last year by the Lab's Diversity Office to provide input to management on African American diversity issues at the Lab, said Debbi Wersonick of the Diversity Office (DV).

Thomas Nelson of the Environmental Restoration (EM/ER) Project is chairperson of the African American Diversity Working Group.

There are eight vacancies on the African American Diversity Working Group, said Wersonick. Those employees selected for the group will serve two-year terms, she added.

Interested employees can obtain a nomination form online by accessing a master management memo on the request for nominations, or from Wersonick. Forms should be returned to Wersonick at Mail Stop C329 by May 23.

Since the African American Diversity Working Group was created last year, it has examined several issues, including strategic recruitment, mentoring and educational outreach opportunities at the Lab for African American employees and students, said Wersonick. The group also has sponsored activities at the Lab to coincide with the national Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month in February.

-- Steve Sandoval

Laboratory water expert speaks at League of Women Voters forum

Los Alamos' drinking water supply is safe and meets all federal and state drinking water standards, Lab hydrologist Bruce Gallaher said Wednesday, but Lab scientists are monitoring subsurface water in the area to find out whether contaminants from Cold War-era Lab operations are seeping into subsurface water supplies.

Gallaher of Water Quality and Hydrology (ESH-18) was one member of a panel of experts who discussed water-quality issues during a League of Women Voters forum at Fuller Lodge. About 50 people attended the forum, Gallaher said, and asked a number of questions about the area aquifer - located some 1,000 feet below the Pajarito Plateau.

In his presentation, Gallaher said his group is trying to determine whether contaminant discharges from 1950s-era Lab operations have migrated from the surface into the regional water system. The answer apparently is yes, he said.

Gallaher and his colleagues have collected and analyzed water samples from 13 municipal water supply wells that are 1,000 to 3,500 feet deep, from eight test wells that are 600 to 1,100 feet deep -- reaching the top part of the aquifer - and from about 15 locations where springs surface along the Rio Grande River.

As a result of the sampling efforts, Gallaher has identified three possible contaminants in the regional aquifer.

In sample areas located beneath Pueblo Canyon, Gallaher has found tritium levels of about 400 picocuries per liter - far below the 20,000 picocuries per liter maximum allowed by federal drinking water standards. Tritium also has been detected at lower levels beneath Los Alamos Canyon and Mortandad Canyon. According to the United States Public Health Service, the levels pose no health risk, he said.

Gallaher also has found nitrate levels in lower Pueblo Canyon that were 50 to 250 percent of drinking-water standards. The specific source of the nitrate has not been determined.

But the most troubling contaminant possibly detected in the regional aquifer is strontium-90, an isotope that doesn't occur naturally but can be linked to early Lab operations. However, Gallaher said, he is uncertain whether the strontium-90 possibly detected in the aquifer was an analytical anomaly or whether it actually came from the aquifer.

The strontium-90 was possibly detected during sampling sessions in upper Pueblo Canyon, Los Alamos Canyon and Guaje Canyon. Subsequent samples from those locations haven't shown strontium-90 in the water, Gallaher said. When the Pueblo Canyon well was sampled and strontium-90 was detected, he said, state of New Mexico personnel also found the isotope in their sample, taken at the same time. As with the samples taken from the other two areas, subsequent sampling didn't yield the isotope at Guaje.

"In general, this tells us that since we were unable to reproduce the apparent detection of strontium-90, it may not have reached the aquifer," Gallaher said.

Potential sources of contamination include waste outfalls in Pueblo, Los Alamos and Mortandad canyons. Gallaher said isolated water pockets -- perched water hundreds of feet above the main aquifer but below the canyon bottoms -- showed significant levels of tritium and other contaminants.

The question, Gallaher said, is whether these contaminants can make their way to the deep aquifer.

The Lab has undertaken a rigorous program to monitor contaminant movement, to reduce the amount of contaminants that are discharged in present-day operations and to drill new monitoring wells, he said.

Gallaher pointed out that the Lab's Environmental Restoration Project has been instrumental in stabilizing potential sources of surface contamination that could make its way into subsurface water supplies.

In addition, Gallaher said, the Lab had done much to reduce waste streams. Nearly five years ago, the Lab had about 140 outfalls. The number has shrunk to 88 and will be further reduced to 40 in the coming year.

In September of this year, as part of the Environmental Restoration Project, Lab employees will construct a new water-monitoring well in lower Los Alamos Canyon. The new well will be used to assess the water quality at the top of the main aquifer, Gallaher said.

"We will be drilling the first well specifically designed for monitoring the main aquifer since 1960," he said.

In addition, as part of the water-quality monitoring efforts, Lab personnel plan to drill 32 main-aquifer monitoring wells throughout the area in the next several years.

Gallaher said data obtained by the test wells eventually will become part of computer models that potentially could predict whether legacy contamination can reach the main aquifer -- the source of Los Alamos' drinking water.

Others who spoke at the League of Women Voters Forum on Wednesday night were: Dennis Armstrong, a health physicist in Air Quality (ESH-17); members of the New Mexico Environment Department; Department of Energy officials; and personnel from the Los Alamos County Utilities Department.

-- James E. Rickman

Reports and papers being solicited for tri-lab engineering conference

Classified and unclassified modeling and simulation reports and papers are now being solicited for presentation at the second biennial tri-laboratory engineering conference on modeling and simulation this fall in Santa Fe.

The Laboratory is hosting the conference Nov. 12-14 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Santa Fe. The conference focuses on computer modeling and simulation in support of engineering design, product performance and manufacturing processes, said Wilbur Birchler of Engineering Analysis (ESA-EA) and the principal contact at the Lab for the conference.

The co-chairpersons of the conference are John Erickson of Design Engineering (ESA-DE) and Steven Girrens of ESA-EA.

Workshop topics include engineering mechanics, computation fluid dynamics, engineering design and manufacturing, and modeling and simulation.

Birchler said abstracts should be submitted to him by June 10. Principal contacts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories also are accepting abstracts, he said.

Authors of abstracts will be notified if their abstracts are accepted in mid-July. Registration forms for the conference should be available by mid-August and the deadline to register for the conference is Oct. 1. The registration fee is $150.

Abstracts should be 300 words or less and should be submitted to Birchler through electronic mail at birchler@lanl.gov. Abstracts should be submitted as ASCII text files and unclassified, he added.

Authors are responsible for obtaining proper Lab approval of the abstract prior to its submission to the conference organizing committee.

The tri-lab conference, Birchler said, provides a forum for participants to share information on recently developed and current computer codes for modeling physical processes. Conference participants also can discuss solutions to engineering problems in nuclear and conventional weapons and energy programs; describe creative approaches to the solution of engineering problems, explore trends in computer hardware and software and their impact on engineering simulation, and interact with peers from other labs, he said.

More information on the conference also is available online.

-- Steve Sandoval

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