Los Alamos National Laboratory
Delivering science and technology to protect our nation and promote world stability
Reusing Water
Millions of gallons of industrial wastewater is recycled at LANL by virtue of a long-term strategy to treat wastewater rather than discharging it into the environment.
April 12, 2012
Water from cooling the supercomputer is release to maintain a healthy wetland.
Contact
- Environmental Communication & Public Involvement
- P.O. Box 1663 MS K491
- Los Alamos, NM 87545
- (505) 667-3792
We reuse the same water up to six times before releasing it back into the environment cleaner than when it was pumped.
How many times does LANL reuse water?
Wastewater is generated from some of the facilities responsible for the Lab’s biggest missions, such as the cooling towers of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, one of the Lab’s premier science research facilities, and the Strategic Computing Complex, which creates world-class, high-performance computing production systems.
LANL diverts treated sanitary wastewater and water flushed from cooling towers to the Sanitary Effluent Reclamation Facility (SERF).
This treated wastewater is then reused in cooling towers around the Laboratory.
