Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
10/9/2015
Eighteen projects from National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) labs, some of which feature nuclear deterrence and stockpile stewardship applications, have been chosen by an independent panel of judges as finalists for R&D Magazine’s annual R&D 100 Awards, which recognizes “the 100 most innovative technologies and services of the past year,” the NNSA announced recently.
Several Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) projects are finalists, including the Lab-scale Asynchronous Radiography System (LARS), which “can provide continuous high-speed x-ray imaging of spontaneous dynamic events, such as explosions, reaction-front propagation and material failure,” according to the lab. “The study of how certain materials behave under extreme conditions of pressure, density, and temperature are central to stockpile stewardship,” LANL spokesman Kevin Roark said by email. The NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program maintains and modernizes the U.S. nuclear stockpile without full-scale nuclear explosive testing.
LANL’s Multi-dimensional Hashed Indexed Middleware (MDHIM) software “enables analysis of large subsets of data for high performance computing, such as is used for NNSA programs,” Roark said, noting that “advanced computer modeling and simulation and the ability to visualize very large dynamic datasets is also a key component of stockpile stewardship.” Another LANL project associated with the stockpile initiative is the Structural Health Monitoring software that can detect damage to critical structures, “from aircraft and buildings to bridges and mechanical infrastructure,” according to the NNSA. The software is able to “quickly prototype and evaluate damage-detection processes” and is “being examined for Enhanced Surveillance applications,” Roark said.
Sandia National Laboratories’ (SNL) Portable Rotating Imager using Self Modulation (PRISM), an award finalist, is a device capable of detecting special nuclear material at distances of up to 100 meters within 30 minutes, combining both “a large active detection area with directional information,” lab spokesman Neal Singer said. The system “can distinguish a localized threat from background fluctuations,” Singer noted, and may be taken to areas suspected of containing nuclear material to localize the source, or be “permanently stationed at a single location such as a government building and operated continuously to detect the approach of a threat source.”
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) finalists include the Harsh Environment Tag (HET) System, a technology “suited for time-sensitive and real-time inventory or personnel tracking in environments that are hostile with respect to radio frequency signals,” LLNL spokesman Steve Wampler said. He noted that HET tags are battery-free with indefinite lifetime and are larger than those currently used by emergency responders. The tags enable “long-range, non-line-of-sight reading of items in harsh environments including: heavy reflective, absorptive, and cluttered surroundings,” Wampler said, but he declined to discuss the technology’s “possible defense applications.”
Two projects from the Y-12 National Security Complex have also been named finalists: the LISe Thermal Neutron Imager (LTNI), which offers law enforcement and national security applications, and the Chemical Identification by Magneto-Elastic Sensing (ChIMES), a portable sensor that detects “chemical and biological warfare agents, toxic industrial chemicals, explosives and illegal drugs,” the NNSA said. The Nevada National Security Site’s (NNSS) finalist project, the Argus Photonic Doppler Velocimetry (PDV) lens array probe, is an “imaging technology used in subcritical experiments” that uses “fiber matrix arrays that are focused onto different regions of a curved surface to measure the velocity distribution of an imploding surface,” NNSS spokesman Dante Pistone said.
R&D 100 Awards winners will be honored in November in Las Vegas.
