Several projects from National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratories have been chosen as finalists for R&D Magazine’s 2016 R&D 100 Awards, which recognize 100 innovative technologies throughout the past year. Some of these projects feature applications for the NNSA’s stockpile stewardship operations, which are intended to ensure the continued operational viability of a safe, secure, and effective U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which said it has received 155 R&D Awards since 1978, has contributed three finalist projects and another in conjunction with other labs and universities. One of these is related to stockpile stewardship and involves the nondestructive imaging of the 3D volume of complex objects. The lab’s GLO Transparent Ceramic Scintillator offers more effective high-energy radiography through imaging seven times faster than glass scintillators, also requiring a lower X-ray dose to produce detailed imagery.
The technology was developed with industrial partners for the lab’s Weapons and Complex Integration Directorate. Lab spokeswoman Breanna Bishop said by email that the work has been funded by the directorate’s Enhanced Surveillance Program, part of the NNSA Stockpile Stewardship Program that studies the possible effects of aging on weapon materials.
Another LLNL finalist is the Solution-Grown Crystals for High-Energy Neutron Detection, a technology for growing stilbene crystals that can distinguish between neutrons and gamma rays, helping to differentiate between nuclear substances and benign radioactive sources. Another finalist is the Polyelectrolyte Enabled Liftoff (PEEL) project, used at the lab’s National Ignition Facility for the fabrication of thin membranes used as load-bearing elements for laser targets. “Because the process is easily scalable in size and manufacturing quantity, it could be applied to sensing, catalysis, filtration and wound-healing applications,” the lab said.
Three of eight Los Alamos National Laboratory projects chosen as finalists have stockpile stewardship applications, according to lab spokesman Kevin Roark. He said the Hybrid Optimization Software Suite, which has been used in the analysis of the NNSA’s Source Physics Experiment series, simulates high-strain-rate events occurring in harsh subsurface environments, such as in underground nuclear explosions. Roark noted that NNSA’s conventional explosives experiments support the U.S. capability to detect such subterranean events.
Another technology, MarFS, offers “a new layer of storage for high performance computing environments to deal with output from extremely large simulations,” he said. The Photonic Band Gap Structures project helps the Matter-Radiation Interactions in Extremes (MaRIE) facility at the New Mexico lab to deliver high-quality electron beams that produce hard X-rays for advanced materials analysis and characterization. MaRIE seeks to understand micro- and mesoscale materials phenomena and their effect on weapon performance, according to LANL.
Seven finalist projects from the Sandia National Laboratories include the UXI, or ultra-fast X-ray imager, the fastest multiframe digital X-ray camera in the world, which could be used for inertial confinement fusion experiment diagnostics, according to the lab. Another finalist, the Pyomo v4.1, involves software for the formulation and analysis of mathematical models.
Award winners will be announced on Nov. 3.
