Sandia Lab News

State of the Labs

Labs Director Steve Younger gave his annual State of the Labs address on Oct. 30, encouraging Sandians to pause and think about what we’ve accomplished and where Sandia is headed. He described numerous accomplishments and praised Labs employees for taking intellectual leadership in defining the future of nuclear deterrence.

Power plants get watered down

Electricity production is one of the industries that uses the most water in the country each day. Sandia researchers are helping the largest power plant in the U.S. identify the most efficient and cost-effective strategies to reduce water use. They have developed a first-of-its-kind comprehensive system dynamics analysis that can show power plants which wet cooling systems can save them money.

Internships fuel research for Puerto Rico engineering students

The NNSA-sponsored Consortium for Integrating Energy Systems in Engineering and Science Education internship program connects engineering students from five Hispanic-serving institutions, including UPRM, with research at Sandia and the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Building a medical-isotope producing reactor

Eden Radioisotopes LLC, a New Mexico company, secured funding this year and located 240 acres of land in the southeastern corner of the state to build a small reactor that exclusively will produce medical isotopes. The concept was developed and licensed by Sandia, and the effort, in partnership with Eden, earned a regional Excellence in Technology Transfer Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium.

Sandia Gives California

The annual Sandia Gives campaign launched Oct. 5 at Fertile GroundWorks in Livermore, as volunteers spent the morning gleaning 305 pounds of squash, weeding 240 square feet of garden beds and adding 1,200 pounds of compost to the soil to grow even more food — more than 3,500 beet plants.