spring a quarterly research & development journal … · an image across the internet, as a...

More Powerful,Longer-Lasting Batteries

Rings Around the Earth

A QUARTERLY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT JOURNALVOLUME 5, NO. 1

BeThereNow Enhancing Long-distanceCollaborations

SPRING • 2003

S A N D I A T E C H N O L O G Y

Sandia Technology is a quarterly journal published bySandia National Laboratories. Sandia is a multiprogramengineering and science laboratory operated by SandiaCorporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for theDepartment of Energy. With main facilities in Albuquerque,New Mexico, and Livermore, California, Sandia has broad-based research and development responsibilities for nuclearweapons, arms control, energy, the environment, economiccompetitiveness, and other areas of importance to the needsof the nation. The Laboratories’ principal mission is tosupport national defense policies, by ensuring that thenuclear weapon stockpile meets the highest standards ofsafety, reliability, security, use control, and militaryperformance. For more information on Sandia, see ourWeb site at http://www.sandia.gov.

To request additional copies or to subscribe, contact:Michelle FlemingMedia Relations Communications Dept.MS 0165Sandia National LaboratoriesP.O. Box 5800Albuquerque, NM 87185-0165Voice: (505) 844-4902Fax: (505) 844-1392e-mail: [email protected]

Sandia Technology Staff:Laboratory Directed Research & Development Program Manager: Henry WestrichMedia Relations and Communications Department Manager: Bruce FetzerEditor: Will Keener, Sandia National LaboratoriesWriting: Chris Burroughs, Neal Singer, John German, Michael Janes, and Chris MillerPhotography: Randy J. Montoya, Bud Pelletier, Bill Doty, Sandia National LaboratoriesDesign: Douglas Prout, Technically Write

ON THE COVER: New Hardware that will enable theviewing and minipulation of images based on very largedata sets has been developed at Sandia NationalLaboratories. Here Lyndon Pierson (left) and PerryRobertson examine a video encoder and decoder thatallow a user to work interactively with others thousandsof miles away.(Photo by Randy Montoya)

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Dear Readers: This issue of Sandia Technologyexplores the breadth of Sandiaresearch capabilities, ranging fromthe possibilities of asteroids creatingEarth rings (page 6) to the quest tocreate more powerful, longer-lastingand smaller batteries for our modernelectronic devices (page 4). Elsewhere, Sandia researchers arehard at work on hardware solutionsto the problem of sharing huge datafiles, so that experts located in variousfar-flung locations can confer andanalyze in a timely manner (page 2).The military, medical, and industrialapplications for this are only beginningto be uncovered. Addressing ongoing public andgovernment concerns about theeventual shipment of spent fuel rodsfrom nuclear power plants to apermanent geologic repository, someinteresting Labs research (page 9) isunder way. These efforts focus onmore precisely defining just howreactive fuel rods are — given thatmany have now been in cooling pondsor dry storage for several decades. We also take this opportunity toreport on the professional recognition(page 12) accorded four individualsand one Sandia team in recentmonths. Other projects involvingputting man-made carbon dioxideback into the ground instead of intothe atmosphere (page 14), makingthe nation’s aging fleet of firefightingaircraft safer (page 15), and helpingto create a research road map toreduce the cost of water desalinationand ensure a secure US supply offresh water (page 16) into the future. As always, we encourage you torespond to the contacts listed witheach article for more information onthese interesting projects.

Will KeenerEditor

F R O M T H EE d i t o r

T A B L E O FC o n t e n t s

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4

6

9

12

14

Enhancing Long-DistanceCollaborations

More Powerful, Longer-LastingBatteries

Rings AroundEarth

New Reactor Probes SpentFuel Reactivity

Three Named to NationalAcademy of Engineering

NEWSNOTES

surgeon in New York wants theopinion quickly of a specialist inLos Angeles. A commanding general needs to conferwith a battle staff spread out across anoperational theater, prior to making a keystrategy decision. A petroleum exploration team,investigating across two continents, needsto confer over the latest geophysical dataon an oilfield prospect in order to pass atimely recommendation on to management. Recent options for transmitting the hugeamounts of data associated with any ofthese examples include sending files as e-mail attachments or making them accessiblein Internet drop zones. Unfortunately forthe hypothetical patient on operating table,the soldiers awaiting orders in the field, orthe oil company managers trying to makea timely decision, extremely large files maytake a half-hour to transmit and require avery large computer — perhaps notavailable — to form images from thecomplicated data.

Additionally, each rotation of the medicalimage for better viewing can take minutesto appear. The same is true of managinglarge mapping overlays or the kinds of3-D geophysical images the explorationteam might need. Now, interactive remote-visualizationhardware that allows these professionalsto view and manipulate these data-densefiles as though standing in the same roomhas been developed at Sandia NationalLaboratories. The tool also will work for a host ofapplications for anyone with a need tointeract with computer-generated imagesfrom remote locations. “The niche for this product is when thedata set you’re trying to visualize is so largeyou can’t move it, and yet you want to becollaborative, to share it without sendingcopies to separate locations,” says Sandiateam leader Lyndon Pierson.Stretching video cables The Sandia hardware, for which a patenthas been applied, allows the data to be keptat a main location, but sends images tolocations ready to receive them. Theinteractivity then available is similar to twopeople operating a game board. The lag time between action and visibleresult is les than 0.1 second, even thoughthe remote computer is thousands of milesaway and the data sets are huge. “We expect our method will interest oilcompanies, universities, the military —anywhere people have huge quantities ofvisualization data to transmit and be jointlystudied,” says Pierson, who works withSandia’s Advanced Networking Integrationgroup. “Significant commercial interest [inthe new device] has been demonstrated bymultiple companies.”

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Sandia researchershave developed

interactive remote-visualization

hardware that allowslong-distancecollaborations

involving theviewing and

manipulation ofimages based on

very large data sets.This “Be There Now”

hardware is likesitting at the consoleof a supercomputer

from a thousandmiles away.


A

Enhancing Long-Distance Collaborations

Lyndon Pierson (left) and Perry Robertsonexamine their group’s video encoder and decoder.(Photo by Randy Montoya)

The Sandia hardware leverages theadvances in 3-D commercial renderingtechnology “in order not to re-invent thewheel,” says Sandia researcher PerryRobertson, assigned to the Labs’ RadioFrequency and Opto Microsystemsdepartment. Graphics cards for video games haveextraordinary 2-D and even 3-D renderingcapabilities within the cards themselves. Butimages from these cards, typically fed tonearby monitors, do not solve the problemof how to plug them into a network, saysRobertson. The Sandia extension hardware lookselectronically just like a monitor to thegraphics card, says Robertson. “So, to movean image across the Internet, as a first stepour device grabs the image.“

Transmitting image and responses

The Sandia hardware squeezes the videodata, flooding in at nearly 2.5 gigabits asecond, into a network pipe that carries lessthan 0.5 gigabits/sec. “While compressionis not hard, it’s hard to do fast. And it hasto be interactive, which streaming videotypically is not,” says Pierson. The Sandia compression minimizes dataloss to ensure image fidelity. “Users needto be sure that the things they see on thescreen are real, and not some artifact ofimage compression,” he says. The group knew that a hardware solutionwas necessary to keep up with the incomingvideo stream. “Without it, the receiver’sframe rate would be unacceptably slow,”says Robertson. “We wanted the user toexperience sitting right at the supercomputerfrom thousands of miles away.” In an attempt to reduce the need foradditional hardware,” says John Eldridge, aSandia researcher who wrote the softwareapplications, “we also created softwareversions of the encoder and decoder unitsfor testing purposes. However, there is only

so much you can do in software at thesehigh resolutions and frame rates.” The custom-built apparatus has twoboards — one for compression, the otherfor expansion. The boards use standard low-cost SDRAM memory, like that found inmost PCs, for video buffers. Four re-programmable logic chips do the main bodyof work. A single-board PC running Linuxis used for supervisory operations. “Weturned to Linux because of its networkingsupport and ease of use,” says Ron Olsberg,a Sandia project engineer. “We built this apparatus for very complexvisualizations. If we could have bought itoff the shelf, we would have,” saysRobertson. Funded by the AdvancedScientific Computing Initiative, a pair ofboards cost about $25,000. They are expectedto cost much less when commerciallyavailable. A successful demonstration took placein late October between Chicago and theAmsterdam Technology Center in theNetherlands. A second demonstrationoccurred between Sandia locations inAlbuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore,California, and the show floor of theSupercomputing 2002 convention inBaltimore, Maryland, last November. “Now that this technology is out there,we expect other applications will begin totake advantage of it,” says Pierson. “Theirexperiences and improvements willeventually feed back into US militarycapability.”

Media: Neal Singer, [email protected],(505) 845-7078

Technical: Lyndon Pierson,[email protected], (505) 845-8212

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“We expectour methodwill interest

oil companies,universities, the

military — anywherepeople have huge

quantities ofvisualization data

to transmit and bejointly studied.”

Lyndon Pierson

Team Leader

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More powerful,longer-lasting and

smaller batteriesare on the horizon

for laptops, cellphones, and othersystems, thanks toa Sandia-developed

materials break-through. Some

material propertiesmay be improved

by as much as400 percent.

More PowerfulLonger-Lasting

Batteries esearchers at Sandia NationalLaboratories in Livermore, California, havedeveloped a new class of composite anodematerials composed of silicon and graphitethat may double the energy storage capacitiescurrently possessed by graphite anodes. Thisprovides the potential for rechargeablelithium-ion batteries with more power, longerlife, and smaller sizes. “Manufacturers of electric automobiles,laptop computers, cell phones, power tools,and other hybrid microsystems will likelyall benefit from this kind of technology,”says Scott Vaupen of Sandia’s CaliforniaBusiness Development group. Sandia isactively seeking collaborators to furtherdevelop the technology for eventual licensingand commercialization, he says. The marriage of silicon and graphite mayimprove the specific capabilities ofcommercial graphite anode materials up to400 percent, says Jim Wang, manager ofSandia’s Analytical Materials Sciencedepartment . “Currently, no device exists that isaltogether small, robust, long lasting, andhigh-powered enough to meet therequirements of hybrid microsystems,” saysWang. “Electronics designers are forced touse low power-consumption componentsand designs that are limited in their longevity.

Our newly discovered anode materials canimprove the performance of microsystemsby allowing for more powerful, sophisticatedelectronic components and by reducing thesize and weight of the overall system.”

Improved capacity retention

Wang explains that researchers have, foryears, been vexed by the capacity limitsassociated with traditional lithium batteryanodes. Sandia turned to silicon, which offersmore than 10 times the lithium capacitypotential of graphite, but is hampered by arapid capacity loss during the battery cyclingphase. When small particles of silicon arecombined within a graphite matrix, however,the large capacities are retained. “The promising aspects of these materialsare the large capacities, the capacity retentionduring cycling compared to other high-capacity materials, and the ability to controlperformance by changing the compositecomposition and microstructure,” Wang says. Karl Gross, one of the principalinvestigators on the team, said thesilicon/graphite composites could beproduced via a simple milling process. Theproduction technique is common within thebattery industry, and the raw materials neededto produce the electrode material have provento be inexpensive and abundant, Gross says. The discovery could have wide-rangingimpact on both consumer and nationaldefense applications, says Ken Wilson,deputy director of Sandia’s Materials andEngineering Sciences center. Sandia’s hybridmicrosystems program, Wilson explains,focuses in part on wireless radiation detectorsand other microsensor systems and devicesused for homeland security applications.These systems are in need of enhancedsources of power and longevity.

An electrode made by coating copper foil with thenew silicon/graphite material, like the wafer-sizeddisc shown at left, could serve as a more compact,longer-lasting power source for rechargeablelithium-ion batteries.

R

In studying the new material’sperformance, Wang and other researchers atSandia took a methodical approach thatspanned three years. They first producedcomposite powders with varying silicon-to-carbon ratios and microstructures, thenproduced electrodes from those powders andevaluated their performance by electro-chemical measurements. They then examinedstructural changes in the electrodes duringcycling to understand the lithium transfermechanism and materials phase changes tofurther improve the new material. According to Greg Roberts, a PostDoctoral team member, research anddevelopment focused on the replacement ofgraphite electrodes in rechargeable lithiumbatteries has taken many forms over theyears. Possible replacement candidates, heexplains, have included non-graphiticcarbons, intermetallics, oxides, nitrides, andcomposites. While each material has uniqueadvantages and disadvantages that need tobe considered when designing a battery fora specific application, Roberts says thesilicon/graphite electrode materials arepromising for applications that require highcapacities delivered at low-to-moderate rates.

Setting the standard

Sandia researchers acknowledge thatsome potential vulnerabilities exist with thenew material. The complete elimination offading of long-term cycling capacity in thesilicon-based electrodes, may not be possible,though it can likely be minimized by thedesign of the carbon-silicon compositemicrostructure. Still, Wang is confident that thesilicon/graphite electrode materials have setthe bar for future breakthroughs. “We believethat only other silicon-containing electrodematerials can compete with the largecapacities that our silicon/graphitecomposites have demonstrated,” he said. The work was sponsored by Sandia’sLaboratory Directed Research andDevelopment ( ) program, incollaboration with David Ingersoll ofSandia’s Lithium Battery Research andDevelopment Department in New Mexico.

Contacts:Media: Mike Janes, [email protected],(925) 294-2447

Technical: Jim Wang, [email protected],(925) 294-2786

Business: Scott Vaupen,[email protected], (925) 294-2322

Each material hasunique advantagesand disadvantages

that need to beconsidered when

designing a batteryfor a specific

application.

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A Sandia researcher assembles an electrochemical cell totest the capacity of a silicon/graphite electrode. The

silicon/graphite mix could improve the specific capabilitiesof commercial graphite anode materials by

up to 400 percent.

Scanning electron microscope image of silicon-carbon nanocomposite.

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ould Earth have hadrings around it? Two scientists — PeterJ. Fawcett, of the Universityof New Mexico, and MarkB.E. Boslough, of SandiaNational Laboratories —have suggested that ageologica l ly “recent”collision (about 35 millionyears ago) may have causedsuch a temporary debris ring. The two also suggest thatsuch temporary rings —lasting from 100,000 to a fewmillions of years — mayhave cast massive shadows,altering patterns of climate.These conclusions werespelled out in a recent articlein the Journal of GeophysicalResearch, Atmospheres.

Lore of the Rings

“One way to get a ring,” says Sandia’sBoslough, “is with an impact.” There is agrowing body of evidence showing that theearth has been subjected to numerous impactsby comets and asteroids throughout itshistory. Among these impacts are the MeteorCrater, in Arizona, the buried Chixulub crater,in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and achain of at least five craters spread acrossseveral continents. Several studies, both theoretical and withlaboratory data, suggest that some largeimpacts are capable of ejecting material intospace in the form of debris rings, if themechanics of the impact meet certain

requirements. The authors conclude that themostly likely scenario for ring creation is alow-angle impact by a large asteroid. Someearth materials spewing out into near spacefrom the collision and melted meteoricdebris, called “tektites,” would form thering materials. Boslough describes the low-angle impactas a case where the collision object ricochetsback into the atmosphere. The ricochetbecomes part of an expanding vapor cloud,setting up an interaction that allows someof the debris to attain orbit velocity. Theorbiting debris will collapse into a singleplane based on the same mechanisms thatled to the rings of Saturn and other planets,Boslough explains. Such a ring would mostlikely form near the equator, because of thedynamics involved with the moon and theearth’s equatorial bulge.

While most of usknow about the

rings aroundSaturn and Jupiter,

some scientistsbelieve there may

once have beenrings of rock

debris around ourown planet.

Further, the ringsmay very wellexplain some

records of unusualclimate change,

trapped in Earth’sgeologic record.

C

Peter Fawcett, left, and Mark Boslough examine some of the possible materialsinvolved in creating rings around the Earth at a display at the University ofNew Mexico Meteorite Museum, in Albuquerque. (Photo by Randy Montoya)

Rings Around the

EARTH


Speculation on climates past

The effects of the larger impact eventson earth’s environment and climate havebeen the subjects of much speculation andresearch over the past two decades. “Clearly,large impacts have affected the evolution ofthe earth, life on it and its atmosphericenvironment,” says Fawcett. Much of the work has focused on theCretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary event,which marked a mass extinction and the endof the age of the dinosaurs about 65 millionyears ago. A number of these studies suggestan impact resulting in the suspension of alayer of dust in the upper atmosphereblocking sunlight and cooling the earth. Thetwo researchers asked if other impacts mightresult in different atmosphere-alteringphenomena? An equatorial ring would cast a shadowprimarily in the tropics, as it does for Saturn.Depending on location, surface area, anddarkness of the ring shadow, the amount ofincoming solar warmth, or insolation, couldbe significantly altered, the two authors

conclude. To test their theory, the twoassumed an opaque ring, like Saturn’s B-ring, scaled to earth-size and tested globalclimate affects using a climate model. The model selected and modified for thesimulation was developed by the NationalCenter for Atmospheric Research. TheCenter’s “Genesis” climate model includesatmospheric circulation information andlayers of vegetation, soil, snow, seatemperature and land ice data. The goals ofthe LDRD funded project were for Sandiato adapt a popular climate code to run ondistributed-memory parallel computers andto establish relationships with the climatechange research community, Bosloughexplains. The Labs made use of its SandiaUniversity Research Program to fundFawcett’s efforts to analyze the data fromthe adapted code.

A Ring World

“The equatorial debris ring has a profoundeffect on climate, because it reflects asignificant fraction of tropical insolationback to space before it can interact with theatmosphere,” the authors conclude. Surfaceand atmospheric temperatures, changes intemperature ranges from equator to poles,circulation patterns and the rain and snowcycles were all impacted by the ring, themodel shows. The two scientists looked at changesshown in the model to predict changes thatmight be found in the earth’s geologic recordas a way to test their work. In addition tothe K-T boundary event, they looked at amore recent impacts and a much older one. The most recent event — about 35 millionyears ago — is identified by an iridium layer(often associated with meteors) and twopronounced micotektite fields, where thesemelted meteor-related materials have been

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A Saturn-like ring around Earth would create a shadow,reducing solar radiation. Illustrated is how the positionof the shadow would change with the seasons.

Much of the workhas focused on theCretaceous-Tertiary

(K-T) boundaryevent, which

marked a massextinction and theend of the age of

the dinosaursabout 65 million

years ago.

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found strewn across the landscape and dated.Climatic records from sedimentary materialsjust above the iridium/microtektite intervalindicate a 100,000-year cooling interval.Orbiting debris in a ring, casting its shadowin the subtropics, could have sustained sucha cooling trend, the authors suggest. The K-T boundary impact — about 65million years ago — was much larger thanthe more recent impact and had a muchlarger immediate effect on the environmentas measured by extinctions and atmosphericchanges. But there were no long-term effectson the climate, leading the authors toconclude the event probably did not generatea debris ring.

Snowball Earth

Another interesting aspect of the modelingwork is its implications for the so-called“Snowball Earth” theory. This theory holdsthat the earth was completely frozen overat the surface as many as four times in theneoproterozoic period — 750 to 580 millionyears ago. While much remains to be learnedabout the geologic evidence for this theory,“an opaque ring could have acted as thetrigger to at least one episode of globalglaciation,” the two researchers say. Thiswould address one difficult question for thetheorists: how did earth come to be frozen?

Contacts:Media: Will Keener, [email protected],(505) 844-1690

Technical: Mark Boslough,[email protected], (505) 845-8851; orPeter Fawcett, [email protected],(505) 277-3867


The “SnowballEarth” theory holds

that the planetwas completely

frozen over at thesurface as many

as four times.

The climate code was modified toinclude a ring shadow in itscalculation of the daily averageincoming solar radiation (insolation)at the top of Earth's atmosphere,which varies with the season.

Geologists have found evidence that leads some to believe that ourplanet has been completely frozen several times during its history.

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ecent experiments by Sandiaresearcher Gary Harms and his team areusing a new Labs-built reactor to showthat spent nuclear fuel —used at nuclearpower plants — is considerably lessreactive than the original fresh fuel. Thiscould mean significant savings in theeventual safe transport, storage, anddisposal of nuclear waste. “The conservative view has alwaysbeen to treat spent fuel like it just cameout of the factory with its full reactivity,”Harms says. “This results in the numbersof canisters required for handling of spentnuclear fuel to be conservatively high,driving up shipping and storage costs.” Harms, a member of Sandia’s AppliedNuclear Technologies department, isproject leader for the experiments. Spent fuel is made from enricheduranium pellets, which are placed in fuelrods and used to power reactors for anumber of years. When the uranium fuel’spotential to produce electrical power is

exhausted, the fuel is described as“spent.” Typically, power plants storespent fuel in enclosed cooling pondsor dry storage casks. Eventually theserods will be moved to a permanentstorage repository. The more realistic view is that asnuclear fuel is burned, the reactivity ofthe fuel decreases. This is due to theconsumption of some of the uranium andto the accumulation of fission products,the “ash” left from burning the nuclearfuel. Accounting for this reactivitydecrease, or taking a so-called “burnupcredit,” would allow spent nuclear fuelto be safely packed in more dense arraysfor transportation, storage, and disposalthan would be possible if thesecomposition changes were ignored. “Allowing such burnup credit wouldresult in significant cost savings inthe handling of spent nuclear fuel,”Harms adds.

Spent fuel is madefrom enriched

uranium pellets,which are placed infuel rods and usedto power reactors

for a numberof years.


NEWREACTOR

R

probesspent fuelreactivity

Sandia researcher Gary Harmsconducts experiments with a new

Sandia-built reactor that arepaving the way toward possible

changes in regulations ontransport and storage of

nuclear waste.(Photo by Randy Montoya)

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This seems obviouson the surface, but inthe ultraconservativewor ld o f nuc learcriticality safety, aneffect must be provenbefore it is accepted.Thus, prior to theNuclear RegulatoryCommi s s i on eve ragreeing to allow anytransportation, storageor disposal changes, conclusive proof isneeded. This will have to come fromactual experiments and from computermodels showing the same effects. In 1999 Harms obtained a three-year grant from the Department ofEnergy’s (DOE) Nuclear Energy ResearchInitiative to make benchmarkmeasurements of spent nuclear fuelreactivity. The project was called theBurnup Credit Critical Experiment.Rhodium, an important fission productabsorber, was chosen for the firstmeasurements. To do this, the team first designedand built a small reactor — technicallycalled a critical assembly — which useslow-enriched fuel. The reactor, whichoperated during the experiments at alower power than a household light bulb,was subjected to several layers of safetyreviews. During the experiments, itperformed safely and exactly as predicted. “It took us most of the three years tobuild the reactor and get authorization

to use it. Only in the last few monthshave we begun actual experiments,”Harms says. “ The experiments involved a fewhundred rods full of pellets of cleanuranium that originally came from thenuclear powered ship NS Savannah.Thirty-six of the rods can be opened toinsert experiment materials between thefuel pellets. Prior to conductingexperiments with the rhodium, theresearchers loaded the reactor to thecritical level with only the uranium fuel.This provided a baseline point of whereuranium goes critical — information thatcould be compared to later experiments. Then, the team added about 1,200circular rhodium foils between the uraniumpellets in the 36 rods. The intent was tomeasure the extent to which the rhodiumreduced the reactivity of the uranium.“We then compared the critical loadingof the assembly with the rhodium foils tothe critical loading without rhodium,”Harms says.

The experimentsinvolved a few

hundred rods full ofpellets of clean

uranium thatoriginally came

from the nuclear-powered shipNS Savannah.

A look at the reactor core duringits construction.

Now at the end ofthe three-year

funding period,Harms says the

Sandia program hascome a long way in

proving that thereactivity of spent

fuel is considerablyless than that of

fresh fuel.

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And, not to anyone’s surprise, it tooksignificantly more fuel to reach the criticallevel with the rhodium-doped rods thanwithout them. Months before running the physicalexperiments on the reactor, Harms wasmodeling on Sandia’s sophisticatedcomputers to determine where the uraniumdoped with rhodium would go critical. “Iwas curious,” Harms says, “I didcalculations ahead of time so I could layout the experiment and get a peek atwhat the experiments would say. In theend, I was fairly impressed with howaccurate the calculations were comparedto the actual physical experiments.” Harms says two other fission productsabsorb neutrons better than rhodium.However, he selected rhodium to run theexperiments because it is one of the fewbyproducts of fission that has a singlestable isotope, which meant that theexperiment would not be contaminatedby the effects of other isotopes. Also, noone else has done any experiments withrhodium in a critical assembly. Subsequentexperiments could address the dozen or

so other fission productsthat are important toburnup credit. It appears that Sandiais the only lab in the USdoing actual burnup creditexperiments, says Harms.Oak Ridge NationalLaboratory is runningcodes to determine howthe reactivity of spent fuelis reduced by fissionproducts, but not doingactual experiments. Now at the end of

the three-year funding period, Harms saysthe Sandia program has come a longway in proving that the reactivity of spentfuel is considerably less than that of freshfuel. “In essence Sandia is helping pavethe way for the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission to address the safe and cost-efficient transport and storage of nuclearwaste.”

Contacts:Media: Chris Burroughs, [email protected],(505) 844-0948Technical: Gary Harms, [email protected],(505) 845-3244

Rhodium foils were added betweenuranium pellets in the test fuel rods.

hree Sandia engineers — James Asay,Charles “Jack” Jakowatz, Jr. and AltonRomig — have been elected to membershipin the National Academy of Engineering.This is one of the highest professionaldistinctions that can be accorded an engineer.Academy President William A. Wulfannounced the awards in February. “I was extremely proud to hear that theNational Academy had elected three moreSandians to membership,” says SandiaPresident C. Paul Robinson, who himselfwas elected to the academy in 1998. Therehave been about 15 Sandia employees electedto the Academy since its formation in 1964. Asay, recently retired deputy director in

Sandia’s Weapon ScienceApplications group, was honored“for leadership in engineeringresearch and management of shockwaves and for the development oftools that have contributed tonational security.” He is currentlya research professor and associatedirector at the Institute for ShockPhysics at Washington StateUniversity, Pullman. Jakowatz, manager in the Labs’Signal Processing and Researchdepartment, earned recognition for“innovations in synthetic-apertureradar-image processing critical tomilitary applications andenvironmental monitoring.”

Romig, vicepresident for Scienceand Technology andPartnerships and theLabs’ chief technologyofficer,” earnedelection for “out-standing contributionsto the science andtechnology of

materials and for innovative research anddevelopment of defense systems.”

Sandia’s Salinas code sharesGordon Bell Award

Sandia National Laboratories’ super-computer program Salinas, a structuraldynamics code that simulates the responseof a structure under various loads, sharedthe prestigious Gordon Bell Award at theSuper Computer 2002 conference held inNovember in Baltimore. This is the thirdtime Sandia has won the Gordon Bell Award. The Gordon Bell Award was establishedto reward practical use of parallel processorsby giving a prize for the best performanceimprovement in an application. The awardis given annually at the high performancecomputing and networking conference. Sandia shared the 2002 award with threeJapanese contestants and the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign. Making it to the finals of this year’sGordon Bell Awards was a great achievementfor the creators of Salinas. Only 38 entriesworldwide were deemed acceptable to bejudged by a committee of experts. The

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“I was extremelyproud to hear that

the NationalAcademy had

elected three moreSandians to

membership.”

Paul Robinson

President, Sandia

National Laboratories


Three Named to National Academy of Engineering

T

13


contest was characterized by one Sandiaresearcher as “the Superbowl ofsupercomputing.” Salinas, which tested out at a speed of1.16 teraflops per second, is a practical,widely used program to simulate the stresseson aircraft carriers and buildings, as well as

on reentry vehicles and aspects of the nuclearweapons. “This is the first time a trueengineering code has won the Gordon Bellaward,” said Tom Bickel, director of Sandia’sCenter for Engineering Science. “Salinas isalready having impact on Sandia’s nuclearweapon mission.”

Julia Phillips is the recipient of thefirst US Department of Labor

Women's Bureau's Horizon Awardfor contributing significantly to the

advancement of women inscience and engineering.

Julia Phillips, directorof the Physical andChemical Sciences centerat Sandia NationalLaboratories, was awardedthe US Department of

Labor Women’s Bureau’s Horizon Award atan October ceremony. This is the inauguralyear for the Horizon Award, which goes toa New Mexico resident for contributingsignificantly to the acceptance andadvancement of women in science,engineering, math or technology. Phillips’ efforts in helping women andgirls develop an interest in science andengineering as a career over the past 20 yearsare impressive. “Julia’s resume shows she isthe consummate role model for girls andwomen aspiring in science and engineering,”says Al Romig, Sandia vice president forScience and Technology and Partnerships,who nominated her. Phillips pursued an undergraduate degreein physics from the College of William andMary and a PhD in applied physics fromYale. After Yale, she took a job as a researchscientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories where

she worked with thin films and found herselfactive in programs that encouraged youngpeople, particularly women, to develop aninterest in science. Now as a leader at Sandia, she findsdifferent ways to encourage women inscience. Finding balance between work andpersonal life is one of the keys to a successfulcareer, she says.

Julia Phillips wins first Horizon Award

Researchers atSandia are helping theUS government takethe first small stepstoward reducing netfossil-fuel emissions byreturning some human-produced carbondioxide (CO2) to whereit came from – inoil fields. From late Decemberto February, a multi-organizational researchteam pumped CO2 gasinto a depleted oilreservoir near Hobbs,New Mexico. The CO2capture effort, referredto as carbonsequestration, is one ofseveral under wayaround the country to

slow the rate at which carbon dioxide isaccumulating in the atmosphere. The project goals: improve existing modelsto help researchers predict where CO2 willgo after it is pumped into a reservoir, learnhow far and how fast it will move, anddetermine what chemical reactions occur asthe gas interacts with underground minerals. Researchers also want to identify remotesensing techniques that will measure thesechanges. And they want to know what thecapacity of the reservoir is and how closethat capacity matches their estimates. Fossil-fuel power plants each year pumpsome 2.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide into theatmosphere in the US. Automobile emissionsaccount for similar volumes each year.

The southern New Mexico collaborationis one of several regional partnerships thatmake up the DOE’s Carbon SequestrationProgram, funded by the Office of FossilEnergy. The larger program supports thePresident's Global Climate Change Initiativeand is exploring a variety of ways carbondioxide could be captured at the smokestackand disposed of in a safe places. The DOE’s National Energy TechnologyLab is leading the project. Also involved areLos Alamos National Laboratory, thePetroleum Resource Recovery Center at NewMexico Tech, Strata Production Company,the Colorado School of Mines, and KinderMorgan, an enhanced-oil-recovery company.A variety of seismic techniques havegenerated gigabytes of data that the teamwill be using to create three-dimensionalimages of the underground geology. The dataalso will be used to adapt 3-D geophysicalcomputer models used for oil and gasexploration to help predict results of futuregeologic carbon sequestration efforts.

Technical Contact:Norm [email protected]/844-3640

Media Contact:John [email protected]/844-5199

14


Putting the Carbon Dioxide Back

NEWSNOTES

Norm Warpinski (left) andJohn Lorenz examine core

samples from the carbonsequestration project. Sandia

is supporting the geologicmodeling and studying the

chemical reactivity of theCO2 with the host rock

in laboratory tests.(Photo by Randy Montoya)

15


The US ForestService has begunre-activating large

firefighting tankersusing an improvedaircraft inspection

and certificationprogram designed at

Sandia NationalLaboratories.

After two fatal accidents involving firefightingair tankers last summer, a Blue Ribbon panel onaerial firefighting recommended that none of thelarge air tankers on contract be returned to serviceuntil an enhanced inspection program could beput in place. In late March, using an enhancedinspection program recommended by Sandia, theForest Service certified that a contractor had metall inspection requirements for two P-3 Orions andreturned them to service. Sandia has also completed a similar inspectionand certification process for the DC-4, DC-6, andDC-7 classes of tankers and development of theimproved inspection process for the LockheedP-2V is under way. The large air tankers, (sometimes referred toas “slurry bombers”) including P-3 Orions, DC-4s, DC-6s, and DC-7s, and P-2V Neptunes, areowned and flown by private companies under acontract administered by the Forest Service for allfirefighting agencies. “Until we can acquire newer aircraft down theroad, this partnership with Sandia is a definite steptowards safer operations with the current contractfleet,” said Tony Kern, Forest Service Assistant FireDirector for Aviation. In consultation with the Federal AviationAdministration (FAA), Sandia is evaluatingcontractor procedures for maintaining andinspecting air tankers and is developingrecommendations for enhanced procedures toimprove the ability to find and repair cracks and

other structural problems before they pose a threatto aircraft and their crews, says Sandia’s RichardPerry, manager of the Labs’ AirworthinessAssurance department. “Our initial objective is to use modern inspectiontechnology and what we know about the aging ofaircraft and materials and get the large air tankerssafely back in service as soon as possible for the2003 fire season,” says Perry. In addition, Sandiawill recommend long-term inspection proceduresfor each class of aircraft, including determininghow often each aircraft needs to be inspected toensure cracks don’t have time to grow into structuraldefects. Sandia has pioneered or refined a number ofnondestructive techniques for aircraft inspectionat the Airworthiness Assurance Center inAlbuquerque, managed and staffed by Sandiafor the FAA.

National Interagency Fire Centermedia contact:Rose [email protected]

Sandia National Laboratoriestechnical contact:Richard [email protected]

NEWSNOTES

ReturningFirefighting Air

Tankers to Service It’s shaping up to be another summerof wildfires.

Sandia NationalLaboratories and the Bureauof Reclamation haveannounced the release of aresearch road map to guidefuture investments necessaryto reduce the cost of waterdesalination. The road map, compiledby a panel of experts, alsodiscusses related advancedwater treatment technologiesand enhanced use ofdesalination. The road map defines aresearch and developmentpath for desalination

technologies, beginning today and continuingthrough the year 2020. If implemented, the researchpath would support finding solutions to the nation’swater supply-related needs by advancing waterdesalination technologies. “Cost reduction is the single most importantfactor necessary to increase the implementation ofdesalination, which will in turn reduce pressure onour limited fresh water supplies,” said John Keys,Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. “Aswe enter the fourth year of a drought in manywestern states, it is imperative that we develop newtechnologies to increase our domestic water supply.This innovative report is a step in the right direction.” The Bureau is the largest wholesale watersupplier and the second largest producer ofhydroelectric power in the United States, withoperations and facilities in the 17 western states.The National Academy of Sciences NationalResearch Council (NRC) will now review the reportto address whether the roadmap offers anappropriate and effective course to provide

freshwater needs in the United States. A final reportwill incorporate the comments of the NRC and otherdesalination experts. The expert panel included representatives ofthe private sector, municipal water agencies,academic and other research institutions, and thefederal government representing the breadth ofdesalination issues.

To see the report:http://www.usbr.gov/water/desal.html

Bureau of Reclamation contact:Kevin Price, Manager, Water Technology,Engineering and Research Group(303) 445-2260.

Sandia contact:Tom Hinkebein, Desalination ResearchRoadmap program manager(505) 844-6985.

16


Route to Cost-EffectiveWater Desalination

NEWSNOTES

Desalinationtechnologies couldchange the way the

nation managesand uses water by

providing newprocesses to cost-

effectively andefficiently remove

salts and othercontaminants from

impaired waters.

SAND 2003-1218P

PRSRT STDU.S. PostagePAID

Albuquerque, NMPermit NO. 232

Media Relations & Communications Dept.MS 0165Sandia National LaboratoriesP.O. Box 5800Albuquerque, NM 87185-0165

"I was extremely proud to hear that the NationalAcademy of Engineering had elected three moreSandians to membership. Each is exceptionally

worthy of membership, and it's even moreremarkable that the specialties of these

three are so diverse. I'm particularly proud thatthe Academy has seen fit to induct these

individuals, particularly since some of theirgreatest accomplishments have been performed

in the classified realm. It should beencouraging to all... that such outstanding work

can be awarded Academy membership."

C. Paul Robinson

Sandia President and Labs Director

spring a quarterly research & development journal … · an image across the internet, as a...

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