(AGENPARL) – Fri 28 March 2025 A weekly compendium of media reports on science and technology achievements
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Though the Laboratory reviews
items for overall accuracy, the reporting organizations are responsible for
the content in the links below.
….. LLNL Report, March 28, 2025
The experimental setup at LLNL to measure the recoil energy of lithium atoms.
(Image: Garry McLeod/LLNL)
… Tabletop traps for neutrinos
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/44139/Precision-tabletop-neutrino-science-starts-with?searchresult=1
Pitching neutrinos can be easier than catching them. Because the lightweight
particles stream mostly unencumbered through any matter they encounter,
neutrino detectors must monitor gargantuan volumes of water or other
material, ever vigilant for the signs of a rare neutrino interaction,
wherever it may occur. On the other hand, the processes that create
neutrinos, including certain nuclear decays and particle reactions, can be
readily localized and precisely studied even in a tabletop experiment.
That’s the idea behind the BeEST (Beryllium Electron capture in
Superconducting Tunnel junctions), an experiment headed by Kyle Leach of
Colorado School of Mines in Golden and Stephan Friedrich at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
Read More
https://pubs..aip.org/physicstoday/online/44139/Precision-tabletop-neutrino-science-starts-with?searchresult=1
El Capitan’s MI300A Instinct APUs deliver unmatched computational
performance, energy efficiency and reliability, and are well-suited for work
in support of AI-driven workloads. (Image: Garry McLeod/LLNL)
… Defining a supercomputer

So What is a Supercomputer Anyway?

Over the decades there have been many denominations coined to classify
computer systems, usually when they were used in different fields or
technological improvements caused significant shifts.
Perhaps a fair way to classify supercomputers is that the ‘supercomputer’
aspect is a highly time-limited property. During the 1940s, Colossus and
ENIAC were without question the supercomputers of their era, while 1976’s
Cray-1 wiped the floor with everything that came before, yet all of these are
archaic curiosities next to today’s top two supercomputers. Both the El
Capitan and Frontier supercomputers are exascale level machines.
Taking up 700 m2 of floor space at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(LLNL) and drawing 30 MW of power, El Capitan’s CPUs are paired with AMD
Instinct MI300A accelerators.. El Capitan’s 11,136 nodes, containing four
MI300As each, rely on a number of high-speed interconnects to distribute
computing work across all cores.
Read More https://hackaday.com/2025/03/19/so-what-is-a-supercomputer-anyway/
With resonance ionization mass spectrometry, researchers at LLNL can also
analyze nuclear material and provide critical information to help determine
origin and intended use.
… Remotely sensing radioactivity

CO2 laser enables long-range detection of radioactive material

Researchers have demonstrated that they can remotely detect radioactive
material from 10 meters away using short-pulse CO2 lasers – a distance over
ten times farther than achieved via previous methods.
Conventional radiation detectors, such as Geiger counters, detect particles
that are emitted by the radioactive material, typically limiting their
operational range to the material’s direct vicinity. The new method,
developed by a research team headed up at the University of Maryland and
including authors from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, instead
leverages the ionization in the surrounding air, enabling detection from much
greater distances.
The study may one day lead to remote sensing technologies that could be used
in nuclear disaster response and nuclear security.
Read More

CO2 laser enables long-range detection of radioactive material

Before and after views of the Building 251 demolition at LLNL in late 2024.
(Image: DOE)
… Clean up on campus
https://www.energy.gov/em/articles/llnl-milestone-crews-remove-building-slab-after-demolishing-historic-facility
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) is
preparing to remove a building slab at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(LLNL) after crews successfully removed hazards from a historic facility and
demolished it late last year.
“This successful D&D means that the significant risks at three of the four
highest-risk excess facilities have now been removed: Building 175, Building
280 reactor and Building 251,” said Kevin Bazzell, EM’s federal project
director for LLNL and nearby Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“Safely removing one of the most contaminated buildings onsite is a huge
milestone for the partnered teams of EM and laboratory staff,” Bazzell
added. “We are thrilled to be a part of the building’s evolution,
creating space for new mission elements and modernized infrastructure.”
Read More
https://www.energy.gov/em/articles/llnl-milestone-crews-remove-building-slab-after-demolishing-historic-facility
In 2023, researchers from LLNL and Verne (above) demonstrated a hydrogen
storage system that can support heavy-duty vehicles, such as semi-trucks.
Now, they’ve been working on compression and cooling techniques. (Image:
Verne)
… Making hydrogen dense without the expense

Commercial Operations Begin At New US Green Hydrogen Plant

Hydrogen stakeholders still need to address the cost of storage and
transportation. “So far, the hydrogen supply chain has been hindered by a
trade-off between compressed gaseous hydrogen — which is cheap to produce,
but low in density — and liquid hydrogen — which is high in density, but
expensive to densify (via liquefaction),” explains Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory.
“This trade-off has led to expensive distribution costs that have limited
the adoption of hydrogen solutions,” LLNL adds.
The lab has been working with the California startup Verne on a modular,
scalable solution that integrates compression and cooling, to yield
high-density hydrogen without the high expense and energy consumption of
liquefaction systems. The idea builds on research initiated in the 1990’s
by LLNL scientist Salvador Aceves and his team.
Read More

Commercial Operations Begin At New US Green Hydrogen Plant

——————————————————————————
Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory https://www.llnl.gov
provides solutions to our nation’s most important national security
challenges through innovative science, engineering and technology. Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory is managed by Lawrence Livermore National
Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security
Administration.
Read previous Lab Report articles online https://www.llnl.gov/news/lab-report
— Unsubscribe from this newsletter :