(AGENPARL) – Fri 13 February 2026 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, Feb. 13, 2026
The Washington Post profiled Tammy Ma as part of the newspaper’s “Post Next”
list of 50 people who will define the stories of 2026.
Ma leads the charge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/post-next/interactive/2026/tammy-ma/
The high point of Tammy Ma’s career happened while she was sleeping.
Early one December morning in 2022, scientists at the National Ignition
Facility in Livermore, California, fired 192 lasers at a peppercorn-size fuel
pellet suspended in a giant blue orb.
Almost 400 such shots are deployed each year to test materials under stress
and further our understanding of the physics of nuclear weapons testing and
astrophysical phenomena like supernovas. A few test the potential for
developing a new supply of clean energy by replicating the processes that
power the sun — Ma’s chief focus as director of the Livermore Institute
for Fusion Technology.
The next morning, Ma’s phone lit up as she prepared to board a flight to
Washington, D.C. Members of her staff told her all the signs of a new
breakthrough were there. The lasers had forced atoms to fuse and create what
appeared to be a net energy gain, which would mark a historic milestone in
the decades-long effort to produce commercial energy from fusion.
Read More https://www.washingtonpost.com/post-next/interactive/2026/tammy-ma/
In a first-of-its-kind experiment, weapons-grade plutonium samples were
exposed to intense, pulsed thermonuclear neutron radiation in a safe and
controlled setting at the National Ignition Facility. (Photo: Jason
Laurea/LLNL)
A breathtaking timeline
https://www.exchangemonitor.com/kim-budil-nnsa-regulatory-reform-occurring-at-breathtaking-speed-2/
The current administration is taking “meaningful action on regulatory
reform” on a “breathtaking” timeline at the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA), according to Kim Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory.
“So I think the biggest thing for us has been the meaningful action on
regulatory reform,” Budil said on a panel at Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear
Deterrence Summit last week. “We’ve talked about regulatory reform with
each new administration as they come in. Everyone is very enthusiastic,
committees are formed, ideas are generated, white papers are written, and
really nothing changes. But I’d say what’s happening right now is that
the rule sets are being re-evaluated and rewritten on a time scale that’s
breathtaking.”
Budil added that “when we get relief from some of these requirements, we
have to be ready to show the kinds of benefits that we have been saying will
accrue if you relieve these different types of regulations. So I think that
shift and the meaningful action that’s being taken right now is very
exciting and is a huge opportunity for the enterprise.”
Read More
https://www.exchangemonitor.com/kim-budil-nnsa-regulatory-reform-occurring-at-breathtaking-speed-2/
Members of LLNL’s Livermore Institute for Fusion Energy team engage with a
model of an IFE power plant concept. (Photo: Jason Laurea/LLNL)
The economics of fusion
https://www.ans.org/news/article-7735/llnl-offers-tools-to-model-the-economics-of-inertial-fusion-power-plants/
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has designed a model to help assess
the economic impact of future fusion power plant operations — specifically,
the operation of inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plants. Further, it has
made its Generalized Economics Model (GEM) for Fusion Technology — an Excel
spreadsheet — available for download.
The GEM is a “techno-economic” model that, according to LLNL, “assesses
IFE power plant inputs relevant to diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL)
drive approach with indirect-drive targets… GEM takes user inputs and
determines cost estimates: capital cost, operating and maintenance costs and
cost of electricity. The model enables design optimization through 1D
sensitivity studies and parameter scans from user-inputs.”
Mackenzie Nelson, a techno-economic systems analyst at LLNL’s Livermore
Institute for Fusion Technology (LIFT), explained that “GEM helps the
fusion industry understand how to build an economically viable IFE power
plant. LIFT is excited to make this available to the community as a means of
tapping into our expertise in fusion technology.”
Read More
https://www.ans.org/news/article-7735/llnl-offers-tools-to-model-the-economics-of-inertial-fusion-power-plants/
One of one million cislunar orbits calculated by researchers at LLNL. The
spacecraft follows the colored path over the six-year simulation period.
(Graphic: Dan Herchek)
Orbits on orbits on orbits
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/earth-orbit-is-getting-crowded-can-this-map-of-1-million-routes-around-our-planet-help-prevent-satellite-collisions
Space is getting crowded — nowadays, over 45,000 human-made objects orbit
Earth. A portion of that figure is indeed represented by the thousands of
satellites humans use for internet, GPS and other communications, but it also
takes into account space junk from humanity’s previous space escapades.
Thus, figuring how to prevent collisions has become more important as space
agencies continue to rocket new technology into low Earth orbit — and
there’s already a brisk launch schedule planned for 2026. As such,
researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in
California have developed a new method for modeling orbits in cislunar space,
which refers to the space between and around Earth and the moon.
The researchers modeled what a million orbits would look like over six years
using an open-access database, or code that’s publicly available, and a ton
of processing power from the lab’s supercomputers.
“When you have a million orbits, you can get a really rich analysis using
machine learning applications,” LLNL scientist Denvir Higgins said in an
announcement.
Read More
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/earth-orbit-is-getting-crowded-can-this-map-of-1-million-routes-around-our-planet-help-prevent-satellite-collisions
A new computational study shows that supercooled water can exist in two
different liquid states of differing density (red versus blue). (Image:
Lee-Ping Wang, UC Davis)
Super cool states of water
https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/chemists-provide-new-evidence-two-supercooled-liquid-water-states
In a recent study appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, University of California, Davis and Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL) researchers use computational modeling to investigate a
hypothesized state of supercooled liquid water.
“About 30 years ago, there was a hypothesis that there are actually two
different kinds of liquid water and that’s really hard to wrap your head
around,” said study author Lee-Ping Wang, an associate professor in the
Department of Chemistry at UC Davis. “Imagine that liquid water can
separate into two different liquids that don’t mix with each other, like
oil and water, except they’re both water.”
The research team, which included UC Davis alum and LLNL postdoctoral
researcher Margaret Berrens, used a physics-based machine-learning model to
simulate water molecules at this critical point.
The simulations showed evidence of a free energy barrier separating
high-density liquid water from low-density liquid water that quickly vanished
at a critical point. The research provides evidence for two supercooled
liquid water states.
Read More
https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/chemists-provide-new-evidence-two-supercooled-liquid-water-states
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