Los Alamos National Laboratory (LASL)

History

2024: High levels of pollution

At the end of August 2024, researchers reported that soil, plants and water along popular recreation sites near the nuclear facility in Los Alamos (USA) are contaminated with plutonium in "critical concentrations," but the federal government refuses to take appropriate measures. Scientists believe that the level of pollution in Los Alamos is comparable to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The article followed a statement by the US Department of Defense that the Los Alamos plant would increase production of plutonium pita, the main component of nuclear weapons. Local public health advocates have been left outraged that Los Alamos has been removed from the list of regions with nuclear pollution benefits and subsidies.

Theguardian.com

It is known that until 1963, the Los Alamos National Laboratory dumped radioactive waste into a nearby canyon. The area turned out to be so contaminated with toxic waste that it was dubbed Acid Canyon. A few years later, the Atomic Energy Commission and the US Department of Energy undertook restoration work, which spent at least $2 billion, and by the 1980s brought the territory in accordance with federal standards. The commission eventually gave the land to Los Alamos County with no restrictions on use, and a dirt trail popular with cyclists, hikers and runners was laid there.

Indeed, the level of radioactive exposure and the immediate danger to those using these trails is relatively low despite the high plutonium contamination, the researchers said. However, they warned that the situation was still a concern as plutonium could enter the water system, where it would be absorbed by plants, enter the food chain and could even be widely dispersed with ash in the event of a wildfire.^[1]

1952: MANIAC I is one of the first computers

After the end of World War II and the completion of the Manhattan Atomic Bomb Project, Nicholas Metropolis returned from the Los Alamos Laboratory to the University of Chicago, where he planned to create a computing center to study computers. When his plans were not destined to materialize, he received an invitation to return again to the Los Alamos Laboratory to build a computer and computing center for the Laboratory there.

Planning for the computer began in early 1949. MANIAC I in its design followed the "von Neumann architecture," since the von Neumann IAS machine, which he was creating at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, was taken as a sample.

MANIAC I entered service in March 1952.

MANIAC, one of the first computers, Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, 1952.

MANIAC I was used to solve a wide range of problems from the field of hydrodynamics, in the development of thermonuclear weapons, was able to solve chess problems (finding all possible options for arranging queens) and even play simple chess on a 6x6 chessboard. He played a significant role in improving the Monte Carlo method, it attempted to decode DNA.

Fermi, Teller, Richtmeyer, Ulam, Gamov and others performed their calculations on a computer. The machine was very easy to program, so even the scientists themselves (for example, Fermi and Richtmeyer) learned how to create programs for it.

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