Los Alamos National Laboratory sits on top of a once-remote mesa in northern New Mexico with the Jemez mountains as a backdrop to research and innovation covering multi-disciplines from bioscience, sustainable energy sources, to plasma physics and new materials.
The facility can simulate the effects of hundreds or thousands of years of cosmic-ray-induced neutrons in a single hour. Los Alamos National Security funds upgrade to key facility LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, December 2, 2010—The National Nuclear Security Administration's Los Alamos Site Office and Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the contractor that operates Los Alamos National Laboratory, have agreed to allocate money LANS could have earned from its prime contract fee to upgrade a facility serving industrial designers and researchers at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center that helps ensure the reliability of semiconductor chips. In early 2011, LANSCE—one of the nation's highest intensity linear proton accelerators—will begin upgrades that will effectively double the facility's capacity for experiments and tests on electronic devices by Laboratory, industrial, and academic users. The facility has been used for more than a decade by a virtual Who's Who of the semiconductor industry to simulate the potential failures posed by cosmic-ray-induced neutrons upon miniature electronic devices, such as chips that help control aircraft or complex integrated circuits in automobiles. The facility can simulate the effects of hundreds or thousands of years of cosmic-ray-induced neutrons in a single hour. This same capability also aids scientists in understanding how components of nuclear weapons age. "The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center has consistently shown its value to the nation,” said LANL Director Michael Anastasio, president of LANS, LLC.
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