Valar Atomics has announced that its Nova Core achieved zero-power criticality on November 17 at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) at the Nevada National Security Site.

The University of California, through its Initiative for Fusion Energy, has awarded $8 million in multicampus research grants, in partnership with UC-managed national laboratories, to fund research aimed at accelerating progress toward fusion energy.

The Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oracle have agreed to a public-private partnership to deliver the DOE’s largest AI supercomputers, named Solstice and Equinox.

Hoffman

Nuclear chemist Darleane D. Hoffman, who was renowned for her research on transuranium elements that advanced the understanding of nuclear fission, died on September 4 at her home in Menlo Park, Calif. She was 98.

Iowa origins: Hoffman was born on November 8, 1926, in Terril, Ia. She attended Iowa State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1948 and a doctorate in physical (or nuclear) chemistry in 1951. She then began working as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Los Alamos research: In 1953, Hoffman began a research position at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she conducted pioneering work on spontaneous fission. She served as the lab’s first female division leader in charge of the Chemistry and Nuclear Chemistry Division.

Better information regarding the specific work needed to finish cleaning up contaminated soil and legacy landfills at Department of Energy nuclear sites could help the department better prioritize cleanup projects and improve budgeting decisions, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.

The Department of Energy announced recently it will provide more than $35 million for 42 projects to help move emerging energy technologies from DOE national laboratories, plants, and sites related to grid security, artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, and advanced manufacturing to the marketplace. The selected projects will leverage over $21 million in cost-share from private and public partners, bringing total funding to more than $57.5 million.

A full list of the FY2025 selections is available here.

The Environmental Protection Agency has approved the addition of two new waste emplacement panels at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Department of Energy’s geologic repository for defense-related transuranic waste in New Mexico.

Work has started at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to deactivate, decommission, and remove the Ion Beam Facility, which played a role in research and experiments that helped develop the nation’s nuclear arsenal during the 1950s and 1960s.

The July 2024 issue of Nuclear News focused on fusion. Editor-in-chief Rick Michal highlighted in his column (p. 4) Los Alamos National Laboratory’s open access special issue of the American Nuclear Society journal Fusion Science and Technology, titled The Early History of Fusion. This article provides a brief summary of the issue—and we encourage readers to explore all of the full papers.^a

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have performed a critical experiment using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) TRISO fuel. It is the nation’s first criticality safety experiment using HALEU fuel in more than 20 years. On November 21, LANL announced the work of its Deimos team, which earlier this year carried out an experiment at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC), operated by LANL at the Nevada National Security Site.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the managing and operating contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are partnering with multiple universities to develop next-generation technology and personnel pipelines to advance the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration’s two-site pit production mission.

A major milestone has been reached in the construction of a plutonium pit production facility at the Savannah River Site, located near Aiken, S.C.

After 18 months of work involving local trade unions, the dismantlement and removal (D&R) of commodities and equipment throughout the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF), previously installed by the Mixed Oxide (MOX) project, was completed in June 2024, the Department of Energy reported on July 24.

In March 1949—75 years ago this month—the 25-kilowatt reactor known as Clementine reached full power. As an experimental reactor, it had a rather long and successful run. It was the world’s first fast neutron (high-energy) reactor and operated from initial criticality in 1946 to final shutdown in 1952.

The National Nuclear Security Administration has issued the fiscal year 2023 results of the performance of its managing and operating (M&O) partners in meeting the agency’s expectations.

The American Nuclear Society will be hosting a special online event on Friday, August 25, at 11:00 am (ET). The webinar Oppenheimer: Behind the Scenes with Los Alamos National Laboratory will feature representatives from LANL, who will discuss the blockbuster feature Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, which premiered last month in theaters.

In Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), the deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion reaction ³H(d,n)⁴He, enhanced by the 3/2⁺ “Bretscher resonance,” is responsible for 99 percent of primordial helium-4. While this fact has been known for decades, it has not been widely appreciated. The importance of the resonant nature of the DT fusion reaction has been amplified by recent activities related to the production and use of terrestrial fusion, including the recent net-gain shot at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Here, we aim to highlight the anthropic importance of the ⁴He-producing DT reaction that plays such a prominent role in models of nucleosynthetic processes occurring in the early universe. This primordial helium serves as a source for the subsequent creation of more than 25 percent of the carbon (¹²C) and other heavier elements that compose a substantial fraction of the human body. Further studies are required to determine a better characterization of the amount of ¹²C than this lower limit of 25 percent. Some scenarios of core stellar nucleosynthetic yield of ¹²C suggest that even higher percentages of carbon from primordial helium are possible.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management awarded a contract to Aptim Federal Services of Baton Rouge, La., to perform deactivation, decommissioning, and removal of the former Ion Beam Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The Department of Energy recently shipped half a kilogram of plutonium oxide pellets from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency announced July 18, marking the largest such shipment since the DOE restarted domestic plutonium-238 production over a decade ago.

Charles Oppenheimer, the grandson of the “father of the atomic bomb,” wants us to save the world with nuclear fission. In “Nuclear Energy’s Moment Has Come,” published in Time last week, Oppenheimer discusses why the public should embrace nuclear energy as a bipartisan solution to the climate crisis.

Fusion energy research has seen exciting recent breakthroughs. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has achieved ignition,^1,2 and in the United Kingdom, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy’s Joint European Torus (JET) has produced a record 59 megajoules of fusion energy.³ Against this backdrop of advances, we provide an account of the earliest fusion discoveries from the 1930s to the 1950s.* Some of this technical history has not been previously appreciated—most notably the first 1938 reporting of deuterium-tritium (DT) 14-MeV neutrons at the University of Michigan by Arthur Ruhlig.⁴ This experiment had a critical role in inspiring early thermonuclear fusion research directions. This article presents some unique insights from the extensive holdings within Los Alamos National Laboratory’s archives—including sources typically unavailable to a broad audience.