Planning for a pandemic
In 2005, a report directed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined the potential effects of a global pandemic in prophetic detail. It was one of the ways Sandians laid the foundation for the U.S. response to COVID-19.
Fat Man sent to Nevada atomic museum
Sandia, DoD and DTRA have moved a Manhattan Project Fat Man weapon shell from 1945 from the Labs' Manzano Mountain storage area to the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. The weapon is part of an exhibit marking the 75th anniversary of the Trinity nuclear test.
Engineers teach Stanford 3D printing students, virtually
Sandia engineers Bradley Jared and Nick Leathe exposed more than a dozen freshman students from a 3D printing class at Stanford University to some of Sandia’s additive-manufacturing capabilities in a May 20 online class.
Saltzstein featured on DOE Women in STEM site
Sandia manager Sylvia Saltzstein has been recognized by DOE’s Women @ Energy: STEM Rising website, which honors women in STEM fields throughout the DOE complex.
Finding COVID-19 needles in a coronavirus haystack
To accelerate the filtering of coronavirus studies in the search for information relevant to COVID-19, Sandia has assembled a combination of data mining, machine-learning algorithms and compression-based analytics to bring the most useful data to the fore on an office computer.
Weapon program meets safety, design requirements
Sandia has successfully completed another milestone in the B61-12 gravity bomb refurbishment program, demonstrating that the Labs is meeting important nuclear safety and use-control requirements. Sandia is the design and engineering lab for non-nuclear components of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, including the B61-12, and is the technical integrator for the complete weapon, assuring that the system meets requirements as a unit.
Aloha from Mount Haleakalā
After nearly 60 years of service to DOE, NNSA and Sandia, a facility atop Mount Haleakalā on the island of Maui, Hawaii, has been retired. Crews completed demolition and clean-up activities at the facility in March. The site, which sits at an elevation of 10,300 feet above sea level, was used for telemetry operations that provided high-altitude tracking for tests conducted from Sandia’s Kauai Test Facility.
Chuck Loeber’s legacy
Chuck Loeber spent 50 years working in the nuclear weapons complex, with the last 20 as an employee and consultant at Sandia. He helped stand up neutron generator manufacturing in the 1990s and oriented a generation of new hires to Sandia and its responsibilities, teaching the popular History of the Nuclear Weapons Complex courses at the Labs and writing a well-known book on the subject. He died on May 10.
Mission forward
Sandia is using a phased approach to return to normal operations over the coming months, while continuing maximum telework as much as possible.
B61-12 compatible with F-15E Strike Eagle
In early March at Sandia’s Tonopah Test Range, two flight tests were part of a full-weapon system demonstration to verify that the refurbished B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb is compatible with the U.S. Air Force’s F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet. The final compatibility test was a culmination of years of work that included ground testing and computer simulations as well as flight tests.