Science and Technology Highlights

heatmap of the risk of equipment overload for a 70,000-bus synthetic system, representative of the eastern United States
// S&T Highlights
To advance the modeling and computational techniques needed to develop more efficient grid-control strategies under emergency scenarios, a multi-institutional team has used a LLNL-developed software capable of optimizing the grid’s response to potential disruption events under different weather scenarios, on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier supercomputer.
Megajoule Neutron Imaging Radiography Experiment team
// S&T Highlights

In early May, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Megajoule Neutron Imaging Radiography Experiment (MJOLNIR) team’s dense plasma focus (DPF) achieved greater than 1012 neutrons in a single deuterium

An atomic-level view of water confined in a small-diameter nanotube.
// S&T Highlights

A new study provides surprising behavior of hydrogen bonding of water confined in carbon nanotubes.

A large portion of Greenland melted about 416,000 years ago — perhaps a bit like the small melt pond shown in this modern Greenland landscape — and became ice-free tundra or a boreal forest.
// S&T Highlights

A large portion of Greenland was an ice-free tundra landscape — perhaps covered by trees and roaming wooly mammoths — in the recent geologic past (about 416,000 years ago), according to a new study in the journal

Understanding the properties of the warm dense matter in planetary cores could help indicate if a planet could support life.
// S&T Highlights

To learn about the properties of materials under changing temperatures and pressures, researchers typically combine laboratory experiments with theoretical models and computer simulations.

LLNL scientist holds a 5-centimeter metasurface optic with deep, closely spaced surface features that allow for a wide optical bandwidth.
// S&T Highlights

Optics researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have refined their novel metasurface process to create taller features without increasing feature-to-feature spacing, an advance that unlocks exciting new design possib

Data from NIF experiments (inset, right) and simulation (inset, left) are being combined with deep learning methods to improve areas important to national security and our future energy sector
// S&T Highlights
The detailed HPC design uses the world’s largest supercomputers and its most complicated simulation tools to help subject-matter experts choose new directions to improve experiments. CogSim then employs artificial intelligence (AI) to couple hundreds of thousands of HPC simulations to the set of past ICF experiments.
Infrared video of the test article shroud inside the pool fire enclosure.
// S&T Highlights
LLNL and Sandia National Laboratories recently successfully executed the second joint abnormal thermal environment (ATE-2) test for the W80-4 Life Extension Program (LEP). ATE-2 was a fast-heat, fully engulfing system-level fuel fire test, the first for LLNL in more than three decades.
artist redering of dry, low RH and high RH metal oxide
// S&T Highlights
Scientists at LLNL performed simulations using the Lab's supercomputer Ruby to uncover physical mechanisms that explain why humidity controls the rate of atmospheric corrosion of aluminum metal.
Image of red clover between rows of grapes
// S&T Highlights
In a new study in Nature Sustainability, an LLNL scientist and collaborators examined concurrent SOC and yield responses to cover cropping, including their direct connection.