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Mitchell, Renae L.

Publications and source records attributed to Mitchell, Renae L..

16 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

A mindset of safety and success

Iris Molina's role as a leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory requires an array of technical skills that are crucial to the Lab's plutonium pit mission; skills she has honed over her long career at the Lab. Her real focus, however, is on her team. Molina’s team is responsible for three different functional areas in pit production, including welding components, putting those welded parts together and conducting nondestructive testing. While she oversees those tasks, Molina wants employees across the Lab to know how exceptional her employees are.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2024

At the forefront of employee engagement

When it comes to paving the way for successful plutonium processing and manufacturing in the Lab's Plutonium Facility (PF-4), Fran Rocha has a lot on her plate. As a deputy division leader supporting programs in PF-4, Rocha works to ensure facility operations are safe and efficient while building on the foundations of science and engineering. In addition to addressing these technical challenges, Fran also focuses on attracting and retaining highquality staff in plutonium science and technology.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Pit Technologies at a Glance

The National Nuclear Security Administration has tasked Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) with important national security work: to develop a plutonium pit manufacturing capability and deliver a minimum of 30 plutonium pits per year in the years ahead. A pit is a hollow sphere of plutonium that, when uniformly compressed by explosives inside a warhead or bomb, causes a nuclear explosion. New pits are needed to maintain the nation’s nuclear stockpile and are a key component of nuclear deterrence and world peace. LANL’s Pit Technologies (PT) division manufactures these pits safely and securely. The work takes place in the Plutonium Facility (PF-4), the nation’s most modern plutonium science and manufacturing facility. LANL is currently the only place in the country with the capability to manufacture plutonium pits.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Walking in his grandfather’s footsteps

During his August 11 visit to the Lab, Charles Oppenheimer participated in several events, and encountered a few surprises along the way Charles Oppenheimer never met his grandfather J. Robert Oppenheimer — the famed physicist died before Charles was born. But through family lore, popular narrative, and retracing his footsteps in Los Alamos, most recently on August 11, Charles knows this man well. Charles speaks on behalf of the Oppenheimer family, offering a perspective so many authors, filmmakers, and interviewers have forgotten to ask for. "The thing that stands out most is the family culture of being supportive of Robert Oppenheimer. It’s something I experienced as family culture … he had these really wide interests and was able to pursue them to his heart’s content," Charles said. During his visit Charles participated in a panel discussion with Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Jennifer Granholm, DOE Under Secretary and National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Jill Hruby, and Lab Director Thom Mason following a screening of an abbreviated version of the National Security Research Center’s (NSRC) newly-released documentary, “Oppenheimer: Science, mission, legacy.” He then toured the Bradbury Science Museum and his grandparent’s Los Alamos residence.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Watch it again-or for the first time: Panel discussion and Q&A on First Lab Director J. Robert Oppenheimer

On June 19, 2023, at the National Security Sciences Building (NSSB) auditorium, LANL Director Thom Mason, LANL physicist Anna Llobet, American Prometheus author Kai Bird, and retired Senate staff member Tim Rieser discussed the life, work and legacy of first Lab Director J. Robert Oppenheimer. The panel event was moderated by LANL senior historian Alan Carr.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Attend debut of new film on the Lab’s first director

The NSRC’s much-anticipated documentary, Oppenheimer: Science, Mission, Legacy, will premiere for Lab staff later this summer at the NSSB auditorium, and then be made available online. Speakers at the premiere will include film creator and primary producer Dave Tietmeyer (Multimedia Services, CEA-MP), Senior Historian Alan Carr (WRS-NSCMS), and NSRC Director Brye Steeves (WRS-DO). The film was entirely produced by the NSRC and Laboratory staff and will commemorate former director J. Robert Oppenheimer and his endeavors. Much of the material and several scenes featured in the film are based on collections from the Manhattan Project era and interviews with today’s Lab staff and Oppenheimer experts.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Short video provides broad overview of the Lab’s 80-year history

In celebration of the Lab’s 80th anniversary this month, join National Security Research Center Senior Historian, Alan Carr (NSRCMS), as he provides a six-and-a-half-minute overview of the Lab’s history. The video, co-produced by Brian Clayton (CEA-MP) and Howard Coe (CEA-MP), covers three phases of the Lab’s evolution, from a nuclear weapons laboratory, then a nuclear science laboratory, to its manifestation today as a multidisciplinary laboratory.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Poster commemorates the Laboratory’s 80th anniversary

To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Laboratory, award-winning artist and graphic designer Paul Ziomek (CEA-MP) created an original commemorative poster for Lab staff. The two-sided poster includes a montage of iconic images from the Lab’s collections in the National Security Research Center. The front showcases historic photographs of the secret laboratory and personnel from 1943 and then today’s National Security Sciences Building headquarters building. The back side includes explanations of the Lab’s earliest scientific achievements and Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves and Lab Director J. Robert Oppenheimer.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Why are we still here 80 years later?

The Lab helped end World War II in 1945, but could the Lab survive peace? Join Senior Lab Historian Alan Carr and Historian Nic Lewis as they present “Why we’re still in Business,” examining the role of the Lab once World War II had ended. This presentation, which commemorates the Lab’s 80th anniversary, Carr and Lewis reconsider the popular belief that the Lab nearly ceased to exist after having developed the atomic bombs that helped end war.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

This St. Patrick’s Day, take a look at “lucky” Lab artifacts from the Manhattan Project

What luck! Tucked inside J. Robert Oppenheimer’s book Bhagavad-Gita is a four-leaf clover. The famed physicist and first Lab director regularly quoted the Hindu scripture, most notably upon witnessing the Trinity test, which was the successful detonation of the first-ever Los Alamos created atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was said to have recalled the line, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” (The quote, though, has been widely misinterpreted.) The clover is taped to what appears to be a calling card from his spouse Kitty and was found inside his copy of the Bhagavad Gita, which was donated to the Lab’s Bradbury Science Museum by private donors Ben and Sara Beck Svetitsky in early 2020. Kitty Oppenheimer was educated as a botanist and biologist, and accompanied her husband to Los Alamos, along with their two children. The family was here in 1943 through the end of World War II in 1945. The book, with the card found inside, makes up one of two of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s personal effects within the Lab’s collections.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

The woman behind the curious invention of modern software: Klára Dán von Neumann’s handwritten letters confirm her legacy

The year 1945 marked not only the birth of the atomic age, but also the birth of modern computer programming. The first fully electronic computing machine, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), came online in December 1945. But programming the ENIAC was an excruciatingly difficult task. Klára Dán von Neumann, who joined the Laboratory at Los Alamos after WWII, helped to revolutionize the process, creating the very first modern computer programs.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Bringing Back the Flavors of Los Alamos’s Past

In December, we challenged LANL employees to prepare a recipe that appeared in the recently rediscovered “What’s Cooking” cookbook, created and published in Los Alamos in 1955. This piece of Los Alamos history features recipes from the families of Lab staff and is now a part of the collections in the National Security Research Center, the Lab’s classified library and curator of unclassified relics. Today’s Laboratory home chefs certainly delivered!

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Witness the Trinity test through Lab artifacts

July 16 marks the 77th anniversary of the Trinity test, conducted in a desert in New Mexico. The test subject, an atomic bomb called The Gadget, was successfully detonated from a 100-foot steel tower. This event marks the commencement of the Atomic Age, a new era where fission capabilities could be employed for national security purposes. Shortly after the Trinity test, two Los Alamos-created atomic weapons were released above Japan, helping to end the world’s bloodiest conflict just weeks later. “Trinity was one of the greatest scientific experiments ever,” said NSRC Senior Historian Alan Carr said. “Los Alamos scientists changed the world forever on that day. Not only was it the dawn of the Atomic Age, but also the beginning of the Lab’s eight decades of cutting-edge science and its national security charge.” To preserve this event, and to continue to learn more about this critical moment in history, the National Security Research Center (NSRC) curates a collection of photographs, films, notes, unclassified artifacts and numerous other materials related to the science of the test. Notably, the collection includes a novel material that formed at the site, trinitite, and artifacts from one of the intriguing scientists present at the test, Enrico Fermi.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2020

Physical Sciences Vistas Issue 2, 2020

Dedication and collaboration accelerate mission-essential LANSCE isotope production; Rigorous operations result in newly outfitted gloveboxes; Continuous improvements deliver high-value subcrit data; 'Magnet surge’ expands capabilities for higher tesla science.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗