In the latest episode of the National Security Science podcast, listeners can experience the preparation, execution and aftermath of an explosives safety test. National Security Science takes listeners to the scene of the experiment. As a team of Los Alamos engineers prepare, they discuss the outcome—will it be a boom or a bust? We also sit down with Division Director Chuck Mielke who offers insight on M Division and his team’s work. The Dynamic Experiments division, or M Division, executes large-scale, outdoor, hydrodynamic experiments and provides expertise in current and evolving explosive science, shock physics, high explosive fabrication and disposition. As Mielke explains, the division supports national security and addresses conventional, nuclear, and homeland defense needs.

In this episode of the National Security Science podcast, we discuss a recent trip the team took to the Trinity site—the location where the first nuclear device was detonated almost exactly 80 years ago. Along with listening to audio from the visit, you will hear the team discuss their impressions of the site and provide some historical context behind the artifacts and structures that remain.

National Security Science art director Brenda Fleming and editor Whitney Spivey sit down to discuss the life and career of physicist and former Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan. They share never-before-released audio clips of McMillan, as well as audio from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Kim Budil and former National Nuclear Security Administration head Jill Hruby. Grab some tissues.

In this episode, NSS explores a little-known facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory that supports national security by manufacturing nonnuclear parts for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. The Mark Quality Manufacturing Center performs machining, assembly, and inspection. The goal is making perfect parts. The episode also introduces the latest Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows--seven researchers honored for their contributions and explains how a Los Alamos scientist has identified the largest black hole ever measured.

Episode Summary: National Security Science magazine interviews Los Alamos National Laboratory historian Nic Lewis about the Lab’s longest serving director, Norris Bradbury. Learn about how Bradbury impacted the evolution of the Lab. You’ll also hear historical audio clips from Bradbury himself. Labcast: Los Alamos establishes Open AI partnership for studying biological threats that frontier AI models could pose. Highlights from the Hill: Los Alamos uses machine learning to detect earthquakes. Learn more about Norris Bradbury, the Lab’s second—and longest serving—director who ensured Los Alamos survived and thrived after World War II: https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2024-summer/norris-bradbury. Check out the Summer 2024 New Mexico issue at https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2024-summer/

Los Alamos National Laboratory Chief Scientist for Weapons Effects Tim Goorley explains how understanding nuclear weapons effects is a crucial component of national security. He addresses what happens when a nuclear device detonates and how scientists study nuclear weapons effects. Labcast: Artificial Intelligence takes center stage as Los Alamos National Laboratory creates National Security AI Office. Highlights from the Hill: Los Alamos National Laboratory begins assembly on components for Scorpius—a machine that will allow scientists to use real plutonium in subcritical experiments to study how nuclear weapons behave.

This episode topic is deterrence. We'll explore the meaning of deterrence and how the national labs help keep our country safe. We'll also bring you some audio from a deterrence conference that our team attended. To hear more about deterrence and the role Los Alamos plays, check out our latest National Security Science magazine at lanl.gov/magazine. This issue includes feature stories on what deterrence is and how it’s used, weapons effects, and some perspectives from people involved in the air- and sea-based deterrents. Labcast: Los Alamos National Laboratory is exceeding expectations in radiological and hazardous waste disposal. Highlights from the Hill: Los Alamos National Laboratory is helping bring indigenous college students into the field of physics.

As we welcome the holiday season at Los Alamos National Laboratory, we’re taking a look back to the Manhattan Project. If you love Los Alamos history and the holidays–this podcast is for you! We will listen to holiday wartime stories of living on the Pajarito Plateau and under the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Edith Warner and Eleanor Jette, and read by Bradbury Science Museum director Linda Deck and National Security Science magazine writer Jill Gibson.

EPISODE FEATURE National Security Science J. Weston Phippen reads an article published in 1992 titled, “A reluctant division leader,” by the first Manhattan Project Physics division leader, Robert Wilson. Wilson talks about the early days at Los Alamos. LABCAST Ten Los Alamos projects have won innovation awards. The R&D 100 awards are considered the 'Oscars of Invention' and honor the best inventions of the past year. HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE HILL Bradbury Science museum director reads a World War II–era poem by the Women’s Army Corps stationed in Los Alamos.

National Security Science Writer Ian Laird narrates along with a special recording of Oppenheimer from his return to Los Alamos in 1964. He spoke to a packed audience at Los Alamos high school about Niels Bohr. LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory’s National Security Science Research Center releases a 3-part documentary on J Robert Oppenheimer. Scanning electron microscopy explores macaw eggshell remains.

U.S nuclear weapons have played a critical role in preventing conflict among major powers since the end of World War II. Ensuring the safety and reliability of this nuclear deterrent is an essential part of national security. But, how can scientists test and evaluate the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the absence of nuclear testing? In this episode of the National Security Science podcast, we’ll learn all about new experiments to ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile. It all starts nearly 1,000 feet underground.

On September 23, 1992, the United States conducted Divider, an underground test at the Nevada Test Site, which is now called the Nevada National Security Site. The test, designed and executed by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was the nation’s 1,054th and final nuclear weapons test before the current testing moratorium. Divider marked the end of an era that began with the Trinity test. Thirty years later, the National Security Science magazine team paid a visit to the Divider test site. We traveled with group of scientists who had been involved with underground nuclear testing to mark this historic anniversary.

This episode marks the first of a three-part series on nuclear testing. Our team traveled to the Nevada National Security Site to explore the history of nuclear testing, how it started, how it ended, and what scientists are doing now. We begin the three-part series by joining the magazine’s Jill Gibson as she embarks on a ‘technical orientation visit’ to the Nevada National Security Site, which was formerly the Nevada Test Site and before that the Nevada Proving Grounds. The site is located about an hour north of Las Vegas in a highly secure area chosen in 1951 for its remote location. It stretches across 1,355-square-miles—making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. Between 1951 and 1992 a total of 928 nuclear tests were conducted at the site, 828 of which were underground.

The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) turns 50 this month! On June 9, 1972, the facility's powerful proton linear accelerator reached an astounding 800 mega electron volts. Celebrate this milestone anniversary with a new episode of the National Security Science podcast, which highlights the various ways this multipurpose facility supports the Lab's important national security work. First up, National Security Science writer Jill Gibson interviews Los Alamos scientist Anna Llobet Megias, who has spent a significant part of her career using LANSCE for cutting-edge science. Next, the NSS team tours some of the LANSCE facilities with LANSCE Director Michael Furlanetto. And lastly, we dive into history with an excerpt from a 1983 article by “the father of LANSCE,” Louis Rosen.

Today we interview three scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in three different labs to get a glimpse of how instruments used for treaty verification are tested and developed. Instruments must be able to survive a rocket launch and also decades of harsh space weather. Over the years, several international treaties have limited the sizes and locations of nuclear detonations. Most recently, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty—the CTBT—prohibits all nuclear detonations, period. No one is allowed to set off a nuclear device anywhere—not underground, not underwater, not on the Earth’s surface or atmosphere, and not even in outer space. President Bill Clinton signed the CTBT in 1996, and although the United States has not ratified the treaty, it has maintained a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992. But what about other countries? How do we know if they’re playing by the rules? The short answer is that the United States has the tools—many of them developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories and other entities—to detect nuclear explosions anywhere in, on, or above the world, at any time. One way Los Alamos does this is by developing specialized sensing instruments that live on satellites and are able to detect and measure the products of a nuclear explosion. At high altitudes and in outer space, the most easily detected products are x-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons. At lower altitudes, these products interact with the atmosphere and produce detectable optical and radio signatures. If certain levels of products are detected in the right proportions, the ground systems analyzing the sensor data can definitively identify a nuclear blast, estimate where and when it occurred, and gauge how big it was. So now we come to today’s topic; surviving space.

In this episode of the podcast, we’re taking you behind the scenes of a rocket launch. This particular flight test is part of the Stockpile Responsiveness Program, which helps develop technology and talent that will modernize the nation’s nuclear stockpile.

Long before National Security Science magazine existed, Los Alamos published a monthly magazine called "The Atom". In this episode of the podcast, the National Security Science magazine team wishes subscribers happy holidays and reads a poem out of The Atom’s December 1964 issue called, “Merry Christmas and all that stuff.”

It’s been long known that Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Greenglass committed espionage at Project Y—the Los Alamos branch of the Manhattan Project—during World War II. Each worked at the secret laboratory charged with creating the world’s first atomic bombs, each stole classified weapons information, and each shared it with the Soviet Union. Just recently though, in September 2019, historians confirmed a fourth wartime spy: Oscar Seborer. In this episode of the National Security Science podcast, National Security Science writer Weston Phippen talks to Los Alamos National Laboratory senior historian Alan Carr about Seborer’s time at Los Alamos and the spy’s possible contributions to the Soviet nuclear weapons program. For more on Seborer at Los Alamos, make sure to read this article in the summer 2021 issue of National Security Science magazine.

On July 16, 1945, a predawn thunderstorm moved through the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 120 miles south of Albuquerque. After it passed, at 5:29:45 a.m., detonators ignited explosives around a large, steel, globe-shaped device on a 100-foot tower. The explosion prompted a fission chain reaction in the plutonium inside the globe. The resulting nuclear blast from the Gadget, as the device was called, released an explosive force of 21 kilotons (equivalent to 21 thousand tons of TNT). It created a blinding flash of light, a thunderous sound, and a mushroom cloud 38,000 feet tall. “Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind,” remembered physicist Norris Bradbury of witnessing the event. “I didn’t. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.” This was the Trinity test, the culmination of 27 months of work at Project Y—a secret laboratory in Los Alamos—to create the world’s first atomic bomb. In this episode of the National Security Science podcast, on the 76th anniversary of the Trinity test, we examine the test from two angles: from 1945, when the test occurred, and from 2021, when a group of Los Alamos employees traveled to the Trinity site to tour ground zero and the surrounding area.

Ohio-class submarines disappear into the ocean for 70 days at a time, carrying 155 sailors, 24 nuclear-armed missiles, and more hot sauce than your local taqueria. Retired Naval officer Mark Levin gives a firsthand account.