July 24, 2013

Honors for Innovations at NNSA Sites Managed by Bechtel Partnerships

Bechtel announced today that researchers from three National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites managed and operated by Bechtel partnerships have received nine 2013 R&D 100 Awards. Known as the “Oscars of Innovation,” the R&D 100 Awards are given by R&D Magazine to recognize the top 100 technology products of the year.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory collected five awards and Los Alamos National Laboratory received four awards— both totals include an award shared by the labs for a jointly developed technology. Researchers at the Y-12 National Security Complex were recognized with one award.

“The R&D 100 Awards celebrate the innovative minds behind these groundbreaking technologies, each of which will have a lasting positive impact for generations,” said Craig Albert, president of Bechtel National, Inc., Bechtel’s government services business.  “These dedicated men and women continue to open new scientific frontiers, demonstrating the important contributions each of these sites provide for the safety and security of this country and the world.”

Winning project technologies include:

• A new technology at Livermore that improves the screening of harmful laser pulses at the National Ignition Facility, reducing screening time from 12 hours to less than one second, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.  A revolutionary imaging technique at Livermore  that captures material and biological process in action at a nanoscale-level of detail.  
• A digital X-ray imaging system at Los Alamos that is battery-powered, self-contained, lightweight, and portable. The device will aid efforts in homeland security, inspection and testing, disaster relief and medicine.  
• A scanning device developed by a team including Los Alamos researchers that uses particles from cosmic rays to detect nuclear and radiological threats, explosives, and other threatening contraband.A single-crystalline semiconductor used in nuclear and security applications that Y-12 designed to be more compact and more efficient than previous models.
• The laboratories and Y-12 are part of NNSA’s nuclear security enterprise of facilities that carry out the agency’s mission of ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The three sites conduct cutting-edge research related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global non-proliferation.

Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are managed by separate partnerships led by the University of California and Bechtel. Y-12 is managed by a partnership of the Babcock & Wilcox Company and Bechtel.

About Bechtel

Bechtel is a trusted engineering, construction and project management partner to industry and government. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers’ objectives to create a lasting positive impact. Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world’s infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place.  

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