Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 9 July 2018

New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory marks 75 years

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) best craft to be able to
— When J. Robert Oppen- build the facilities around
heimer invited top scien- us.”
tists, engineers and tech- Wallace said the United
nicians to New Mexico in States has been served
1943 to build the world’s ever since by that initial
first nuclear weapon, no blueprint for bringing to-
one really knew what the gether a talented work-
results would be. force to solve some of the
What they did know was world’s most difficult prob-
that they had to succeed lems.
at all costs since intelli- As lab employees roamed
gence reports indicated downtown admiring an-
Germany and its allies were tique fire engines and cars
working toward the same on display as part of the
goal. anniversary celebration,
The once-secret city of Los their children played laser
Alamos is marking 75 years tag at the park and slurped
of discovery at Los Ala- ice cones. There were also
mos National Laboratory, demonstrations at the
which still plays a key role nearby Bradbury Science
in maintaining the United Museum.
States’ nuclear weapons In one booth lining Central
cache. The facility also still Avenue, lab employee Mi-
conducts research on ev- This undated aerial photo shows the Los Alamos National laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. When chael Nesmith was gather-
erything from renewable J. Robert Oppenheimer invited the top scientists to New Mexico in 1943 to build the world’s first ing signatures as part of an
energy technology to pub- nuclear weapon, no one really knew what the results were going to be. effort to get a Virginia class
lic health concerns and Associated Press nuclear attack submarine
the effects of insects on and in late 2015 federal The federal government re- meant to the world and named the “USS Los Ala-
stressed forests. officials announced they cently tasked the lab with New Mexico’s future. mos.”
The anniversary comes as would be putting the con- annually building at least “Over a series of lectures, Nesmith and his commit-
the lab prepares for a shift tract out to bid since the 30 plutonium cores, which they came up with a plan, tee have been working on
in leadership. The U.S. En- management team failed are used to trigger nuclear and that plan was to do the campaign since 2016.
ergy Department recently to earn high performance weapons. something they had never He said it was the least he
awarded the multibillion- reviews. The lab marked its anniver- done before,” Wallace could do for a national
dollar contract to manage Los Alamos lab has strug- sary earlier this month with said. laboratory that has done
Los Alamos to Triad Nation- gled with safety lapses a day of speeches and “They weren’t going to be so much.
al Security LLC, a company involving the handling of activities, the Los Alamos just physicists. They weren’t “The impact has been dra-
made up of the University plutonium and radioactive Monitor reported . going to be just chemists. matic, not just in ending
of California, Texas A&M waste and was found re- Just yards from where plans They weren’t going to be the bloodiest conflict in the
and Battelle Memorial Insti- sponsible for a 2014 radia- for the first nuclear bomb just engineers,” he said. world, but ever since then,”
tute. tion release that forced the were developed, Los Ala- “They had to be able to he said. “Medical isotopes,
The University of California nation’s only underground mos lab director Terry Wal- have the world’s best tech- all kinds of things. ... It’s hard
has played a management nuclear waste repository to lace told a crowd about nicians. They had to be to comprehend everything
role since the beginning, close for nearly three years. what Oppenheimer’s ideas able to have the world’s that’s been done here.”q

Iranian teen detained over Instagram dance videos

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran tention, and that she was 300 videos on her account, the accounts were verified. lions of Iranians continue
has detained a teenage only trying to gain more many of which showed her Iranian police have said to use the sites through
girl who posted dance vid- followers. It was unclear dancing in both Iranian they plan to shut down proxies and VPNs. Iran’s ju-
eos on Instagram and at- whether her statement was and Western styles. She also similar accounts on Insta- diciary and security forces
tracted tens of thousands made under duress. appeared in videos with- gram, and the judiciary is are dominated by hard-
of followers. Shabooneh, a local news out wearing the obligatory considering blocking ac- liners who launch periodic
State TV broadcast a video website, said Hojabri and Islamic headscarf. Her per- cess to the site. Iran has crackdowns on behavior
on Friday in which Mae- three other individuals were formances had thousands already blocked access deemed un-Islamic. The
deh Hojabri, 18-year-old detained on similar charg- of followers on various ac- to many social media sites, latest arrests came amid
gymnast, acknowledged es in recent weeks before counts with her name on including Facebook, Twit- a series of protests against
breaking moral norms while being released on bail. them, ranging from 12,000 ter, YouTube and the Tele- the government’s handling
insisting that was not her in- She had posted around to 66,000 followers. None of gram messaging app. Mil- of the economy.q