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Seaborg Institute
Postdoctoral Fellows Program
Fostering excellence and external visibility in actinide science
The primary mission of Los Alamos National Laboratory is national
security. Although nuclear weapons are a central focus of the Lab’s
mission, it is clear that this role is in decline as the threat of
a strategic nuclear exchange fades. At the same time, new threats
outside the nation’s traditional response structure are emerging
that are so complex that the state of applied science is inadequate
to address them
Two of these linked threats are the inability of the United States
to meet its energy requirements without massive importation of oil
and the destructive increase in average global temperature as fossil-fuel-generated
carbon dioxide emissions block re-radiation of heat to space. Collateral
damage from these two threats
include degradation of our economy as U.S. dollars leave in massive
amounts, decrease in our ability to invest in science and education
as our available resources are spent more and more on energy, and
a general decline in the value of the United States to the rest of
the world as we import more and export less science and technology.
If Los Alamos is to protect national security in the future, it must
do so using, among many capabilities, its nuclear expertise, still
unchallenged and nationally recognized.
Knowledge of actinide science, including national defense,
environmental restoration, radioactive waste management, and especially
energy security, continues to be essential to the United States and
central to the mission of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
As energy security becomes increasingly tied to nuclear power, knowledge
and expertise in the production, processing, purification, characterization,
analysis, and disposal of actinide elements are essential to national
security.
The Seaborg Institute Postdoctoral Fellows Program fosters
sustained excellence and enhanced external visibility in actinide
science. The program also provides a broad intellectual community
for actinide science in support of Laboratory missions as well as
a mechanism to attract and retain a future generation of actinide
scientists and engineers. Seaborg postdocs perform research that supports
new actinide science at the single-investigator or small-team level
in the areas of actinide physics, chemistry, metallurgy, sample production,
experimental technique development, theory, and modeling. The Seaborg Postdoctoral Program now supports a dozen or so actinide
investigators. With support from the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program,
the Seaborg Institute and its programs, workshops, and seminars provide
the focus for communicating and coordinating actinide research at Los Alamos.
Aligning with currently funded and anticipated new actinide-related
proposals, the Seaborg Institute provides clear direction to outstanding scientists. It also demonstrates
that actinide physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering remain a high priority and that
Los Alamos provides the finest actinide environment in the world.
At present, Seaborg postdocs support directly or indirectly LDRD Directed Research programs in several divisions, including Plutonium Materials
and Technology (PMT), Theoretical (T), Materials Science and Technology (MST), and Chemistry
(C). In this issue of Actinide Research Quarterly, nine of our Seaborg
postdocs write about their actinide science research.
Albert Migliori
Associate Director, Seaborg Institute
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