Energy and Technology Review, November 1991. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, operated by the University of California for the United States Department of Energy, was established in 1952 to do research on nuclear weapons and magnetic fusion energy. Since, then we have added other major programs, including laser fusion and laser isotope separation, biomedical and environmental science, strategic defense, and applied energy technology. These programs, in turn, require research in basic scientific disciplines, including chemistry and materials science, computer science and technology, engineering, and physics. Energy and Technology Review is published monthly to report on unclassified work in all our programs. Topics covered in this issue are: (1) Earthquake safety: How safe is LLNL Over the last decade, we have made a major effort to ensure the safety of Laboratory employees and facilities in the events of an earthquake. With completion of the structural upgrade for Building 111, the Laboratory may now be one of the most earthquake-ready research and the development complexes in the Bay Area; however, our efforts to ensure an earthquake safe environment at the Laboratory continue. (2) Assessing the effects of earthquakes and other natural disasters before they strike. Although scientists and engineers in LLNL's Nuclear Systems Safety Program may not ablemore » to predict an earthquake or other natural disaster, they can now do the next best thing-they can assess the probable hazards of a natural disaster at any location in the country. (3) A strategy for smoothly transitioning to massively parallel computing. We have recently demonstrated that massively parallel processors are becoming hospitable to general-purpose computing and that codes written initially for vector processors can be transported smoothly to and run effectively on these new machines.« less