Supercomputer For A Super Mess Sixth Most Powerful Computer To Help Clean Up Hanford
A $14 million supercomputer, billed as the sixth-most powerful in the world, is in place at a Hanford Nuclear Reservation laboratory where it will be used to help clean up the nation’s nuclear messes.
First, however, scientists must install the system’s software and test it to see if it can perform as advertised.
The 2.6-terabyte computer at the fledgling Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory was created by IBM with help from Battelle-Northwest, a Hanford contractor.
The first of the computer’s first two sections was installed at the lab last year. The second, larger section has been added this year.
The computer’s basic software is expected to be installed late this month, with a 90-day test period to follow. After that, operating procedures will be established.
Scientists hope the computer will be ready to help solve cleanup problems at Hanford and other nuclear waste sites by this fall.
The computer’s brainpower is contained in 31 linked, cabinet-sized “frames” filling one side of a vast computer room.
The computer is designed to store 2,600 billion bytes of data and perform 227 billion operations per second - fast enough to calculate an Internal Revenue Service 1040 tax form for each of the Earth’s 5.8 billion people in one second.
The computer’s vast capacity and speed are needed because of the complexity of Hanford’s environmental problems, said Robert Eades, manager of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory’s computer division. Finding solutions requires simulating natural conditions, a task requiring enormous computer capacity.
Scientists at the 5-month-old, $230 million lab hope the computer will shed light on how contaminants bind to the soil or travel through it. The computer will also be used to analyze tank wastes and separate different types of radioactive and hazardous wastes.
“This can do things we couldn’t dream of five years ago,” Eades said.
The world’s most powerful computer is at the national laboratory at Sandia, N.M. It is used to simulate nuclear explosions.