N3B Bids Farewell to Three Summer Interns Who Made Significant Contributions
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B), the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has closed out another successful 10-week summer internship program thanks to the work of three interns: Sofia Enriquez, Sam Gervais and Erin Stucky.
Over the past 10 weeks, Enriquez created a program that automates well log cross-section graphing to support the analysis of the aquifer beneath Los Alamos National Laboratory. This was Enriquez’s second summer internship with N3B, and she also worked for the company during her 2023 winter break. Enriquez’s hometown is Los Alamos, and she will be a junior at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO this fall.
“I liked having a major project to work on this summer,” Enriquez said. “It made me feel I was making a bigger contribution. And in the course of working and reporting to meetings, I got a very good feel for the kind of work I might be engaged in for my future career to positively impact groundwater protection.”
In his fourth summer as an intern with N3B, Gervais designed a backup power system for a key Operations Center and assisted in replacing an HVAC system. “This year was especially rewarding because I was able to branch out in my own projects and become more immersed within a professional setting,” he said. Gervais hails from Albuquerque and will be a senior at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo this fall, completing his degree in electrical engineering with a concentration in power systems.
This summer, Stucky focused on stormwater and groundwater monitoring projects, analyzing data and quality-checking related reports. What really made an impact on her, however, was her work in the field. “I learned how engineering processes and issues were carried forward and the interconnectivity of the various functions in groundwater testing,” Stucky said. “And I loved seeing how everything we discussed in meetings was later addressed in the field — making that connection to the physical environment.”
A native of Santa Fe, Stucky will be a junior at the University of Colorado Boulder, working toward her environmental engineering degree with a mathematics minor.
N3B President and General Manager Brad Smith followed the internships closely.
“We do everything we can to expose our interns to real-world environmental and workplace situations to make internships as valuable as possible,” Smith said. “We also gain from the experience. We benefit from the interns’ skills and perspectives, and, just as important, every person and team they work with is invigorated by their energy and passion. Plus, at the team level, when we teach, we learn, and that helps reinforce safe actions and processes. It’s a win-win arrangement.”
For those eager to gain valuable experience as an intern, be sure to check out N3B’s job postings in March 2025 for new internship opportunities.
###
Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) is a limited liability company owned by HII Nuclear and BWX Technologies. N3B manages the $2.1 billion, 10-year Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract for the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office.
Photos
Sofia Enriquez (right) with mentor Mike Erickson, N3B Environmental Remediation Water Program Director. Enriquez created a program for users to generate geophysical well log cross-sections to support the analysis of the aquifer beneath Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Sam Gervais (left) with mentor Brian Caldwell, N3B Engineering Director. Gervais designed a generator UPS system for the Technical Area (TA)-54 Operations Center and supported the replacement of the HVAC unit at Building 2 in TA-54 during his 10-week internship
Erin Stucky (right) with mentor Cami Charonko, N3B Environmental Remediation Water Program Project Manager. Stucky helped with surface/stormwater and groundwater monitoring projects, analyzed data, quality-checked well completion reports and reviewed documents related to the stormwater telemetry system.