N3B builds cleanup workforce, UNM-Los Alamos student wins award

A University of New Mexico-Los Alamos chemistry student turned N3B intern has won an Undergraduate Student Technical Poster Competition award, giving Los Alamos County a rare cleanup story that doubles as a jobs story. Paul Alcazar received the Danny Nichols and Dennis Huddleston Memorial Scholarship in March 2025, joined N3B as an intern in June 2025 and later used a technical paper for the 2026 Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Arizona, as the basis for the poster that won.

The win points to a deeper workforce strategy inside Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos, the HII Nuclear and BWX Technologies joint venture that manages the 10-year, $2.1 billion Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management. That contract covers legacy waste management, decontamination and demolition of excess facilities, soil and groundwater remediation, and environmental monitoring, work that requires chemistry, field science, technical writing and enough discipline to operate inside one of the nation’s most complex legacy nuclear sites.

For Los Alamos, the significance is not just that N3B is filling jobs. It is trying to build a pipeline. N3B says it has awarded 21 scholarships worth an estimated $200,000 since 2020, and many recipients later became interns or employees. Alcazar was one of three Northern New Mexico students named in the company’s 2025 scholarship announcement, alongside Atalia Archuleta and Jaide Romero. A local report put the awards at $9,000 each, a level that makes the program meaningful for students weighing school costs against the chance to stay in Northern New Mexico for work.

That matters in a county where Los Alamos National Laboratory and the cleanup contractor ecosystem anchor much of the economy. N3B’s human-resources lead has said attracting candidates is difficult, and the company has leaned on scholarships, internships and mentoring to grow talent organically and reduce turnover. The contract’s reported extension through April 29, 2026, keeps that workforce question front and center: who gets trained now, who stays, and whether cleanup work can produce durable careers for residents of Los Alamos and the surrounding region.