Oak Ridge Today

Radiation Safety Information Computational Center at ORNL marks 50th year

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RSICC Directors

Radiation Safety Information Computational Center directors at Tuesday’s celebration were Robert Roussin (1987-96), Bernadette Kirk (1996-2000 and 2004-11), and Tim Valentine (current). (Photo by Curtis Boles)

One of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s longest-running institutions marked its golden anniversary on Tuesday with a recognition ceremony keynoted by U.S. Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons, a press release said.

The Radiation Safety Information Computational Center has been a storehouse of invaluable nuclear computational tools and data for modeling and simulating the interaction of radiation with matter since 1962, the release said. The center acquires the state-of-the art codes and data, preserves them, and makes them accessible to the research community.

“Congratulations to the RSICC in its 50th year,” Lyons said. “RSICC’s innovative and adaptive culture has enabled the center to continuously provide a unique service to its nearly 20,000 customers around the world.”

The DOE center has expanded its software and data packages beyond radiation shielding to areas that include criticality safety, radiation protection, reactor physics, atmospheric dispersion and environmental dose, radiation dose in medical applications and space shielding applications, the release said.

The idea for the RSICC, like many that emanated from ORNL during the Cold War, can be traced to the late Alvin Weinberg, who as ORNL director chaired a president’s advisory council convened to deal with the expanse of new data emerging from the nuclear science community. The council recommended the establishment of information analysis centers.

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ORNL locked down Sunday as officials investigate security concern

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory was locked down for more than four hours on Sunday as officials investigated a security-related concern that turned out to be unsubstantiated, a spokesman said.

Officials took the proper precautions and stopped people from entering or leaving the lab during the lockdown, which lasted from about 8:40 a.m. to about 1:15 p.m. Sunday, ORNL Communications Director David Keim said.

“When we investigated, we found that the concern was unsubstantiated,” Keim said.

He said the security concern was reported by a U.S. Department of Energy contractor employee at ORNL. Keim said he couldn’t give more information on the nature of the report since the concern wasn’t substantiated.

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ORNL’s newly licensed neutron detector will advance research

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A neutron detector developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could be used by an Indiana-based company for research in a variety of scientific fields, helping, for example, in the development of new drugs.

The neutron detector, the Neutron-Sensitive Anger Camera, has been licensed by PartTec Ltd. of Indiana, an ORNL press release said.

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ORNL researchers probe invisible vacancies in fuel cell materials

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Knowing the position of missing oxygen atoms could be the key to cheaper solid oxide fuel cells with longer lifetimes. New microscopy research from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is enabling scientists to map these vacancies at an atomic scale.

Although fuel cells hold promise as an efficient energy conversion technology, they have yet to reach mainstream markets because of their high price tag and limited lifespans. Overcoming these barriers requires a fundamental understanding of fuel cells, which produce electricity through a chemical reaction between oxygen and a fuel.

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ORNL technology moves scientists closer to extracting uranium from seawater

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Fueling nuclear reactors with uranium harvested from the ocean could become more feasible because of a material developed by a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The combination of ORNL’s high-capacity reusable adsorbents and a Florida company’s high-surface-area polyethylene fibers creates a material that can rapidly, selectively, and economically extract valuable and precious dissolved metals from water. The material, HiCap, vastly outperforms today’s best adsorbents, which perform surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms, or ions.

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ORNL researchers improve soil carbon cycling models

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Carbon Cycling Model

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new carbon cycling model could help scientists understand the role of soil in climate change by tracking the microbial processes that break down carbon-rich materials. (Graphic submitted by ORNL)

A new model developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helps scientists understand the role that soil will play in future climate change, a press release said.

Predicting climate change depends heavily on the cycling of carbon dioxide, which is found in four main reservoirs: the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans, and soil, the release said.

ORNL’s model was designed to replace traditional soil carbon cycling models. The press release said it better accounts for the carbon dioxide-releasing activity of microbes in the ground.

“Soil is a big reservoir of carbon,” said co-author Melanie Mayes of ORNL’s Environmental Sciences Division. “And most of the soil carbon cycling models in use today are so vastly simplified that they ignore the fact that decomposition is actually performed by microbes.”

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