Oak Ridge Today

ORNL: Neutrons find ‘missing’ magnetism of plutonium

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Doug Abernathy and Marc Janoschek

Doug Abernathy, left, ARCS instrument scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Marc Janoschek, Los Alamos National Laboratory, prepare their sample for experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source. (Photo by ORNL)

 

Groundbreaking work at two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories has confirmed plutonium’s magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe. The advances that enabled the discovery hold great promise for materials, energy, and computing applications.

Plutonium was first produced in 1940, and its unstable nucleus allows it to undergo fission, making it useful for nuclear fuels as well as for nuclear weapons. Much less known, however, is that the electronic cloud surrounding the plutonium nucleus is equally unstable and makes plutonium the most electronically complex element in the periodic table, with intriguingly intricate properties for a simple elemental metal.

While conventional theories have successfully explained plutonium’s complex structural properties, they also predict that plutonium should order magnetically. This is in stark contrast with experiments, which had found no evidence for magnetic order in plutonium. [Read more…]

K-31 Demolition: 200 acres now available for development at ETTP

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K-31 Demolition

The last section of the K-31 Building at East Tennessee Technology Park was demolished on Friday, June 26. It’s the fourth of five buildings to be demolished where gaseous diffusion was once used to enrich uranium. (Photo by Lynn Freeny/DOE) 

 

Demolition now complete on four of five gaseous diffusion buildings

Demolition of the large K-31 Building in west Oak Ridge means that 200 acres of flat land are now available for industrial development at East Tennessee Technology Park, officials said.

“It’s the largest parcel of land available at ETTP,” said Sue Cange, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management.

Infrastructure is already in place, including water, sewer, roads, and electricity, Cange said. Also, ETTP is close to Interstate 40, a short rail line, and possibly an airport. (There are plans to build an airport at the site, which is also known as Heritage Center.)

K-31 is the fourth of five gaseous diffusion buildings demolished at ETTP. The site, which has also been known as K-25 and Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was built during the Manhattan Project in World War II as part of a top-secret federal program to build the world’s first atomic bombs. Officials say it helped to win the Cold War, enriching uranium for commercial nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons.

But operations ended in 1985, and the site was permanently shut down in 1987. DOE then began cleanup operations and—with the help of contractors, a nonprofit organization, and others–is converting it into a large private industrial park. [Read more…]

DOE names IIa as woman-owned small business of year

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Bonnie C. Carroll, IIa founder and CEO, center, receives the DOE Woman-owned Small Business Award for Fiscal Year 2014 from John Hale III, director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization for DOE. (Photo courtesy IIa)

Bonnie C. Carroll, IIa founder and CEO, center, receives the DOE Woman-owned Small Business Award for Fiscal Year 2014 from John Hale III, director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization for DOE. (Photo courtesy IIa)

 

The U.S. Department of Energy has named Information International Associates, or IIa, its Woman-owned Small Business for Fiscal Year 2014.

Bonnie C. Carroll, IIa founder and chief executive officer, accepted the award at the 14th Annual DOE Small Business Forum and Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 17, 2015, from John Hale III, director of the DOE Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.

Each year, DOE recognizes the exceptional performance of a woman-owned small business directly contributing to the accomplishments of core DOE mission objectives and requirements, a press release said. In presenting the award, Hale cited IIa’s innovation and technical solutions, which exceeded contract requirements in responding to cyber security concerns, as well as its exceptional customer service and efficiency, the release said.

DOE, the largest civilian contracting agency within the federal government, awarded a total of $6.6 billion in contracts in FY 2014 to prime and subcontracts. [Read more…]

Helium ‘balloons’ offer new path to control complex materials

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Helium Atoms into Crystalline Film

Inserting helium atoms (visualized as a red balloon) into a crystalline film (gold) allowed Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers to control the material’s elongation in a single direction. (Submitted image)

 

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new method to manipulate a wide range of materials and their behavior using only a handful of helium ions.

The team’s technique, published in Physical Review Letters, advances the understanding and use of complex oxide materials that boast unusual properties such as superconductivity and colossal magnetoresistance but are notoriously difficult to control.

For the first time, ORNL researchers have discovered a simple way to control the elongation of a crystalline material along a single direction without changing the length along the other directions or damaging the crystalline structure. This is accomplished by adding a few helium ions into a complex oxide material and provides a never before possible level of control over magnetic and electronic properties.

“By putting a little helium into the material, we’re able to control strain along a single axis,” said ORNL’s Zac Ward, who led the team’s study. “This type of control wasn’t possible before, and it allows you to tune material properties with a finesse that we haven’t previously had access to.” [Read more…]

HED: Silica ‘spiky screws’ could enhance industrial coatings, additive manufacturing

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It took marine sponges millions of years to perfect their spike-like structures, but research mimicking these formations may soon alter how industrial coatings and 3-D printed objects are produced.

A molecular process developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory paves the way for improved silica structure design by introducing microscopic, segmented screw-like spikes that can more effectively bond materials for commercial use.

The study, conducted by Jaswinder Sharma and his colleagues Panos Datskos and David Cullen, has been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Authors said other applications of the screw-like spikes could include coatings for eyeglasses, television screens, commercial transportation, and even self-cleaning windows and roofs in rural and urban environments.

Created by emulsion droplets applied to a silica particle’s surface, the new, segmented spikes offer an alternative tool for material scientists and engineers that can better maintain and fuse bonds within a variety of microstructures. [Read more…]

DOE Oak Ridge names director of facilities, information, reservation management

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Johnathan Sitzlar

Johnathan Sitzlar

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office recently named Johnathan Sitzlar as director of the Facilities, Information, and Reservation Management Division, or FIRMD, in the Office of Assistant Manager for Administration at DOE-ORO.

In this position, Sitzlar directs a staff of 24 federal employees in the FIRMD with responsibility for the development and execution of a variety of programs including reservation management and infrastructure and facility management.

Sitzlar is directly responsible for all support services and reservation management issues on the DOE Oak Ridge Reservation. His duties also include planning and executing programs for the federal workforce designed to provide a clean, safe work environment with all the necessary resources required for ORO employees and customer organizations to fulfill their assigned missions. [Read more…]

Letter: Expansion of DOE waste storage highlights environmental justice problem

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To the Editor:

For years, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 have steered their workers to live in surrounding counties. This has boosted those economies—while lowering our home values, financially burdening our schools, and limiting our retail growth.

Now, the U.S. Department of Energy wants to store more of its nuclear waste here.

In the last four years, our two counties (Anderson and Roane) lost 20 percent of their resident DOE workers, costing us an estimated $93 million in annual DOE payroll.

DOE’s economic favoritism is environmentally unfair and politically dumb. It works against the long-term interests of DOE’s important nuclear programs—which need a strong local political base of support to successfully operate. [Read more…]

ORNL: New tool on horizon for surgeons treating cancer patients

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Droplet-based Surface Sampling Probe

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new droplet-based surface sampling probe speeds the process of analyzing a liver biopsy sample. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

Surgeons could know while their patients are still on the operating table if a tissue is cancerous, according to researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

In the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, a team led by ORNL’s Vilmos Kertesz describes an automated droplet-based surface sampling probe that accomplishes in about 10 minutes what now routinely takes 20 to 30 minutes. Kertesz expects that time to be cut to four to five minutes soon. For this proof-of-concept demonstration, researchers rapidly profiled two hormones from human pituitary tissue.

“Instead of having to cut and mount tissue and wait for a trained pathologist to review the sample under a microscope, a technician might soon perform an equally conclusive test in the operating environment,” Kertesz said.

The new mass spectrometry-based technology provides an attractive alternative to the traditional method called immunohistochemistry, or IHC, which looks for specific protein biomarkers to make a diagnosis. Although the IHC approach provides a high degree of spatial recognition, it is time-consuming and limited by the quality and specificity of the antibody used to detect the protein. [Read more…]

Experts launch advanced composites institute announced by Obama, led by UT

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Craig Blue, David Danielson, and David Millhorn

Pictured above are Craig Blue, IACMI CEO; David Danielson assistant secretary, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy; and David Millhorn, executive vice president for the University of Tennessee System and president of the UT Research Foundation. (Photo courtesy UT)

 

ORNL a founding partner

Hundreds of composites experts from industry, government, and academia gathered at the Knoxville Convention Center on Wednesday for the launch of the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, or IACMI.

The University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among IACMI’s founding research partners.

A signing ceremony between the U.S. Department of Energy and IACMI representatives marked the official start of business for the newly established institute, which was announced in January by President Barack Obama.

IACMI will work with industry to reduce technical risk and develop a robust supply chain for advanced composite materials in automotive components, wind turbines, and compressed gas storage applications. Funded with $70 million in federal funds and more than $180 million in nonfederal funds, IACMI will focus on making advanced fiber-reinforced polymer composites less expensive and less energy-intensive, helping give America’s resurging manufacturing sector a more competitive edge in the global economy. [Read more…]

ORAU’s Timmerman receives DOE Small Business Award

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Heidi Timmerman and John Hale III Small Business Award

Heidi Timmerman, director of Procurement and Contracts Administration at ORAU, left, receives the Facility Management Contractor Procurement Director of the Year award for fiscal year 2014 from John Hale III, director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization for DOE. (Submitted photo)

 

The U.S. Department of Energy presented ORAU’s Heidi Timmerman with its Facility Management Contractor Procurement Director of the Year award for fiscal year 2014 at the 14th Annual DOE Small Business Forum and Expo in Phoenix on Wednesday.

The award recognizes ORAU’s subcontracting achievements with small business suppliers used to support work performed under the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education contract that ORAU (Oak Ridge Associated Universities) manages for DOE.

In FY14, ORAU committed to awarding 71 percent of its subcontracts in support of ORISE work to small businesses, and it exceeded that goal when more than 78 percent of subcontracts were awarded to small businesses, a press release said. [Read more…]

Cinder, public works director, to retire Sept. 4

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Gary Cinder

Gary Cinder

Gary Cinder, who has been Oak Ridge public works director for 24 years and interim city manager twice, is retiring September 4.

Cinder has been in public service for 33 years. He could go to work in the private sector, possibly as a consultant.

“It’s time to try something new, something different,” Cinder told Oak Ridge City Council members on Tuesday.

Cinder was the lead staff member on locating, designing, and building the Oak Ridge Central Services Complex on Woodbury Lane. That building is used by the Oak Ridge Public Works Department, Oak Ridge Electric Department, and the school bus maintenance facility, among others.

Cinder has led a major effort to ensure that Oak Ridge complies with a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency order that requires the city to repair all sewer system overflows by September 28. That work is mostly complete, and the city is in good shape, Cinder said. [Read more…]

ETTP emergency exercise to be held Tuesday, June 16

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An emergency exercise will be conducted at the East Tennessee Technology Park in west Oak Ridge beginning at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 16.

The emergency exercise is being conducted by URS-CH2M Oak Ridge, LLC, or UCOR.

The exercise, which should conclude no later than 1 p.m., is being conducted in coordination with the U.S. Department of Energy and Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, a press release said. It will involve participants from multiple state agencies; the city of Oak Ridge; and Anderson, Knox, Loudon, and Roane counties. [Read more…]