Oak Ridge Today

Morris named NPO assistant manager for environment, safety, health

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Susan Morris

Susan Morris

Susan Morris has been named assistant manager for environment, safety, health, and quality for the National Nuclear Security Administration Production Office. The NPO oversees work at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.

Morris is responsible for oversight of contractor programs for health physics and radiological protection, industrial hygiene and occupational medicine, industrial safety, transportation safety, construction safety, chemical safety, fire protection, firearm safety, explosive safety, aviation safety, and quality assurance at the Pantex Plant and Y-12 National Security Complex, a press release said. She has more than 28 years of federal service.

Morris has had a broad range of responsibilities, including serving as the team leader and subject matter expert/program manager for industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, fire protection, and environmental programs, and she served as the Y-12 Site Office NEPA compliance officer, the release said. [Read more…]

Tech 2020 Announces autoXLR8R 2015

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Application process now open

Tech 2020 of Oak Ridge is accepting applications for autoXLR8R 2015, a business accelerator for startups seeking to commercialize technology in the automotive industry. The application process is detailed on the program website: www.autoXLR8R.com. The deadline for applications is May 29.

The program opens in Oak Ridge on July 6 and runs through the week of August 31.

autoXLR8R is in it’s third year, having started at the Southern Middle Tennessee Entrepreneur Centers in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Tech 2020 has been involved with providing educational support since its inception, a press release said. [Read more…]

ORNL researchers contribute to major UN bioenergy, sustainability report

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Keith Kline and Virginia Dale

ORNL researchers Keith Kline and Virginia Dale contributed to a major United Nations report on bioenergy and sustainability. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

A major United Nations report on bioenergy and sustainability released Tuesday concludes the sustainable production of bioenergy can be an important tool for addressing climate change.

Two researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory contributed to the multinational UN document, which offers science-based evaluations of bioenergy issues—including food and energy crop production and bioenergy—as a climate change mitigation strategy.

Keith Kline of ORNL’s Environmental Sciences Division contributed to a chapter on land use for the UN Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) Bioenergy and Sustainability Report.

“Misconceptions about the availability of land needed for growing food crops and about the opportunities and synergies possible from combined production systems could undermine investment in a key strategy for climate change mitigation,” Kline said. [Read more…]

New electric bucket trucks offer cleaner, quieter operation

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Oak Ridge Electric Department Hybrid Bucket Truck Crew

Linemen Michael Goodpaster, left, and Steve Wilson prepare to demonstrate the Oak Ridge Electric Department’s new hybrid bucket truck, which uses electricity rather than diesel to operate its bucket boom.

 

The Oak Ridge Electric Department has a new hybrid bucket truck that uses quiet electricity rather than noisy diesel to power its bucket boom, making it easier for workers to communicate and reducing emissions and neighborhood noise.

Workers said the electric-powered boom is as fast as traditional diesel-powered booms, and the improved worker communications with the new, quieter booms helps them stay safe.

“It’s been a great thing for us,” Oak Ridge Electric Department Director Jack Suggs said. “The linemen really like it.”

Officials said the city’s Electric Department is one of several local power companies partnering with the Tennessee Valley Authority to bring energy-efficient, hybrid electric-powered bucket trucks to the Tennessee Valley. The new trucks are funded in part by a grant from TVA, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Oak Ridge received one plug-in hybrid bucket truck in October and is awaiting delivery of a plug-in hybrid pickup truck. [Read more…]

Kevin Hall named DOE Oak Ridge Office manager

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Kevin Hall

Kevin Hall

The U.S. Department of Energy has named Kevin Hall as the manager of its Oak Ridge Office. Hall has served as the office’s deputy manager since April 2013.

As manager, Hall oversees the Oak Ridge Integrated Support Center, which provides critical mission support services in the personnel, finance, budget, procurement, legal, security, and emergency management, and employee health and safety on a local and national level, a press release said.

Hall is also responsible for managing the 33,500-acre Oak Ridge Reservation. This function involves managing issues that impact areas surrounding Oak Ridge National Laboratory, East Tennessee Technology Park, and National Nuclear Security Administration Production Office, and leading projects that may affect multiple sites. [Read more…]

New one-megawatt solar array at Heritage Center can power 133 homes

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Powerhouse Six Solar Array Ribbon-cutting April 9, 2015

Company executives and city and federal officials celebrate a new one-megawatt solar array at Heritage Center in west Oak Ridge on Thursday with a ceremonial “plugging in.”

 

A new one-megawatt solar array at the Heritage Center in west Oak Ridge will provide enough clean energy to power 133 average-size homes per year, officials said.

Company and nonprofit executives joined city and federal officials for a ceremonial “plugging in” of the new Powerhouse Six photovoltaic solar array on Thursday.

The $1.8 million array has 3,268 solar modules, and it will be used to sell electric power to the Tennessee Valley Authority through the Oak Ridge Electric Department.

“We’re going live today,” said Gil Hough, renewable energy manager for RSI, or Restoration Services Inc., the Oak Ridge-based company that developed the array. [Read more…]

U.S. scientists celebrate the restart of the Large Hadron Collider, which involves ORNL

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Note: Oak Ridge National Laboratory has led an eight-year upgrade of the electromagnetic calorimeter used for LHC’s experiment called ALICE  (for A Large Ion Collider Experiment). This detector measures the energies of high-energy electrons and gamma rays to learn more about the conditions of the early universe. Thomas M. Cormier leads the LHC Heavy Ion Group in ORNL’s Physics Division.

On Sunday, April 5, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator began its second act. After two years of upgrades and repairs, proton beams once again circulated around the Large Hadron Collider, located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

With the collider back in action, the more than 1,700 U.S. scientists who work on LHC experiments are prepared to join thousands of their international colleagues to study the highest-energy particle collisions ever achieved in the laboratory.

These collisions—hundreds of millions of them every second—will lead scientists to new and unexplored realms of physics, and could yield extraordinary insights into the nature of the physical universe. [Read more…]

DOE awards contract for sludge buildout project

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Transuranic Waste Processing Center

The Transuranic Waste Processing Center in west Oak Ridge, south of Bethel Valley Road on Highway 95, is pictured above. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy/Oak Ridge Office)

 

Federal officials have taken the first step in treating 2,000 cubic meters of transuranic sludges stored in Melton Valley storage tanks.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management announced it had awarded a contract to CH2M Hill Constructors Inc. for the Sludge Processing Facility Buildouts Project at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center. The center is in west Oak Ridge, south of Bethel Valley Road on Highway 95.

The transuranic waste comes from past operations at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said Mike Koentop, executive officer of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, or OREM. The sludge is stored safely and securely now, but there are regulatory milestones to meet, Koentop said. [Read more…]

DOE Oak Ridge awards $9.6 million contract to Chickasaw Nation Industries

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Cris Van Horn, seated right, DOE-ORO deputy director for procurement and contracts, along with DOE-ORO Procurement and Contracts staff Trae Crowder and Keturah Moore, standing, congratulate Tyler Sparks, LLC manager of Chickasaw Nation Industries Global Solutions LLC, for the current award of a 5-year, $9.6 million SBA 8(a) Business Development Program contract for financial management support services at the DOE Oak Ridge Office. (DOE photo/Lynn Freeny)

Cris Van Horn, seated right, DOE-ORO deputy director for procurement and contracts, along with DOE-ORO Procurement and Contracts staff Trae Crowder and Keturah Moore, standing, congratulate Tyler Sparks, LLC manager of Chickasaw Nation Industries Global Solutions LLC, for the current award of a 5-year, $9.6 million SBA 8(a) Business Development Program contract for financial management support services at the DOE Oak Ridge Office. (DOE photo/Lynn Freeny)

 

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office has awarded a five-year, $9.6 million contract to Chickasaw Nation Industries Global Solutions LLC for financial management support services. The contract will employ about 17 people in Oak Ridge, a press release said.

The contract was awarded through the Small Business Administration 8(a) Business Development Program.

“We are pleased with the selection of Chickasaw Global Solutions as the next financial management support contractor at the Oak Ridge Office,” said ORO Deputy Manager Kevin Hall. “The services provided under this contract are vital to our success, and we look forward to building a productive, professional relationship with this company.” [Read more…]

ORNL part of project to study how tropical forests respond to climate change

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Amazon Tropical Rainforests

The future of tropical rainforests in the Amazon (pictured) and worldwide is the focus of a new research project that combines field experiments and predictive modeling. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory will play key roles in an expansive new project that aims to bring the future of tropical forests and the climate system into much clearer focus by coupling field research with the development of a new ecosystem model.

The project is called the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics, or NGEE-Tropics. Its goal is the development of a model that represents how tropical forests interact with Earth’s climate in much greater ecological detail than ever before. This will help scientists explore, more accurately than is possible today, how rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, increasing greenhouse gas levels, and other natural and human-induced changes affect tropical forests’ influence on Earth’s climate.

Led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the effort includes collaborators from Oak Ridge, Brookhaven, Los Alamos, and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. The study also includes researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA, and several institutions from other nations. [Read more…]

Regional firms receive ORNL’s 2015 Small Business Impact Awards

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ORNL Small Business Impact Awards

ORNL Small Business Impact Award winners, pictured, left to right: Jeremy Shoop, City-State LLC; T.J. Kocak and Roger Claiborne, Pellissippi Investors LLC; Cindy and Michael Hollander, Innovative Design Inc.; Vicki Dyer and Wendi Arnold, Scientific Sales Inc.; Elizabeth Vacanti, ORNL; Beau Scherer, Scientific Sales Inc.; Barry Stephenson, Materials and Chemistry Laboratory Inc. (MCLinc); Gabe Beck, City State LLC; Debbie Pohanka, Scientific Sales Inc.; and Brittany Voigt, Innovative Design LLC. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory recognized local and regional companies with annual Small Business Impact Awards on March 27 at the weekly meeting of the East Tennessee Economic Council in Oak Ridge.

The companies were honored in categories emphasizing their specific capabilities.

The Above and Beyond Award went to the small business Pellissippi Investors LLC. The company is the landlord for ORNL’s National Transportation Resource Centers I and II, which house several highly advanced research laboratories. Pellissippi Investors was instrumental in ensuring that tenant improvements to the facilities were executed properly despite demanding research schedules and tight budgets.

The Innovator Award was given to Materials and Chemistry Laboratory, or MCLinc. This commercial applied research firm is a small business located in Oak Ridge. MCLinc developed a unique method used for the analysis of filters from the cooling system at the Spallation Neutron Source, despite a challenging analytical scenario. [Read more…]

Tech 2020-led team receives $250K grant for investment capital effort

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Tech 2020 Logo

A proposal team led by Technology 2020, or Tech 2020, in Oak Ridge has received a $250,000 federal grant to create a seed capital fund. The goal is to establish a permanent source of professionally managed, seed-stage investment capital focused on technology-generating institutions, entrepreneurs, and young companies in Tennessee, a press release said.

The grant was announced this week by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.

Tech 2020 led a proposal team that included Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Meritus Ventures, and Innova Memphis. The team proposed to create the “TennesSeed Fund.”

The TennesSeed Fund team will receive the $250,000 grant, and it will be supported by Meritus and Innova to conduct an assessment of best practices, and then organize and launch a new seed fund focused on “proof of concept” financings in Tennessee. The initial focus of investments will be intelligent and sustainable transportation and logistics, which is an industry cluster where Tennessee has a competitive advantage bolstered by strong research, development, and commercial activity, a press release said. [Read more…]