Oak Ridge Today

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…]

ORNL Climate Change Science Institute rep to discuss science, policy on Tuesday

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Benjamin L. Preston

Benjamin L. Preston

The deputy director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will discuss climate change science and policy during a Tuesday lunch lecture. The meeting is open to the public.

Ben Preston is deputy director of ORNL’s Climate Change Science Institute. His talk is titled “The State of Climate Change Science and Policy: Local to Global.”

The Friends of ORNL meeting starts with socializing and coffee at 11 a.m., lunch begins at 11:30 a.m., and the lecture starts at noon. A question-and-answer session is scheduled at 12:45 p.m., and the meeting adjourns at 1 p.m. A catered lunch by the Soup Kitchen will be available for $8. [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…]

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…]

New film on former ORNL Director Weinberg has premiere on April 23

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Alvin Weinberg Poster

The world premiere of a new film on the life of former Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Alvin Weinberg will be held on Thursday, April 23, at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge. The film was written and directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and Oak Ridge resident Keith McDaniel.

Although McDaniel has written and directed more than a dozen documentary films, he is generally best known for his films “Secret City: The Oak Ridge Story” and “The Clinton 12.”

According to McDaniel, the biographical documentary entitled “Alvin Weinberg” explores the life of the internationally renowned nuclear scientist.

“I didn’t know Dr. Weinberg very well although I did interview him a couple of years prior to his death,” McDaniel said. “His was a fascinating life. In making this film, I wanted to not only tell stories of his professional achievements but I also wanted to show what Dr. Weinberg was like as a person.” [Read more…]

ORNL-led team demonstrates desalination with graphene membrane

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Nature Nanotech Pores

Researchers created nanopores in graphene (red, and enlarged in the circle to highlight its honeycomb structure) that are stabilized with silicon atoms (yellow) and showed their porous membrane could desalinate seawater. Orange represents a non-graphene residual polymer. (Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Dawn Levy

Less than 1 percent of Earth’s water is drinkable. Removing salt and other minerals from our biggest available source of water—seawater—may help satisfy a growing global population thirsty for fresh water for drinking, farming, transportation, heating, cooling, and industry. But desalination is an energy-intensive process, which concerns those wanting to expand its application.

Now, a team of experimentalists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated an energy-efficient desalination technology that uses a porous membrane made of strong, slim graphene—a carbon honeycomb one atom thick. The results are published in the March 23 advance online issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

“Our work is a proof of principle that demonstrates how you can desalinate saltwater using free-standing, porous graphene,” said Shannon Mark Mahurin of ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division, who co-led the study with Ivan Vlassiouk in ORNL’s Energy and Transportation Science Division.

“It’s a huge advance,” said Vlassiouk, pointing out a wealth of water travels through the porous graphene membrane. “The flux through the current graphene membranes was at least an order of magnitude higher than (that through) state-of-the-art reverse osmosis polymeric membranes.” [Read more…]

20th Anniversary Tennessee Valley Corridor Summit at ETSU May 27-28

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Tennessee Valley Corridor Logo

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The Tennessee Valley Corridor will hold its 20th Annual TVC National Summit in Johnson City at East Tennessee State University on May 27-28.

The Summit will be hosted by ETSU President Brian Noland, in cooperation with Congressman Phil Roe, with the theme “Education Fuels the TVC Economy.”

“From our region’s community colleges to our outstanding four-year universities, the Corridor has a strong foundation to prepare the next generation of the workforce,” Roe said. “As co-chairman of the Tennessee Valley Corridor Caucus, I look forward to sharing some of the work that is ongoing in Congress. The Summit will look at education from the business and industry perspective and discuss how to ensure the workforce has the skills they need to find quality jobs at home, and how our educational institutions can partner with businesses and organizations for better success, which is critical for us all to learn about.” [Read more…]

Planning for national park, Park Service tours Jackson Square, K-25, ORNL, Y-12

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Vic Knox of National Park Service

Vic Knox (Photo by D. Ray Smith)

Note: This story was last updated at 12:37 p.m.

Planning for the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park has started, and federal officials this week toured Jackson Square, the former K-25 site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Stops included the Alexander Inn, Chapel on the Hill, the former K-25 Building site, the Graphite Reactor at ORNL, and two buildings at Y-12: Building 9731, a pilot plant, and Building 9204-3, also known as Beta 3.

“Several of those sites are just amazing,” said Vic Knox, associate director of park planning, facilities, and lands for the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. “They seem like they are just the way they were in 1943. It seems like they take you back in time.”

Oak Ridge was built as part of the Manhattan Project, a top-secret federal program to build the world’s fist atomic weapons during World War II. Besides Oak Ridge, the new national park includes Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington. [Read more…]

Big day: Main Street Oak Ridge, Manhattan Project Park on Thursday’s agenda

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Main Street Oak Ridge Presentation

Pictured above during a presentation on Main Street Oak Ridge last week are Crosland Southeast partner James Downs, right; Barry James, Crosland Southeast senior vice president, center; and Houston E. Daugherty, Cannon and Cannon vice president.

 

A vote that could help Main Street Oak Ridge, the redevelopment of the former Oak Ridge Mall, is on Thursday’s agenda. So is an open house on the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

They are among two of the biggest projects in Oak Ridge in years, and both are considered key parts of an economic renaissance that also includes new business development along Oak Ridge Turnpike and South Illinois Avenue, a new Kroger Marketplace shopping center, the proposed multi-billion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex, and the announcement by metal powder manufacturing company CVMR this month that it will move its operations from Toronto to Oak Ridge, investing $313 million and adding 620 jobs.

A rezoning has been requested for Main Street Oak Ridge. It will be considered by the Oak Ridge Municipal Planning Commission during a meeting that starts at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 26, in the Oak Ridge Municipal Building Courtroom. The Planning Commission will also consider a planned unit development, or PUD, master plan for the project. [Read more…]

Materials science duo advances next wave of alloys; work conducted at ORNL, UT

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Louis Santodonato

Louis Santodonato

Peter Liaw

Peter Liaw

KNOXVILLE—High-entropy alloys—substances constructed with equivalent quantities of five or more metals—might hold the key to future manufacturing and construction, and two researchers from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville could help pave the way.

Doctoral candidate Louis Santodonato, along with his adviser Professor Peter Liaw, both in materials science, did an extensive study into this class of materials, which are considerably lighter and less prone to fracture, corrosion, and oxidation than conventional alloys.

The pair used various methods to observe and model the atomic mixing behavior of high-entropy alloys, work that was picked up by the prestigious journal Nature Communications. [Read more…]

ORNL, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics cooperate on salt-cooled reactors

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ORNL and SINAP Salt-cooled Test Reactors

Representatives from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) met at ORNL to discuss plans for building a salt-cooled test reactor. Pictured in front of ORNL’s molten salt test loop are (from left) David Felde, ORNL; Yang Zou, SINAP; Guanyuan Wu, SINAP; Xiaohan Yu, SINAP; Naxiu Wan, SINAP; Zhimin Dai, SINAP; David Holcomb, ORNL; Kun Chen, SINAP; Kevin Robb, ORNL; Mike Laufer, University of California at Berkeley; Guimin Liu, SINAP; and Weiju Ren, ORNL. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

Representatives from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics met at ORNL last week as part of an agreement between the two institutions to work together on the advancement of salt-cooled nuclear reactor technologies.

At the meeting, SINAP staff members were expected to describe their plans for building the first salt-cooled test reactor, and the two sides began planning the next steps in the shared research project.

The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, between ORNL and SINAP focuses on accelerating scientific understanding and technical development of salt-cooled reactors, specifically fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors, or FHRs. The project will draw on ORNL’s expertise in fuels, materials, instrumentation and controls, design concepts, and modeling and simulation for advanced reactors, as well as the lab’s experience in the design, construction and operation of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, the only molten salt reactor ever built. [Read more…]