Construction is planned in December for a project to upgrade proton power at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The construction could last about one year, and it will be limited to the buildout of what is known as the klystron gallery, ORNL said in June. The klystron gallery houses the radio-frequency systems that power the structures used to accelerate a negatively-charged hydrogen ion beam in the linear accelerator at SNS.
Note: This story was updated at 12 p.m. July 19.
Four workers received small external radiation doses and a planned outage of the Spallation Neutron Source was started a few days early after an unexpected “pressure transient” in March, according to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The low radiation dose levels (less than 25 millirem) were well below the regulatory threshold of 5,000 mrem annual exposure, which was established to protect worker safety, ORNL said in June.
The pressure transient occurred in the SNS mercury loop. When radiation was detected, ORNL staff closed off the affected area and reviewed workers’ dosimeters.
“Readings showed four workers received small external doses, none more than 25 millirem,” ORNL said.
For comparison, a chest x-ray produces a radiation dose of about 6 mrem; a mammogram about 13 mrem, and a head and chest CT scan is 1,100 mrem[1].
[Read more…]No injuries were reported when a furnace door blew open during an “unexpected violent reaction” in a chemistry laboratory at the Y-12 National Security Complex in May.
The door of the muffle furnace blew open while it was heating samples in an analytical chemistry laboratory in Building 9995 on Thursday, May 30, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said.
The muffle furnace was damaged, the DNFSB said. It is used to heat samples to high temperatures. The glass vials containing the samples shattered, and some were expelled from the muffle furnace into the work area, the safety board said in a June 7 report.
[Read more…]No injuries were reported during a fire at a transformer for a salt bath used to heat depleted uranium at the Y-12 National Security Complex in May.
The transformer fire was reported Monday, May 20, in Building 9215 at Y-12. It burned no more than about 25 minutes, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. No depleted uranium was being processed at the time of the fire, the board said.
The salt bath heats depleted uranium before metalworking operations.
The DNFSB said the system engineer had stepped away from the salt bath while it was slowly heating to a new temperature, and he noticed the fire after re-entering the area after a supervisor told him about an unusual odor, the DNFSB said. The engineer called 911, and all personnel evacuated the immediate area.
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After a leak in April, hydrogen fluoride operations have resumed at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
The leak in a cylinder enclosure in Building 9212 in the production area on the west side of Y-12 was reported Thursday morning, April 4. An operational emergency was declared, and employees in the buildings in and around the 9212 processing complex were evacuated to other buildings in the production area.
Photos released by the City of Oak Ridge and CNS Y-12 on Monday show the landslide that occurred next to the access road to the Oak Ridge Water Treatment Plant on Pine Ridge in February.
Last week, Oak Ridge Public Works Director Shira McWaters said it could cost an estimated $407,000 to repair the landslide, and the work should be complete by the end of July.
The water plant is on a ridge top above the main entrance to the Y-12 National Security Complex on Bear Creek Road. The landslide occurred next to the access road to the water plant on Saturday night, February 23. It’s the only access road to the water plant. It allows operations and maintenance workers to get to the water plant and deliver materials, equipment, and chemicals.
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Filmmaker Keith McDaniel has completed a nine-year project to document the oral histories of about 400 current and former Oak Ridge residents, including those connected to the Manhattan Project during World War II.
The life stories were used to build a digital collection for the Oak Ridge Public Library’s Center for Oak Ridge Oral History, or COROH. McDaniel was part of the group that made plans for the COROH and, following the city’s receipt of an annual grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, took the contract for the documentary work.
“A lot of original Oak Ridgers were dying and getting older,” McDaniel said in a press release from Carson-Newman University. “We felt it was really important to collect their memories, to collect their stories.”
The one-on-one filmed interviews gave those connected to the Manhattan Project, and later to the city at large, the opportunity to share their life stories, the press release said.
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An Oak Ridge Institute approved in June is expected to foster a stronger, more coordinated relationship between the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
In June, the University of Tennessee System Board of Trustees approved a resolution creating the Institute, which will be at the University of Tennessee. It will move five joint UT and ORNL programs under a single administrative “umbrella,” the university reported.
It will allow the coordinated expansion of graduate education programs to prepare scientists and engineers for a global economy that demands interdisciplinary problem-solving, teamwork, and innovation, according to a resolution proposing the Institute.
“Coordination of joint efforts through ORI (Oak Ridge Institute) will promote greater focus, efficiency, and accountability; ensure innovative education, training, and workforce development; and provide flexibility to respond to emerging research challenges and the potential of disruptive technologies,” the resolution said.
The Oak Ridge Institute will build on the “track record of success” established by ORNL and UT, the resolution said. It will be led by an executive director who will pursue interdisciplinary research and workforce development in emerging fields.
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When people think of glass blowing, they think of unique vases and colorful works of art made in places like Dollywood or Asheville. Not many people know that Oak Ridge has its very own scientific glass blowers working for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
ORNL has its own glass shop on site. Scientific Glassblower and Shop Manager Jason Craig has been blowing glass for almost 25 years.
According to Craig, ORNL has always had a glass shop. The glass shop now has been in its current building since 1955. There used to be 10 glass blowers at ORNL, and two or three at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Now Craig and Carlos Rodriguez-Flores are the two full-time glassblowers, with a retired glass blower who comes in part-time.
Here are photos from the glass shop by Kate Trabalka, a media and communications student who is concentrating on journalism at East Tennessee State University and helping Oak Ridge Today with stories and photos this summer. See Trabalka’s story here. See her videos here.
[Read more…]
When people think of glass blowing, they think of unique vases and colorful works of art made in places like Dollywood or Asheville. Not many people know that Oak Ridge has its very own scientific glass blowers working for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
ORNL has its own glass shop on site. Scientific Glassblower and Shop Manager Jason Craig has been blowing glass for almost 25 years.
According to Craig, ORNL has always had a glass shop. The glass shop now has been in its current building since 1955. There used to be 10 glass blowers at ORNL, and two or three at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Now Craig and Carlos Rodriguez-Flores are the two full-time glassblowers, with a retired glass blower who comes in part-time.
Craig started out as an artistic glass blower before transitioning to scientific glass blowing.
“Working in a (glass shop) at a research facility is much different than blowing glass in a production shop or for artistic glass blowing,” Craig said during an interview in the ORNL glass shop last week. “So, I guess my greatest challenge is just trying to…keep track of the customers and the jobs and ordering materials, inventory, and gas cylinders, and all that stuff…We’re basically running our own business here inside the laboratory.”
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A supercomputer that was once the world’s fastest will be retired at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on August 1.
The supercomputer is a Cray XK7 machine called Titan. It is operated by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. It’s a petaflop system capable of performing up to 27 quadrillion calculations per second.
Titan was the world’s fastest supercomputer in November 2012, but it was bumped to number two by Tianhe-2, a Chinese supercomputer in June 2013. Still, Titan continued to rank as one of the world’s top 10 fastest supercomputers from its debut at number one in 2012 until this June, when it dropped to number 12.
In June, ORNL said Titan, which has been operating for seven years, will be decommissioned on August 1 and disassembled for recycling. Titan will be removed to make room for a new, much more powerful supercomputer, Frontier. That will be an exascale system capable of 1.5 exaflops, or 1.5 quintillion calculations per second (a billion billion calculations per second). Frontier will be a $600 million Cray computer that is expected to be the world’s most powerful when it debuts in 2021.
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By Dawn Levy
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has named Marcel Demarteau as Physics Division Director, effective June 17.
“Marcel brings a keen sense of physics research to the Physics Division and will help in shaping its future in the areas of heavy-ion collisions, fundamental symmetries, neutrino physics, nuclear structure and astrophysics, and stable isotope production and research,” said David Dean, associate laboratory director for physical sciences.
An expert in particle collider physics and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Demarteau leads research in the structure and evolution of the universe. He chairs several advisory committees through which the particle physics community takes stock of past progress and charts future enterprises.
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