Oak Ridge Today

Boy hit by car at apartment complex, ORFD says

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A 10-year-old boy was reportedly hit by a car and flipped onto the hood before falling onto the ground next to a tire at British Woods Apartments on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

The boy was lying face up in the apartment complex driveway when the Oak Ridge Fire Department arrived at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, a report said. He had abrasions on his neck but no other obvious injuries.

The boy could not remember what happened, the ORFD report said. He was taken by ambulance to the University of Tennessee Medical Center.

Alexander Inn ballroom demolished as renovation work begins

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Alexander Inn Ballroom Demolition

Workers have demolished the damaged ballroom at the historic Alexander Inn, a dilapidated two-story hotel that has been vacant for years and is now being converted into an assisted living center.

Workers have demolished the ballroom at the historic but dilapidated Alexander Inn as part of a project to convert the vacant two-story hotel into an assisted living center.

There are about a dozen workers at the three-acre site on East Madison Road, including framers and demolition, cleanup, and abatement crews, project manager Shea Ramsey said Thursday.

The flat-roof addition that included the ballroom, kitchen, and dining room had leaked, and the wood had rotted. Project officials have previously said the ballroom and kitchen would be demolished and rebuilt. [Read more…]

B&W Y-12 again a premier sponsor of the Secret City Festival

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B&W Y-12 Secret City Festival Check Presentation

Chuck Spencer, center, B&W Y-12 president and general manager, presents a $25,000 sponsorship check for the Secret City Festival to Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan, left, and Mayor Pro Tem Jane Miller. (Submitted photo)

B&W Y-12 is returning to the Secret City Festival once again as the premier festival sponsor, a press release said.

“B&W has led the way in Secret City Festival sponsorships both financially and in kind for the past eight years,” the Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau said in a Wednesday press release. B&W Y-12 operates the Y-12 National Security Complex for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Chuck Spencer, B&W Y-12 president and general manager, presented a $25,000 festival sponsorship check during a May 28 meeting. [Read more…]

Groundbreaking for Protomet expansion on June 14

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Protomet Corp. is having a June 14 groundbreaking ceremony for a $6.25 million expansion that will more than double the size of its current manufacturing space.

The expansion will add 30 jobs to Protomet, and it is the second multi-million dollar investment in the company’s Oak Ridge facility, a press release said. [Read more…]

Energy Secretary Moniz visits Y-12 National Security Complex

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Energy Secretary Visits Y-12

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, right, tours the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility during his visit Monday to the Y-12 National Security Complex. Joining him are, from left, B&W Y-12 President and General Manager Chuck Spencer, Julie Huff of B&W Y-12’s Materials Management Organization, B&W Y-12 Senior Vice President of Security Rod Johnson, and NNSA Production Office Manager Steve Erhart.

New U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz visited the Y-12 National Security Complex this week.

Before touring production and storage facilities at the site, Moniz held an all-hands meeting with Y-12, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and federal employees at Y-12’s New Hope Center. Joining him at the meeting was U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Tennessee Republican whose district includes Oak Ridge. [Read more…]

New all-solid sulfur-based battery outperforms lithium-ion technology

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ORNL Lithium-Sulfur Battery

A new all-solid lithium-sulfur battery developed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory team led by Chengdu Liang has the potential to reduce cost, increase performance, and improve safety compared with existing designs. (Submitted photo)

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today’s electronics.

The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur, also addresses flammability concerns experienced by other chemistries.

“Our approach is a complete change from the current battery concept of two electrodes joined by a liquid electrolyte, which has been used over the last 150 to 200 years,” said Chengdu Liang, lead author on the ORNL study published this week in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. [Read more…]

UT report: Economy shows signs of strength, finds ‘firm footing’

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KNOXVILLE—Falling unemployment rates, an increase in vehicle sales, and a long-awaited rebound in the residential housing market are all indications that the national and state economies are making a comeback.

Despite sequestration of federal spending and a payroll tax increase that have slowed consumer spending, the economy is poised for strong growth in both 2014 and 2015, according to the spring 2013 Tennessee Business and Economic Outlook released Wednesday.

The study, prepared by the Center for Business and Economic Research, or CBER, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, predicts the trajectory of the state and national economies by examining many economic and fiscal factors and trends. [Read more…]

Winds knock down gazebo, snap trees at Rarity Ridge

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Rarity Ridge Gazebo

A community gazebo at Rarity Ridge collapsed during a brief storm in Oak Ridge on Wednesday afternoon. (Photo courtesy of Bob Wolf)

A community gazebo collapsed and trees snapped at Rarity Ridge during a brief Wednesday afternoon storm, a resident said.

The wind damage, which occurred between about 4:15 and 4:30 p.m., appeared to be in a very localized area inside the residential development in west Oak Ridge, resident Bob Wolf said.

Soffits had blown off the front and rear porches of one home, and shingles were missing. Another house had its gutter torn off, and the white plastic fencing at several homes was damaged, Wolf said. [Read more…]

Theoretically twice as fast, Chinese supercomputer could bump Titan from No. 1 spot

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Tianhe-2 Lights

Lights on the Chinese Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which has a theoretical peak that is twice as fast as the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Jack Dongarra)

A new Chinese supercomputer is theoretically twice as fast as the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it could bump Titan from the No. 1 spot on the Top 500 list that will come out on June 17, one of the co-authors of the list said Wednesday.

Titan, which reached the No. 1 spot on the semiannual Top 500 list in November, has a theoretical peak of 27 petaflops, or roughly 27,000 trillion calculations per second.

The Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2, also known as TH-2 or Milkyway-2, has a theoretical peak of 54.9 petaflops. It also has about twice as much memory as the Titan system, said Jack Dongarra, a Top 500 co-author, University of Tennessee faculty member, and distinguished research staff member in ORNL’s Computer Science and Mathematics Division. [Read more…]

B&W Y-12 donates $25,000 to Secret City Festival

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B&W Y-12 Donates to Secret City Festival

B&W Y-12 General Manager Chuck Spencer, center, presents a $25,000 check to Oak Ridge officials for the Secret City Festival this month during a City Council meeting last week. (Submitted photo)

B&W Y-12 President and General Manager Chuck Spencer presented a check for $25,000 to Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan and Vice Mayor Jane Miller during a City Council meeting last week.

B&W Y-12 has been a premier sponsor of the Secret City Festival for the past eight years, a press release said.
 [Read more…]

Female pioneer in law enforcement dies after battle with cancer, sheriff says

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Peggy Murphy, a longtime deputy who was a pioneer in law enforcement, died Saturday after a long battle with cancer, the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department said Wednesday. She was 68.

“Deputy Peggy Murphy was a veteran law enforcement officer,” Anderson County Sheriff Paul White said in a statement. “One of the female pioneers in law enforcement, she began her career with the Clinton Police Department in 1966. Peggy served with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department from 1976 until 1986. She returned to the Sheriff’s Department in 2006 and served until her death. [Read more…]

Report: Teen driver didn’t see stop sign due to tree limbs before hitting bus

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Oak Ridge Preschool Bus Crash

No students were reported to be injured after a Monday afternoon collision between a school bus and a car in Woodland.

The 17-year-old driver who hit a school bus in Woodland on Monday afternoon said he did not see a stop sign at the intersection of Northwestern and West Gettysburg avenues due to tree limbs, and he failed to stop before colliding with the bus, authorities said.

The Clinton teenager estimated he was traveling at about 30 mph in a 1997 Volvo 960 sedan as he drove west on West Gettysburg Avenue just before the 2:16 p.m. crash, according to an Oak Ridge Police Department accident report.

The bus driver, Yvonnda Smith McNair, 60, of Oliver Springs, told ORPD Officer Leslie Miller that she was driving south on Northwestern Avenue when the Volvo failed to stop and hit the bus, owned by contractor First Student Inc. [Read more…]