Oak Ridge Today

Five TN veterans, including Kallio of Oak Ridge, to receive French Legion of Honor

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Melvin Kallio Family

Melvin Kallio, center, received a Bronze Star on Monday, April 6, 2015, 70 years after he fought in Colmar Pocket in France during World War II, south of the Battle of the Bulge. Kallio is pictured above with family and Congressman Chuck Fleischmann. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

 

Oak Ridge resident and World War II veteran Melvin E. Kallio is one of five Tennessee veterans who will receive the prestigious Legion of Honor Medal from France in a ceremony in Nashville in October.

“As an expression of France’s eternal gratitude to those who liberated it from oppression from 1944-1945, the Consul General of France to the U.S. Southeast, Denis Barbet, will bestow the Legion of Honor upon five WWII veterans from Tennessee,” said a press release from the Consulate General of France in Atlanta.

The National Order of the Legion of Honor is the highest honor conferred upon a French or foreign national in France. It was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, and it recognizes eminent services to the French Republic.

American veterans who risked their lives during World War II and who fought on French territory qualify to be decorated as Knights of the Legion of Honor. Veterans must have fought in one of the four main campaigns of the Liberation of France: Normandy, Provence, Ardennes, or Northern France. Recipients of this honor are designated by the President of the Republic, François Hollande.

Kallio, who said he was 92 in April, fought in Colmar Pocket. He was a machine gunner in the 12th Armored Division, and he and other soldiers had been ready to fight at the Battle of the Bulge. [Read more…]

Pellissippi State transcript: Obama proposes free community college for two years

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President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON AMERICA’S COLLEGE PROMISE

This is a transcript of remarks made by President Barack Obama at Pellissippi State Community College in Hardin Valley in west Knox County on Friday, January 9. The president was at Pellissippi State to announce a proposal that would make community college free for two years to responsible students across the country. The proposal is modeled on the relatively new Tennessee Promise.

Friday’s visit was the first by a president to Pellissippi State.

Pellissippi State Community College

Knoxville, Tennessee

2:05 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody!  (Applause.)  Hey!  Thank you!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Thank you.  Thank you, everybody.  Thank you.  Everybody, please have a seat.  Please have a seat.  Well, it is good to be back in Tennessee.  I hope you guys aren’t getting tired of me.  I’ve been coming around a lot lately, because there’s a lot of good stuff happening here.

I want to begin by thanking Joe and Jill Biden.  They’re not just good friends and good partners, but they really believe in the power of education and they really believe in creating those kinds of ladders of opportunity that gave all three of us and Michelle the chances, the incredible opportunities that we’ve had today.  And they understand the promise of America’s community colleges.  Well, Jill really understands it, and Joe — (laughter) — he doesn’t really have a choice.

Before I get into the reason that I’m here today, I want to begin by saying just a few words about the tragic events that we’ve watched unfold in France over the last several hours and days.  And because events have been fast-moving this morning, I wanted to make sure to comment on them. [Read more…]

Chief engineer for U.S. ITER at ORNL to give project overview on Tuesday

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Brad Nelson

Brad Nelson

The chief engineer for the U.S. ITER Project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will give a project overview on Tuesday.

Brad Nelson is the chief engineer for the U.S. International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Project. His Tuesday talk will be the first in a series of three presentations on the U.S. ITER project to Friends of ORNL, with Hans Vogel speaking on April 8 and Graeme Murdoch speaking on May 13.

The New Yorker published a story on ITER in its March 3 edition titled “A Star in a Bottle” by Raffi Khatchadourian.

Nelson’s Tuesday presentation during a Friends of ORNL luncheon lecture starts at noon at the University of Tennessee Resource Center in Oak Ridge. [Read more…]

NNSA partners with Russia to recover ‘dirty bomb’ material

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WASHINGTON, D.C.— The National Nuclear Security Administration, in partnership with the Russian Federation, has successfully completed the removal of 14 Russian radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, from the Northern Sea Route. These devices, which contain high-activity radioactive sources, powered navigational beacons along Russia’s northern coastline. With this removal, the U.S. Department of Energy has completed its efforts to recover RTGs along the Northern Sea Route, a press release said.

RTGs were used for many years in Russia to generate electrical power at remote locations, including lighthouses and navigational beacons. The 14 RTGs recently recovered by DOE contain more than one million curies of strontium-90, a high-activity radioisotope that could be used in a dirty bomb. [Read more…]

Guest column: White crosses, Normandy, and honoring veterans

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John Ragan

John Ragan

A few years ago, I traveled to France visiting the American Cemetery in Normandy on a guided tour. Our French guide was an expert on what we were seeing. A native to the region, she was steeped by her family lore in eyewitness accounts to the events of more than a half a century earlier.

That family background had spurred her to become a tour guide just before the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Her excellent knowledge of English and history convinced her employer, despite her youth, to assign her escort duties for American veterans visiting on that momentous occasion.

She spoke in a tone of reverence about the “older gentlemen” she had taken from place to place. Movingly, she recounted how they pointed here or there and commented how different something appeared compared to when they had seen it as young men. [Read more…]

Chinese supercomputer bumps ORNL’s 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 Chinese supercomputer has bumped the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from the No. 1 spot on a semiannual ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

The Tianhe-2, which was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, is capable of 33.86 petaflops, or more than 33,000 trillion calculations per second.

Now ranked No. 2, Titan was able to perform 17,000 trillion calculations per second, or 17.59 petaflops, according to the list published in November. [Read more…]