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DOE still has top two supercomputers, including Summit at ORNL

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The Summit supercomputer, a 200-petaflop IBM system that is the world’s most powerful, is pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)

The U.S. Department of Energy still has the two most powerful supercomputers in the world, including Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, according to a semiannual list released Monday.

It’s the fourth time in the past two years that Summit, an IBM-built supercomputer, has been number one on the TOP500 list of of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

The United States displaced China at the top of the list last year, in June. Two years ago, in November 2017, China had the top two systems in the world.

Summit debuted at number one in June 2018. That was the first time since 2012 that the United States had the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Summit retained the top spot in November 2018 and again in June 2019.

The Sierra supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, climbed to number two from number three in November 2018. It remained at number two on the June list and again on the list released Monday, meaning it’s been number two on three versions of the list in the past two years.

Summit and Sierra are both IBM-built supercomputers that use Power9 central processing units (CPUs) and NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphics processing units (GPUs).

[Read more…]

For members: Companies have agreement to make nuclear fuel

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The carbonization and heat treatment furnace used to produce TRISO fuel, a high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel, at a pilot production facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy X-energy)

 

A company that has a trial fuel fabrication facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is collaborating with a joint venture led by GE with Hitachi to produce nuclear fuel for the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA.

The company, X-energy of Rockville, Maryland, announced the collaboration with Global Nuclear Fuel on November 6.

The two companies have an agreement to develop high-assay, low-enriched uranium TRISO fuel. The fuel could be used in defense micro-reactors and by NASA for nuclear thermal propulsion, a press release said.

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Cleanup workers start processing U-233 powder at ORNL

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Oak Ridge U-233 Glovebox Installation Oct 2019
Workers at Oak Ridge install new gloveboxes to begin processing a portion of uranium-233 a year ahead of schedule. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management)

Workers have begun processing a powder form of uranium-233 a year ahead of schedule as part of a larger environmental management, or cleanup, project to process and dispose of the remaining inventory of the nuclear material stored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It’s the highest priority cleanup project at ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory.

Isotek is the contractor responsible for processing and disposing of the uranium-233 inventory at ORNL. The work eliminates the need to use Building 3019, which is the oldest operating nuclear facility in the world, for storage of the material, according to DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, or OREM.

In the 1970s and 1980s, nuclear facilities sent liquid uranium-233 to ORNL, and the site converted it into an oxide form, known as Oak Ridge Oxide, which is more stable for storage, OREM said in an “EM Update” newsletter published Tuesday. Some of the material was shipped to facilities for use as fuel in reactors. However, most of it was stored at ORNL until workers were able to dispose of it.

[Read more…]

ORNL’s Stephen Macklin named DOE Outstanding Security Manager of Year

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Stephen Macklin
Stephen Macklin

Stephen Macklin, protective force group leader at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named the DOE Outstanding Security Manager of the Year by Energy Secretary Rick Perry. 

Macklin is one of only three individuals and one security team to receive 2018 Outstanding Security Awards, a press release said. The honors recognize both federal and contractor employees who “excel in the performance of their duties while providing security services or support to the DOE’s protective missions.”

ORNL nominated Macklin for leading a seamless transition of 92 security employees from an outside contractor to internal management, the press release said.

[Read more…]

ORNL-Veterans Affairs collaboration targets veteran suicide epidemic

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An Oak Ridge Team recently sped up a computer model that helps predict veteran suicide risk. (Image credit: Carlos Jones, ORNL)

 

Submitted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory

More than 6,000 veterans died by suicide in 2016, and from 2005 to 2016, the rate of veteran suicides in the United States increased by more than 25 percent.

Suicide prevention is the highest priority for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs—so much so that in recent years, the VA has started using predictive models and advanced informatics (the study of information processing; computer science) to identify at-risk veterans.

One model of this type is called the medication possession ratio algorithm. It creates individualized summaries of veterans’ medication patterns, such as which medications a veteran is prescribed and how often those prescriptions are filled. The model helps clinicians pinpoint veterans with inconsistent medication usage patterns. These veterans are known to have a higher risk of attempting suicide in the next month.

In a collaborative project with the VA, a team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has taken the model and engineered the expanded version of it to run 300 times faster, gaining an unprecedented acceleration that might have a profound effect on the VA’s ability to reach susceptible veterans quickly. [Read more…]

DOE has scoping EIS meeting on Versatile Test Reactor on Wednesday

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The U.S. Department of Energy will have a scoping meeting Wednesday night for an environmental impact statement, or EIS, for a Versatile Test Reactor that could be located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory or Idaho National Laboratory.

The Versatile Test Reactor would be used to test fuels and materials for commercial nuclear power reactors.

Besides being under consideration for the Versatile Test Reactor, Idaho National Laboratory is also under consideration for the fabrication of the fuel needed to run the Versatile Test Reactor. The Savannah River Site in South Carolina is also being considered for the fuel fabrication.

The public can comment through September 4 about what should be included in a draft environmental impact statement for the reactor, according to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. DOE will publish the final EIS and make it available to the public for 30 days before issuing a record of decision, TDEC said.

[Read more…]

Small RMS satellite to launch into space Oct. 2020

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Robertsville Middle School RamSat CubeSat
The small cube satellite built by Robertsville Middle School students with help from teachers, mentors, and NASA is scheduled to launch in October 2020, and it will be deployed from the International Space Station, Oak Ridge Schools announced Monday, Aug. 29, 2019. (Photo courtesy Todd Livesay)

Note: This story was last updated at 1 p.m. Aug. 20.

The small cube satellite built by Robertsville Middle School students with help from teachers, mentors, and NASA is scheduled to launch in October 2020, and it will be deployed from the International Space Station, Oak Ridge Schools announced Monday.

The school system said it has received notification of the launch date from NASA.

“We received the official word from Scott Higginbotham at Kennedy Space Center,” Oak Ridge Schools said in a press release. “His letter stated, ‘RamSat is currently manifested to fly on the ELaNa-31 mission aboard the NG-14 Commercial Resupply Services mission to the ISS. Launch is currently scheduled for October of 2020. NanoRacks will be facilitating the deployment of your spacecraft from the International Space Station.’”

Students have determined the mission of the cube satellite, or CubeSat, will be to circle the Earth and capture images to help them study the regrowth of vegetation in Gatlinburg, as the city recovers from the forest fires of November 2016, the press release said. The satellite has been named RamSat.

[Read more…]

Deputy energy secretary visits nuclear, national security sites

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Dan Brouillette East Tennessee Aug 2019
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette traveled to Tennessee this week to tour the BWXT—Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and meet with University of Tennessee President, Randy Boyd. (Photo by Department of Energy)

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette traveled to Tennessee this week to tour the BWXT-Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. Facility and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and meet with University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd.

Brouillette was joined by Congressman Phil Roe and BWXT-Nuclear Fuel Services leadership on his tour of the downblending process facility and the fuel manufacturing facility at NFS, a U.S. Department of Energy press release said.

“They had a productive discussion about the innovative technologies pioneered by BWXT and NFS that fuel our nation’s naval reactors and defense industry,” the press release said. “The deputy secretary emphasized the importance of the critical work being done at this facility.”

[Read more…]

NNSA signs $600 million contract to build its first exascale supercomputer

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Image courtesy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The National Nuclear Security Administration has signed a $600 million contract with Cray Inc. to build the first exascale supercomputer for the NNSA at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

It is one of three exascale systems to be built at U.S. Department of Energy or NNSA laboratories. The other two exascale machines will be at DOE laboratories: Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago and Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

ORNL currently has the most powerful supercomputer in the world, Summit, and LLNL has the second-fastest, Sierra. They are both petaflop systems. Summit is capable of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second.

All three of the new exascale supercomputers will be built by Cray using their Shasta architecture, Slingshot interconnect, and new system software platform, the NNSA said in a press release Tuesday.

An exascale computer will be able to solve calculations up to 50 times faster than today’s top supercomputers, exceeding a quintillion, or 1018, calculations per second. That’s a billion billion calculations per second.

[Read more…]

Test reactor could be built at Oak Ridge, Idaho

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory Sign
Photo by ORNL

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory are being considered as potential sites for a test reactor, where fuels and materials could be tested for new types of nuclear power reactors.

It’s not clear where the test reactor would be built at ORNL, if it’s built there.

The fast-neutron reactor, called the Versatile Test Reactor, would be sodium-cooled and small, about 300 megawatts thermal. It would be based on the GE Hitachi PRISM power reactor. That’s a small module design based on the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, which operated for more than 30 years in Idaho, the U.S. Department of Energy said in a notice published in the Federal Register on Monday. (Fast neutrons are highly energetic neutrons that travel at speeds ranging from tens to thousands of kilometers per second.)

The Versatile Test Reactor would be a pool-type reactor and use metal alloy fuels that could include uranium, plutonium, zirconium and other alloying metals. It would not be a power reactor, and it would not generate electricity. It could generate at least 4×1015 neutrons per square centimeter per second.

Reactor operations could start as early as the end of 2026, DOE said. Fuel for the reactor could be fabricated at Idaho National Laboratory or the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

[Read more…]

SNS adding 20th instrument

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An artistic rendering of the VENUS imaging beam line under construction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source. ORNL said VENUS will provide insights into research areas that include nuclear fuels such as uranium, left, additively manufactured materials, biological processes, engineered components, and studies of archeological and natural materials. (Image credit: ORNL/Jill Hemman)

A 20th research instrument is under construction at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The new neutron imaging instrument is known as VENUS, or Versatile Neutron Imaging Instrument. It is expected to be completed in 2022 and expected to be ready for scientific use by 2023.

“The beam line will ensure the United States remains competitive with international spallation sources that are already building or currently operate advanced imaging instruments,” ORNL said in an article by Jeremy Rumsey published Tuesday.

The new instrument will allow researchers to study “in real time” the makeup and performance of a wide range of functional materials under varying environments, ORNL said.

“Coupled with SNS, the world’s most powerful pulsed accelerator-based neutron source, VENUS will be the only open research facility platform in the U.S. to provide time-of-flight neutron imaging capabilities to users from academia and industry,” the lab said.

[Read more…]

Y-12 supporting work to make most widely used medical isotope

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Pictured above is a rendering of the proposed Coquí Radio Pharmaceuticals Corporation medical isotope production facility at the Heritage Center in west Oak Ridge. (Image courtesy Coquí)

Note: This story was updated at 5:30 p.m.

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge is supporting a program to make an isotope used in more than 40,000 medical procedures across the nation each day. The goal is to produce the isotope, molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), in the United States without using highly enriched uranium.

Some of that work could occur in Oak Ridge. A company called Coquí Radio Pharmaceuticals Corporation announced in April that it plans to build a $500 million medical isotope production facility at the Heritage Center in west Oak Ridge. Coquí’s facility would make medical isotopes, primarily Mo-99, and the company could start production in 2025.

In a video posted online, Y-12 said some of its researchers have extensive knowledge of Mo-99 and are sharing that information with Coquí and other companies hoping to produce the isotope.

Y-12 has been involved with Mo-99 since 2009, said Cole Jackson of Y-12 Global Security and Strategic Partnerships.

[Read more…]

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