Oak Ridge Today

DOE labs, including ORNL, recognized as international R&D hub by IAEA

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The High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy/ORNL)

The High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy/ORNL)

 

Federal laboratories in Oak Ridge and Idaho, along with a nuclear research center in Belgium, will make their research reactors, labs, and education and training facilities available to scientists from other countries for training, research, and development, officials announced at the IAEA General Conference in Austria on Monday.

The IAEA is the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The facilities that will make their reactors available are the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory, and the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK*CEN, the IAEA said.

The institutions received designations as IAEA International Centres based on Research Reactor, or ICERR, the IAEA said.

The reactors include the High Flux Isotope Reactor at ORNL, the Advance Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, and the Belgian Reactor 2. [Read more…]

Celebration of Oak Ridge’s 75th anniversary started Friday

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ORHPA city 75th Birthday Celeb Flyer 2

A reminder: The 14-month celebration of Oak Ridge’s 75th anniversary starts today (Friday, September 15).

Today’s celebration will feature guest speaker Denise Kiernan, author of “The Girls of Atomic City” and “The Last Castle,” at 6 p.m. at the Historic Grove Theater. There will be a book signing, and Kiernan’s book will be available for sale.

Ed Westcott, the official government photographer in Oak Ridge during the top-secret Manhattan Project in World War II, will be the honored guest from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Family members Don and Emily Hunnicutt will present a slide show of Westcott photos with a question-and-answer session.

“You will never grow tired of Ed’s photographs, which tell the enormous Oak Ridge Manhattan Project story,” according to the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association, which is presenting the celebration.

The celebration starts with historical displays at 2 p.m. There will be a wide variety of artifacts, posters, and displays for you to enjoy, the ORHPA said. [Read more…]

UT-Battelle has to take corrective action, pay $120,000 after unauthorized disclosure of classified information

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UT-Battelle, which manages and operates Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has to take corrective actions and pay $120,000 for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information and the introduction of classified information into unapproved information systems at the lab, according to a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy that was approved in August.

The settlement agreement was for a security event discovered March 28, 2016. On that date, UT-Battelle discovered that presentations containing classified information had been processed on unapproved information systems during a roughly five-year period. The classified presentations were stored on unapproved servers, information systems, and removable electronic media, and transmitted by unauthorized means, according to the DOE Office of Enterprise Assessments’ Office of Enforcement.

In addition, classified information was visually presented to uncleared students on a specific program, including three foreign nationals from non-sensitive countries, DOE said.

The highest classification level and category of information contained in the presentations is Secret/Restricted Data, including No Foreign, said Steven C. Simonson, director of the Office of Enforcement. [Read more…]

Council to consider construction contract for Peace Bell Pavilion

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oak-ridge-international-friendship-bell-side-scaled

Design of the Peace Pavilion for the Oak Ridge International Friendship Bell by Demian\Wilbur\Architects, Washington, D.C.

 

The Oak Ridge City Council on Monday will consider a construction contract for the Oak Ridge Peace Bell Pavilion. The contract, which would include associated site work, could be worth up to $440,000. It could be awarded to First Place Finish Inc. of Oak Ridge, the low bidder.

The new Peace Pell Pavilion would support the International Friendship Bell, which will continue to be at Alvin K. Bissell Park in central Oak Ridge but will move to a slightly different location within the park.

The contract award will be made after negotiations with First Place Finish to reduce the project scope to meet available funding, Oak Ridge Recreation and Parks Director Jon Hetrick said in a September 5 memo to City Manager Mark Watson. The bids for the project exceeded the project budget, Hetrick said.

The bid from First Place Finish had a price of $698,900. The other bid, from Holston Construction Services LLC of Knoxville, had a price of $840,000. [Read more…]

ORNL helps emergency responders with hurricanes Harvey, Irma

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The map above is part of the LandScan system that has been used by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to help readiness, response, and recovery crews during Hurricane Harvey, which hit most heavily in Texas. This map shows population counts in the Houston area, with red areas having the highest counts and yellow areas lower counts and gray areas none. The map has a flooding overlay, where red is more flooding and green is less. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

The map above is part of the LandScan USA system that has been used by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to help readiness, response, and recovery crews during Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas on Friday, Aug. 25, 2017. This map shows population counts in the Houston area, with red areas having the highest counts and yellow areas lower counts and gray areas none. The map has a flooding overlay, where red shows more flooding and green shows less. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

 

Data collection systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are being used to help emergency responders and recovery crews with two deadly hurricanes, Harvey and Irma.

The data collection systems are LandScan USA and EAGLE-I. Information from the systems is being used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies. The two systems give information on electric customer outages and population counts, and they are being used in daily briefings, according to ORNL staff members.

The first system, LandScan USA, shows population counts with a resolution of about 90 meters. The system can show color-coded maps with population counts ranging for high to low, and it includes daytime and nighttime populations.

Flood maps can be overlaid on the population count maps to help determine the best places for rescuers to respond, said Amy Rose, ORNL team lead in Population Distribution and Dynamics. Rose displayed that map and overlay during an interview in the EVEREST visualization laboratory at ORNL on Tuesday.

Houston, which experienced heavy flooding, didn’t evacuate before Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 storm that came ashore just northeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, on Friday night, August 25. [Read more…]

Updated: X-energy, Centrus Energy to develop fuel for advanced nuclear reactors

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Larry Cutlip, left, Centrus Energy vice president of field operations, and Pete Pappano, X Energy vice president of fuel production, announce a collaboration on fuel for advanced nuclear reactors at the Nuclear Suppliers Workshop at Pollard Technology Conference Center on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Larry Cutlip, left, Centrus Energy vice president of field operations, and Pete Pappano, X Energy vice president of fuel production, announce a collaboration on fuel for advanced nuclear reactors at the Nuclear Suppliers Workshop at Pollard Technology Conference Center on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

 

This story was last updated at 5:30 a.m. Sept. 7.

Two companies that have operations or employees in Oak Ridge are exploring a collaboration for the possible production of fuel for advanced nuclear reactors.

The two companies, X Energy LLC and Centrus Energy Corporation, announced Wednesday that they have signed a memorandum of understanding for the potential collaboration.

They are expected to put together a business plan for the fuel fabrication business. It’s not clear how long that might take, said Jeremy Derryberry, Centrus Energy senior communications manager.

But the companies are working toward the development of a fuel fabrication facility that could possibly be in Oak Ridge, where Centrus, formerly known as USEC, has had operations for about 15 years.

“We really think that Oak Ridge can be a nexus for the advanced reactor industry in the U.S. going forward,” Derryberry said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
[Read more…]

Employers, students invited to Roane State’s Sept. 27 internship fair at Oak Ridge campus

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There are plenty of internships available each year for Roane State Community College students, with pay ranging from minimum wage to up to $18 an hour.

Many of these opportunities go unfilled, often because students are unaware of them, said Kim Harris, the college’s workforce training and placement director.

With that in mind, the college’s placement office is hosting its first Internship Opportunities Fair from 10 a.m. until noon on Wednesday, September 27, in the Coffey/McNally Building on the Oak Ridge Campus at 701 Briarcliff Avenue.

“This effort hopes to connect our students with area employers who have internship opportunities available throughout the year,” Harris said. [Read more…]

GAO: DOE has more than 80 percent of U.S. government’s environmental liabilities

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Workers clean 5,700 feet of piping on Alpha-4’s west side at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. (Photo by U.S. Department of Energy)

Workers clean 5,700 feet of piping on Alpha 4’s west side at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. Alpha 4 was built in 1944. It was used first for enriching uranium as part of the Manhattan Project and later for thermonuclear weapons production. It was shut down in 1987 and will be demolished. (Photo by U.S. Department of Energy)

 

Note: This story was last updated at 3:20 p.m. September 4.

The U.S. Department of Energy is responsible for more than 80 percent of the U.S. government’s estimated $450 billion in environmental liabilities, a federal agency said in a report published this year.

The agency, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, added the government’s environmental liabilities to a high-risk list of federal programs and operations in a report published in February.

Total environmental liabilities for the federal government are estimated at $447 billion. DOE is responsible for about $372 billion of them, or 83 percent, according to a fiscal year 2016 estimate, the GAO said.

Most of DOE’s environmental liability is related to nuclear waste cleanup, the GAO said. Fifty percent of it is at two cleanup sites: the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

The GAO—an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress—said DOE’s total reported environmental liability has generally increased since 2000. It’s roughly doubled from a low of $176 billion in fiscal year 1997 to the higher estimate of $372 billion in fiscal year 2016.

“In the last six years alone, EM (environmental management) has spent $35 billion, primarily to treat and dispose of nuclear and hazardous waste and construct capital projects to treat the waste, while EM’s portion of the environmental liability has grown over this same time period by over $90 billion, from $163 billion to $257 billion,” the GAO said.

In the past few fiscal years, DOE environmental management has spent about $6 billion per year. The budget request submitted to Congress by President Donald Trump in May asked for $6.5 billion for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, the largest request in a decade.

Oak Ridge has a DOE environmental management program. It received more than $400 million in funding per fiscal year between 2013 and 2016. The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management has major cleanup projects at the East Tennessee Technology Park (the former K-25 site), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Y-12 National Security Complex. Cleanup work depends upon funding, but it could continue into the mid-2040s. Although they might be in various stages, projects that are under way now include finishing demolition work at ETTP by 2020, disposing of uranium-233 at ORNL, addressing high-risk excess facilities at ORNL and Y-12, building a Mercury Treatment Facility at Y-12, and shipping transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. [Read more…]

ORNL: Neutrons peer into a running engine

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Researchers used neutrons to probe a running engine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source, giving them the opportunity to test an aluminum-cerium alloy under operating conditions. From left, researchers Orlando Rios, Ke An, and Eric Stromme show off a cylinder head made from the new alloy. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

Researchers used neutrons to probe a running engine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source, giving them the opportunity to test an aluminum-cerium alloy under operating conditions. From left, researchers Orlando Rios, Ke An, and Lt. Eric Stromme show off a cylinder head made from the new alloy. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Ashley C. Huff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

In a first-of-a-kind experiment, researchers used neutrons to investigate the performance of a new aluminum alloy in a gasoline-powered engine—while the engine was running.

A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory worked with industry partners to perform the test, which looked at whether a high-performance alloy that is promising for automotive applications held up under the heat and stress of an internal combustion engine.

Researchers used neutrons to probe a running engine at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source, giving them the opportunity to test an aluminum-cerium alloy under operating conditions.

The feat was a first for the Spallation Neutron Source, said Ke An, lead instrument scientist for the facility’s VULCAN instrument.

“This was the first time an internal combustion engine has been run on our diffractometer, and, as far as we know, on any other,” he said. [Read more…]

ORNL researchers turn to ‘deep learning’ to solve science’s big data problem

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Scientists will use Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s computing resources such as the Titan supercomputer to develop deep learning solutions for data analysis. (Photo credit: Jason Richards/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

Scientists will use Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s computing resources such as the Titan supercomputer to develop deep learning solutions for data analysis. (Photo credit: Jason Richards/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Scott Jones, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A team of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been awarded nearly $2 million over three years from the U.S. Department of Energy to explore the potential of machine learning in revolutionizing scientific data analysis.

The Advances in Machine Learning to Improve Scientific Discovery at Exascale and Beyond (ASCEND) project aims to use deep learning to assist researchers in making sense of massive datasets produced at the world’s most sophisticated scientific facilities. Deep learning is an area of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks to enable self-learning devices and platforms. The team, led by ORNL’s Thomas Potok, includes Robert Patton, Chris Symons, Steven Young, and Catherine Schuman.

While deep learning has long been used to classify relatively simple data such as photographs, today’s scientific data presents a much greater challenge because of its size and complexity. Deep learning offers the potential to truly change the way in which researchers use massive datasets to solve challenges spanning the scientific spectrum.

For example, neutron scattering data collected at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source contain rich scientific information about structure and dynamics of materials under investigation, and deep learning could help researchers better understand the link between experimental data and materials properties.

“This understanding can help scientists build and support new scientific theories, and help to design better materials,” Potok said. [Read more…]

ORNL’s Salil Mahajan: Gaining perspective on climate variability with high-resolution modeling

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Computational climate scientist Salil Mahajan simulates the complex and chaotic aspects of climate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

Computational climate scientist Salil Mahajan simulates the complex and chaotic aspects of climate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Ashley C. Huff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Simulating the global climate in high resolution at multiple scales will help answer questions about future global and regional climates. However, as performance expectations increase for Earth system models, so do computing challenges.

Salil Mahajan, a computational climate scientist in the Computational Earth Sciences group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is tackling some of these challenges in high-performance computing for climate science.

Climate is a chaotic system. It includes complex interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, sea ice, and land.

“As we include more dynamic, coupled interactions among these spheres and incorporate more biological, chemical, and physical processes in our models, the computations become more complicated,” Mahajan said. “We have to take a step-by-step approach to understand cause and effect and ensure that our simulations are accurately representing our observational measurements.”

Model validation and verification are now the bread and butter of his daily routine. But Mahajan’s affinity for atmospheric science and computing architectures developed along a circuitous route.

From architecture to atmosphere [Read more…]

Oak Ridge to announce plans for 75th anniversary celebration on Thursday

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Pictured above is early construction in 1942 on the K-25 plant with one of the original homes in the city that became Oak Ridge. (Photo by Ed Westcott courtesy U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Office)

Pictured above is early construction in 1942 on the K-25 plant in the left background with one of the original homes in the city that became Oak Ridge in the right foreground. (Photo by Ed Westcott courtesy U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office)

 

The City of Oak Ridge has formed a committee to help coordinate and circulate information about the city’s 75th Anniversary, which begins in September. Mayor Warren Gooch will lead a news conference on Thursday, August 31, where the city will announce plans for a year-long celebration of this milestone anniversary.

Several events are already on the calendar to help kick off the City’s 75th year. The Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association will present a lecture on September 15 titled “The Legacy of Place” by guest speaker Denise Kiernan, author of “The Girls of Atomic City” and “The Last Castle.” The Oak Ridge Fire Department plans to host “Then and Now,” a 1940s-era Fire Prevention Parade along Oak Ridge Turnpike on October 7.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex will celebrate the anniversaries of their respective beginnings as well. The festivities will continue through the end of 2018. Additional events will be announced as they are confirmed, a press release said. [Read more…]