Oak Ridge National Laboratory honored seven small businesses and their supporters at its annual small business awards ceremony on March 22. The winning firms were nominated by ORNL staff in recognition of the companies’ exceptional service during the 2012 fiscal year.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann and John Hale, deputy director of DOE’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization in the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, were guest speakers at the breakfast event. [Read more…]
Officials from the U.S. Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will celebrate a unique carbon fiber facility on Tuesday morning.
DOE will also announce a new U.S. manufacturing initiative during the ceremony at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Carbon Fiber Technology Facility at Horizon Center Business Park in west Oak Ridge. [Read more…]
National Strategic Protective Services LLC announced Monday morning that it now provides guard services at U.S. Department of Energy sites in Oak Ridge.
NSPS won the protective force services work under a five-year, $182 million contract announced in January. The company will guard the East Tennessee Technology Park, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Joe L. Evins Federal Building, and part of the Oak Ridge Reservation. [Read more…]
Friday was the last day for many employees at security company WSI Oak Ridge, which lost its contracts to protect federal facilities after the July 28 security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
After 13 years of protecting federal facilities, WSI Oak Ridge has left the Secret City.
Friday was the last day for many employees at WSI, and the contract ended Sunday, spokeswoman Courtney Henry said.
Formerly known as Wackenhut Services Inc., the company once provided up to 1,000 security police officers and support staff at federal facilities that included East Tennessee Technology Park, the Joe L. Evins Federal Building, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Y-12 National Security Complex.
But WSI lost its contract to guard Y-12, a National Nuclear Security Administration site, after the July 28 security breach, and it did not win a separate contract to protect local U.S. Department of Energy sites, including ETTP, ORNL, the Federal Building, and the rest of the Oak Ridge Reservation. That contract was awarded to National Strategic Protective Services LLC, or NSPS. [Read more…]
Technologies from Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among winners of 2013 national and regional Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards.
ORNL’s awards, which recognize outstanding work in transferring a federal laboratory-developed technology to the commercial marketplace, were in the Excellence in Technology Transfer and Interagency Partnerships categories. [Read more…]
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office is initiating a series of controlled burns of grassland areas on the Oak Ridge Reservation for prescribed burning at the East Tennessee Technology Park and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during March and April.
On March 15, weather permitting, controlled burns are taking place:
Jeff Nichols, associate director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in front of Titan, the world’s fastest supercomputer. (Photos courtesy of ORNL)
Hundreds of connectors are being re-soldered each week, and the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory—the world’s fastest machine—could be in regular production by May, a lab official said Wednesday.
Jeff Nichols, ORNL associate lab director for computing and computational sciences, said connectors on the $100 million computer’s motherboards had too much gold, and solder was interacting with the gold on connector pins, making the solder unstable and leading to cracks.
There are about 20,000 of the pencil-sized connectors, which link central and graphic processing units, or CPUs and GPUs. Each connector has about 100 pins.
Daniel B. Poneman
The federal funding cuts that went into effect March 1 could result in 1,400 furloughs or layoffs for U.S. Department of Energy contractors in Tennessee, an official said this week. The furloughs could start as early as April 1.
There could also be spending reductions of about $90 million for DOE contractors in the Volunteer State, DOE Deputy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman said in a March 5 letter to Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam.
Funding for contractors at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge could be cut by roughly $41 million, and more than 1,000 contractor employees could be furloughed, Poneman said.
Sakuji Tanaka
When Rotary International President Sakuji Tanaka of Japan visits Oak Ridge on Friday and Saturday, he will talk about and hear innovative ideas on how to achieve peace through service.
On Friday, Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will give Tanaka a tour of ORNL. At 3 p.m., the RI president will tour the Secret City Commemorative Walk built by the Rotary Club of Oak Ridge. City Manager Mark Watson, who is president-elect of this Rotary club, will present a gift to Tanaka, who will make some remarks.
At 3:45 p.m. Tanaka will then visit the International Friendship Bell, where he will be welcomed by Oak Ridger Jack Bailey, district governor of RI District 6780, which encompasses 65 clubs in East Tennessee. Shigeko Uppuluri will present a history of the bell and give a bell replica to Tanaka, who will make remarks and ring the bell.
Shawn Reeves
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Shawn Reeves has been awarded the 2013 Outstanding Technologist Award in Physical Sciences from the Microscopy Society of America.
She is a member of the microscopy group in ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division.
Reeves, a Lenoir City resident, will receive the award during the plenary session of the Microscopy and Microanalysis Annual Meeting in Indianapolis this summer.
Oak Ridge Associated Universities and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have partnered again to award two new grants in the ORAU/ORNL High-Performance Computing Grant Program for 2013.
ORAU provides up to $75,000 over three years to researchers and their teams. In addition to the monetary award, ORNL provides faculty and student teams with valuable access to the laboratory’s computing resources and staff.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory—home of one of only two reactor facilities in the world capable of producing californium-252 (Cf-252)—has begun implementing a new six-year contract between the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program and industry to make this unique and versatile radioisotope.
The new contract follows the successful completion of a four-year Cf-252 program under an agreement with a consortium of industries that use the neutron-emitting radioisotope for a number of applications that focus mostly on analysis, detection, and nuclear energy.
