Bill McMillan
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management has named Bill McMillan as its new federal project director for cleanup at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
As federal project director, McMillan oversees cleanup, decontamination, decommissioning, waste storage, and disposal operations at the site, a press release said.
Nuclear workers and seniors will be offered free health care screenings, information, and entertainment during the fourth annual Cold War Patriots Resource Fair next week, a press release said.
The fair is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 27 in the New Hope Center at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
A new roof system tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory improves efficiency using controls such as a ventilation system that pulls air from the attic into an air space above the roof. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)
A new roof-and-attic system tested at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory keeps homes cool in summer and prevents heat loss in winter, a press release said.
Among the features designed to improve efficiency are a ventilation system that pulls air from the underbelly of the attic into air space above the roof, the release said.
“Heat that would have gone into the house is carried up and out,” says Bill Miller of ORNL’s Building Envelope Group. “And with a passive ventilation scheme, there are no moving parts, so it’s guaranteed to work.”
A research team at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will receive $4.1 million during the next five years to study materials used in nuclear fusion reactors.
The funding is part of a larger $11.5 million U.S. Department of Energy project that includes seven other laboratories and universities across the country.
The goal is to help convert nuclear fusion, which promises an “almost limitless supply of clean and safe energy,” into a practical, commercial power source, a UT press release said.
About 1,600 people toured the Oak Ridge Reservation during this summer’s public bus tour, the U.S. Department of Energy announced.
The annual tour of Oak Ridge facilities ended Aug. 31, and it attracted visitors from 40 states, a press release said.
A neutron detector developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could be used by an Indiana-based company for research in a variety of scientific fields, helping, for example, in the development of new drugs.
The neutron detector, the Neutron-Sensitive Anger Camera, has been licensed by PartTec Ltd. of Indiana, an ORNL press release said.
Workers from Tennessee Towing of Powell pull a coal truck out of a ditch on Highway 95 near Bethel Valley Road on Friday afternoon.
A coal truck overturned on Highway 95 near Bethel Valley Road about noon Friday.
The truck ended up on its side and spilled coal in a ditch west of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The condition of the driver wasn’t immediately available. The Oak Ridge Police Department declined comment, saying an accident report would be available early next week.
Officials and volunteers celebrate the Thursday opening of an ADFAC home for Oak Ridge resident Carly Gilbert, second from right. From left are ADFAC board president Tom Marshall, Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan, a Tennessee Housing Development Agency representative, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason, and ADFAC Executive Director Annie Cachiero.
She’s been living with her parents in west Oak Ridge, but child care worker Carly Gilbert will soon have a home of her own.
The 25-year-old expects to move into a home on Robertsville Road within about a week. She has a 30-year-mortgage on the home, built with the help of Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties and volunteers from UT-Battelle, which manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“I’m a little overwhelmed but very happy,” said Gilbert, a teacher for Anderson County Early Head Start in Oliver Springs. “I’ve never owned a home.”
An Oak Ridge engineering services firm with an international footprint has teamed with three Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists to form a subsidiary and market an award-winning text analysis system.
The subsidiary, Global Security Information Analysts LLC, is the product of Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve) and the inventors of Piranha, which is software used by the military and U.S. Department of Homeland Security to analyze large sets of streaming data.
Knowing the position of missing oxygen atoms could be the key to cheaper solid oxide fuel cells with longer lifetimes. New microscopy research from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is enabling scientists to map these vacancies at an atomic scale.
Although fuel cells hold promise as an efficient energy conversion technology, they have yet to reach mainstream markets because of their high price tag and limited lifespans. Overcoming these barriers requires a fundamental understanding of fuel cells, which produce electricity through a chemical reaction between oxygen and a fuel.
Fueling nuclear reactors with uranium harvested from the ocean could become more feasible because of a material developed by a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The combination of ORNL’s high-capacity reusable adsorbents and a Florida company’s high-surface-area polyethylene fibers creates a material that can rapidly, selectively, and economically extract valuable and precious dissolved metals from water. The material, HiCap, vastly outperforms today’s best adsorbents, which perform surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms, or ions.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new carbon cycling model could help scientists understand the role of soil in climate change by tracking the microbial processes that break down carbon-rich materials. (Graphic submitted by ORNL)
A new model developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helps scientists understand the role that soil will play in future climate change, a press release said.
Predicting climate change depends heavily on the cycling of carbon dioxide, which is found in four main reservoirs: the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans, and soil, the release said.
ORNL’s model was designed to replace traditional soil carbon cycling models. The press release said it better accounts for the carbon dioxide-releasing activity of microbes in the ground.
“Soil is a big reservoir of carbon,” said co-author Melanie Mayes of ORNL’s Environmental Sciences Division. “And most of the soil carbon cycling models in use today are so vastly simplified that they ignore the fact that decomposition is actually performed by microbes.”
