Neutron Sciences News

ORNL and German lab forge partnership at Spallation Neutron Source (Knoxville News Sentinel 11/5)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory today hosted a workshop with its international partner, Forschungszentrum Julich, to discuss neutron science and celebrate completion of a new research instrument (the Neutron Spin Echo Spectrometer) at the Spallation Neutron Source. ORNL said the Spin Echo was installed on Beam Line 15 at the SNS. Eventually, there'll be 25 research instruments of varying types and capabilities, allowing neutron-scattering experiments to do their things in analyzing material structures and properties. In a statement, ORNL said, "The Germany lab has a research portfolio that emphasizes energy, bioscience and high-performance computing, and considerable experience in the design and construction of neutron instrumentation. The unique working relationship with ORNL has resulted in a major contribution by Julich to the SNS instrument suite. Julich funded the construction of the instrument and also supplied their staff to run the instrument for the benefit of the ORNL user program."

13 ORNL reactors reveal history (Knoxville News Sentinel 11/2)
The history of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to a large extent, can be told through its nuclear reactors, and it's quite an eventful story. The reactors have received visits from Kennedys and royalty. They've saved lives by producing cancer-killing isotopes. They've been a training ground for generations of nuclear engineers and a proving ground for Nobel Laureates. Until recently, however, no one had compiled the history of ORNL's reactors - 13 all told - into a single document. Murray Rosenthal, retired deputy director of the laboratory, accomplished that with a new report that describes the reactors individually and collectively, beginning, of course, with the Graphite Reactor in World War II.

Former ORNL researcher wins Nobel Prize (ORNL Press Release 10/7)
One of the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry spent the early part of his career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, or "Venki" as he was known to his colleagues, was a researcher at ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor in the early 1980s. He is currently working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England. A U.S. citizen, Ramakrishnan was born in India and received his Nobel Prize for work in decoding the genetic makeup of human cells. While in Oak Ridge, he conducted neutron scattering experiments at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. The instruments today at the reactor are 100 times more powerful than when Ramakrishnan collected his data some 25 years ago. The Nobel Committee will award Ramakrishnan and the two other winners $1.4 million dollars. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.

Hendrick Construction to Expand Lab Space at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Carolina News Wire Knoxville 9/29)
Hendrick Construction, Inc. was awarded a contract to upgrade 14,000 square feet of lab space at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to further cutting-edge research at one of the world's most advanced scientific facilities. The project in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will create 13 new labs to support scientific research conducted at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the world's most powerful source of neutrons for the study of materials. Scientific understanding of the molecular structure of materials is critical to the development of stronger, lighter and cheaper compounds for a variety of commercial, industrial and other applications. Work at the SNS can result in advanced technologies, such as smaller computers with more memory, lightweight plastics for airplanes and pharmaceutical drugs

ORNL Pulsed Spallation Neutron Breaks One Megawatt Barrier for the First Time
"Advances in the materials sciences are fundamental to the development of clean and sustainable energy technologies. In reaching this milestone of operating power, the Spallation Neutron Source is providing scientists with an unmatched resource for unlocking the secrets of materials at the molecular level," said Dr. William F. Brinkman, Director of DOE's Office of Science. SNS operators at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory pushed the controls past the megawatt mark on September 18 as the SNS ramped up for its latest operational run. "The attainment of one megawatt in beam power symbolizes the advancement in analytical resources that are now available to the neutron scattering community through the SNS," said ORNL Director Thom Mason, who led the SNS project during its construction. "This is a great achievement not only for DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but for the entire community of science."

Researchers compare neutron 'microscope' upgrade to laser vs. flashlight (AP - Knoxville 9/18)
The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge returned to action with a bang this weekend following a long summer maintenance period. Among the highlights was installation of a new Target Imaging System that's designed to get a picture of the proton beam smashing the target in pulses 60 times a second. The new camera is reportedly much sturdier than an earlier version and tough enough to survive the environment as power load begins to approach the SNS design capability of 1.4 megawatts and beyond. According to internal correspondence, ORNL's Curt Maxey said the system "worked as planned from the very first pulse." The above image, Maxey said, was taken at approximately 20 percent power as the SNS was ramping up.

NoMachine NX Grows in National Laboratories Within the US Department of Energy (NoMachine News 9/8)
The Department of Energy, established in 1977, has grown to include twenty-one labs and technology centers where more than 30,000 scientists and engineers perform cutting-edge research. Now, more and more of the national laboratories are relying on NoMachine NX to provide remote access to their computing clusters and scientific tools at their world-class facilities. The Department of Energy's largest science and energy lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), employs a staff of more than 4,300 and annually hosts approximately 3,000 guest researchers. NoMachine NX provides groups of ORNL employees, guest researchers and students from around the world remote access from off-site or home to Linux applications stored centrally on the NX Servers to perform heavy engineering analysis more efficiently...In addition to the computing cluster, certain beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are also accessed remotely to run beamline control software for data collection, reducing travel costs by allowing research to be conducted from anywhere. The Spallation Neutron Source Facility at ORNL also uses NX to provide remote access to their instrument beamlines.

Protons on target: new imaging system in place at SNS (Knoxville News Sentinel 9/2)
The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge returned to action with a bang this weekend following a long summer maintenance period. Among the highlights was installation of a new Target Imaging System that's designed to get a picture of the proton beam smashing the target in pulses 60 times a second. The new camera is reportedly much sturdier than an earlier version and tough enough to survive the environment as power load begins to approach the SNS design capability of 1.4 megawatts and beyond. According to internal correspondence, ORNL's Curt Maxey said the system "worked as planned from the very first pulse." The above image, Maxey said, was taken at approximately 20 percent power as the SNS was ramping up.

Regular checkups part of reactor's health plan (Knoxville News Sentinel 9/2)
One of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's prize possessions will be out of commission for the next month and half, but that's not a bad thing. The 47-day outage at the High Flux Isotope Reactor is part of the lab's strategy to keep the old reactor - built and commissioned in the 1960s - available for experiments and production of radioisotopes for decades yet to come. The fall outage is one of the two biggest of the year (the other being in the spring), and a long list of maintenance tasks and upgrades is planned, according to ORNL reactor chief Ron Crone. The to-do list includes the annual inspection of the reactor vessel's internal components, such as the tracks that pull the uranium fuel plates up and down, Crone said. That inspection is supposed to catch any problems in the making before they actually occur, he said. During the down time, workers also will replace a motor control center as part of the continuing electrical upgrades at the 40-year-old reactor. "We're replacing the temperature instrumentation that we use to control reactor power," Crone said. "It's another part of the reliability upgrade effort." A similar project was done earlier on the system that scrams the reactor, he said.

ORNL's nuclear reactor up and running (Atomic City Underground 8/5)
The High Flux Isotope Reactor was restarted this a.m., following a relatively short outage for maintenance and refueling. Ron Crone, the research reactors director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said the reactor went critical at 6:42 a.m. That's a little earlier this normal, he said, because reactor employees wanted to take some radiation measurements at Cold Guide No. 1. "They put beam on that guide today, and that took about three hours," Crone said. The reactor achieved full power (85 megawatts) at 9:43 a.m., and operations were normal, he said. Crone said the necessary maintenance was accomplished during the outage, including the installation of a primary pump. The next outage, which is scheduled for the weekend of Aug. 28, will be a long one -- 47 days, he said.

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