Category Archives: ORNL

ORNL part of administration’s beat-cancer program

supercomputingpicOak Ridge National Laboratory is part of the Obama administration’s sweeping program to defeat cancer, joining with other labs and the National Cancer Institute on pilot projects that use supercomputers to analyze data on how cancer develops and to accelerate development of promising therapies.

The Cancer Moonshot program, led by Vice President Joe Biden, hosted a summit Wednesday in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to projects around the country that involve hundreds of researchers, oncologists and technologies of many types. Continue reading →

Talking science like it’s 1994

27559145850_2834636c68_kIt was April 29, 1994, and Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary was taking a tour of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She’s shown here listening to a presentation at ORNL’s High Temperature Materials Laboratory. O’Leary, who’s holding some research product in her hands, seems to be the only one who’s paying attention — and that may be marginal. From left, KNS reporter Frank Munger, ORNL Director Al Trivelpiece, O’Leary, and U.S. Rep. Marilyn Lloyd. (DOE photo/Lynn Freeny)

Liang accepts leadership role at Pacific Northwest Lab

liang2Liyuan Liang, a celebrated chemist and emerging science administrator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named director of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory in Washington state. The lab is a research user facility at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Liang has performed multiple roles at ORNL, including a tenure as director of the lab’s Office of Institutional Planning. She also headed a scientific team that tackled many of the perplexing issues about mercury in the environment — including how mercury is transformed into methylmercury, its most toxic form.

Allison Campbell, an associate director at Pacific Northwest, said in a statement: Continue reading →

Recalling the joys of reporting

munger1984If there was one place, just one, to sit and reflect on the past 35 years, I guess I’d have to choose a seat in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Central Auditorium. Somewhere on the right side, maybe about the fifth row. That was generally close enough to get a look at the stage, but far enough back to be enveloped by the crowd and feel the excitement as the room began to fill. It was positioned so I could dash to the stage for an interview afterward or make a quick exit to the hallway if time was short and a deadline was near.

ORNL’s old-style auditorium, kind of musty and sloped from front to back, was where I first embraced the joy of my job. Continue reading →

China’s new supercomputer takes world lead; Titan drops to No. 3 on TOP500

summitpicChina has retained the top spot on the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers with a newly developed system built entirely with Chinese-made processors, according to Monday’s announcement at the biannual International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

The new system — dubbed Sunway TaihuLight — is reportedly capable of 93 million billion calculations per second or 93 petaflops. China’s Tianha-2, which previously was ranked No. 1, dropped to the second slot, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan supercomputer, a Cray XK7 system, is third on the newly released list.

ORNL is currently working with IBM on a next-generation supercomputer that will be called Summit (conceptual image, insert) and reportedly capable of 150 to 300 petaflops. It is scheduled to be delivered next year and achieve full operations in 2018. Continue reading →

Reporters at work (1946)

84120Tim Gawne of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been a wonderful help to me over the years, providing historical documents and photos and insights that helped tell the Oak Ridge story. In honor of my upcoming retirement at the end of the month, he dug into the lab’s archives once again and provided a couple of pics that show reporters at work in the early days. The one here shows journalists covering the first delivery of radioisotopes for research. The date was Aug. 2, 1946.

DelCul wins Seaborg Award

delcul Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Bill DelCul has received the Glenn T. Seaborg Award at the 40th Actinide Separations Conference.

He was honored for his long and extraordinary career in nuclear science and engineering with research on “actinide separations, processing of used nuclear fuel, high temperature molten salts, technical support of enrichment activities and national security-related research.” Continue reading →

Orlando shooter worked for G4S

The Orlando nightclub shooter worked for G4S, one of the world’s largest security companies, according to multiple news reports. WPBF, a TV station in Palm Beach County, Fla., where the company is based, quoted a statement issued by G4S that said Omar Mateen had worked for the company since Sept. 10, 2007. “We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy,” the statement said in part.

G4S, formerly known as Wackenhut, was a major security provider at the government facilities in Oak Ridge until it lost its contracts in the wake of the 2012 break-in by protesters at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. Mateen reportedly lived in Fort Pierce, Fla., and there is no indication he was ever involved in any Oak Ridge-related activities. Continue reading →

Vanderbilt’s contribution to Tennessine

hamiltonI’ve known Vanderbilt Physics Professor Joe Hamilton since the 1990s, when he served on the steering panel for a series of studies that assessed the health impacts of environmental releases from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge facilities.

He wrote today to express his disappointment with my story earlier this week about Element 117, a new element that has been provisionally named “Tennessine.” He said Vanderbilt University didn’t receive proper credit, and he explained why.

Here’s the text of his message about Vanderbilt’s role in the discovery and confirmation: Continue reading →