DOE's Argonne National Laboratory—West has verified that the liquid metal sodium coolant from Experimental Breeder Reactor-II has been completely drained from the reactor vessel, reaching a major milestone in demonstrating safe shut-down of a sodium cooled nuclear reactor. EBR-II was turned off in September 1994, and completing the sodium drain makes it technically impossible to re-start the reactor in the future. The sodium coolant is being treated, and the resulting sodium hydroxide will be disposed of in a standard low-level radioactive waste disposal site. Argonne and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are the lead laboratories for DOE's nuclear reactor research program.

[Paul Pugmire, 208/533-7331,
paul.pugmire@anlw.anl.gov]

 

Biosensor chips for cancer risk assessment

Reducing fuel-oil costs

 

Sandia energy work helps Mexican farmers, ranchers

DOE's Sandia National Laboratories is helping expand efforts to bring the benefits of solar and wind power to rural Mexico through new joint programs with the Mexican government, renewable energy suppliers in the US and Mexico, universities, and other partners. One such effort, the "Renewable Energy for Agriculture" program managed by the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, is expected to bring as many as 1,200 new PV systems and 55 wind systems to isolated areas of Mexico during the next five years. The systems will be used primarily for water pumping, but some may be adapted for other uses that improve economic, social, and health standards in agricultural areas of Mexico.

[Howard Kercheval, 505/844-7842,
hckerch@sandia.gov]

 

State-of-the-art silicon boosts DZero detector

DZero detector

One of the smallest sub-assemblies in the revamped 5,000-ton DZero detector at DOE's Fermilab crams 800,000 electronic channels into a volume you can wrap your arms around. With 10 to 20 times the resolution of other detector materials, this new silicon-based component will bring physicists an unprecedented up-close and personal look at particle collisions when Collider Run II of the Tevatron begins operation in March 2001. The dramatic increase in resolution will allow DZero physicists to identify and track articles with relatively short lifetimes, particularly bottom and charm quarks. Identifying these heavy quarks is crucial to new discoveries in Run II.

[Mike Perricone, 630/840-5678,
mikep@fnal.gov]

PPPL researchers' paths combine for fusion advances

Ronald Bell (left) and Edmund Synakowski, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), are recipients of the 2000 Kaul Foundation Prize for Excellence in Plasma Physics and Technology.

From spectroscopy to novel measurements of plasma dynamics, the paths of Edmund Synakowski and Ronald Bell have intersected often during the past two decades.

Bell and Synakowski, physicists at DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, were recently honored for experimental results obtained on the Laboratory's Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor four years ago—results that are currently being reproduced and confirmed elsewhere. The researchers developed novel measurements of the dynamics of hot ionized gases, or plasmas, which will someday fuel fusion power plants.

The work suggests that generating plasma flows in a fusion reactor might increase the reactor efficiency, thus reducing its cost and size. In November, the two received Princeton University's Kaul Foundation Prize for Excellence in Plasma Physics and Technology Development.

Bell and Synakowski, presently involved in research on the National Spherical Torus Experiment sited at PPPL, met in 1979 at Johns Hopkins University. While a sophomore, Synakowski took a work-study job with the University's plasma spectroscopy group, and soon changed his focus from astrophysics to plasma physics.

"Ron was working on his Ph.D. and involved in spectroscopy," recounts Synakowski. "I built some of the control system electronics for a first-of-a-kind spectrometer that Ron designed and built."

The two eventually worked on TFTR together. "Ron likes to say his strengths complement mine. I have some background in atomic physics that we drew on to interpret flow measurements on TFTR. Ron is extremely creative in any system he builds, whether it is hardware or software. We worked well in pulling together atomic physics and implementing complex programs to analyze data. Interactions like this are typical of much of the work we've done together. Because of this, it was doubly rewarding receiving the Kaul Prize together," Synakowski said.

Submitted by DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory