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U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Stable Isotope Research and Development Center. The facility is slated to receive $75 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. The facility on ORNL’s main campus will produce stable isotopes on a large scale, meeting the nation’s increasing demands for isotopes needed in medicine, industry, science and national security.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in coordination with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, today held a groundbreaking for the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center (SIPRC), which will expand the nation’s capability to enrich stable isotopes for medical, industrial, and research applications.
Scientists use high-energy protons to create isotopes for cancer treatment. In space, such protons pose a risk to astronauts and spacecraft. To learn more about both the risks from these protons and about methods of using these protons to produce medical isotopes, scientists measured the cross sections (probabilities) for high-energy proton reactions used to produce radiopharmaceuticals. The research helps to optimize the quantity and purity of medical isotopes and improve the design of spacecraft shielding.
By analyzing noble gas isotope data, a scientist determined that the ancient plume mantle had a water concentration that was a factor of 4 to 250 times lower when compared with the water concentration of the upper mantle. The resulting viscosity contrast could have prevented mixing within the mantle, helping to explain certain long-standing mysteries about Earth’s formation and evolution.
A new flagship facility for nuclear physics has opened, and scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory have a hand in 10 of its first 34 experiments.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $4 million in funding for 10 awards across 5 efforts to advance R&D for isotope production. This funding is part of a key federal program that produces critical isotopes otherwise unavailable or in short supply for U.S. science, medicine, and industry.
Dan Melconian is developing new techniques and new equipment to test our current theory of electroweak interactions. Comparison of these precision measurements to theoretical predictions will either confirm the Standard Model to a higher degree or point to a New Standard Model.
A rare isotope in high demand for treating cancer is now more available to pharmaceutical companies developing and testing new drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently received Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s drug master file for actinium-225 nitrate, which lets pharmaceutical companies reference the document to support applications for their own Ac-225-based drugs without disclosing proprietary information.
Scientists at Berkeley Lab have demonstrated how to image samples of heavy elements as small as a single nanogram. The new approach will help scientists advance new technologies for medical imaging and cancer therapies.
ORNL story tips: COVID breath-sampling, welding advances and powered by water
Neighboring isotopes of the heaviest elements often have very similar properties. To differentiate these isotopes by their differing masses, scientists use a device called FIONA (For the Identification of Nuclide A) to measure the masses of heavy-element isotopes. For the first time, scientists have used FIONA to discover a new heavy-element isotope, mendelevium-244.
Led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a study of a solar-energy material with a bright future revealed a way to slow phonons, the waves that transport heat.
A team of ORNL researchers working with tungsten to armor the inside of future fusion reactors had some surprising results when looking at the probability of contamination.
An international team has made a key discovery related to “presolar grains” found in some meteorites. This discovery has shed light on stellar explosions and the origin of chemical elements. It has also provided a new method for astronomical research.
Groundbreaking approach in high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy has been judged to be one of the 10 best microscopy innovations in the 2020 Microscopy Today Innovation Award competition.
ORNL Story Tips: Shuffling atoms, thinning forests, fusion assembly and nuclear medicine
ARTMS Inc., TRIUMF spin-off company and global leader in isotope production technology, has announced US$19 million in Series A financing from a consortium led by Deerfield Management Company and Quark Ventures.
Uranium is not always the same: depending on whether this chemical element is released by the civil nuclear industry or as fallout from nuclear weapon tests, the ratio of the two anthropogenic, i.e. man-made, uranium isotopes 233U and 236U varies. These results were lately found by an international team grouped around physicists from the University of Vienna and provides a promising new “fingerprint” for the identification of radioactive emission sources.
Thanks to a newly developed laser spectrometer, Empa researchers can for the first time show which processes in grassland lead to nitrous oxide emissions. The aim is to reduce emissions of this potent greenhouse gas by gaining a better understanding of the processes taking place in the soil.
With this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for the development of lithium-ion batteries, directors of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research share perspectives on the future of energy storage.
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