ORNL in the News

ORNL looking solar on trade mission to China

(Knoxville News Sentinel) [Billy Stair] 'In China I will be available for follow up in the event potential Chinese companies thinking of Tennessee investment have similar interests. We are particularly interested in establishing relationships with solar companies. China has a number of the world's leading companies in this emerging sector who might be looking at Tennessee and the new Solar Institute.'.. 10/18

The Science of Spending Stimulus Money Wisely

(NY Times) Bella will be twice as large and 20 times more powerful, and Dr. Leemans just got the $20.7 million in federal stimulus money that he needs to build it. “Bella is T-Rex on steroids,” said Dr. Leemans, a slight man of 46. Bella has the potential, he said, to help restore the nation’s prowess in particle physics... 10/17

Bechtel: Likelihood of K-25 criticality 'very low'

(Knoxville News Sentinel) So, here's the question: What happens if parts of the 65-year-old K-25 uranium-enrichment plant collapse before being readied for demolition? It's a question that, no doubt, has been evaluated many times, in many ways, by the Department of Energy and its Oak Ridge contractors... 10/18

History of the first video games

(Helium) The history of video games is a surprisingly long one. Most people believe that video games began with the creation of "Pong" for the the Atari game system in 1972, however this is not the case... Tennis for Two was played from the side view of a tennis court, rather than a helicopter type viewpoint. The ball needed to be shot over the net in order for points to be scored. The game, which was created to entertain visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, was dismantled in 1959... 10/18

Energy efficiency wasn’t on the list, but they’re sold

(Knoxville News Sentinel) Now the couple is living in a home built to some of the most stringent efficiency standards in the nation. The home was built by Schaad Companies according to Department of Energy Builders Challenge requirements, a set of standards that covers all aspects of construction, from moisture management to insulation to caulking, to produce a dwelling at least 30 percent more efficient than typical construction... 10/19

energy & science policy

How Obama's Secret Iran Talks Set Stage for a Nuclear Deal

(Time) President Barack Obama has a personal stake in the outcome of Monday's meeting in Vienna between Western and Iranian nuclear experts on the future of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium. That's because, Administration sources tell TIME, Obama personally weighed in three times during secret, multiparty negotiations with the Iranians over the last four months... 10/19

Energy Firms Deeply Split on Bill to Battle Climate Change

(NY Times) As the Senate prepares to tackle global warming, the nation’s energy producers, once united, are battling one another over policy decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars in coming decades... 10/18

Energy Star Appliances May Not All Be Efficient, Audit Finds

(NY Times) The Energy Department has concluded in an internal audit that it does not properly track whether manufacturers that give their appliances an Energy Star label have met the required specifications for energy efficiency... 10/18

science & technology

NASA Discovers A Ring Around The Solar System

(NPR) [audio] NASA scientists have discovered a mysterious ribbon around our solar system —- a stripe made of hydrogen —- that defies all current expectations about what the edge of the solar system might look like... 10/18

Swine flu vaccines are safe and time-tested, experts assert

(Chicago Tribune) For all who will listen, Alexander and other experts at research facilities, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and elsewhere explain that the swine flu vaccine isn't a completely new brew cooked up in a panic... 10/19

NASA moon crash did kick up debris plume as hoped

(LA Times) NASA's recent lunar-punch mission apparently was not the high-profile flop it first appeared. Officials at Ames Research Center in Northern California, which managed the mission, released images Friday that clearly show a plume of debris from the Cabeus crater shortly after the space agency's rocket plowed into it... 10/17

Oct. 19, 1941: Electric Turbines Get First Wind

(Wired News) After looking into the designs of the past, he immediately decided that the economics of scale dictated that he build a wind turbine with 75-foot blades, the largest in the world. It would generate more than a megawatt of power and feed it on to the grid, working in tandem with a hydroelectric plant to even out the intermittency of the wind and the seasonality of water generation... 10/19

CEO prepares family’s real estate business for next century

NICS joins petaflop supercomputer club