Lab Lines Lab Lines Velikov: sub tankers, platform power plants |
| Yevgeni Velikov dreams of an energetic future for Russia. Photo by Jim Richmond |
RNL hosted an extremely prestigious visitor on February 20 when Yevgeni Velikov, a renowned Russian physicist who has spanned the transition from the Soviet Union's science hierarchy to that of post-Cold War Russia, spoke on energy technologies for the next century.
Velikov, who teaches physics at the University of Moscow, is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-founder of the International Foundation for Survival and Development of Humanity.
In addition to being an accomplished science administrator, Velikov excels as a hands-on and even heroic scientist. When the Chernobyl reactor exploded in 1986, helicopters dropped extinguishing agents into the blazing core: Velikov was on board, directing the drops.
Most of the ideas Velikov shared with his ORNL audience were energy-related: technologies for leveraging Russia's rich natural gas and oil resources to the benefit of the country's struggling economy. Velikov, one of Russia's top scientists, is also a visionary—his ideas take into account climate change impacts that expanded fossil energy development might incur.
One of his most intriguing plans is to pump oil and gas from special off-shore Kara Sea platforms that are equipped for on-site generation of electric power. Carbon dioxide emissions, Velikov explained, could be fixed in the ocean water, averting atmospheric carbon dioxide gains.
Velikov also touched on ideas for nuclear power generation in infrastructurally poor areas of his nation and ways nuclear submarine technologies and resources can be transferred to civilian uses. For example, Russians are pondering the use of submarine oil tankers to transport oil under the icebound Arctic seas.
He expounded on nuclear technologies as a necessary alternative for Russia "by the second quarter of the twenty-first century." By then, he said, nuclear technologies will be "completely different" in terms of reactor quality, fuel cycle and waste management.
Velikov's host, Al Trivelpiece, has known and worked with him since 1963, when they met at a Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy conference in Salzburg, Austria. Over the years they have been involved in negotiations on various science and technology protocols between the United States and the Soviet Union.
New security group stresses info protectionRNL now has its own security organization. As of January 1, the Security Department conducts physical, information and personnel security functions for the Lab; services previously purchased from Energy Systems. The Lab continues to buy the services of its familiar corps of security police officers and guards from Energy Systems.
Bill Rich, who leads the new group under the Office of Laboratory Protection, says that Operations Security, or OPSEC, will receive greater attention than in the recent past, with a serious focus on the potential for economic espionage.
"Our OPSEC program will stress security awareness—letting people know what their individual responsibilities are," he says. "With as much intellectual information as we now have and collaborations with cooperative R&D agreements, user facilities and work for others, we have an ever increasing responsibility to protect proprietary information.
"With respect to economic espionage, we have to deal with traditionally friendly countries as well as with those we have seen as targeting us over the years for classified defense secrets. Information doesn't have to be classified to be valuable."
Sheila Tompkins will coordinate the revitalized Lab OPSEC program; Tom Row will chair the OPSEC Working Group. A phone list for the entire ORNL Security Department can be found in ORNL Today on the internal Web.
A half century of marking time
One of ORNL's older timepieces is now an icon, thanks to I&C Technical Support Services, which did the photoengraving, and Plant and Equipment Division carpenters, who fashioned the mount from leftover wood. You'll see it, complete with authenticating Clinton Lab sticker, in the lobby outside Weinberg Auditorium. Photo by Jim Richmond
RNL history buff Bill Alexander, who gets around quite a bit because of his official duties with the Office of Environmental Protection, keeps his eyes open for old, some might say antique, furnishings around the Laboratory. Most highly prized are the pieces marked Clinton Laboratories, which was a forerunner name of ORNL. (For a year we were called Clinton National Laboratory.)
Recently he spied the old clock shown here, which was hard-wired into a wall. It still runs and even has a pull chain that turns on a dial light. Best of all, it has a Clinton Lab tag.
Incidentally, Alexander points out, this year is the 50th anniversary of the adoption of Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the Lab's official name, so it's a pretty old clock. If only it could talk as well as tell the time.
For a look at more ORNL artifacts, stop by Alexander's history exhibit in Building 4500-North's flagpole lobby. The clock itself will hang outside Weinberg Auditorium.
Trivelpiece echoes V.P.'s gratitude
Mr. Alvin W. Trivelpiece
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
P.O. Box 2008
Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-2008
Dear Mr. Trivelpiece:
I wanted to take this opportunity to write and thank you for all the help and support you provided with the arrangements for my visit to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I very much appreciate your efforts on my behalf.
Certainly, the success of the visit was due in no small part to your generosity and hard work. I am well aware of how time consuming the logistics of such a trip can be, and my staff and I are grateful to you for your outstanding assistance.
Again, thank you for your help. Please accept my very best wishes.
Sincerely,
Al Gore
"I would like to echo the compliments and thanks that Vice President Al Gore has expressed and direct them to Lab staff members who worked so hard back on January 21, and the days leading up to it, to make his visit a pleasurable and successful one," Trivelpiece says. "I'd especially like to mention Nancy Gray, the Laboratory's protocol officer, for her efforts in planning and coordinating the visit. I can't think of a thing that went wrong.
"The administration's support is very important to the Spallation Neutron Source project. Thanks to all of you."
After 50 years, Protective Force hands over the wheel
he ORNL Protective Force has closed the book on more than a half-century of providing an important service at the Lab. Members of their bargaining unit, the International Guards Union of America Local 3, agreed to turn over their stewardship of ambulance service to the ORNL Fire Department, which also assumes emergency medical technician services from salaried officers.
After an early-morning ceremony on February 25, Mike Bradshaw, director of the Lab's uniformed Protective Services, said the move makes the Lab's ambulance and EMT arrangements more similar to the other Oak Ridge facilities. That kind of consistency, he said, will help, especially in a major event that requires mutual aid from all the plants.
Bradshaw and Director Butch Clements of Energy Systems Protective Services, which provides the protective services to the Lab, praised the IGUA for agreeing to the change. "It's a big step for a bargaining unit to give up even a small amount of work, but we all recognized that the move is best for the Lab," Bradshaw said.
ORNL ambulances average roughly 100 runs a year, Bradshaw said. About half of those are actual ambulance runs; the others accompany fire responses.
Associate Director Jerry Swanks told the security officers that he is reminded of the Protective Force's professionalism "every time he enters through the portals."
