en-us Wed, 14 May 2008 19:00 EDT http://neutrons.ornl.gov /snsnews/snsnews.htm The Spallation Neutron Source is an accelerator-based neutron source being built by a partnership of six DOE laboratories at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This feed includes news items about or related to the SNS. These items do not reflect the opinions or views of ORNL staff or management. webmaster@ornl.gov http://www.ornl.gov http://www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/rss/sns_news.gif http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/01/848185.aspx (MSNBC, 4/1) Technically speaking, the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source is the world's most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons - but the people who run the sprawling facility prefer to think of it as one of the highest-resolution microscopes ever built. "You can think of this as a better, and better, and better digital camera," operations manager Frank Kornegay said last week, during a tour of the 80-acre site at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "You can actually see electrons change state." These snapshots aren't just for fun, however. The neutron-scattering patterns produced by the device show how materials ranging from industrial alloys to drug molecules are structured at the molecular level - and how they hold up under stressful conditions. http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/munger/2008/03/hfir_due_to_restart_wednesday.html (Knoxville News Sentinel, 3/25) Late this afternoon, Kelly Beierschmitt, ORNL's director of nuclear operations, said the High Flux Isotope Reactor will be restarted Wednesday morning as scheduled. The reactor has been shut down since early March for refueling and maintenance. "We got a tremendous amount of work done on the facilities and (research) instruments," Beierschmitt said. One big deal was replacing a neutron detector on the SANS (small-angle neutron scattering) instrument, he said. Apparently, the reactor's intense neutron beam caused more damage earlier than expected for the relatively new instrument, following the installation of a cold source and refrubishment of the reactor last year. Beierschmitt said a neutron detector was transferred to Oak Ridge from the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source at Argonne National Laboratory. http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=6002 (Azonano.com, 3/4) The Department of Energy's Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most powerful pulsed neutron spallation source.The SNS recently ramped up beam power to more than 300 kilowatts, producing 4.8 x 10e 16 neutrons per second. The SNS is currently sending neutrons to five instruments of an eventual 24, and its first article has been accepted in Physical Review Letters and is expected to be published soon. With an eventual beam power of 1.4 megawatts, every time the SNS ramps up, it will set a new neutron production standard.  http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jTtNiq3Em8X5A9L2pGSl24I1AVvgD8V690O00 ) The Americans have bested the Brits again — this time in physics. In an accomplishment that promises to lead to new drugs, energy advances and other benefits, Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has become the world's most powerful source of pulsed neutrons. The $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source's linear accelerator produces a proton beam that strikes a mercury target and creates a stream of subatomic neutrons that are used to study the structure and dynamics of materials. The beam reached 310 kilowatts, in late January, nearly doubling the 163-kilowatt record held by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Oak Ridge now holds the Guinness World Record. "This is basically confirming what we did in January," lab spokesman Bill Cabage said Monday. "We confirmed the record." http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/feb/13/was-los-alamos-weak-link-on-sns/ The Spallation Neutron Source is one of the world's leading centers for materials research, offering unprecedented levels of neutrons to do experiments. It also has become a symbol of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's success in the 21st century...For those for may have forgotten this little tidbit: The Spallation Neutron Source was developed as a partnership of six national laboratories. Besides Oak Ridge, the others were Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos and Thomas Jefferson. ORNL, of course, was the host site, and after the work was done, the lab took over as owner and manager...If there had ever been a grand opening for a grand project, which there wasn't, each of the labs undoubtedly would have been thanked for their contributions. This week, however, Los Alamos got just the opposite. The New Mexico lab got a spanking. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/feb/08/ut-battelle-gets-all-as-in-doe-review/ UT-Battelle scored straight A's on its latest report card for managing Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the contractor will receive almost $10.4 million in fees for fiscal 2007. The partnership of the University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute received 97 percent of the maximum fee available ($10.7 million) from the U.S. Department of Energy. UT-Battelle had one of the highest scores, if not the highest, among all DOE contractors. Gerald Boyd, DOE's Oak Ridge manager, praised UT-Battelle accomplishments in a letter to ORNL Director Thom Mason. He cited the work at the Spallation Neutron Source, which added three new research instruments in 2007 and set a world record for beam power, and improvements at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/feb/05/proposed-budget-very-good-for-or/ The proposed federal budget for 2009 would funnel about $3 billion to Oak Ridge, with most of the major programs here in solid shape."This is a very good budget for Oak Ridge," Gerald Boyd, the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge manager, said Monday. ORNL Director Thom Mason said the lab's major research facilities - such as the Spallation Neutron Source, the High Flux Isotope Reactor, Center for Computational Sciences and the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences - would do well under the president's proposed 2009 budget. http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/munger/ Yes, indeed, the beam power at the Spallation Neutron Source last week reached 310 kilowatts. Some of you may remember that last summer, during a visit by U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander and other luminaries, Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced the SNS had reached 183 kw and surpassed the previous record (160 kw) held by the ISIS facility in the United Kingdom. Since then, of course, the SNS sets a new world record every time the beam power increases, and Ian Anderson, ORNL's associate lab director for neutron sciences, told me the SNS might reach 340 kw before the end of the week. http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=52553 The opening session of the 2008 National Science Foundation Engineering Conference attracted Gov. Phil Bredesen, Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and UT system President John Petersen to the Knoxville Convention Center Jan. 8. The conference, sponsored by the NSF Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, runs Jan. 7-10, and UT's College of Engineering is hosting it this year. Dr. Way Kuo, dean of engineering and chairman of the event, said there are at least 1,200 participants, which include scientists, funding leaders and students...Ragsdale and Haslam also addressed conference attendees and said they were proud of the technical sites available in East Tennessee, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Spallation Neutron Source, Siemens Molecular Imaging and the Y-12 National Security Complex. The attendees said the region is on its way to becoming a leader in science and technology. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jan/09/nano-center-tightens-focus-to-build-on-early/ The Center for Nanophase Materials Science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was the first of five federally funded nanoscience research facilities to come into being within the past couple of years, and it's also been the busiest. According to ORNL officials, the new lab attracted about 300 scientific users during fiscal 2007 - surpassing the goal and pretty much stretching the capabilities of the lab in its first full year of operations. That's impressive, and the $65 million facility, which is directed by Linda Horton, is getting good marks from people in high places.