Lev Neymotin has worked in the field of nuclear safety and security for 35 years, ever since he immigrated to the United States from his native Russia. But his latest assignment, working in the Nonproliferation and National Security Department’s Nonproliferation and Homeland Security Field Support Group at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, has allowed him to be of service to both nations.
For the past 15 years, Neymotin has traveled between Russia and the U.S. on a mission to help Russian officials securely maintain nuclear materials remaining from the Cold War arms race. He recently returned from the 50th meeting of a working group that includes Russian scientists and nuclear materials specialists.
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ITER, the international fusion research facility now under construction in St. Paul-lez-Durance, France, has been called a puzzle of a million pieces. US ITER staff at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using an affordable tool—desktop three-dimensional printing, also known as additive printing—to help them design and configure components more efficiently and affordably.
“Now for pennies instead of tens of thousands of dollars, we can have impact right away with 3D printing. It lets us see what the part actually looks like,” said Kevin Freudenberg, an engineer who supports the US ITER magnets team and has led the project’s use of 3D printing. “On 3D CAD (computer-aided design) displays, you can’t feel the shape of an object. You just see it. Many people have trouble seeing 3D projections or find them tiresome to view over time. With the 3D printed objects, you can run your finger over the surface and notice different things about the scale and interfaces of the component.”
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Scientists at DOE's Ames Laboratory are revealing the mysteries of new materials using ultra-fast laser spectroscopy, similar to high-speed photography where many quick images reveal subtle movements and changes inside the materials. Seeing these dynamics is one emerging strategy to better understanding how new materials work, so that we can use them to enable new energy technologies.
It takes dedication and perseverance to solve a mystery that has been around for 50 years. Just ask Reinhard Schumacher, a professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University. He and his colleagues analyzed data from an experiment conducted at DOE's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to finally pin down two key characteristics that had never been measured before of an elusive particle, the Lambda(1405).
Overseas dust increases the Sierra Nevada Mountains snowpack and atmospheric rivers cause it to rapidly melt, according to scientists at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their colleagues. The team reached this finding by modeling two cloud conditions under the influence of atmospheric rivers, narrow bands of moisture transported from the tropics, during a field experiment called CalWater 2011. Atmospheric rivers are the primary cause of flooding in California by dumping rain and accelerating snowmelt in the mountainous terrain. Dust blown in possibly from Asia and Africa increases the formation of snow in winter clouds over California and increases rain- and snowfall by 10 to 20 percent. However, local pollution from California cities and the Central Valley has little impact on snowfall. Further, local pollution's influence on rain from warm clouds heavily depends on cloud conditions and the strength of a low level jet, often associated with atmospheric rivers, that blows parallel to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.