Climate Change Science: Dr. Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab Director

Video Published on Mar 6, 2012

Jan 31, 2011. As a director of a national laboratory, I'm sometimes asked about the scientific underpinnings of climate change issues and their relationship to human activities. I imagine that some of you have also been asked these questions. Government officials want to know that their policy and spending decisions are based on sound science, and ordinary citizens want to know why so much emphasis is being placed on "clean" and "green" energy. I've developed a brief exploration of the basic science of carbon dioxide's influence on the temperature of the planet, along with some of the empirical evidence behind scientists' concerns about the long-term impacts of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Tags: human activity, carbon dioxide, Fourier, heat transfer, Keeling, oxygen, glaciation, warming, Arrhenius, feedback

Viet Nam's Nuclear Dreams

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Friday, March 02, 2012

Vietnam’s Nuclear Dreams Blossom Despite Doubts

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

HANOI, Vietnam — Inside an unheated classroom at the Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology here about 20 young government technicians from Vietnam’s incipient nuclear power industry kept on their winter jackets on the first morning of a 10-day workshop on radiation.

The workshop, sponsored by the semigovernmental Japan Atomic Energy Agency, started with Radiation Physics 101. The students then collected radiation samples with the help of Japanese specialists and analyzed them in a lab built by Japan.

“Nuclear power is important for Vietnam’s energy security, but, like fire, it has two sides,” said one of the students, Nguyen Xuan Thuy, 27. “We have to learn how to take advantage of its good side.”

As Vietnam prepares to begin one of the world’s most ambitious nuclear power programs, it is scrambling to raise from scratch a field of experts needed to operate and regulate nuclear power plants. The government, which is beefing up nuclear engineering programs at its universities and sending increasing numbers of young technicians abroad, says Vietnam will have enough qualified experts to safely manage an industry that is scheduled to grow from one nuclear reactor in 2020 to 10 reactors by 2030.

But some Vietnamese and foreign experts said that was too little time to establish a credible regulatory body, especially in a country with widespread corruption, poor safety standards and a lack of transparency. They said the overly ambitious timetable could lead to the kind of weak regulation, as well as collusive ties between regulators and operators, that contributed to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan last year.

From the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management, EM Update, Vol. 4, Issue 1, January 2012

Oak Ridge Lays Out Big Plans for 2012

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – Last year, Oak Ridge’s Environmental Management (EM) program logged one of its most successful years due to sound project management and achievements in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act work.

Oak Ridge plans to maintain that momentum in 2012, and the year is off to a great start. EM employees are making considerable progress on Oak Ridge’s largest projects, specifically the K-25 Demolition Project and Uranium-233 Disposition Project. 

“Our employees laid an excellent foundation last year through the Recovery Act and cooperation with our newly selected prime contractor, URS | CH2M Oak Ridge,” said Sue Cange, acting assistant manager for EM in Oak Ridge. “Those efforts have set the stage for an ambitious year, allowing us to make substantial gains in our work to meet requirements with regulators, protection of the environment, and furthering DOE’s other missions onsite.”

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Employees at Oak Ridge are accelerating work at K-25’s East Wing. Sixty percent of the remaining structure is expected to be down by the end of the September. 

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Currently, Oak Ridge’s EM program has a list of 40 active projects with a wide range of scopes and complexity. At the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), employees are removing K-25’s East Wing more rapidly than anticipated, with 26 percent of the 796,000-square-foot structure down and 60 percent planned for demolition by the end of September. Built as part of World War II’s Manhattan Project, K-25 housed the world’s first gaseous diffusion plant for enriching uranium.

EM is making progress finalizing the K-25 site’s historic preservation plans, which have been under negotiation since 2006. A final agreement is expected this spring.

Also at ETTP, pre-demolition work is scheduled to begin shortly in Building K-27. The eventual removal of this highly contaminated, 383,000-square-foot former gaseous diffusion facility will substantially eliminate risks and free millions of dollars in security and maintenance costs for cleanup elsewhere.

At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), employees removed the 4,000-gallon Tank W-1A this month. The tank, located in ORNL’s central campus, was the greatest source of groundwater contamination at the site. From 1951 until 1986, the tank collected and stored liquid waste from radiochemical separations and high-radiation facilities at ORNL, until significant levels of soil and groundwater contamination were traced to the vessel. Currently, employees are removing the surrounding contaminated soils. The project is expected to be complete this summer in accordance with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) milestone.

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Tank W-1A, a 4,000-gallon contaminated tank buried in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s central campus, was removed from the site in January.

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Also at ORNL, Oak Ridge’s EM program is advancing the Uranium-233 Disposition Project. In late December, the first shipment of inventory from Building 3019 was sent offsite, marking the beginning of the end for the world’s oldest operating nuclear facility. The first phase of shipments is expected to be complete during the next six to nine months.

 At the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12), workers continue performing the second round of Recovery Act projects made possible through savings from previous Recovery Act projects. This second round of projects is directed toward mercury mitigation. For example, EM workers are developing an absorption unit to capture and treat mercury-tainted water from a location that is one of the main contributing factors of mercury entering the Upper East Fork Poplar Creek.  

EM is making headway on its National Priorities List (NPL) Site Boundary Delineation Project, which is in the final stages of characterizing 16,000 acres within the Oak Ridge Reservation. When complete, the uncontaminated areas will be removed from the existing NPL. The list, maintained by the EPA, contains sites with known or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants.

Once areas are removed from the list, they can be approved for a greater range of new development and reuse activities. Most water and soil samples have been analyzed and validated, with the final two samples scheduled for completion this month. The overall project remains on schedule to meet a Sept. 30 milestone with TDEC and the EPA.