The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and three universities have been named new Energy Frontier Research Centers for radiochemistry research to support the Department of Energy’s cleanup program. The DOE Office of Science plans to award $40 million over four years to the national lab in Washington state and Florida State University, Ohio State University, and the University of South Carolina. The centers were competitively selected and are expected to start work in August. The Department of Energy said its goal is to achieve fundamental advances in science to promote safe, efficient, and cost-effective waste cleanup and storage technology.
PNNL will lead a team focusing on radioactive tank waste, including waste in tanks at the nearby Hanford Site and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The team will research the impact of radiation on waste as it ages. Hanford waste from decades of plutonium production will continue to evolve over the 40 or 50 years before all of it is expected to be processed, said Aurora Clark, a Washington State University associate professor of chemistry and deputy director of the center based at PNNL “If we can understand that aging process, we can possibly reduce the time and expense of characterizing the waste and accelerate its processing for disposal,” said Sue Clark, a Battelle fellow at PNNL and a regents professor of chemistry at WSU Pullman, who will lead the lab center.
The PNNL center will be called IDREAM, for Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials. The chemistry of the salts and sludges exposed to ionizing radiation in tank waste is dominated by interactions at solid-liquid interfaces that are poorly understood, according to the lab. A more detailed understanding of the processes would support innovation in processing the material, it said. The PNNL team, in addition to WSU, includes the University of Washington, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Notre Dame, City College of New York, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
PNNL officials see opportunities for its center to train more scientists in radiochemistry, who are in short supply. Washington State University awards degrees to half of the nation’s radiochemistry doctoral graduates, 10-15 per year, and IDREAM coordinators expect the number to double in the years to come.
