Latest news with #OakRidgeNationalLaboratory
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Cancer-killing breakthrough discovered in Manhattan Project's nuclear waste
Radioactive waste from the earliest days of the US nuclear weapons program is being repurposed into a promising new cancer therapy. For years, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee have carefully managed leftover materials like Uranium-233. This highly radioactive isotope has been stockpiled since the 1940s, when it was used in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs. During the disposal process, scientists discovered they could extract an extremely rare byproduct of aging uranium, called Thorium-229. That radioactive substance can be used in targeted alpha therapy, a cutting-edge procedure that attacks cancer cells at the DNA level. As Thorium-229 breaks down, it produces Actinium-225 (Ac-225), an isotope that can destroy tumors without harming surrounding healthy tissue. Researchers believe targeted alpha therapy could treat a range of cancers, including lymphoma, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. Sarah Schaefer, project manager for Oak Ridge's uranium cleanup effort, said: 'This is no longer something that will happen in the future. The time is now.' Targeted alpha therapy is a precise cancer-fighting tool that works like a tiny, guided missile aimed at cancer cells in the patient's body. Doctors use Thorium-229 to create Ac-225, which is attached to specialized antibodies that act like homing devices, seeking out and sticking themselves to cancer cells in the prostate, breast, or lymph nodes. Ac-225 then shoots out radioactive particles (called alpha particles) that break down the cancer cell's DNA and kill the tumor. This type of targeted treatment doesn't affect the healthy cells around the disease, which means there are fewer side effects than broader cancer treatments like chemotherapy. The biggest problem at the moment is that there is only a tiny supply of Thorium-229 in the entire world - only 45 grams, or 1.6 ounces extracted. 'It's important to extract Th-229 because that isotope only comes from U-233,' Schaefer said in a statement. 'Most of the world's supply of U-233 is stored at ORNL, so once this material is dispositioned, no more Th-229 will be available,' she added. While scientists have only been able to extract less than two ounces of Thorium-229 from America's nuclear waste, that's still enough to treat hundreds of cancer patients each year. A single therapeutic dose of Ac-225 typically ranges from four to 50 MBq (megabecquerels), depending on the cancer type and treatment protocol for the patient. Megabecquerels are units of radioactivity that equate to four to 50 'zaps' of energy, where each zap is enough to target the cancer cells in one session. That amount of Ac-225 comes from an even smaller amount of Thorium-229, amounting to less than a grain of salt. So, even though only a microscopic amount of thorium can be extracted from the nation's nuclear waste, it still goes a long way in medical experiments. The next problem scientists face, however, is what to do once the Oak Ridge uranium disposal project runs out of waste to clean up. According to a release from the US Department of Energy, Oak Ridge has set a target date of 2028 for eliminating their entire Uranium-233 inventory. That means scientists at the facility will need to create a new method for manufacturing Thorium-229 without atomic bomb-making material. Those steps may involve creating Thorium-229 from alternatives like Radium-226 in nuclear reactors. Scientists would bombard Radium-226 with particles called neutrons to change its atomic structure into thorium. It's like cooking with a recipe that takes multiple steps, instead of waiting for Thorium-229 to decay naturally from uranium. Scientists can also fire protons like subatomic bullets at Radium-226 or Thorium-232 using a particle accelerator called a cyclotron to produce Thorium-229. It would be like using a high-tech tool to carve out exactly the radioactive material you need.
The Hill
22-07-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Tariffs won't stop China if it wins the energy race
China is the centerpiece of the Trump administration's tariff strategy. Beijing, the administration insists, is ' by far the biggest abuser in history ' when it comes to trade offenses. Tariffs, they claim, will level the playing field and reassert American dominance. But the playing field is already shifting beneath our feet. While President Trump is busy slapping tariffs on steel and copper, China is racing ahead in something far more powerful: cheap, clean energy. No amount of tariffs will stop China if it wins the energy race. In late February 2025, Chinese geologists announced the discovery of vast deposits of thorium, an element so energy-rich that a single golf-ball-sized lump can power a person's lifetime energy needs. With enough reserves to fuel the country for 60,000 years, China is now sitting on what could be the most transformative energy breakthrough of the century. Unlike the U.S., which sat on this potential for decades, China is sprinting ahead. Chinese scientists recently achieved a historic first: refueling a molten salt reactor running on thorium without interrupting energy production. Thorium's advantages are staggering. It is three to four times more abundant than its nuclear counterpart, uranium, and can theoretically yield up to 200 times more energy. It's cleaner, too, producing far less long-lived radioactive waste and generating zero greenhouse gases during operation. China is building the world's first commercial thorium molten salt reactor, slated to go online by 2029. It's a bold move that underscores China's ambition to lead the world in cheap energy and ultimately explosive economic growth, not through trade wars but by out-innovating the West. And here's the kicker: They're doing it on the back of U.S. research. The use of thorium in fueling nuclear reactors was first discovered by American chemist Glenn Seaborg in the 1940s. From there, the Tennessee-based Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran a successful demonstration of the molten salt reactor in the 1960s, proving the technology's safety and potential. But instead of championing the innovation, the project was axed. The Nixon-era government, driven by Cold War priorities, preferred uranium-based reactors that produced weapons-grade plutonium. Thorium didn't serve military aims, so the research was defunded, its champions removed, and the program shut down. Regulatory and funding priorities shifted decisively against thorium. Billions were poured into the Clinch River Breeder Reactor — a uranium-based failure — while thorium research was sidelined. By the 1970s, thorium research and development had essentially been abandoned. Even existing thorium stockpiles were targeted; the Department of Energy under the George W. Bush administration slated them for destruction by dilution, short-circuiting their scientific promise. Most thorium research in North America now happens in Canada, while in the 'land of the free' our scientists are still shackled by regulatory inertia. The U.S. government makes it illegal to experiment at the relevant scale to conduct thorium research with radioactive material. The government also uses a linear no-threshold radioactive exposure model for limiting human exposure. These extreme criteria are unscientific and harmful to the advancement of science. And while the U.S. buries its lead under layers of bureaucracy and bias, our allies and rivals picked up the pieces. Now China has leapt ahead. If China fully harnesses this potential, tariffs won't make a dent in their economic trajectory. While the Trump administration is busy slapping taxes on aluminum and auto parts, President Xi Jinping could be preparing to export cheap, clean and practically limitless energy. That's the kind of strategic advantage that propels countries to economic excellence, not a marginal trade war win. The U.S. is not entirely asleep. Gov. Kathy Hochul's (D) announcement of a zero-emission nuclear facility in New York is a modest sign of life. So is the growing interest in small modular reactors. Hopefully it's not too little, too late. It's time to stop trying to suppress the success of other countries and start unleashing our own potential. The government cannot predict what the future of innovation holds. Instead of targeting foreign progress with trade penalties, the administration needs to unleash American scientists and entrepreneurs to build the future here. That means deregulating advanced energy technologies, funding high-risk research, and getting Washington's foot off the innovation brakes. In the 20th century, we built the bomb. In the 21st, let's lead the world again.
USA Today
07-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Modeling buildings' energy use could help lower electric bills
DOE's goal is to cut electricity use in US buildings by 30% in 20 years Suppose you meet with an architect and ask her to design a building. You tell her the design you'd like, the size, and where it will be located. You might also specify the level of energy efficiency you want – known as the energy use intensity – that is up to or better than code values. Although the architect traditionally would complete the early design and other phases before addressing limitations on energy use, this goal can now be performed in real time using artificial intelligence software trained on building energy simulations developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. This technology, described by ORNL's Joshua New in a talk to Friends of ORNL, reduces the cost for the architectural firm. In addition, it ensures you get a properly designed building that will allow you to reliably pay for the building, mortgage, appliances and energy bills. ORNL has also developed a database of every existing U.S. building – more than 125 million – and made the data and building energy models freely available via the 'Model America' dataset. That was one topic in New's talk to FORNL titled, 'An energy model of every U.S. building: Science and business uses.' 'This dataset leveraged the AutoBEM software to enable creation of a computer model, or digital twin, of every U.S. building as a baseline before establishing cost-effective retrofit improvements for individual buildings, but at the scale of the entire country,' New explained. 'So, whether someone is constructing a new building or already has one, these capabilities can help improve the building's performance.' A digital twin is a virtual copy of a real-world object that accurately reflects its physical counterpart. It could show you in this make-believe scenario how to optimize the energy performance of your house at a reasonable cost through the simulated incorporation of certain energy technologies and other features. The digital twin can be updated with improved data via real-time input on a webpage or by ingesting portfolios of building characteristics or energy use from partner data. According to New, these simulations involve physics-based energy performance of various roof types, oil and gas furnaces, electric or gas water heaters, different types of lighting, windows of different sizes and insulating value, attic insulation and building materials of varying thermal mass. The digital twin has access to data on costs, the average weather in the area where you'll live and the rates the local utilities charge over time. This advanced technology for determining how to optimize the energy performance of residential and commercial buildings, reducing their energy use and electrical bills, arose out of a successful project that was launched by an ORNL team in 2015. New, the team leader who has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Tennessee, worked for 15 years at DOE's Building Technologies Research and Integration Center at ORNL. In 2024, he received the international R&D 100 'Researcher of the Year' award. The team's task was to create, partially for DOE's Building Technologies Office, a computer model of nearly every building in 2020 in the United States and their individual hourly energy use. DOE's long-term goal has been to use the building data collected and building energy modeling software to determine ways to reduce electricity use by U.S. buildings by 30% in 20 years, New said. 'Our immediate goal in making data from 125.7 million buildings publicly available in 2021 was to help encourage more energy-efficient, resilient construction of new buildings and retrofits of existing buildings to reduce energy costs,' New said. 'More than 125 million residential and commercial buildings in the United States account for 40% of primary energy use and 73% of electricity use on the nation's grid and 80% during peak demand,' he added. 'The total energy cost of operating U.S. buildings is $370 billion per year.' The mammoth effort by the ORNL team started with the creation of 122 million building models by mining satellite, aerial and Google street-view images; employing light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology; and stereoscopic vision from imaging data captured by drones and airplanes to scan large volumes and rapidly collect precise three-dimensional data; using multiple listing services and developing databases for buildings that consolidate digital information on the unique footprint, height, age of construction and other properties necessary to create an accurate building energy model for each structure in an open-source tool. To determine which combination of energy technology options and other features would optimize each building's energy efficiency and minimize its energy cost, at least eight supercomputers in the United States, including Titan at ORNL and Theta at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, were used. The speed of the computations using computer vision and other algorithms was greatly boosted by advances in artificial intelligence. 'The physics simulations using the EnergyPlus building energy model take 20 seconds to five minutes, depending on the complexity of the building,' he said. 'But AI can do the calculations in milliseconds, sometimes microseconds, enabling real-time feedback.' What are the practical applications of building energy models and data? 'Our capabilities, built on top of DOE's EnergyPlus and OpenStudio software, are being used by architecture-engineer-construction firms like SmithGroup to improve energy awareness during early design,' New said. 'It's being used by utilities, like Chattanooga's Electric Power Board (EPB), to make operational decisions on their electrical distribution network. It's used by Lightbox, which services 54,000 commercial real estate lenders. And we have been working with Google to improve their tools for estimating the energy impacts of buildings in 40,000 cities worldwide.' In the past five years, New has been working with key partners in several multibillion-dollar industries to enhance the data and models for practical uses in actionable business decisions. A simulation-informed analysis estimates that use of DOE-funded building energy models could bring large savings (estimated below) to several major industries and governmental organizations. They include: New spoke about his team's partnership with the AEC firm SmithGroup. 'My understanding is there are about 20 architects that use this prototype tool to provide energy-informed building designs,' he said. New showed the audience an estimate of the energy use intensity target at the top left corner of the interactive tool while architects were changing the building properties. In designing the building, the architect pulls levers and turns knobs to construct new virtual 3D buildings, each with different sets of energy options. 'Every time an architect makes a change, they see energy use moving closer or further away from the energy target and by how much,' New said. 'The energy use can be displayed among a list of all potential building designs, informing how energy use of an original design can often be cut in half just by changing a few energy technology options in the early design phase.' New's team has collaborated with EPB (Electric Power Board) on using the building energy model to help the Chattanooga electric utility keep down its costs to consumers. He said EPB knows where its critically loaded infrastructure is and that it can potentially reduce expenses if it can defer installing a higher-capacity line, new transformers or a new substation. 'Instead, they have the option of reducing electrical load in that area,' New said. 'If the utility can defer that infrastructure upgrade through improved building efficiency and smart thermostats, EPB will operate more efficiently and not have to raise its rates.' New said his team modeled the energy use of more than 175,000 residential and commercial buildings served by EPB to determine which ones needed to be altered to greatly improve their energy efficiency. The team estimated the savings from upgrading buildings constructed last century to 2012 building codes; EPB then helped homeowners increase their insulation levels to bring their houses up to code. The resulting annual savings ranged from $11 million to $35 million, varying by building type, vintage and strategy used. New's team recommended other changes to EPB that allowed them to identify $375 per customer as a break-even point for deploying smart thermostats in the homes of customers that could respond to a utility signal. Such demand response measures enable utilities to use buildings as thermal batteries, reduce their electricity usage during peak demand periods or shift their energy consumption to times when it is less expensive or more plentiful, preventing utility blackouts. New said that in part, because of this collaboration, when the Tennessee Valley Authority boosted its electricity prices, most local power companies buying electrical power from TVA had to raise their rates, 'but EPB kept their rate completely flat. That was a huge success story!'
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
IT Lab Partners honored by Oak Ridge National Lab
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has named IT Lab Partners LLC (ITLP) the recipient of its 2024 Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business of the Year Award in recognition of outstanding work as a small business contractor. ITLP is a joint venture comprised of Information Technology Resources Inc., Cadre5 LLC, and XCEL Engineering Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of MartinFederal Consulting LLC. Since its inception in 2021, ITLP has placed more than 200 highly skilled professionals at ORNL in support of its Information Technology Basic Ordering Agreement, according to a news release. 'From the outset, ITLP was instrumental in helping me make critical hires that broadened our capabilities to include User Experience research, product strategy, User Interface design, accessibility, prototyping, and front-end development,' said Brooks Herring, Head of User Experience for ORNL's Information Technology Services Directorate. 'As project demands increased, ITLP provided top-tier contract staff to complement our existing UT-Battelle team, allowing us to efficiently stand-up multiple work streams. Their ability to identify and place skilled UX practitioners has significantly elevated the quality, velocity, and overall impact of our work. ITLP has been a critical asset in our journey to building a world-class UX practice.' 'We are thrilled for our dynamic team to be recognized by ORNL leadership,' said Tim Campbell, general manager of ITLP and CEO of ITR. 'It is an honor to support the incredibly important work being done in Oak Ridge and to play a role in the Lab's continued success.' This article originally appeared on Oakridger: IT Lab Partners honored by Oak Ridge National Lab
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Oak Ridge High gets $225,000 donation supporting new high-tech tools
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WATE) — UT-Battelle donated $225,000 to Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation for a project called 'Giants of Oak Ridge.' The money is to fund a student-run project that uses generative AI, advanced manufacturing and software from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Students will use the tools to design statues of prominent historical figures to be installed throughout the city. UT-Battelle is also paying up to $250,000 for lab staff to work alongside Oak Right High School students, training them to use the equipment. London, Kentucky couple recounts huddling in basement as tornado destroyed home 'What keeps America a great country is the investment that we make in public education and the way that we support our kids who grow up and be the leaders of tomorrow,' said Stephen Streiffer from ORNL. 'One of the things we often say at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is 'The people that will make up the workforce 10 years from now are the kids that are at the high school, middle schools and elementary [schools] now.' Streiffer said this will help students learn how to move into the workforce. He emphasized that the equipment the students will be using is the same as is used at ORNL. TWRA, Appalachian Bear Rescue working to boost cooperation, increase transparency UT-Battelle is a nonprofit company established to manage and operate ORNL. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
