Articles

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) postdoctoral researcher Kaustubh Bawane attributes much of his career success so far to a 2018 Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) award he received while working on his doctoral thesis at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.The NSUF access award allowed Bawane to irradiate the nuclear fuel cladding materials he was studying, use cutting-edge instruments often unavailable to university students and ultimately secure his two-year postdoctoral position at INL that started in February 2020. To add to the journey, Bawane was recently awarded a second NSUF project that will allow him to utilize Texas A&M University's Accelerator...

Read More

The presentations from the NSUF Users Organization Meeting are now available. If you have questions about any of the presentations, please contact the presenter. Facility Flash TalksArgonne National Laboratory (MeiMei Li)Brookhaven National Laboratory (Lynne Ecker)Center for Advanced Energy Studies (Yaqiao Wu)Idaho National Laboratory (Brenden Heidrich)Los Alamos National Laboratory (Tarik Saleh)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Gordon Kohse)North Carolina State University (Ayman Hawari)Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Kory Linton) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Ramprashad Prabhakharan)Purdue University (Janelle Wharry)Sandia National Laboratories (Khalid Hattar) SCK-CEN (Steven van Dyck)The Ohio State University (Praneeth Kandlakunta)University of California, Berkeley (Peter Hosemann) University of Florida (Assel Aitkaliyeva) University of Michigan (Kevin Field) University of Wisconsin (Hongliang...

Read More

The second FY 2020 Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) has opened. Proposals are due Thursday, March 12.The RTE award process offers an avenue for researchers to perform irradiation effects studies of limited scope on nuclear fuels and materials of interest utilizing NSUF facilities. Completion of RTE projects is expected within 9 months of award. Prospective researchers are strongly encouraged to request samples from the NSUF Nuclear Fuels and Materials Library.RTE proposals are solicited and awarded three times per year. They are reviewed and evaluated for technical merit, relevancy, and feasibility. The number of awards is dependent on the availability of funding. Further...

Read More

When the Wright brothers were building the world’s first aircraft, the inventors’ primary concern was whether or not their machine could get off the ground. It’s easy to assume that neither Orville nor Wilbur were thinking about the infinite number of variables associated with airplanes today, many of which are unpredictable; or so it may seem. Today aerospace engineers utilize modeling and simulation to remove some of the danger the Wright brothers first experienced.“Aviation is a high cost and consequence industry,” said Eric Whiting, Division Director for Advanced Scientific Computing at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). “Anything you can do to...

Read More

IDAHO FALLS -- The U.S. Department of Energy - Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) has selected 19 new Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) projects, totaling approximately $690,000. These project awards went to 12 principal investigators from universities, five from national laboratories, one from industry, and one foreign university.    The NSUF competitively selected these projects from a pool of high-quality RTE proposals submitted during the solicitation period. Each proposal was evaluated based on a variety of factors including technical approach, mission relevance, and scientific-technical merit. The NSUF, managed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL), provides unparalleled opportunities for nuclear energy researchers. Through the RTE solicitation, a researcher can...

Read More

Jones will take over this role for Travis Howell who is now an NSUF experiment manager.

Rachel Jones is organized, detailed and deliberate—traits that make her a good fit in her new role as a planning and financial controls specialist (PFCS) for the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF).Jones started in October supporting NSUF by monitoring and tracking the funding and costs of projects with budgets ranging from $50,000 to $2.5 million. She also will support the development, implementation and schedule of nuclear energy research projects awarded by the program, including nuclear fuels and materials experiments. “I’m a very structured person and I enjoy the structure that comes with planning and monitoring these projects,” Jones said. She replaces Travis...

Read More

The opportunities for student-led research are nearly endless

A vital resource in the United States’ critical energy infrastructure, nuclear power requires perpetual research in order to advance. While other user facilities reside across the globe, very few provide the resources or capabilities of the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF).As the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy’s only user facility, NSUF has championed hundreds of researchers from across the country and world in the pursuit of nuclear energy innovation to benefit our nation. Researchers are provided access to world-leading nuclear facilities, such as the Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory (IMCL) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) or the High...

Read More

DOE-NE has released Amendment 003 to the FY2020 Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research (CINR) Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The purpose of this amendment is to: (1)  Clarify readiness requirements for NSUF-1.3 applications with this statement: “The NSUF readiness requirements are applicable to all NSUF funded workscopes (Reference Table 1. FY 2020 Work scope Overview) with the exception of NSUF 1.3: NUCLEAR MATERIALS DISCOVERY AND QUALIFICATION INITIATIVE. Applications in the NSUF 1.3 work scope may include preliminary materials fabrication and characterization within the context of the work scope. Other than this noted exception, NSUF will not support preliminary fuels, materials or instrumentation development work,...

Read More

Judge joined NSUF in September leaving Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. With a background in materials science, Judge will also act as a technical lead, assisting experiment managers with NSUF projects.

Materials scientist Colin Judge may have just recently joined Idaho National Laboratory, but his knowledge of the lab goes back 10 years. He estimates that off and on he spent three months of his career at INL before taking his current assignment in September.Judge came from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River, Ontario, where he was a research scientist in the Materials Science branch. His association with INL goes back to 2009, when he sought to examine CANDU reactor fuels and materials using focused ion beam (FIB) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) equipment at INL’s Materials & Fuels Complex (MFC).With...

Read More

The Users Organization Executive Committee will work to advance NSUF user concerns and priorities.

From Users Organization Chair, Peter Hosemann:Thank you to all who voted in the Users Organization Executive Committee election. I’m excited to welcome our newest members. Their terms will begin January 2020. Secretary/Chair Elect: Gabriel Meric de BellefonGabriel has been an active user of NSUF since 2017 working on three Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) projects at four different NSUF facilities. Gabriel currently works at Kairos Power leading the irradiation testing of structural materials of the fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor. NSUF PROFILE  »LINKEDIN PROFILE  »  Committee Member: Daniel LaBrierDaniel is not new to the Users Organization Executive Committee; he previously served as a student committee...

Read More

Once research is done, there is still an opportunity to communicate the impacts of your research to a broader audience.

Scientific communication is all about the message, that is, one that resonates with people and explains the impact that research will have on their lives. For Dan Ogden, it’s all about framing the appropriate message for the given audience. For Simon Pimblott, it’s all about explaining science to the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) foremost stakeholder — the public. For Jeff Benson, it’s all about the cool factor.These varying concepts of what scientific communication is all about represent the gamut of approaches that researchers often consider. But they also come from a common source: they all touch on the reality...

Read More

The University of Michigan's two NSUF partner facilities offers NSUF users access to extensive capabilities to study the effects of radiation as well as conduct high temperature mechanical property, corrosion, and stress corrosion cracking experiments on neutron irradiated materials in an aqueous environment to characterize the fracture surfaces after failure.

Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory The Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan has developed extensive capabilities in the use of accelerators directed towards the study of radiation effects by emulating neutron damage in nuclear reactor materials.  The laboratory also provides a wide range of capabilities for both surface modification and analysis.   Facilities include: A 3 MV Pelletron Tandem accelerator that can provide ion energies up to 6 MeV for single charged ions and to higher energies that depend on the ion charge state. Ion sources include a Torvis high current proton source, an...

Read More

The goal of the Users Group is to provide a formal and clear channel from the NSUF users to the NSUF program office as well as advocate for the experimental activities at NSUF, and the Executive Committee helps facilitate this.

Thank you to those who submitted their nominations for the Users Group Executive Committee. We received excellent nominations for the User organization board and encourage all NSUF users to vote. Our election is now open. Please submit your votes by 10/31. Thank you for your commitment to NSUF! To vote, please go to www.surveymonkey.com/r/C5PRW3D.If you have questions about the Users Group, please contact chair Peter Hosemann....

Read More

While both are chief scientists for NSUF, Brenden Heidrich and Simon Pimblott took different paths to get here.

The two chief scientists for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program both chose to pursue nuclear research early in their careers, but they did so in different ways. Brenden Heidrich, NSUF’s chief irradiation scientist, has always been interested in technology. Growing up, he was into cars and stereos. After joining the navy, Heidrich operated naval nuclear reactors for six years before going to college, working on the USS Enterprise for four years, saying his time in the Navy was a “strong impetus to get into nuclear.” Meanwhile, Simon Pimblott, NSUF’s chief post-irradiation scientist, forecasted his future at a...

Read More