PNNL

Cleaning up complex contaminated sites requires many different types of materials to capture, trap, and dispose of multiple different contaminants that are hazardous to the public and local environment. But how do you pick a good material? Can one material clean up multiple contaminants? And how might you tune the performance of the material to meet your specific needs? Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are using X-rays to see inside these materials and answer these questions. This talk by chemist Sarah Saslow will introduce the treatment of nuclear waste at the Hanford Site in Richland, WA, and the cleanup challenges in the subsurface. We will explore the cleanup materials currently being used and the way scientists use X-ray measurements to understand how and why some materials work better than others.

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