With the help of a diagnostic tool called the Salish Sea Model, researchers found that toxic contaminant hotspots in the Puget Sound are tied to localized lack of water circulation and cumulative effects from multiple sources.
The world’s largest scientific society honored Sue B. Clark, a PNNL and WSU chemist, for contributions toward resolving our legacy of radioactive waste, advancing nuclear safeguards, and developing landmark nuclear research capabilities.
The inner Salish Sea’s future response to climate change, while significant, is predicted to be less severe than that of the open ocean based on parameters like algal blooms, ocean acidification, and annual occurrences of hypoxia.
Researchers apply numerical simulations to understand more about a sturdy material and how its basic structure responds to and resists radiation. The outcomes could help guide development of the resilient materials of the future.
A radioactive chemical called pertechnetate is a bad actor when it’s in nuclear waste tanks. But researchers at PNNL and the University of South Florida have a new lead on how to selectively separate it from the nuclear waste for treatment.
Installing new access holes (up to 6 feet in diameter) could reduce the overall time and cost to retrieve waste from Hanford's underground storage tanks, according to a structural analysis of the tank domes by PNNL and Becht Engineering.
"It's sort of like using infrared goggles to see heat signatures in the dark, except this is underground." PNNL and CHPRC implemented a state-of-the-art approach to monitor the process of remediating residual uranium at Hanford's 300 Area.
Researchers used novel methods to safely create and analyze plutonium samples. The approaches could prove influential in future studies of the radioactive material, benefitting research in legacy, national security and nuclear fuels.
Aluminum oxyhydroxide (boehmite) nanoplatelets align and attach to form neatly ordered stacks, a novel findings that involves both experimental and computational research.
Peering through the thick, green glass of a decades-old "hot cell," an expert technician manipulates robotic arms to study highly radioactive waste from Hanford, in support of ongoing cleanup.