PNNL is studying the movement of lamprey fish, which are culturally and historically important to the Pacific Northwest, on rivers and through hydroelectric dams.
Oil spills could be cleaned up in the icy, rough waters of the Arctic with a chemically modified sawdust material that absorbs up to five times its weight in oil and stays afloat for at least four months.
In fast-neutron reactors, fuel is sealed in ~7 millimeter diameter steel tubes called cladding. When a high-energy "fast" neutron strikes an atom in the steel, it can knock the atom out of place, like a cue ball striking another billiard ball. This leaves two types of damage in the metal: an empty spot where the atom was, and the displaced atom wedged between other atoms. Over time, these defects typically drive undesirable rearrangement of the microstructure, potentially reducing the life of the cladding.
