Contest for Determining Speed of Light: Einstein = 1; CERN = 0

From Asian Tribune: Contest for Determining Speed of Light: Einstein = 1; CERN = 0 Hemantha Abeywardena writes from London…

In September, last year, floodgates of sensationalism suddenly burst open in the realm of physics when a team of scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland, hailed what they called a ‘significant finding’ - measurements of the speed of a beam of subatomic particles known as neutrinos.

The team claimed that the beam in question reached the destination faster than light. No sooner had the news spread across the world than the world of science started spinning chaotically around a secondary loose axis, made of excitement and bewilderment in equal measures.

The scientists, who got intoxicatingly excited at the news, went as far as predicting the feasibility of time-travelling: go back in time to see how things were, say, when dinosaurs were at each other’s throat or Cleopatra was seducing her would-be lovers with her charm.

For those of us who took the news with a pinch of salt, it was yet another headline-grabbing by the scientists, when they couldn’t come up with something useful from a project that cost European taxpayers almost $10 billion.

They were supposed to spot Higgs Boson, a specific particle in the jungle of particle physics, in the final stages of the project. Yet, what we got was a ludicrously large red-herring. The mission failure was eclipsed by the ‘discovery’ that, all of a sudden, the ceiling of the speed of light had been broken.

As it turned out this week, the unexpected results were down to a combination of faulty wiring, a dodgy atomic clock and questionable position of a GPS device. These macro errors took place when the physicists were dealing with a micro world of particle physics, some of the measurements of which are even smaller than a millionth of a millimetre.

The British university professor who promised to eat his boxer short live on TV, if the speed of light was broken, could not hide his excitement at the emerging news this week. “Both my boxer shorts and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity are safe right now,” chuckled the learned academic with glee.

With the disputed results produced by an experiment carried out in dodgy background, Einstein once again emerged as the undisputed emperor of physics. The short-lived findings by the team of CERN scientist could not rattle his Theory of Relativity. Nor could they prove that subatomic particle were capable of moving faster than light, despite the most-up-to-date technology at their disposal.

The embarrassment suffered by the teams at CERN cannot be underestimated. On one hand, they were nowhere near any reliable evidence to prove that Higgs Boson exists – the main purpose of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). On the other hand, they could sense that the public interest in these projects is fast disappearing, perhaps quite irreversibly.

In this context, CERN may be forced to go on an unprecedented PR exercise in the hope that the European taxpayers will be willing to cough up more funds for their pet projects. This is a risky strategy as far as the scientific institute is concerned. They know very well what happened to the climate scientists, who were hell bent on scare-mongering the world with global warming.

However, there is a ray of hope for CERN despite gloom and doom. Although, their scientists may fail in their main mission – in conquering world of subatomic particles - they still can pull off a surprise on a completely different front for the betterment of mankind.

Sir Tim Berners Lee, the British scientist, went to work at CERN as a nuclear physicist and came up with HTML – Hyper Text Mark-up Language – which led to the birth of the World Wide Web. Sir Tim, who is credited with the invention of the internet as we know it, is a unique gentleman who never profited from his fame or patents while keeping a very low profile.

Sir Tim proved beyond any shadow of doubt that the place had been blessed by the angel of serendipity.

If the battered team at CERN can draw some inspiration from Sir Tim and produce something useful, the world may take them seriously again when they make very public statements in future – even if the subatomic particles run rings around them.

Aspiring nuclear scientists take examination

From the Hindu: Aspiring nuclear scientists take examination
When a number of his friends at IIT Madras were on their way to Mamallapuram on Sunday, Tapas Ghosh took a right turn on Rajiv Gandhi Salai near Taramani.

He was one among the 246 Physics and Chemistry post graduate students who opted to appear for the competitive exam for the Orientation Course for Engineers and Scientists (OCES) held at the only examination centre in the city in Taramani.

The examination has 100 objective type questions based on the post graduate syllabus in basic sciences. Conducted by the Baba Atomic Research Centre Training Schools, it was held in other centres across the country as well. A good score in the examination and the interview might give Mr.Tapas an opportunity to travel the same road his friends took to reach Mamallapuram and in fact move even further to Kalpakkam.

In that case, he could continually get to enjoy the fascination of East Coast Road and consistently contribute towards strengthening of the nation's Nuclear Power Programme as a Nuclear Scientist at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam. Kalpakkam Township is located just a few kilometres away from Mamallapuram Backwaters on the East Coast Road.

Candidates like Mr.Tapas could also join other units of the Department of Atomic Energy by successfully completing the OCES training programme. The training programme would cover nuclear technology fundamentals in addition to discipline-specific courses.

According to scientists at Kalpakkam, the selection process for OCES exam is rigorous, but after selection the nuclear scientists also have a lot of fun. Nuclear facilities are always located near lush green surroundings and adhere to strict norms for preserving the surrounding environment, they said. The number of aspirants for nuclear scientist job has increased this year, the scientists added.

For IIT students such as Gummadi Narasimha of Andhra Pradesh, the curiosity created by the string of protests against nuclear power projects in the country is one of the factors that influenced his decision to take the examination. “Interest in materials chemistry and the lure of a good job were other factors that made me write the OCES examination,” said Gummadi.

G.Naresh, another basic sciences student of IIT Madras, said that he wanted to be part of the team that takes up the challenge of bringing in a change in the nuclear energy programme by also respecting the aspirations of the local residents. His friend, Mr.Tapas, added that the nation's demand for huge amount of power could only be met by a positive change in nuclear energy generation. “But the change has to be made by science, not by scientists.”

New Process Could Ease Isotope Crunch

From MedPage Today: New Process Could Ease Isotope Crunch
The solution to a looming shortage of the medical isotope technetium-99 may lie in the basements of many hospitals, according to Canadian scientists.

The answer: cyclotrons.

Researchers associated with Vancouver's TRIUMF nuclear physics research center say machines that are widely used to make other imaging isotopes can be modified to make technetium-99, the substance at the heart of the isotope crisis.

The process is relatively simple to implement and can produce commercial quantities of technetium-99 at a reasonable cost, they said. Best of all, it uses equipment that is a lot cheaper than a nuclear reactor, currently needed to make the isotope.

"We don't think there are any show-stoppers here at all," said Tom Ruth, PhD, who is principal investigator for the two-year, $6-million project.

"We've demonstrated it all works and it's feasible and within the economic realm of being competitive," he told MedPage Today.

But there remain a few hurdles that still need to be cleared, according to Robert Atcher, PhD, of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who is past president of SNM and chairman of the molecular imaging society's isotope committee.

Among them are regulatory issues, he told MedPage Today, such as does the technetium-99 produced by the cyclotrons meet medical safety standards, and does the production process itself meet nuclear safety guidelines?

Atcher pointed out that cyclotron production may work well in the Canadian health system but he's not convinced it's suitable for the U.S.

Isotope Insufficiency

If one possible solution to the isotope crunch lies in Canada, the root of the problem is also there.

Canada's aging NRU reactor in Chalk River, Ont., is the main source of technetium-99 in North America. It has been in and out of service for the past several years, and the Canadian government says it will get out of the medical isotope business entirely by 2016.

That's a problem because technetium-99 is used in about 85% of all medical imaging procedures, and the remaining facilities that produce it -- reactors in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Australia, and South Africa -- are unlikely to be able to take up the slack left by the Canadian shutdown.

The reactors don't actually make technetium-99. Instead they make molybdenum-99, a radioactive substance that decays into technetium-99.

The molybdenum-99 is packed into "generators" and distributed to hospitals, where nuclear medicine specialists can draw off the technetium-99 as needed for about a week.

The cyclotron process is more direct, Ruth said. For between three and six hours, the machine sends a stream of high-energy protons at a target of molybdenum-100, a nonradioactive isotope of the element, converting some of its atoms to technetium-99.

At the end of that time, a half-hour chemical processing step removes technetium-99 from the target and it's ready to be used in imaging procedures, he said. Unlike nuclear reactors, the machines that are needed are in wide use.

The downside is that the technetium-99 has a half-life of only about six hours, meaning it can't be stored for a long time or shipped long distances, Atcher said.

In Canada, where a large fraction of the population lives in urban centers, that may not matter, he said, as a dozen cyclotrons could probably handle the country's needs.

But in the U.S., the distance factor might mean that rural areas would be left out, Atcher said.

As well, the short half-life might make it more difficult to get technetium-99 on an emergency basis -- at night, for instance, or on weekends -- where specialists currently can simply draw off a little more from their generators.

"You can't equal the convenience of the generator," Ruth conceded. "That's why they've lasted so long."

So some generator production will probably continue, but the cyclotron process is "a piece of the puzzle," he said.

The researchers made a point of using machines similar to those now in use. In particular, of the three machines they modified to make the substance, two were 16 MeV machines made by GE, which are in common use around the world. At least in Canada, one of the regulatory hurdles -- establishing nuclear safety -- is under way, Ruth said. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the equivalent of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was involved in and approved the modifications to the test machines.

The second hurdle, establishing medical safety, will require clinical trials. Ruth said he and his colleagues hope to have a phase I study running this fall to show that their isotope is both safe and efficacious.

The technetium-99 they produce, he said, is identical structurally to the substance produced by molybdenum-99 generators. But the cyclotron process also introduces some other technetium isotopes -- less than 1%, the researchers calculated -- and those might have some unforeseen toxicity.

Ruth said Health Canada, the government department that has equivalent safety jurisdiction to that of the FDA, has also been aware of the research from the beginning. Technetium Tussles Another issue is cost, Atcher said. Given that the Canadian reactor is going out of business, there was pressure in Canada to find other sources of isotopes, even if they cost more. But whether the U.S. market would pay more is another question, he said. Ruth told MedPage Today he thinks the cost per dose will not be much higher, as least according to his group's preliminary calculations. But complicating the picture are the subsidies that underlie the current price of technetium-99. All of the reactors in the business, including Chalk River, are primarily research machines that get substantial support from their respective governments -- in essence, a subsidy for the isotope business. But there is currently a push to use molybdenum-99 made in reactors that use low-enriched uranium, unlike the highly enriched uranium used in current machines. Those facilities may not get similar support, so that the cost of generators would rise, Ruth said. The U.S. Department of Energy has been supporting efforts to develop a domestic source of isotopes. Two groups had been trying to develop a reactor-based technology, but one of those -- led by General Electric -- has recently dropped the project. As well, there are two projects based in Wisconsin that do not use reactors. Madison-based NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes is hoping to have commercial production of molybdenum generators this year, while Middleton-based Phoenix Nuclear Labs is also developing a production process. Because of that work, Atcher said he is more optimistic that the isotope market can become more stable than it has been. "But when we have a hard deadline of 2016, you always wonder what can go wrong in terms of technical development," he added. Bench to Bedside Technical development aside, it's also important to get products from the lab to the clinic, Ruth said. His group has done the scientific spadework and is now trying to find commercial partners to make and distribute cyclotron-produced technetium-99. Ottawa-based Nordion, the current commercial intermediary between the Chalk River reactor and the clinic, said it's discussing the issue with TRIUMF. In a statement, the company said it considers the cyclotron process to be something that would supplement reactor-based production. For clinicians, Ruth said, the key question is reliability -- can they depend on having enough isotope? That is a matter of how the cyclotrons are distributed and what other demands are placed on them. For example, the machine they tested in Vancouver could probably supply the needs of the Greater Vancouver Area, with a population of about 2.1 million. That device, at the B.C. Cancer Agency, has other functions, Ruth said, but a similar machine dedicated to making technetium-99 could probably serve all of the people in the province, some 3.5 million. Similar calculations would have to be made anywhere the process is used, he said. On the other hand, clinicians are used to some isotopes with a short half-life, such as fluorine-18, so that the distribution channels should not be a major issue. "We think we've dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's," he said. But "time will tell," Atcher noted.

Was Einstein wrong - or was the cable loose?

From Reuters: Was Einstein wrong - or was the cable loose?
(Reuters) - The world of science was upended last year when an experiment appeared to show one of Einstein's fundamental theories was wrong - but now the lab behind it says the result could have been caused by a loose cable.

Physicists at the CERN research institute near Geneva appeared to contradict Albert Einstein's 1905 Special Theory of Relativity last year when they reported that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster than light.

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which underpins the current view of how the universe works, says that nothing can travel faster than light, and doing so would be like traveling back in time.

James Gillies, a spokesman for European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said on Wednesday the lab's startling result was now in doubt.

Earlier on Wednesday, ScienceInsider, a website run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reported that the surprising result was down to a loose fibre optic cable linking a Global Positioning System satellite receiver to a computer.

Gillies confirmed that a flaw in the GPS system was now suspected as a possible cause for the surprising reading. Further testing was needed before any definite conclusions could be reached, he added.

The faster-than-light finding was recorded when 15,000 neutrino beams were pumped over three years from CERN to an underground Italian laboratory at Gran Sasso near Rome.

"A possible explanation has been found. But we won't know until we have tested it out with a new beam to Gran Sasso," Gillies told Reuters in Geneva.

Physicists on the experiment, called OPERA, said when they reported it last September that they had checked and rechecked over many months anything that could have produced a misreading before announcing what they had found.

A second test whose results were announced in November appeared to provide further evidence that neutrinos were travelling faster than light. But many experts remained skeptical of a result that would have overturned one of the fundamental principles of modern physics.

Edward Blucher, chairman of the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago, said the original finding would have been breathtaking if it had been true. As it was, the research inspired many spirited discussions, if few believers.

"I don't think I met anyone who said I bet it's going to be true. I think the people on the experiment worked as carefully as they could and I think they ran out of ideas of what could be wrong and they decided to present it," he said.

"Maybe they should have waited a few more months," he added.

Gillies said CERN would be issuing a full statement early on Thursday

Report: Iran concealed key atom research center

From Y Net (Israeli News): Report: Iran concealed key atom research center
Science and International Security study says Physics Research Center played pivotal role in Islamic Republic's 'undeclared nuclear program,' casting further doubt on Iran's claims that nuclear program has peaceful purposes

An Iranian research center that has been investigated by UN nuclear inspectors appears to have played a key role in Tehran's atomic program, which Western powers fear is aimed at producing weapons, according to a new report released on Wednesday.

The study by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) will likely cast further doubt on Tehran’s denials that it is seeking atomic bombs as the UN nuclear agency prepares to publish a new report on Iran in the coming days.

Iran’s Physics Research Center was established in 1989 "as part of an effort to create an undeclared nuclear program," according to ISIS’s president David Albright, a nuclear expert and former inspector for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as Andrea Stricker and Paul Brannan.

"Although Iran has admitted that the PHRC was related to the military and had a nuclear purpose in the area of defense preparedness and radiation detection, its actual nuclear role appears much more extensive," the ISIS report said.

The Iranian research center was established a year after the end of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, in which Saddam Hussein’s troops used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers.

According to the UN nuclear watchdog’s November 2011 report on Iran, the Physics Research Center was established at Lavizan, a complex near a military installation in Tehran.

Lavizan was completely razed in late 2003 and early 2004. Western diplomats and intelligence sources said at the time that they suspected Tehran was conducting undeclared nuclear activities at Lavizan and was determined to cover them up.

ISIS said it has acquired more than 1,600 telexes relating to the nuclear procurement activities of the Physics Research Center and Sharif University, another Iranian institution involved in Tehran’s nuclear research, in the 1990s.

"Iran has failed to declare all of PHRC’s activities to the (IAEA)," the Albright group’s report says. "Iran has stated to the IAEA that the PHRC procurements were not related to a nuclear program. The information assembled in this ISIS report, however, contradicts this claim."

Extensive cover-up?

If the allegations are confirmed, they could show that Iran’s suspected nuclear cover-up is far more extensive than was previously known. This may annoy Iranian allies such as Russia and China, which have slowed the push for new sanctions on Iran while pressing Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA.

While the exact nature and full scope of the Physics Research Center’s nuclear-related activities "remains difficult to fully understand,” Albright’s report said it is time for the Iranians to come clean about the center’s past work.

"Iran should clarify PHRC’s exact purpose and accomplishments and its relationship to the IAEA’s broader question of the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear effort," the report said.

UN nuclear officials have repeatedly complained that Iran has not fully cooperated with their attempts to shed light on the full extent of Iran's nuclear program, which it kept hidden from agency inspectors for nearly two decades until 2003.

The IAEA sent several senior officials to Iran recently to persuade Tehran to grant them greater access to the nuclear facilities but failed to win any pledges to boost cooperation. The setback could raise the risk of confrontation between Iran and the West.

The IAEA has been looking into the Physics Research Center, which acted as an umbrella organization under Iran’s defense ministry and coordinated various nuclear activities.

According to the IAEA, by the early 2000s, the Physics Research Center’s activities had been folded into the so-called AMAD Plan, which was responsible for what the IAEA refers to as “alleged studies” into research and development relevant to building nuclear weapons.

Cyclotrons make commercial quantities of technetium

From Physics World: Cyclotrons make commercial quantities of technetium
Scientists in Canada are the first to make commercial quantities of the medical isotope technetium-99m using medical cyclotrons. The material is currently made in just a few ageing nuclear reactors worldwide, and recent reactor shutdowns have highlighted the current risk to the global supply of this important isotope.

Technetium-99m is useful for medical imaging because it emits only gamma rays and can be incorporated into a number of different molecules that target different types of tissue in the body. Today it is made in nuclear reactors by creating a radioactive isotope of molybdenum that then decays to technetium-99m.

The entire supply of the isotope for North America is made at the 60-year-old NRU reactor in Canada, which has experienced two extended, unscheduled shutdowns in the past decade.

As a result, the Canadian government challenged the nation's scientists to develop a new method of making the isotope that would use the medical cyclotron accelerators found in many major hospitals. These cyclotrons are already used to make other isotopes, but making technetium-99m in commercial quantities using accelerators has evaded physicists since it was first proposed more than 40 years ago.

Right on target
Now, a team including Paul Schaffer, head of the Nuclear Medicine Division at the TRIUMF accelerator lab in Vancouver, has cracked the problem after two years of hard work. The main challenge was designing a target of molybdenum-100 that produces significant amounts of technetium-99m when irradiated with protons from a cyclotron. Efficiency is important because molybdenum-100 is extremely expensive. They also had to come up with a way of extracting the isotope in a rapid way – it has a half-life of about 6 h – and is in a chemical form that can be used in medical applications. Also, because of the high cost of the target, it must be recyclable.

"We took the principles of physics, chemistry and engineering that people have known for years, and used them to write a recipe for upgrading a cyclotron so it could be used to make technetium-99m," explains Shaffer.

The team has shown that the method can be used on two different commercial medical cyclotrons in Canada – which means that it is compatible with many cyclotrons worldwide. The next step for the team is to gain regulatory approval for the cyclotron-made isotope to be used in medical procedures. This should take less than two years, according to the scientists.

Cyclotron-based production is also compatible with how many medical physicists see as the future of medical isotopes. It is expected that technetium-99m procedures will be replaced by positron-emission tomography, which also uses isotopes made in cyclotrons.

Medical isotopes possible without a nuclear reactor

From the Star: Medical isotopes possible without a nuclear reactor
VANCOUVER—Canadian scientists say they have developed a technique to produce medical isotopes in hospitals and clinics without the need for a nuclear reactor.

The announcement, on the final day of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Vancouver, could signal the end to a crisis that has shaken up the medical community, politicians in Ottawa, and patients throughout Canada.

Two ageing nuclear reactors produce about 75 per cent of the global supply of medical isotopes. One of them, the reactor in Chalk River, Ont., about 180 kilometres north of Ottawa, produces 40 per cent of the supply of the raw materials needed to produce the isotopes.

But the era of dependency on nuclear reactors in the production of isotopes is over, said Tom Ruth, senior scientist at TRIUMF, the national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics based in Vancouver.

“It’s clearly a financial issue with the government as they don’t want to invest more money into the existing reactor (at Chalk River),” he said Monday.

By upgrading equipment already stored in a dozen hospital basements across Canada, the scientists say they can manufacture the isotopes with out the nuclear component.

The reactor previously produced about half the North American supply of molybdenum-99, which decays into the technetium-99m isotope used in the majority of nuclear medicine procedures like diagnostic imaging and cancer treatments.

Chalk River produced the molybdenum-99 and shipped it to two processing centres in the United States, which then shipped the finished isotopes back to Canada.

But the Chalk River reactor faces full shutdown in 2016, and the U.S. has also told Canada it will decrease or stop exporting the highly-enriched uranium by 2019.

The process of developing the medical isotopes through a particle accelerator known as a cyclotron has been done for four decades but not on a commercial scale.

Adjustments made to the cyclotron now enables scientists to write a recipe to produce the finished isotopes which will make it no longer necessary to ship the raw materials to the U.S.

“We have now successfully performed this process at the commercial scale,” said Paul Schaffer, head of nuclear medicine at TRIUMF.

“We’ve delivered a proof of concept.”

There are 18 cyclotrons in Canada in 12 facilities — six in Vancouver and two each in Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal. Over the next few years, another seven new cyclotrons are planned to come online throughout the country.

Schaffer said there are still regulatory hurdles that must be met through Health Canada. Several industrial partners and regional health authorities across the country are now starting to talk about how to fund and implement the commercial production of medical isotopes.

B.C. Cancer Agency researcher François Bernard said it was previously thought that it would be too costly to produce the isotopes outside of a nuclear reactor but the new process has challenged that notion.

“We will be able to produce Canada’s needs,” he said.

“It’s essentially a win-win scenario for health care, because you end up removing your dependence on a single source of technetium-99m, but you also make other isotopes more widely available.”

Using only one cyclotron, the new method could produce a fresh supply for a large metropolitan area every day, Bernard said.

“For the price of one nuclear reactor, you can buy hundreds of cyclotrons, and by buying cyclotrons, not only do you make technetium available but you also make the other isotopes for PET imaging.”

Charles Edward Pietri, 1930-2012

From the Chicago Tribune: Charles Edward Pietri, 1930-2012 Charles Edward Pietri, a longtime member of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, helped set policy for national research and development laboratories across the country and is credited with contributing to the safe and effective control of nuclear materials.

"He was a strong supporter of nuclear energy, while at the same time a staunch advocate of the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons," said his wife, Bettina.

Mr. Pietri, 81, a retired chemist with the U.S. Department of Energy's New Brunswick Laboratory on the site of the Argonne National Laboratory, died of acute leukemia Friday, Feb. 10, in his Western Springs home.

The Deerfield-based institute, founded in 1958, is an international organization that promotes safety in the handling of nuclear material and the practice of nuclear materials management through publications, presentations and meetings among professionals and technical workers in the field.

For more than two decades, until his health forced him to step down, Mr. Pietri coordinated annual meetings of the group in cities throughout the U.S., events that were open to its thousand-plus membership and featured hundreds of presentations and workshops.

"What was special about Charlie is that he did what he did so seamlessly, year after year, with humility, a smile and an incredible sense of humor that just drew people to him," said Scott Vance, the president of the institute. "He was at the center of all of our gatherings."

Born in New York in 1930, Mr. Pietri graduated from The Bronx High School of Science and earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from New York University. He went on to work for a few years as a chemist for DuPont Co. in Wilmington, Del., prior to becoming a research chemist at the New Brunswick Laboratory, which was then in New Jersey.

In the mid-1970s, Mr. Pietri moved to the Chicago area after the lab relocated to Argonne. He worked as a science administrator, senior scientist, and assistant director for operations. He retired in the late 1990s, but continued for several years as a consultant at the lab, as well as with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Charlie was an early mentor to me," said Colleen Gradle, a longtime scientist at the lab. "He was one of those people with a sort of sparkle in his eyes, a constant curiosity about the world around him."

Mr. Pietri in 1996 was named a fellow at the institute, its highest level of membership.

He was the author of numerous articles, patents and publications, and was a member of professional organizations including the American Chemical Society, American Nuclear Society, American Institute of Chemists and the Health Physics Society.

Mr. Pietri is also survived by two sons, Randolph and Richard; a daughter, Dianna Francis; two stepdaughters, Ginger Seery and Sarah Maxwell; a stepson, Andrew Smith; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 3, at Hallowell & James Funeral Home, 1025 W. 55th St., Countryside.

Is low-energy nuclear reaction new physics or an old scam?

Creamer Media Science News: Is low-energy nuclear reaction new physics or an old scam? Faced with the converging crises of fossil fuel depletion and climate change, humanity is in desperate need of an abundant, cheap and clean source of energy.

For decades, fusion has been the holy grail of nuclear energy researchers. ‘Hot’ fusion – the process that creates energy in the sun and hydrogen bombs – involves the fusing of hydrogen or deuterium atoms into helium. After decades of research, scientists have yet to crack the problem of managing the extreme temperatures involved. ‘Cold fusion’, which, in theory, would create useable energy at room temperatures, has for a long time been a similarly elusive dream.

In 1989, two scientists at the University of Utah, Pons and Fleischmann, claimed to have demonstrated a cold fusion reaction that produced excess energy, that is, more energy than would be yielded by a normal chemical reaction.

However, other researchers had great difficulty in replicating the Pons-Fleischmann experiments, and the whole notion of cold fusion became discredited as ‘junk science’.

Nonetheless, some scientists scattered around the globe have continued this line of research and, in the past few years, there has been a renewed explosion of interest in the subject.

The term ‘cold fusion’ has fallen out of favour, to be replaced by the more accurate label of low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENRs.

Scientists working in several labo- ratories have claimed to have produced excess heat energy when mixing hydrogen gas with nickel or palladium under certain conditions. Remarkably, the reactions produce no greenhouse gases or radioactive waste.

Last year, an Italian engineer and entrepreneur named Andrea Rossi catapulted himself to fame – or possibly infamy – by claiming to have invented a device – called the energy catalyser, or E-Cat – that produces commercially viable quantities of LENR energy using a special catalyst.

In October, Rossi performed a demonstration of a 1 MW E-Cat to a handful of scientists and a potential buyer at the University of Bologna. Subsequently, Rossi said he sold his device to an unnamed American buyer, which some people have speculated could be a branch of the US Department of Defense.

With Swedish company Hydro Fusion acting as the agent, the website ECAT.com is advertising 1 MW units for sale at $1.5-million each – a 25% price cut after two months, resulting from a “close and successful colla- boration with the first (still undisclosed) customer” and “new favourable and scalable production processes”. That price would equate to about R47-billion for capacity equal to the Medupi power station, which has a price tag of upwards of R120-billion. The fuel and maintenance costs are said to be a negligible $1/MWh each, while the estimated life span of a device is 30 years. ECAT.com claims that 10 kWh household units will be available for purchase by next year.

Rossi’s claims triggered a storm of debate, with many critics saying it was a scam, as his device defied the known laws of physics. Rossi has yet to allow independent scientific validation of his device, arguing that he wants to secure a patent first.

In recent months various competitors have emerged with similar assertions.

Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies issued a press release in November stating that it will begin selling an LENR device dubbed Hyperion this year. Another statement, released on January 23, invited inde- pendent third parties to test the reactors.

In mid-January, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) released a short video in which a Dr Joseph Zawodny says that the LENR process “has the demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy cleanly, without ionising radiation, without producing nasty waste”. He says this heat could be used on a household scale for space and water heating and converted into electricity generation, on an industrial scale for power generation and, ultimately, for transportation.

On his blog, Zawodny subsequently stated: “When considered in aggregate, I believe excess power has been demonstrated. I did not say, reliable, useful, commercially viable, or controllable.” Nevertheless, he says the video was released as part of a patent application filed by Nasa for an LENR device.

Most recently, several blogs are reporting that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology held a short course on cold fusion in the last week of January, where a successful LENR demonstration was apparently conducted.

If commercial energy from LENR proves to be viable and cheap, it could completely revolutionise the world’s energy systems, rendering fossil fuels and conventional nuclear fission reactors obsolete and making fresh- water through desalination affordable. But a widespread transition to LENR energy would likely take a decade or two.

It is still too early to tell whether commercial LENR is imminent or will turn out to be a red herring. But this story is definitely one to watch.

High-schoolers can study nuclear physics at Michigan State University

From Gifted Atlanta: High-schoolers can study nuclear physics at Michigan State University
How often do teen-agers get the chance to study nuclear physics at the site of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory?

More often than you might think. Every summer, high-school kids spend a week learning nuclear science in the Physics of Atomic Nuclei program at Michigan State University.

The PAN Program introduces students to concepts in astrophysics, cosmology and nuclear science and allows participants to conduct their own nuclear physics experiments.

To participate, kids must have completed one year of high-school. Applications are due April 30, and the selection process is competitive. The good news: For those accepted, the residential program is free, other than transportation to and from the campus.

The PAN Program offers a separate, week-long program for high-school science teachers, so consider passing this information along to an outstanding teacher — most likely a physics or chemistry teacher — at your child’s school.

At DOE, Body Blows to Fusion, Nuclear Physics, and Particle Physics

From Science Insider: At DOE, Body Blows to Fusion, Nuclear Physics, and Particle Physics
Overall, the budget numbers for the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science, the single largest funder of physical sciences research in the United States, look reasonably good. The office would see its budget climb by 2.4% to $4.992 billion. Three of the office's six major research programs, however, are slated for potentially devastating cuts. While programs with connections to clean energy technologies come out ahead, the fusion energy science, nuclear physics, and high-energy physics programs suffer.

President Barack Obama has made clean-energy research a priority, and officials at the Office of Science had designated research on advanced materials for energy, advanced biolfuels, and high-performance scientific computing as critical areas. Those priorities show through in the budget request released today. The office's single largest program, basic energy sciences, which funds research into condensed matter physics, chemistry, and materials, would see its budget climb 6.6% from its current level to $1.80 billion. Similarly, the biological and environmental research program, which houses DOE's biofuels research, would get a bump of 2.5% to $625 million. And the office's program in advanced scientific computing research would get a 3.3% increase to $456 million. DOE's Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which aims to quickly develop the most-promising energy related basic technologies, would see its budget rise from $275 million to $350 million.

On the flip side, the Office of Science's three other programs suffer cuts that, although seemingly small, could have severe consequences.

In the single most dramatic shift, DOE would pay for an increased contribution to the ITER international fusion project by diverting funds from its domestic fusion programs, including shuttering a fusion experiment known as the Alcator C-Mod at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Overall, the fusion energy sciences budget falls by 0.8% to $398 million, but increases the U.S. contribution to ITER to $150 million, up from $105 million this year. That shift forced officials to throw some things overboard, including MIT's $18 million budget for C-Mod. That machine is a donut-shaped device known as a tokamak that uses magnetic fields to trap an ionized gas or plasma and hold it at very high temperature and pressure. C-Mod is one of three tokamaks in the United States and a cousin of the gigantic $23 billion ITER that researchers are planning to build in Cadarache, France.

"I'm dismayed, but not surprised," says Raymond Fonck, a fusion physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. C-Mod had not yet been mined out scientifically, Fonck says, but there were arguments for keeping up the United States' two other tokamaks—at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey and General Atomics in San Diego, California. Fusion physicists have long worried that the U.S. contributions to ITER would starve the domestic fusion program, and that appears to be happening. In the new budget, fusion research would receive 45% of the money, ITER would receive 45% of the money, and operations of the U.S. facilities would receive just 10% of the resources, a far cry from the roughly 50% considered optimal. "To have a 10% operating budget is kind of insane," Fonck says. "I understand where it's coming from, but we're already under utilizing our facilities."

DOE's nuclear physics program would see its budget fall 3.6% to $527 million. But even the $20 million cut would have big consequences. For example, the budget would provide enough money to run an atom smasher known as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, for roughly 10 weeks—half of the time it will run this year. However, RHIC is already running at 2/3 capacity, and if such foreshortened runs continue, it could be the beginning of a "death spiral," says Steven Vigdor, associate director for nuclear and particle physics at Brookhaven. RHIC recreates a soup of fundamental particles called a quark-gluon plasma that filled the universe a microsecond after the big bang. Similarly, the budget provides $22 million for development of a new accelerator known as the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University in East Lansing, instead of the $55 million university officials were expecting. FRIB would generate exotic nuclei for a wide variety of experiments.

Researchers say that with flat budgets expected for years to come, officials in the nuclear physics program may soon have to sacrifice one of three major projects. In addition to supporting RHIC and FRIB, the nuclear physics program also supports the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. CEBAF studies the structure of individual protons and neutrons and of nuclei. "Looking at the numbers, it seems to me that what the nuclear physics officials are trying to do is keep everybody alive, but just barely, this year with an eye to making a decision in 2014," Vigdor says.

The news for high-energy physicists may be even worse. The budget for such research, which explores fundamental particles and forces primarily through particle collisions, would fall 1.8% to $777 million. That sounds like a mere haircut, but the effect at the United States' last dedicated particle physics laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, could be momentous. "At first blush, it looks like a fairly disastrous budget," says Fermilab Director Pier Oddone.

That's because the budget cuts research and development for what would be Fermilab's flagship project in the next decade. Researchers hope to build a gigantic underground particle detector called the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment in the abandoned Homestake mine near Lead, South Dakota, to snare particles called neutrinos fired 1300 kilometers through Earth from Fermilab. But plans to develop the mine have stalled and the budget cuts spending on LBNE from $21 million this year to $10 million. That cut threatens the entire project, Oddone says. "It seems that we'll have to ramp down spending by more than a factor of two," he says, "which won't leave enough to keep it alive." Overall, cuts in the high-energy physics budget would see Fermilab's budget fall by 5.1% to $366 million. And if plans for Fermilab's future founder, larger cuts could follow in years to come.

In almost any budget, there are winners and losers. But in the Office of Science budget for 2013, the losers take a real drubbing. It remains to be seen whether Congress will agree with the Administration's priorities.

Southern’s `Monumental Accomplishment’ Tempered by Fukushima

From Bloomberg.com: Southern’s `Monumental Accomplishment’ Tempered by Fukushima The chief regulator’s dissent in a vote that approved the first U.S. permit in 34 years to build a nuclear reactor is fueling a debate over safety as the first anniversary of Japan’s nuclear disaster nears.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4-1 yesterday to award Southern Co. (SO) of Atlanta a license to build two reactors at its Vogtle plant near Augusta, Georgia. The agency should have required the company to implement lessons from Japan’s nuclear crisis last year, said Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who opposed the license.

“Right now we know there are things that need to be fixed, things that need to be changed, or at least things that need to be analyzed,” Jaczko said yesterday in an interview at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. “For us to issue this license, and say ‘we’ll deal with them later,’ to me is kind of putting the cart before the horse.”

It has been less than a year after an earthquake and tsunami on March 11 caused meltdowns and radiation leaks at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. The industry has faced concerns about nuclear safety at least since a partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant in 1979, and the NRC’s authorization of Southern’s reactor may face a challenge in federal court from environmental groups.

“The chairman’s vote reflects the post-Fukushima reality that U.S. reactors are not designed to deal with a meltdown” and will need years’ worth of work “to make them less dangerous,” Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace USA, an anti-nuclear group, said in an e-mail.

Standardized Design
Southern will build the first U.S. reactors to use a standardized design, which it says will speed construction and reduce risks.

The agency’s vote is a “monumental accomplishment,” Thomas Fanning, Southern’s chairman and chief executive officer, said yesterday in a statement.

“Anything that we learn from Fukushima, I assure you we will bring to bear,” Fanning told reporters on a conference call yesterday. The NRC’s review of the planned reactors “has been thorough, it has been thoughtful and it is complete,” he said in an interview yesterday.

The NRC is weighing rules to improve safety at existing plants, and by March 9 it may direct owners to take steps to be better prepared for power failures.

Improving Safety
An agency task force in July recommended that the commission implement rules to improve safety at the 104 U.S. operating reactors, including reviews of seismic and flooding risks. An industry plan to place emergency pumps and generators at plants may speed the agency’s review of the proposed safety enhancements, Martin Virgilio, the NRC’s deputy executive director for reactor and preparedness programs, said at an NRC staff meeting with industry officials Jan. 13.

The agency should have required the Vogtle plant to adhere to all post-Fukushima regulations, such as a potential requirement to ensure that spent-fuel cooling pools have better monitoring equipment, Jaczko said. “I’m concerned that we will have challenges getting all of the Fukushima changes made” at the Vogtle plant, he said.

The NRC chairman said he will work to make sure the NRC’s Fukushima-related regulations are applied to Southern’s plant as the agency considers the rules, which he wants implemented by 2016.

Several environmental and consumer organizations said this week that they may file a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the NRC award of Southern’s reactor license.

Environmental Impact
They will ask the court to direct the NRC to complete another environmental impact statement to take into consideration lessons learned after Fukushima, said Stephen A. Smith, executive director of one of the groups, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

“The only way the nuclear power is ever going to be successful is if you assure accidents like Fukushima don’t happen,” Smith said in a phone interview. “Cheerleading and the rush to move forward has overtaken safety,” he said.

The U.S. nuclear industry established its own safety- monitoring organization, the Atlanta-based Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, after a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island. Reactor owners have made technology upgrades at power plants, and plant owners spent more than $2 billion to bolster security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based industry group.

Commercial Facilities
“Probably the most robust commercial facilities on the planet are nuclear power plants,” Tony Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for the NEI, said in a Jan. 11 interview.

Nuclear accidents at U.S. plants would release less radiation than previously thought and would cause almost no immediate deaths, an NRC analysis issued on Feb. 1 determined.

Reactor designers are now implementing more “passive” engineering, which relies more on the laws of physics to improve safety, Eric Loewen, chief consulting engineer for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in Wilmington, North Carolina, said in a phone interview.

“Usually the laws of physics are a little bit more reliable than making sure that somebody left a valve open or making sure that some automated system works,” he said.

Local Student Honored at White House

From 2 News: Local Student Honored at White House
Meet Taylor Wilson-- a Reno local who designed a nuclear reactor, is working on groundbreaking medical research, and got invited to the White House this week. And did I mention, he's 17 years old. Wilson is a senior at the Davidson Academy in Reno, and he describes himself as an applied nuclear physicist. And you won't believe everything he's done, all before his 18th birthday. "A lot of people say, 'Oh, you're just a kid. You can't have any experience in nuclear science.' And I say 'well, I've had about seven years of it." Seven years of experience, because Wilson started studying nuclear physics when he was just 10 years old. He moved here four years ago to attend the Davidson Academy, and now he has his very own lab at the University of Nevada. He showed us his nuclear fusion reactor, which he started building at age 12. It's the inspiration for his most recent invention: a scanning device that detects weapons grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Basically, it scans for nuclear weapons. This is technology that does already exist, made from rare materials, and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wilson said he can mass-produce his version for a couple hundred bucks each.

"Instead of using the rarest and most expensive substance on planet earth, it uses water," Wilson said, "which is the cheapest and most abundant."

And it's more sensitive than its predecessors. He wants to use it to catch terrorists, so he took it to the White House Science Fair this week to show President Obama.

"The first thing he said is 'Why haven't we hired this guy?'" Wilson said about meeting President Obama. "He told the science adviser to go hire me, and he came to me with a job offer."

And that's not the only job offer Wilson got at the White House. The Secret Service also gave him a pretty hard sell.

"They said three things: the pay is good, we get lots of travel, and we get all the girls," Wilson said, laughing, "and I thought that was hilarious, coming from these otherwise very proper Secret Service agents."

But it's not a calling Wilson takes lightly. He agrees with President Obama-- his research is important.

"What impresses me so much is not just how smart you are," President Obama said at the science fair. "It's the fact that you recognize you've got a responsibility to use your talents in service of something bigger than yourselves."

"I like solving problems," Wilson said. "That's what really has an impact on me, and has an impact on the world."

Wilson has applied to a handful of top-tier colleges, but he's not sure where he'll end up. He is also enjoying working on his newest project: developing better technology to diagnose and treat cancer.

Aprahamian named chair of APS nuclear physics division

From Notre Dame Department Physics: Aprahamian named chair of APS nuclear physics division

Ani Aprahamian, the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Physics, has been elected chair of the American Physical Society's Division of Nuclear Physics. APS is the second-largest organization in the field, chartered “to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics.” It publishes a number of journals, conducts extensive education and outreach programs, and is active in public and governmental affairs. The Division of Nuclear Physics is composed of scientists and educators who study fundamental problems related to the nature of matter – the properties of nuclei and of their ultimate constituents, quarks and gluons.

Aprahamian's research interests lie in nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics. Her current work relates to the elements heavier than iron, whose origin remains a scientific enigma; they cannot be formed by the normal nuclear fusion process in stars. It is thought that a neutron-rich explosive environment in the emerging shock front of a supernova may be responsible for the enhancement of the heavy elements, but experimental confirmation requires laboratory production of elusive, highly unstable nuclei in cutting-edge facilities. One such will be the Facility for Rare Isotopes Beams (FRIB) under construction at Michigan State University, for which Aprahamian serves as a member of the science advisory committee.

In addition to the above professional roles, Aprahamian has been both director of Notre Dame's Nuclear Science Laboratory and a former chair of the Department of Physics at Notre Dame. She is also the vice-chair of the National Academies' decadal review of nuclear physics (NP2010) and the co-chair of the standing Nuclear Science Advisory Subcommittee on Isotopes (NSACI), as well as chair of the Scientific Council for the GANIL research center in France.

Fight for funding: Pool shrinking for MSU's FRIB facility, other science projects

From Lansing State Journal: Fight for funding: Pool shrinking for MSU's FRIB facility, other science projects Thomas Glasmacher's cellphone rang for the third time in half an hour. He excused himself and stepped into the hallway. "I think twice when I want his time," said Konrad Gelbke, still sitting in the small conference room at Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. "Normally, I expect people to be there when I want them. With Thomas, I say 'Do I really need him now?' because he's so busy." Gelbke is the cyclotron lab's director. Glasmacher is the person managing its most important project, the $615 million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, which is 2 1/2 months away from its most important review by the U.S. Department of Energy, the review that will fix the cost, scope and schedule of the project and, if successful, allow MSU to go forward with construction. The scientists and engineers at FRIB have spent the past 1 1/2 years adding flesh to a conceptual design approved by the U.S. Department of Energy in September 2010, working out the technical conundrums of a machine powerful enough to create isotopes that don't exist outside the thermonuclear explosions in dying stars, fitting together the jigsaw of systems into a unified whole. But that work is now going on against a backdrop of concern for the project's future. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu spoke at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club last month. Afterward, standing in a scrum of reporters, he was asked how FRIB would fare in next year's federal budget. His answer gave little reason for optimism. "If you look at all the things we're doing ... and you look at what we think we can afford in a budget projection given our deficit, we are saying 'Well, we have to be very careful, because we can't be starting six things and we can only afford four things,' " he said. The reaction was sharp and immediate: strongly worded statements from members of the state's congressional delegation, editorials in newspapers across the state, including this one, saying Michigan couldn't afford to lose its grip on a project that would bring so much in the way of jobs, money and scientific prestige.

Fire at Moscow nuclear institute, Russia says no risk

From Reuters: Fire at Moscow nuclear institute, Russia says no risk (Reuters) - There was no risk of a radiation leak after a fire broke out at a Moscow nuclear research centre housing a non-operational 60-year-old atomic reactor on Sunday, said officials, but Greenpeace Russia expressed serious concern about the incident. The fire broke out early on Sunday in a part of the Alikhanov Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in southwestern Moscow that contains a research collider, institute officials said in a statement on its website. There were no radiation sources in the area of the collider, which had been shut off on December 25, and no danger of a radiation leak, the statement said. It said personnel were evacuated and nobody was hurt. Grey smoke rose above the institute, which is encircled by a wall, and an acrid smell filled the air. Some 30 emergency vehicles, including fire trucks and ambulances, stood inside and outside the main gate, witnesses said. Several phone calls to the institute went unanswered. The fire was in a basement area, said Sergei Vlasov, spokesman for the Moscow branch of the Emergencies Ministry. Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom, said there were no open flames, only smoke that came from an area housing power cables and could not affect any nuclear materials at the institute. "This case poses no threat to fissile materials," said Novikov, adding firefighters were pumping foam into the affected area. He said the institute's heavy-water research reactor was no longer operational. SAFETY CONCERNS A Greenpeace Russia official said the incident was potentially very dangerous. "This is extremely dangerous ... this should not have happened at all, but as long as it did, it shows there has been a major failure in their operations," said Ivan Blokov, campaign director at Greenpeace Russia. "What we have here is a large amount of radioactive substance right in the centre of Moscow and even if a minor quantity leaks, it would pose a serious problem." Russian news agencies issued conflicting reports. Interfax cited a police source as saying fire brigades were denied access to the facility for "a long time" before being allowed in, but the institute said that was not the case. It said the fire had not been extinguished as of 4:20 p.m. (1320 GMT). State-run RIA reported earlier the fire had already been put out. Safety at Russia's nuclear facilities has been a concern since the deadly 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic. The Soviet authorities did not announce that disaster for two days. A fire aboard a nuclear submarine in the north Russian port of Murmansk in December severely damaged the vessel, but authorities said radiation levels remained normal. Russia has suffered several accidents which observers say were the result of negligence and corruption, problems that have hindered modernization of the civilian and military infrastructure. The Moscow institute is named after its founder, Abram Alikhanov, one of the designers of the Soviet atom bomb, and houses the Soviet Union's first heavy water reactor, designed in the late 1940s as part of dictator Josef Stalin's program to develop nuclear arms, according to its website.

In Galileo’s hometown, Vatican promotes science

From the Washington Post: In Galileo’s hometown, Vatican promotes science VATICAN CITY — Nearly four centuries after the Roman Catholic Church branded Galileo Galilei a heretic for positing that the sun was the center of the universe, the Vatican is co-hosting a major science exhibition in his hometown. The Vatican is teaming with Italy’s main physics research center to host “Stories from Another World. The Universe Inside and Outside of Us,” in Pisa. The exhibit will illustrate the progress of knowledge of the physical universe, from prehistoric times to recent discoveries. The exhibit is organized by the Specola Vaticana — the Vatican-supported observatory — and Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics, together with Pisa University’s physics department. The exhibition aims to tell “the history of the universe, from the particles which make up the atoms in our bodies to distant galaxies,” the Rev. Jose Funes, director of the observatory, told reporters on Thursday (Feb. 2). It is aimed particularly at young people and great care has been taken “to make complex and difficult knowledge accessible, while at the same time avoiding the risk of superficiality.” Cosimo Bracci Torsi, president of the exhibit’s venue, the Palazzo Blu Foundation, stressed that the placement of the exhibit in Galileo’s hometown reflects the progress made between secular science and religion since Galileo was “first condemned then cleared up.” Galileo was condemned by the Vatican in 1633 for his astronomical theories and spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest. The late Pope John Paul II apologized in 1992, saying the church was wrong to convict Galileo. Objects on display include rock fragments from the moon and Mars, and original copies of the books of Isaac Newton. The exhibition runs from March 10 to July 1.

Nuclear security takes its place in NSE’s curriculum

From MIT News: Nuclear security takes its place in NSE’s curriculum While virtually any scientific or engineering technology has the potential for misuse, nuclear technology is a special case, and security of materials and know-how has always been a priority in the nuclear community. In an age of rogue nations and violent sub-national organizations, the subject has even greater significance, and this is reflected in its important place in the curriculum of MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). The attention to nuclear security is part of the department’s broader consideration of the interactions of nuclear technology with society as a whole. This is particularly important because fission reactors are emerging as the primary large-scale carbon-free energy generation method for the foreseeable future, notes Senior Research Scientist Richard Lanza. “If you’re going to have nuclear power, then you’re going to have to deal with the issues of proliferation and safeguards,” he explains. “This is a complex-systems problem, and the sort of problem MIT has addressed in the past, because we can bring together a lot of pieces.” From inside the Institute, these pieces include NSE faculty and members of other departments including physics, materials science and engineering and political science. Outside instructors hail from private companies and national laboratories, and government agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA; there is also collaboration on policy issues with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In a major supplement to funding from the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, NSE recently received a $2.4 million award from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, under its Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). The Initiative is fostering development of a shared, five-course nuclear security curriculum at MIT, Pennsylvania State University and Texas A&M University; the materials will ultimately be promulgated to other universities.