I have to put in a word of praise for my friends at the CLS Outreach Office, who do a creative job of explaining the complexities of synchrotron science to a popular audience. Their work with high school students is a really amazing ongoing project.
I am not familiar with this author, but I can hardly wait to read a novel populated with my CLS colleagues!
Cryophallion, like most physicists, I sit up late at night and dream of actually having power and control to abuse! As much as Dr. Evil might be our role model, most of us are far more like the nerdy kid in a John Hughes movie.
Thank you very much for your kind words. Posting to Slashdot is a bit like hollering into the void. It is very gratifying that you (and the other poster who thanked me) found my explanation of the DOE review process helpful.
If you live near one of the DOE labs, you should look up the calendar on its website. There are public events and open houses several times each year which provide an opportunity to see what goes on behind the fence. And bring the kids.
There are some misconceptions in your post, Fission86, a couple minor, one quite serious.
Proposal review panels do their more than once a year at most DOE facilities. At the two where I am a reviewer (see my post below for some of my observations of the review process), we do so 3 times per year. Surprisingly, lab executives have very little to do with the review or allocation processes -- the peer review by a panel of experts in the field of the proposal is, in most cases, the sole criterion (aside, of course, from the number of days in the operating calendar compared to the number of proposals submitted) for whether a proposal gets access to an instrument.
Your serious misstatement is about cost. Access to DOE x-ray, neutron, nanoscience, electron microscopy, and high magnetic field facilities is free for non-proprietary research. The researcher has to pay for travel, meals and incidental expenses, as well as for the cost of preparing whatever samples they bring to the lab. But the cost of using the facility is free. Zero dollars and zero cents. Amazing, but true. Proprietary research is done with full cost recovery -- as well it should be. The tax payer should not pay to make proprietary research happen, then pay for the results of that research. But research that goes into archived journals -- that is indeed free.
As for undergraduates, many of the faculty who come to my beamline at the NSLS x-ray facility bring their undergraduate researchers. I enocurage that, the lab encourages it, and DOE encourages it. Am I going to let rowdy kids do what they will with my $125,000 detector? Hell no! But will I leave a responsible, trained 20 year old alone to run the beamline? Yes. And I often do.
Well... I am one of DOE's "gatekeepers", so perhaps I can shed some light on the nature of the red tape. Actually, I am a proposal reviewer for the Advanced Photon Source and for the National Synchrotron Light Source, the x-ray facilities next door to two DOEs nanoscience facilities. So I help mind the gates for the x-ray facilities, not the nanoscience facilities, which are the topic of this article. But the process for access to the nanoscience facilities is very similar to our process.
First, we are not a secret cabal. The names of the proposal review panel members are listed on the web sites for the two x-ray facilities for which I do this work. (For the sake of transparency, I am Bruce Ravel on the Spectroscopy panel at the APS - http://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Committees/Proposal_Review_Panel/ - and the X-Ray Spectroscopy: Chemical and Material Sciences panel at NSLS - http://www.nsls.bnl.gov/organization/committees/prp.htm.) Reviews are signed by the panel as a whole, not by individuals, but you know who we are.
Second, the procedure is not a mystery. There is a standardized form that the proposer must fill out. We review the contents of that form to assure that the experiment proposed is feaasible in the sense that it is well-conceived and appropriate to the instrment requested.
Third, the demand for these resources is high. At the APS, virtually every instrument receives more requests for time that there are days in the operating calendar. It is inevitable that some folks will come away disappointed. I cannot speak for all of my fello reviewers, but I write (what I hope are) useful comments in every review to help the proposer write a stringer, more competitive proposal the next time. One of the comment farther down is from someone who failed to get timefor an experiment at the APS. My advice to him or her is to contact the beamline scientist at the beamline and/or the user office and ask for advice about how to make your proposal sringer next time.
Fourth, although the process is challenging in the sense that not every proposal is going to result in access, the resources being offered are quite extraordinary. A researcher from academia or a national lab gets free access to the instrument with no obligation to cover the operating costs of the facility or of the special equipment available at the specific instrument. Companies get the same benefit for non-proprietary work. (Proprietary work involves cost-recovery, but many corporations choose to publish much of their work.) Except for the proprietary work, all users are expected to publish in peer-reviewed, widely available journals.
Fifth, everyone enters pretty equally. I get good proposals from institutions of all sizes and poor proposals from the same mix of institutions. One of colleagues and a very fine practioner of my specialty is faculty at Sarah Lawrence College -- certainly not a huge unversity -- and he has quite adequate access to DOEs facilities.
My comments are, of course, specifically relvant to the x-ray facilities. But similar models are used for the nanocenters.
So, yes... there is red tape, but there has to be. There is far more demand than supply. There are safety issues that range from the mundane to the severe. Adn there are obligations both for the facility and for the user to perform and report science of the highest quality.
I interact with users of the DOE facilities on a daily basis. I think the system is highly succesful (although not without warts and blemishes) and so do the vast majority of the people I see every day.
Those are all valid questions. The DOE maintains a number of so-called lagacy sites where materials were produced for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel. Some sites are pretty far from large population centers, others are in that "somewhere in between" area. At this moment, the uranium from DOE's lagacy sites isn't poisoning anyone. Drinking water supplies near a couple of these DOE sites do show elevated (compared to the natural background) levels of uranium and those levels are rising. However, those levels are vastly below the levels of associated with either acute or chronic toxicity. Certainly no one is dying in their shower -- which is charming if rather hyperbolic imagery.
I have to take exception with your last sentence. That *you* don't know the hard data does not mean that hard data does not exist. The article at the PNNL website is written for public consumption and is therefore written more or less at the level of an article in the New York Times science section. A vast scientific literature exists on the problem of uranium and other metal contamination in ground water. DOE's legacy sites are extremely complex geobiochemical systems, but they have been studied for decades at this point. A lot is known about the long term threat posed by these contaminated ground waters, although a lot is yet to be learned. That a problem is not an immediate health threat in the "people dying in the shower" sense, does not mean that an active response to an existing problem is not merited.
Reading through the comments so far, there seems to be some misunderstanding of the work by the PNNL crowd and of bioremediation in general. My research group here at Argonne National Laboratory (which outside of Chicago) collaborates with the folks from PNNL. In fact, I am writing this very early on a Sunday morning while measuring the oxidation state of uranium using X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy at the Advanced Photon Source in samples from a collaborator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which, like PNNL, is a center of research into uranium bioremediation.
First, a few words about the concept of bioremediation. The Department of Energy became interested in bioremediation of metallic contamination after the extensive success of bioremediative techniques for cleaning up organic contamination -- things like benzene or trichloroethylene. The basic idea is that you dose the ground with bacteria that can metabolize the organic contaminant, let the bugs happily live their lives, then in the end the ground is much cleaner than before. Variations on this technique are in wide use for many organic contaminants and in many places around the world.
The Department of Energy's started several years ago to fund research into using similiar concepts to clean up ground water contamination associated with various sites where materials for nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel were produced. There are several sites in the US where the groundwater has elevated levels of uranium and other metals. Bioremediation is attractive because it involves remediation in situ. The ground doesn't need to be dug up, which introduces a whole slew of other problems into the mix.
Unfortunately, metals are different from organics. When a bacterium metabolizes benzene, the benzene goes away. When a dissimilatory metal reducer, like Shewanella, respires on a uranium compound, the most it can do is change the chemical state of uranium. It is impossible to turn the uranium into some other element. As several other posters have pointed out, uraninite (the end product of Shewnella's respiration of uranium compounds) is still radioactive and it is still toxic.
However, uraninite is not soluble. The uranium in the ground water is in a soluble form and therefore will flow through the ground and find its way into rivers and into drinking water supplies. Uraninite is highly insoluble. When Shewnella converts soluble uranium into uraninite, the uraninite particles adhere to the rocks in the ground.
Thus uranium bioremediation is a containment-in-place strategy. The danger of the contaminated sites is that the contamination will spread. The uranium-polluted site will still be polluted after the Shewnella has done its thing, but at least the uranium will not move out of the contaminated site. And that's the point of the DOE's bioremediation strategy -- to keep a problem that exists from spreading and becoming a bigger problem.
Although I don't do microtomography myself, I am a synchrotron scientist. I've managed to convince my boss that I qualify as "someone with expertise".;-) Minerals are quite robust when exposed to x-rays -- even from a highly intense, highly brilliant source like the synchrotron in Switzerland used for this experiment. There is not, in fact, much power put on the sample in one of these experiment. It's on the order of miliwatts, maybe tens of miliwatts, so the sample does not heat up at all. The dominant interaction, indeed the interaction used to probe the fossils in this experiment, is the interaction of a photon and an electron tightly bound to some atom. This interaction is very short-lived and rarely changes the chemistry of the sample. The thing that is actually measured is a secondary emission of a photon that is a by-product of the primary interaction. While not 100% non-invasive, the photons are, in fact, almost completely non-damaging. Indeed, that is one of the primary benefits of x-ray tomography. After the x-ray guys are done, the sample is in the same state as when they started.
If you poke around the web sites of any of the synchrotrons (google for them: in the US their names are APS, NSLS, SSRL, and ALS; in Europe: HASYLAB, DESYLAB, ESRF, ANKA, Diamond, Soleil, and the SLS; in Japan: SPring8 and the Photon Factory) you will find lots of information about x-ray tomography. It's really a very cool technique. 3D pictures of things without having to open them up!
Slashdot Mirror
I have to put in a word of praise for my friends at the CLS Outreach Office, who do a creative job of explaining the complexities of synchrotron science to a popular audience. Their work with high school students is a really amazing ongoing project.
I am not familiar with this author, but I can hardly wait to read a novel populated with my CLS colleagues!
Cryophallion, like most physicists, I sit up late at night and dream of actually having power and control to abuse! As much as Dr. Evil might be our role model, most of us are far more like the nerdy kid in a John Hughes movie.
Thank you very much for your kind words. Posting to Slashdot is a bit like hollering into the void. It is very gratifying that you (and the other poster who thanked me) found my explanation of the DOE review process helpful.
If you live near one of the DOE labs, you should look up the calendar on its website. There are public events and open houses several times each year which provide an opportunity to see what goes on behind the fence. And bring the kids.
There are some misconceptions in your post, Fission86, a couple minor, one quite serious.
Proposal review panels do their more than once a year at most DOE facilities. At the two where I am a reviewer (see my post below for some of my observations of the review process), we do so 3 times per year. Surprisingly, lab executives have very little to do with the review or allocation processes -- the peer review by a panel of experts in the field of the proposal is, in most cases, the sole criterion (aside, of course, from the number of days in the operating calendar compared to the number of proposals submitted) for whether a proposal gets access to an instrument.
Your serious misstatement is about cost. Access to DOE x-ray, neutron, nanoscience, electron microscopy, and high magnetic field facilities is free for non-proprietary research. The researcher has to pay for travel, meals and incidental expenses, as well as for the cost of preparing whatever samples they bring to the lab. But the cost of using the facility is free. Zero dollars and zero cents. Amazing, but true. Proprietary research is done with full cost recovery -- as well it should be. The tax payer should not pay to make proprietary research happen, then pay for the results of that research. But research that goes into archived journals -- that is indeed free.
As for undergraduates, many of the faculty who come to my beamline at the NSLS x-ray facility bring their undergraduate researchers. I enocurage that, the lab encourages it, and DOE encourages it. Am I going to let rowdy kids do what they will with my $125,000 detector? Hell no! But will I leave a responsible, trained 20 year old alone to run the beamline? Yes. And I often do.
Well... I am one of DOE's "gatekeepers", so perhaps I can shed some light on the nature of the red tape. Actually, I am a proposal reviewer for the Advanced Photon Source and for the National Synchrotron Light Source, the x-ray facilities next door to two DOEs nanoscience facilities. So I help mind the gates for the x-ray facilities, not the nanoscience facilities, which are the topic of this article. But the process for access to the nanoscience facilities is very similar to our process.
First, we are not a secret cabal. The names of the proposal review panel members are listed on the web sites for the two x-ray facilities for which I do this work. (For the sake of transparency, I am Bruce Ravel on the Spectroscopy panel at the APS - http://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Committees/Proposal_Review_Panel/ - and the
X-Ray Spectroscopy: Chemical and Material Sciences panel at NSLS - http://www.nsls.bnl.gov/organization/committees/prp.htm.) Reviews are signed by the panel as a whole, not by individuals, but you know who we are.
Second, the procedure is not a mystery. There is a standardized form that the proposer must fill out. We review the contents of that form to assure that the experiment proposed is feaasible in the sense that it is well-conceived and appropriate to the instrment requested.
Third, the demand for these resources is high. At the APS, virtually every instrument receives more requests for time that there are days in the operating calendar. It is inevitable that some folks will come away disappointed. I cannot speak for all of my fello reviewers, but I write (what I hope are) useful comments in every review to help the proposer write a stringer, more competitive proposal the next time. One of the comment farther down is from someone who failed to get timefor an experiment at the APS. My advice to him or her is to contact the beamline scientist at the beamline and/or the user office and ask for advice about how to make your proposal sringer next time.
Fourth, although the process is challenging in the sense that not every proposal is going to result in access, the resources being offered are quite extraordinary. A researcher from academia or a national lab gets free access to the instrument with no obligation to cover the operating costs of the facility or of the special equipment available at the specific instrument. Companies get the same benefit for non-proprietary work. (Proprietary work involves cost-recovery, but many corporations choose to publish much of their work.) Except for the proprietary work, all users are expected to publish in peer-reviewed, widely available journals.
Fifth, everyone enters pretty equally. I get good proposals from institutions of all sizes and poor proposals from the same mix of institutions. One of colleagues and a very fine practioner of my specialty is faculty at Sarah Lawrence College -- certainly not a huge unversity -- and he has quite adequate access to DOEs facilities.
My comments are, of course, specifically relvant to the x-ray facilities. But similar models are used for the nanocenters.
So, yes... there is red tape, but there has to be. There is far more demand than supply. There are safety issues that range from the mundane to the severe. Adn there are obligations both for the facility and for the user to perform and report science of the highest quality.
I interact with users of the DOE facilities on a daily basis. I think the system is highly succesful (although not without warts and blemishes) and so do the vast majority of the people I see every day.
Those are all valid questions. The DOE maintains a number of so-called lagacy sites where materials were produced for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel. Some sites are pretty far from large population centers, others are in that "somewhere in between" area. At this moment, the uranium from DOE's lagacy sites isn't poisoning anyone. Drinking water supplies near a couple of these DOE sites do show elevated (compared to the natural background) levels of uranium and those levels are rising. However, those levels are vastly below the levels of associated with either acute or chronic toxicity. Certainly no one is dying in their shower -- which is charming if rather hyperbolic imagery.
I have to take exception with your last sentence. That *you* don't know the hard data does not mean that hard data does not exist. The article at the PNNL website is written for public consumption and is therefore written more or less at the level of an article in the New York Times science section. A vast scientific literature exists on the problem of uranium and other metal contamination in ground water. DOE's legacy sites are extremely complex geobiochemical systems, but they have been studied for decades at this point. A lot is known about the long term threat posed by these contaminated ground waters, although a lot is yet to be learned. That a problem is not an immediate health threat in the "people dying in the shower" sense, does not mean that an active response to an existing problem is not merited.
Reading through the comments so far, there seems to be some misunderstanding of the work by the PNNL crowd and of bioremediation in general. My research group here at Argonne National Laboratory (which outside of Chicago) collaborates with the folks from PNNL. In fact, I am writing this very early on a Sunday morning while measuring the oxidation state of uranium using X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy at the Advanced Photon Source in samples from a collaborator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which, like PNNL, is a center of research into uranium bioremediation.
First, a few words about the concept of bioremediation. The Department of Energy became interested in bioremediation of metallic contamination after the extensive success of bioremediative techniques for cleaning up organic contamination -- things like benzene or trichloroethylene. The basic idea is that you dose the ground with bacteria that can metabolize the organic contaminant, let the bugs happily live their lives, then in the end the ground is much cleaner than before. Variations on this technique are in wide use for many organic contaminants and in many places around the world.
The Department of Energy's started several years ago to fund research into using similiar concepts to clean up ground water contamination associated with various sites where materials for nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel were produced. There are several sites in the US where the groundwater has elevated levels of uranium and other metals. Bioremediation is attractive because it involves remediation in situ. The ground doesn't need to be dug up, which introduces a whole slew of other problems into the mix.
Unfortunately, metals are different from organics. When a bacterium metabolizes benzene, the benzene goes away. When a dissimilatory metal reducer, like Shewanella, respires on a uranium compound, the most it can do is change the chemical state of uranium. It is impossible to turn the uranium into some other element. As several other posters have pointed out, uraninite (the end product of Shewnella's respiration of uranium compounds) is still radioactive and it is still toxic.
However, uraninite is not soluble. The uranium in the ground water is in a soluble form and therefore will flow through the ground and find its way into rivers and into drinking water supplies. Uraninite is highly insoluble. When Shewnella converts soluble uranium into uraninite, the uraninite particles adhere to the rocks in the ground.
Thus uranium bioremediation is a containment-in-place strategy. The danger of the contaminated sites is that the contamination will spread. The uranium-polluted site will still be polluted after the Shewnella has done its thing, but at least the uranium will not move out of the contaminated site. And that's the point of the DOE's bioremediation strategy -- to keep a problem that exists from spreading and becoming a bigger problem.
Although I don't do microtomography myself, I am a synchrotron scientist. I've managed to convince my boss that I qualify as "someone with expertise". ;-) Minerals are quite robust when exposed to x-rays -- even from a highly intense, highly brilliant source like the synchrotron in Switzerland used for this experiment. There is not, in fact, much power put on the sample in one of these experiment. It's on the order of miliwatts, maybe tens of miliwatts, so the sample does not heat up at all. The dominant interaction, indeed the interaction used to probe the fossils in this experiment, is the interaction of a photon and an electron tightly bound to some atom. This interaction is very short-lived and rarely changes the chemistry of the sample. The thing that is actually measured is a secondary emission of a photon that is a by-product of the primary interaction. While not 100% non-invasive, the photons are, in fact, almost completely non-damaging. Indeed, that is one of the primary benefits of x-ray tomography. After the x-ray guys are done, the sample is in the same state as when they started.
If you poke around the web sites of any of the synchrotrons (google for them: in the US their names are APS, NSLS, SSRL, and ALS; in Europe: HASYLAB, DESYLAB, ESRF, ANKA, Diamond, Soleil, and the SLS; in Japan: SPring8 and the Photon Factory) you will find lots of information about x-ray tomography. It's really a very cool technique. 3D pictures of things without having to open them up!