July 2019

Currently we are facing serious issues related to global warming due to the excessive use of coal and petroleum. Researchers are collaborating to work on a new porous polymer that can store natural gas, a cleaner alternative, more effectively than anything currently being used.

Members of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and The Texas A&M University System recently led a workshop aimed at assessing current efforts in high-volume, flexible, and agile materials sample preparation and target fabrication, fostering collaborative interactions that take advantage of present advances, and considering initiatives that could attract sponsor support.

The Center for Nuclear Security Science and Policy Initiatives coordinated with Argonne National Laboratory to provide an International Nuclear Facilities Experience for graduate-level engineering and policy students from universities in the U.S. and early career professionals from national laboratories.

Levi McClenny, a doctoral candidate who holds a Design of Energy Materials fellowship and was recently appointed student regent for the state of Texas, has utilized the program to gain insight as to what happens at the microstructure level in materials.

On June 25, 2019, Dr. Sean McDeavitt, director of the Nuclear Engineering and Science Center, hosted the first Experimenters Integration meeting at Texas A&M University. This meeting was attended by approximately 85 contributors from across five different Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, 20 universities and seven industry partners. The focus of the meeting was information sharing in order to build stronger collaborations across the suite of the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) Experiment program.