The Laboratory was awarded $5.2 million to fund research aimed at resolving some of the nation's most challenging environmental cleanup issues. The awards are part of the DOE Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) and are much sought after by national labs and universities. PNNL is involved in 24 percent of this year's EMSP projects.
Most of the Laboratory's awards are targeted at research involving residual contaminants in groundwater and subsurface soil. PNNL scientists believe this work will help them understand how chemical and radioactive contaminants behave in groundwater and subsurface soil, and is likely to provide the scientific basis for a final remedy to some of Hanford's groundwater plumes and other contaminated sites.
The Laboratory also won three Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) awards, worth a total of $1.3 million per year over three years. More than 197 proposals, submitted by scientists at national laboratories, universities and industry, were considered in a rigorous peer review process to arrive at the final 24 funded projects.
Research on two of the NERI awards will seek better understanding of the structural behavior of materials needed to meet new, longer-life requirements for materials in the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet. The third award focuses on automating quality assurance techniques for the fuel systems of advanced gas-cooled reactors. This work is crucial to the safety of new high temperature reactors suitable for producing both electricity and hydrogen for future transportation needs.