• Improving nuclear waste repositories

    How fast will iodine-129 released from spent nuclear fuel move through a deep, clay-based geological repository? Understanding this process is crucial. Countries worldwide consider underground clay formations for nuclear waste disposal because clay offers low permeability and high radionuclide retention. Even when a repository is not sited in clay, engineered barriers often include a compacted buffer of bentonite, a common type of clay, to improve waste isolation.

  • UN inspectors' repot on gas attack points to Assad’s elite military units

    Russia may say publicly that it does not know who launched the deadly 21 August gas attack on two Damascus neighborhoods, but the Russians must have had an inkling: Russia’s UN ambassador agreed to have an international team of weapon inspectors sent to Syria to investigate the 21 August attack on one condition: the inspectors’ mandate was narrowed to verifying that chemical weapons were used, but specifically prohibited the inspectors from assigning responsibility to the attack. Russia’s effort to shield Assad has resulted in a report, submitted Monday to the UN Security Council, which does not explicitly name the Syrian regime as the party launching the attack, but details buried in the report point directly at elite military formations loyal to Assad.

  • The side of Homeland Security you won't see on TV

    By Louise Lerner

    The way the Department of Homeland Security is often portrayed in popular culture — surveillance and secret agents — leaves out a crucial aspect of its role. It also works on technology to detect attacks as they are happening, and helps federal and local governments prepare for all kinds of disasters, from hurricanes to accidental chemical spills to anthrax attacks. Argonne Laboratory engineers contribute to this effort, helping local and state governments form emergency plans, run drills for a pandemic flu outbreak in the city of Chicago, and analyzed ways to enhance security at plants and factories across the country.

  • A new generation of odor-releasing materials for training dogs

    Traditionally, the training of bomb-sniffing dogs has been a hazardous job, but newly developed odor-releasing materials could take the risk out of that work. Scientists are seeking to patent a novel system that can capture scents and release them over time.

  • Smartphone “microscope” can detect a single virus, nanoparticles

    Your smartphone now can see what the naked eye cannot: A single virus and bits of material less than one-thousandth of the width of a human hair. Researchers have created a portable smartphone attachment that can be used to perform sophisticated field testing to detect viruses and bacteria without the need for bulky and expensive microscopes and lab equipment. The device weighs less than half a pound.

  • U.S. still has 3,100 tons of chemical weapons to be destroyed

    Last weekend’s U.S.-Russia agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons has put on hold a U.S. strike on Syria. The pause may allow a reflection on the fact that the United States possesses one of the world’s largest chemical arsenals. Sixteen years after a treaty banning of chemical weapons went into effect, the Unites States has 3,100 tons stored in Colorado and Kentucky.

  • History of explosives highlighted in museum exhibit

    For more than seventy years, Los Alamos National Laboratory has been a frontrunner in explosives research, development, and applications. To highlight the Laboratory’s work in the field of explosives, the Bradbury Science Museum is opening a new exhibit, titled “The Science of Explosives.”

  • Experts question ambitious Syria chemical weapons agreement

    The announcements in Geneva by Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were bold: President Bashar al-Assad has a week to provide detailed, accurate, and comprehensive information about Syria’s entire chemical weapons program: research labs, production facilities, test sites, chemical storage depots, and munitions kept by every military unit. Experts say that the tight timetable the agreement requires for disclosure of stockpile, destruction of production facilities, and the destruction of the chemical weapons themselves, would not only set a speed record, but that that it cannot be accomplished even with Syria’s full cooperation.

  • Syria’s chemical program, inventory

    The Syrian chemical weapons program began in the 1970s when the Hafez al-Assad regime purchased chemical munitions from the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, Syria launched a broad program of acquiring the materials, products, and knowledge necessary to set up an autonomous chemical weapons production capacity. In the nearly four decades of acquisition, research, development, and production, Syria has amassed what experts consider to be the world’s largest chemical weapons stockpile, consisting of about 1,000 tons of chemical agents and precursor chemicals.

  • Children living close to nuclear power plants do not have higher risk of developing leukemia

    Young children who live near nuclear power plants do not have a greater risk of developing childhood leukemia or non-Hodgkin Lymphoma according to new research. Researchers conducted a study of almost 10,000 children under five years of age who were diagnosed with leukemia or similar cancers in Britain between 1962 and 2007. The scientists measured the distance from the nearest nuclear power plant both at birth and when diagnosed with childhood leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and found that there was no apparent extra risk living near a nuclear power plant.

  • UN inspectors’ report points strongly to Syrian government’s culpability in 8/21 chemical attack

    UN chemical weapons inspectors will on Monday submit their report to UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, in which they will say that they have collected a “wealth” of evidence which points to the Syrian government as being responsible for using chemical weapons against its own people.

  • Syrian conflict renews focus on chemical weapons

    Chemical weapons have been used several times in modern history, with Germany recognized as the first country to use such weapons on a mass scale in the 22 April 1915 attack on 6,000 British and French troops at Ypres, Belgium. Since the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons, chemical weapons have been used in five conflicts, with Syria being the sixth.

  • Disarming Syria of chemical weapons exceedingly difficult, lengthy, uncertain process: experts

    The Russian proposal concerning Syria’s chemical weapons is attractive: international inspectors will make a detailed account of Syria’s vast chemical stocks and take control of them; the weapons will be destroyed; and Syria will join the Chemical Weapons Convention. Experts say, however, that it may well be a deceiving attraction because it will be exceedingly difficult to implement and reliably monitor. “After more than 20 years in Iraq, the job still isn’t finished. Syria could be worse,” one expert says.

  • Chemical munitions used in 8/21 attack carried larger payload than previously estimated

    A new study of the 21 August chemical attack on rebel-controlled areas on the outskirts Damascus found that that the rockets used in the attack carried larger toxic payloads than had previously been estimated. Weapons experts say that the fact that the rockets carried up to fifty times more sarin nerve agent than previously thought helps explain why there were so many more victims than in previous chemical attacks by regime forces.

  • Obama: Russia’s chemical weapons proposal may be a “significant breakthrough”

    President Obama on Monday described a Russian proposal for Syria to turn over control of its chemical weapons to international monitors in order to avoid a military strike a “potentially positive development,” which could represent a “significant breakthrough.” Obama said, though, that the proposal should be taken “with a grain of salt,” and it was viewed with some skepticism by the administration, with senior officials saying the proposal could possibly be a delaying tactic aimed to undermine Obama’s already tenuous efforts to push for a military strike. The Russian proposal called for Syria to open its chemical weapons stocks to international inspections and give complete account of its stocks; begin the process of supervised destruction of these weapons; and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.