n e w s of t h e
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Countering terrorism Last week at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson outlined his depart ment's efforts to counter the emerging threats of nuclear, chemical, and biolog ical terrorism, part of the Administra tion's plans unveiled earlier by Presi dent Clinton at the National Academy of Sciences. The Department of Energy has his torically been involved in the production and safeguarding of nuclear weapons. In 1997, as a result of the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996, DOE set up its Chemical & Biological Nonproliferation Program. That program's director, Page Stoutland, tells C&EN that the effort harness es the existing strengths of the national labs in biology, chemistry, engineering, microfabrication, and computer model ing "to develop better capabilities and technologies that can be applied to threats posed by chemical and biologi cal weapons to U.S. citizens."
Unlike the Pentagon's global thrust, DOE's focus is domestic. And the watch words for the department's nearly $1 bil lion nonproliferation effort for fiscal 2000 are prevent, detect, reverse, and respond. For example, to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons that could be used against U.S. citizens, DOE is helping "Russia secure its weapons-usable nucle ar materials from theft or diversion by ter rorists and rogue states," Richardson said. To this end, the department and its national labs are working at more than 40 Russian sites, helping to secure nuclear materials and to install state-of-the-art se curity and accounting systems. To thwart black-market nuclear smug gling, the national labs have developed a handheld nuclear materials detection de vice that is similar to a beeper. It is being used by law enforcement officers in the U.S. and Europe. Other portable detec tion devices developed by the national labs are being used in Russia and in many of the other newly independent states. Rogue states and terrorists are using ever more sophisticated ways to evade
Foam rapidly degrades chemical/biological warfare agents Sandia National Laboratories chemist Maher E. Tadros, in protective gear, sprays a foam that he and Sandia chemist Mark D. Tucker have developed to decontam inate chemical and biological warfare agents. The foam is a combination of a mild nucleophile such as hydroxyl peroxide carbonates commonly found in tooth pastes, a positively charged nontoxic surfactant often found in hair condition ers, and hydrotropes found in deter gents. Hydrotropes solubilize and cata lyze the neutralization of the agents. The foam reacts rapidly with agents, is nontoxic and noncorrosive, and could be produced at a cost of 15 cents per lb. Testing of the foam against the nerve gas es VX and Soman and against mustard gas was conducted by Illinois Institute of Technology (ΙΠ) in Chicago because San dia can use only simulants. The half-life of the reaction "is in the neighborhood of two to 10 minutes," Soman being neutral ized very quickly and mustard gas react ing much more slowly, Tadros explains. The foam has been shown by NMR to cleave the P-S bond in the agents. Using a simulant for the biological warfare agent anthrax, the foam achieved a 7-log kill, meaning only one anthrax spore out of 10 million is alive after one hour. ΙΓΓ will test the foam against live anthrax next month. How the spores are killed is not known. Researchers speculate that the surfactants damage the spore's protec tive protein wall and allow nucleopMesioxidizing agents—to agents—to attack attackthe the genetic geneticmaterial materialinside. inside.The The foam foamdevelopment developmentisispart part of me the Department of Energy's Chemical & Biological Nonproliferation Program. ^ Lois Ember 10 MARCH 8,1999 C&EN
detection of weapons of mass destruc tion, Richardson noted. He has chal lenged his labs—cooperating with other U.S. agencies—to identify technical breakthroughs to revolutionize U.S. pro liferation detection capabilities. He has set a deadline of 2005 for "10-fold to 100fold improvements" in detection abilities. To respond to the threat of chemical and biological terrorism, the national labs have just developed a suitcase-size instru ment that can detect a biological agent within hours by decoding its DNA But Richardson has tasked the labs to devel op, within three years, handheld biologi cal agent detectors for use by police and firefighters. He wants these detectors to signal the presence and identity of the agents within seconds. Richardson didn't stop there. He fur ther challenged the labs "to develop, demonstrate, and deliver the first phase of a biological detection system—an inte grated network of sensors and analytical software—that will help us protect critical assets such as subway systems or major events such as a Super Bowl." He wants this system completed by 2002, in time for the Olympics in Salt Lake City. To that end, he has requested a nearly 70% in crease in DOE's chem-bio defense pro grams, from $19 million in fiscal 1999 to $32 million infiscal2000. Lois Ember
Two-photon punch for high-tech materials Exotic molecules that readily absorb two photons simultaneously are living up to their promise of helping further the de velopment of futuristic devices, from three-dimensional optical memory to microlithography, scientists in Arizona report. A way to achieve the high resolution needed for such microtechnology is to exploit the phenomenon of two-photon excitation, in which a molecule absorbs two photons of equal energy almost in stantaneously. Because the probability of two-photon excitation depends quadratically on the energy of the excitation laser beam, any chemistry initiated by the pro cess occurs only where the beam is most intense—at its focus—in controlled, high-resolution, spot-sized volumes. For most molecules, however, twophoton excitations are few and far be tween, because they must absorb the photons within 10"16 seconds of each oth-
