Potentially contaminated trash is run through a commercial shredder and spread by an auger to a VAn. .hickneesso a small conveyer belt. WAND sits above the belt and rapidly checks for contamination. LANL developers hope to eventually screen other materials, such as rubber gloves, with WAND as welll
GOVERNMENT
Missions accomplished? The Laboratory Operations Board of the Department of Energy (DOE) has released its Draft Strategic Laboratory Missions Plan for public comment. The plan, which fulfills a request by the Galvin Commission that DOE establish clear mission statements for its laboratories, was presented to the secretary of the Energy Advisory Board on March 21. The plan describes how DOE now performs its mission and presents DOE's vision for the laboratories in the 21st century. The "mission activities" include 166 roles in the four broad categories of national security, energy resources, environmental quality, and science and technology. A mission profile for each of the department's 22 major laboratories shows how they contribute to each of the mission activities. "It is currently a plan like the floor plan of a house," says Charles B. Curtis, deputy secretary of energy and chairman of the Labor Operations Board. "It describes how things area It is not yet a plan that says hon to get where we must go." According to John P McTague vicechairman of the Laboratory Operations Board there is a competition between "minimizing energy and maximizing entroDV" in managing the missions for the laboratories Some favor having a tight focus for each of the laboratories minimizing enercrv—whereas others argue for spreadfi t'ons amonp laboratories so that tnere is a breaoin oi expenise at each of the laboratories—maximizing entropy. The challenge of the department is to achieve the optimum balance between energy and entropy, McTague says.
PEOPLE
1996 EAS, Benedetti-Pichler, and SAS Gold Medal award winners
Phoswich detector rejects scattered background and cosmic ray events by their Csl signatures.
nated with very low levels of radioisotopes from uncontaminated trash. The sensor is called WAND (Waste Acceptance for Nonradioactive Disposal) and currently works best with low-density trash, such as paper and tissues. Nevertheless, says codeveloper Charles Foxx, the detector could divert from 50 to 90% of the waste LANL now buries in an expensive lowlevel radioactive landfill into standard landfills. As a result, LANL officials predict that the laboratory could save as much as $1 million in annual disposal costs. WAND uses a Phoswich scintillating detector to measure L X-rays in the 10- to 20-keV range and low-energy "y-rays UD to 1.5 MeV. The detector consists of a thin Nal and a thick Csl crystal that allow the sensor to reject scattered background and _ , ,, , ?• • 1 • j. cosmic ray events by their Csl and Nal Even when the document is issued in fi- sienal rise times The detector is shielded nal form, it is expected to change continu- bv lead to reduce background radiation ally to reflect DOE missions and fundUnlike standard a-particle detectors that ing. Says Curtis, We expect this plan to be scan the surface, WAND is designed to l • d " D m ? • •+ Klmonitor extremely low levels of radioactiviving ocu . P comment on tne ar p pec s e ity in bulk samples. It can detect as littte as 0.13 nCi/g of Pu and 1.3 x 11~2 2Ci/g of Amm final version to be reteased by June 1. approximately 1000-fold lower than the defined upper limit of low-level radioactivity. .n A WAND for trash theory, says Foxx, WAND could detect any radioisotope, except for low-level energy Updating a 30-year-old sensor technology P-emitters such as tritium. Until now, ,he with new user-friendly electronics, researchers at Los Alamos National Labora- only application for the Phoswich detector has been to monitor the levels of Pu and Am tory (LANL) have developed a sensitive in the lungs of plutonium workers. detector for separating trash contami-
Winners of the 1996 Eastern Analytical Symposium awards are Harvey S. Gold of DuPont Corporate Analytical, Fred Regnier of Purdue University, John Waugh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Winefordner of the University of Florida. Daniel Armstrong will receive the Benedetti-Pichler Award, and Charles Wilkins will receive the SAS Gold Medal Award. These awards will be presented at EAS '96, to be held Nov. 1722 in Somerset, NJ.
Harvey S. Gold
Fred Regnier
John Waugh
James Winefordner
Charles Wilkins
Daniel Armstrong
Analytical Chemistry News & Features, May 1, 1996 297 A
