NEWS OF THE W EEK
APPROPRIATIONS: Science fares
well in House-passed bill
T
HE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES has passed
the first of 12 fiscal 2013 appropriations bills, and the measure contains some preliminarily good news for key science agencies. But it must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama, who has threatened a veto over budget cuts in the bill. The House-passed $51.1 billion Commerce, Justice, Science & Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 5326) includes a 10.5% increase over 2012 for NIST, bringing its 2013 budget to $830 million, and a 4.3% increase for NSF, bringing its budget to $7.3 billion. NASA is set to see a 1.8% cut under the legislation, for a total budget of $17.4 billion. In all three cases, the House levels are at or near the President’s requested budget. “The House-passed bill demonstrates bipartisan support for science and recognition that it is critically important to U.S. innovation and global competitiveness,” says Glenn S. Ruskin, director of the American Chemical Society’s Office of Public Affairs.
PLUTONIUM ANALYSIS ADVANCES SPECTROSCOPY: 239Pu NMR will enable
better study of nuclear fuel, waste
R
ESEARCHERS HAVE detected the long-sought
nuclear magnetic resonance signal of plutonium-239, one of the common radioactive elements used in nuclear fuel and weapons. The discovery will allow scientists to use NMR to directly probe plutonium coordination, electronic structure, and nuclear spin relaxation processes in nuclear fuels and waste, as well as in plutonium-containing superconductors, says Melissa A. Denecke. She is the head of actinide speciation at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s Institute for Nuclear Waste Disposal, in Germany, and was not involved in the work. 239Pu has been difficult to study directly because of its radioactivity and complex oxidation chemistry. Additionally, its most common oxidation state, Pu(IV), is nonmagnetic, which means that techniques such as magnetic susceptibility or electron spin resonance yield little information. And NMR experiments are challenging because coupling between unpaired electrons and the nuclear spin leads to rapid relaxation and
Such support is essential as Congress is in the midst of an intense battle to rein in the federal deficit. The gains seen for science are being balanced by cuts to nonscience programs, such as health care and education. Harold D. Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, says the total $1.6 billion cut from 2012’s level by H.R. 5326 is necesPOSITIVE TREND sary. “This legislation Science avoids big cuts in House-passed funds important proCommerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill grams at adequate, responsible levels while 2013 cutting spending,” he HOUSEsays. PRESIDENT’S PASSED CHANGE a $ MILLIONS 2012 REQUEST LEVELS 2012–13b The veto threat NASA $ 17,771 $ 17,711 $ 17,448 -1.8 % by the AdministraNSF 7,033 7,373 7,333 4.3 tion comes because 751 857 830 10.5 NIST of cuts such as the a Estimate. b Change from 2012 levels to House-passed 2013 $330 million decrease levels. SOURCES: House Appropriations Committee, AAAS from the 2013 budget request for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Amendments added to the bill on the House floor are also raising concern from the Administration and other observers, including the science community. For example, one amendment halts all NSF funding for political science research.—ANDREA WIDENER & SUSAN MORRISSEY
thus loss of signal. The 239Pu signal was located by a group of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). Led by LANL postdoctoral researcher Georgios Koutroulakis and JAEA scientific counselor Hiroshi Yasuoka, the group studied samples of 239PuO that were cooled to 4 K to slow spin relaxation. 2 In contrast to standard NMR experiments, in which the magnetic field is held constant while the radiowave frequency is varied, the researchers held the radio frequency constant and swept the magnetic field from 3 to 8 tesla. They found that the gyromagnetic ratio, which predicts where the signal will appear for a particular frequency and magnetic field combination, is 2.856 × 2π MHz/tesla for 239PuO2. Additional study of a mixed-oxide sample revealed two distinct NMR signals, indicating that 239Pu NMR should be sensitive to different chemical environments around the Pu atom. Koutroulakis notes, however, that fast relaxation times may still be a problem for other Pu complexes, even at 4 K.—JYLLIAN KEMSLEY
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COURT ESY OF GEORGIOS KOUTROULAKIS
BUDGET BATTLE 2013 BEGINS
Koutroulakis (left) and Yasuoka discuss data in the condensed matter NMR lab at LANL.
