WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2008: OPTIONAL TOURS: 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
University of California at Berkeley (http://www.berkeley.edu/)
The UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding in 1958. The department moved into Etcheverry Hall in 1967. This tour will visit the department’s laboratories and facilities, including the Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory and undergraduate teaching laboratories. http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/research/index.htm
Mining Building was built in 1907. Because of the historical and esthetic value of this building, its seismic strengthening was implemented using base isolation. In effect, the building foundation was re-built such that about 140 rubber isolators with lead cores are fitted in an isolation layer between the ground and the building. The isolators carry the gravity load of the building (about 30,000 tons!) but allow the building to move horizontally by as much as 28 inches in any direction. Such large freedom of motion is needed to mitigate the seismic risk posed by the near-by Hayward fault, while preserving the historic masonry and marble structure of the building.
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/09/18_hearst.html
http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/1002/history.html
Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory (http://www.lbl.gov/)
The Earth Sciences Division (ESD) is actively involved in the development of strategies for resolving the nuclear waste disposal issues confronting the national and international community. The majority of research within ESD’s Nuclear Waste Program relates to flow and transport, as well as thermally driven hydrological, chemical, and mechanical coupled processes in the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain, the proposed site for the permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste in the USA. This research pertains to Yucca Mountain acting as a natural barrier to the transport of radionuclides to the biosphere, and the natural barrier's contribution to the safety case of the license application for repository construction (scheduled for June 2008). ESD also conducts research on geophysics and seismic safety of structural systems which can be applied to nuclear technology. http://www-esd.lbl.gov/NW/index.html
The Advanced Light Source (ALS), is a national user facility that generates intense light for scientific and technological research. As one of the world's brightest sources of ultraviolet and soft x-ray beams--and the world's first third-generation synchrotron light source in its energy range--the ALS makes previously impossible studies possible. The facility welcomes researchers from universities, industries, and government laboratories around the world. Of the nearly 40 beamlines, several are ideally suited to the study of actinide chemistry and earth science.
http://www-als.lbl.gov/
88 Inch Cyclotron supports research in nuclear structure and astrophysics, heavy element studies, fundamental interactions and symmetries and technology development. Major instrumentation under development include GRETINA, the next generation Gamma Ray Energy Tracking Array, and VENUS, a third-generation superconducting Electron Cyclotron Resonance ion source. The facility is ideal for studying cross sections of many nuclei and also provides well-characterized beams of protons, heavy ions and other medium energy particles which simulate the space environment, to understand the effect of radiation on microelectronics, optics, materials, and cells. http://user88.lbl.gov/
The Glenn T. Seaborg Center (GTSC) is a national facility founded in the spring of 1999, which includes a number of actinide and heavy element chemistry radiation laboratories. Facilities include lasers, cryostats, spectrometers, diffractometer, NMR, and a range of surface science capabilities and staging synchrotron radiation experiments. http://actinide.lbl.gov/gtsc/
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is the flagship scientific computing facility for the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy and a world leader in accelerating scientific discovery through computation. NERSC is located at Berkeley Lab in Berkeley, California. http://www.nersc.gov/
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