National labs

  • Nuclear mattersINL develops safer, more efficient nuclear fuel for next-generation reactors

    The advanced nuclear fuel, which would be used in next-generation high-temperature gas reactors, has set a particle fuel record by consuming approximately 19 percent of its low-enriched uranium; this is more than double the previous record set by German scientists in the 1980s, and more than three times that achieved by current commercial light water reactor fuel

  • Nuclear mattersLos Alamos lab's toxic waste seeps toward New Mexico's water sources

    Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there is no health risk; to comply with New Mexico's clean up orders, the lab has installed about 300 monitoring wells and gauges, contaminated soil is being removed from canyon bottoms, wetlands are being planted, and small dams built to arrest the flow of polluted storm water

  • DHS is searching for buyers for Plum Island facility

    The Plum Island Biosafety level 4 facility -- the only type of research lab authorized to handle diseases that are communicable between humans and animals and for which there is no known cure -- is aging; DHS has selected a Kansas site for a new, $500 million replacement; DHS is beginning to look for buyers for the Plum Island facility

  • Security professionals -- ISC West and Public Security & Safety Expo March 23-26

  • Army lab find 9,220 uncatalogued vials of Ebola, anthrax, and plague

    U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland finds 9,220 unregistered vials of Ebola, anthrax, plague, and other pathogens

  • NSF receives $3 billion in stimulus package funds

    NSF director: "The Obama administration understands the role of science in dealing with national problems. It's built into their priorities and the people they have appointed to get the agenda moving"

  • Army to complete Fort Detrick Lab probe

    For a year now, U.S. Army investigators have been trying to find out what happened to three vials of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus that were unaccounted for at Fort Derrick bio research lab; as they are about to complete the probe, investigators say that there were no signs of criminal misconduct found yet

  • Border Security Expo & Conference, Phoenix, Arizona – April 23 & 24, 2010

  • Techie in chiefObama names Aneesh Chopra first U.S. chief technology officer

    President Barack Obama fulfills a campaign pledge to appoint chief technology officer for the United States; Chopra will work closely with Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, who is responsible for setting technology policy and federal technology spending, which amounts to more than $70 billion a year

  • Army biolab halts research after problems with tracking high-risk microbes

    The labs of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Maryland study the deadliest of diseases -- those for which there is no cure and which are transmissible by air; it is unnerving, then, that the place had to suspend biodefense research on Friday, after discovering apparent problems with the system of accounting for high-risk microbes and biomaterials

  • LANL Blackberry lost in a "sensitive foreign country"

    Security problems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory continue; internal e-mail reveal that there was a break-in at the Santa Fe home of a LANL scientist, from which three LANL computers were stolen; also, a LANL Blackberry was lost in a "sensitive foreign country"

  • Kansas wins $450 million biolab

    Kansas State University outlasted four other competitors to win the $450 million DHS National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility

  • National nuclear lab helps develop more soothing hand lotion

    Hand- and face lotions are typically uncomfortably chilly when coming fresh from the jar; Sandia National Lab, using microencapsulation technology used in nuclear weapons, helps a New Mexico cosmetics entrepreneur develop a hand cream which warms itself up as it is gently rubbed on

  • The business of homeland securityThe continuing development of Fort Detrick offers business opportunities

    In some places there is a debate about the balance between the business opportunities and risks that the presence of a BioLab facility offers; in Washington County, Maryland, they concentrate on the business opportunities the sprawling -- and growing -- Fort Detrick (it covers 1,127 acres and employs more than 8,000 people) offers

  • Biosafety Lab-Level 4 dedicated in Galveston, Texas

    The $174 million, 186,267-square-foot lab will employ 300 people; the lab is one of two approved in 2003 by NIH (the second is being built in Boston); critics question placing a BSL-4 lab on a barrier island vulnerable to hurricanes

  • Unsettling lack of security at Level 4 Biosafety Labs

    Biosafety labs (BSLs) handle the world's most dangerous agents and diseases; only BSL-4 labs can work with agents for which no cure or treatment exists; there are five BSL-4 labs in the United States, and GAO conducted a study of these labs' perimeter security; you are not going to like what the GAO found

  • FDA hires 1,300 new doctors and scientists

    Staffing drive, launched just five months ago, will result in an estimated 10 percent increase in the FDA's work force

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