José took 1st place in both microscopy categories this year for this images.  Below are the writeups and images.  Great job José!

Winner for “Technical Image”

Title: Distribution of elemental species of crystallized Hanford high‐level nuclear waste glass Description: Vitrification of Hanford high‐level nuclear waste glasses requires careful balancing of the composition. High additions of nuclear waste tend to lead to the formation of crystals that lower the corrosion resistance and can lead to leaching of radioactive components. Low additions increase the time required to vitrify the over 55 million gallons of nuclear waste present at the Hanford site. Presented here is a nuclear waste glass that has crystallized upon cooling. The inset images show the distribution of different components in this sample. Of particular interest is boron which is very difficult to measure with most laboratory techniques and is a major component of Hanford waste glasses. This image is the first to demonstrate that boron does not enter the crystalline structure in a significant amount. The atomic concentration scales from cold (blue) to hot (red).

Winner for “Artistic Image”

Title: the elegance of crystallographic texture.
Description: this image is and electron back scatter diffraction image of an inconel superalloy. The colors represent
different crystallographic orientations that distinguish neighboring grains that comprise the alloy and accent the beauty
of the world of engineering. The aim of this material is to improve both ductility and fatigue strength by increasing the
number of striations within the grains (known as annealing twins).

Joseph Osborn won the 2016 WSU Emeritus Society Undergraduate Research Award in the category of Physical Sciences for his poster presentation at SURCA (Showcase for Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities) entitled “Primordial Glass: an Aegis in the Nuclear Age”, recounting attempts to recreate Ancient Hillfort glasses.

Jamie Weaver received the Roy. G. Post (http://roygpost.org/) scholarship for the Safe Handling of Nuclear Materials.  She will present her work at the Waste Management 2016 conference (http://www.wmsym.org/).  Congratulations Jamie!  You can see the writeup about here (http://www.roygpost.org/JamieWeaver).

Prof. McCloy was recently affiliated with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, headed by Prof. Neil Hyatt (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/materials/staff/nchyatt01) as a Visiting Scientist of Nuclear Materials.  McCloy and  Hyatt will use this affiliation to strengthen ties between the work in the US and the UK on nuclear waste management.  In particular, they will be working together on a new project for glass-ceramic wasteforms, described in a previous post (http://labs.wsu.edu/mccloy/?p=709).