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Congratulations to John Bussey!

Congratulations to John Bussey for being selected as this year’s winner of the SURCA (Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities) at WSU.

John was selected by the WSU Emeritus Society as the recipient of the scholarship in the category of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“Our reviewers found that your research on Mount St. Helens ash’s stimulant properties holds much promise for lunar equipment testing applications.”

Congrats John!

Congratulations Emily and Gabe!

Congratulations to our group members who were determined by the School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering to be Outstanding Undergraduates for the 2016-17 year.

Emily Allen was outstanding Junior in Mechanical Engineering

Gabriel Cocking was outstanding Sophomore in Materials Science & Engineering.

Great work!

José Marcial wins WSU’s MRS chapter microscopy contest

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).

MRS-marcial-2016

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).

EBSD_inconel_617_marcial

McCloy now affiliated as Visiting Scientist at University of Sheffield

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).

 

WSU receives new award from DOE Nuclear Energy University Program

We just won a new project for studying glass-ceramic waste forms for proposed nuclear fuel reprocessing.  We will team with Rutgers University and a UK consortium including University of Sheffield and Warwick University, as well as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  A link below is provided for the announcement.

Understanding influence of thermal history and glass chemistry on kinetics of phase separation and crystallization in borosilicate glass-ceramic waste forms for aqueous reprocessed high level waste

https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt/document/178293/neup_attachments_proposal_cfa-15-8081_filtered_pdf