Newsmakers

NMT Division has won one of the six R&D 100 Awards recently presented to the Laboratory. A first for NMT, the prestigious international award was earned for the Hydride-Dehydride Recycle Process. Principal developers were Bart Flamm and Garland M. Isom. The research team also included Joseph C. Martz and John M. Haschke, all of NMT-5. Details of the process were published in the last issue of Actinide Research Quarterly, spring 1995.

Division Seminar Speaker: Prof. Rod Ewing of UNM on the subject of "Zircon: A Host-Phase for the Disposal of Weapons Plutonium."

Dr. Robert Uhrig is the new NMT Division External Review Committee member (see the related news article under the 1995 Division Review, page 10).

K.K.S. Pillay received BEST PAPER AWARD for "Disposition Scenarios and Safeguardability of Fissile Materials Under START Treaties," presented at the winter meeting of the American Nuclear Society.

NMT Prepares Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Proposals March and April are the two busiest months in preparation for the coming year's LDRD proposals. NMT produced about a dozen new proposals in the competency development (CD) program development (PD) and individual project (IP) components of LDRD. Several more idea papers were prepared jointly with investigators from other technical divisions and program offices. These idea proposals were reviewed by their respective category teams, and the following four were chosen to be prepared fully for final selection: "Integration of Advanced Nuclear Materials Separations Processes," by Gordon Jarvinen; "Feasibility of a Standardized, Compact, Flexible, Portable, Modular Treatment System," by Dana Christensen; "Stabilization of Nuclear Materials in Hybrid Materials," by Nicholas Coppa; and "Radioactive Waste Remediation and Stabilization through Acoustic Cavitation," by Pamela Benicewicz.

The four continuing proposals, which proceed automatically to full preparation and review for final selection, are: "Structural and Magnetic Characterization of Actinide Materials," by Barbara Cort; "Polymers for Nuclear Materials Processing," by Gordon Jarvinen; "Decontamination of Radioactive Liquids by Freeze Concentration and Fractional Precipitation," by Nicholas Coppa; and "Disposition of Weapons Plutonium as Non-Fertile Fuel for Light Water Reactors," by Ken Chidester.

In addition to the above CD and PD proposals, two IP proposals have been submitted for consideration, but they have not yet been reviewed. FY 95 was a successful year: NMT obtained LDRD funding for four proposals. We hope that several more proposals will be successful in FY 96.