TN Tech tradition: For decades, Cookeville college has sent students to ORNL

When David Dan's chemistry students from Cookeville's Tennessee Technological University come to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory this summer, they'll have two objectives.

They'll be doing hands-on work toward developing a more efficient method for separating and purifying promethium-147, a rare and desirable radioisotope with various industrial applications.

And they'll be part of a larger effort to build new interest in radiochemistry and nuclear science careers - fields that need highly specialized workers as demand for isotopes increases and older workers reach retirement age.

"We're entering a second golden age of nuclear science, and it's critical that we train the next generation to lead it," Dan said.

ORNL researchers Frankie White and Megan Simms, both in the Radioisotope Science and Technology Division (RSTD) of the Isotope Science and Enrichment Directorate (ISED), will work with the students, whose training is funded by a three-year grant through DOE's Reaching a New Energy Workforce (RENEW) initiative.

"These are chemistry and engineering students who are interested in learning how to work with radioisotopes - more specifically, how to work with certain lanthanide and actinide isotopes that are difficult to work with outside of national labs", White said. "A lot of them have aspirations to work at a national lab someday, and this gives them a hands-on look at what it's like."

The RENEW grant was awarded to Dan, assistant professor of chemistry at Tennessee Tech, who has collaborated with White since 2022 to bring Tech students to ORNL each summer, as well as bringing White and other national lab staff to speak at Tennessee Tech. White and Dan attended graduate school together at Florida State University and were colleagues at Los Alamos National Lab before separately landing in Tennessee.

"My students get real-world experience, and they get to see how national labs operate," Dan said. "It opens their eyes to the possibilities of different career paths in nuclear or radiochemistry."

But Dan's and White's project is also part of a long tradition of Tech and ORNL collaboration. The lab has a large number of Tech graduates on staff, owing in part to Dale Ensor, now a professor emeritus at Tech who still teaches a yearly seminar.

In the 1970s, Ensor worked at the former Transuranium Research Laboratory on ORNL's main campus, kicking off an association with the lab that lasted until his final student finished in 2016. Ensor also worked with chemical engineering and separations groups in other ORNL labs. He was a visiting scientist at both Argonne and Los Alamos national labs and taught an annual weeklong session at the Nuclear Science Summer School at San Jose State University for a decade.

"Dale is a 'Choppinite,' a student who got his doctorate with Dr. Greg Choppin," said senior chemist Richard Mayes. "Choppin was on Glenn T. Seaborg's team that discovered the element that would become mendelevium," a synthetic metallic radioactivetransuranium element in the actinide series named after Dmitri Mendeleev, the "father" of the periodic table.

Mayes, who now leads the Fuel Cycle Chemical Technology Group in ORNL's Fission and Fusion Energy and Science Directorate, never worked for Ensor but collaborated with him as a student at Tech, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry.

"I learned radiochemistry and coordination chemistry from Dale," Mayes said. "He is well-respected in the separations and actinide science community. His students were sought after because of the rigor of their education."

Mayes said around 20 of Ensor's students work in national labs, including Matt Gott of ISED; Rachel West of the Environment, Safety, Health and Quality Directorate; David Glasgow and John Partridge of ORNL's Physical Science Directorate; and Kayron Rogers of the National Security Sciences Directorate.

Tech students frequently visit the lab for tours and other interactions, and ORNL representatives from FFESD and NSSD recently attended Nuclear Security Day at Tech, connecting with both Dan and chemical engineering professor Kevin West to talk about opportunities for Tech students at ORNL.

The connection extends beyond chemistry. Several members of RSTD's Radioisotope Infrastructure Development (RID) group, for example, are Tech graduates.

RID's Andrew Thammavongsa, a mechanical engineer, and Seth Hawkins, a process equipment infrastructure engineer, said the personalized education they received at Tech prepared them for both earlier jobs in their careers and their current work at ORNL. The training in chemistry and mechanics of materials Thammavongsa received when getting his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering equipped him for the diversity of his job now.

"Every day is a new thing with our group," Thammavongsa said. "We're asked to help solve problems in hot cells and gloveboxes, in nuclear facilities. It never gets boring."

And Hawkins credits Tech with providing a "broad range of engineering classes" that allowed him to pave his own path, discovering a love for the inner workings of materials that directly led to the work he does now.

RID's Joe McVeigh said his mechanical engineering degree from Tech came with chemistry, mechanical design and real project management experience - including some projects that resulted in prototypes.

"From my experience at Tech, I know what students are being prepared for; I know the exposure they're going to have," said McVeigh, who has visited Tech to entice students to ORNL and has had Tech interns through a program with Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE). "They all come hungry to learn. At ORNL, we have such complex systems, and we do such interesting things, we have good opportunities for them to apply everything they're learning in school."

Dan's students, who trained last summer for radiation worker 2 certification, will assist with research focused on separating and purifying Pm-147 using metal-organic frameworks, highly porous 3D structures of metal ions linked by organic molecules.

"At ORNL, they get to do things they don't normally get to do, use instrumentation they don't normally get to use," Dan said. "ORNL has state-of-the-art facilities, and they can do a lot of things radiochemically, at a higher activity level, than we can do at Tech."

Pm-147, like other lanthanides, is very difficult to separate from its neighboring elements. An improved method - especially one that can be scaled up - would make a difference in the availability of the in-demand Pm-147, but it could potentially be applied to other lanthanides as well, Dan said.

Dan said the relationship Ensor built with ORNL laid the groundwork for his students' opportunities today.

"ORNL sees the value in Tech students and what they bring to the table, and that's a big part of why this is so successful," he said. "I just hope to continue that strong tradition."

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE's Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.