Two of America’s premier research and technology centers literally joined minds last week with the establishment of the “Oak Ridge-Huntsville Partnership Office” on the campus of The University of Alabama in Huntsville. 

 

The “partnership” is between UAHuntsville and representatives from the Department of Energy facilities in Tennessee, South Carolina and California including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Savannah River National Laboratory. 

 

“What we began as a single Summit in 1995 has blossomed into a strong and thriving job creation partnership throughout the Tennessee Valley Corridor,” said Corridor founder Congressman Zach Wamp. “And this new Oak Ridge-Huntsville Partnership Office and the opportunities it can help create will greatly benefit our entire region.”

 

“The opening of this office is a great example of regional cooperation between two historic communities, both focused on cutting-edge science and technology,” said U.S. Representative Parker Griffith, who joined other regional leaders at the announcement.  “This partnership also expands Huntsville and Oak Ridge’s access to well-educated graduates for the federal agencies and national laboratories so they can meet their future scientific and technical workforce needs.”

 

The partnership is expected to create intensive, ongoing collaborations in academic and research programs in a number of areas vital to national security, energy and space exploration, according to UAHuntsville President Dr. David Williams and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Dr. Thom Mason. The office will also foster joint opportunities with the U.S. Army and contractors at Redstone Arsenal, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and companies in Cummings Research Park.  

 

“This alliance between Huntsville and Oak Ridge will bring creativity and new ideas to solving problems facing our community and nation,” said Dr. David Williams, UAHuntsville President.  “Whether collaborating on the latest climate change solutions or alternative energy sources for use on Earth and the moon or helping solving NASA or the Army's latest space and aviation challenges, our region and this new partnership working as one can make an even bigger difference in serving the nation and indeed the world while continuing our work and strong regional tradition of creating promise and prosperity here at home.”

 

Grand opening ceremonies for the office were held Friday, April 17 at the Olin B. King Technology Hall on the UAHuntsville campus.   The partnership office is located in the Olin B. King Technology Hall in Suite 101 South. 

 

“The Oak Ridge-Huntsville partnership is a natural one between two of the South's leading high-tech communities,” said Dr. Thom Mason, Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  “Both communities are led by great universities, and both will be home to dozens of new technologies that will shape America's economic growth in the years to come.”  

 

Initially, the office will have a staff of three professionals, which will be led by Major General (Ret) Dennis Jackson, interim director of the Oak Ridge-Huntsville Partnership Office.  

 

To celebrate the announcement of the partnership office, UAHuntsville also held the first of the "Building Partnerships, Advancing Competitiveness" Symposium Series on April 16.  The symposium featured UAHuntsville and Oak Ridge leaders discussing collaborations around topics like 21^st Century Energy Challenges, Maintaining National Security, Environmental Stewardship and Workforce Development.  The series will continue with quarterly Symposium around these important topics. The next Symposium is scheduled for August 21, 2009 and will take an in-depth look at collaborations and partnerships in the area of environmental stewardship.

 

Huntsville and Oak Ridge have a long and important history of collaboration, including research and development of two history-altering events of the 20^th century — the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Moon Missions. Indeed, the intellectual capital and technology infrastructure that led to the success of those endeavors have continued to grow in the ensuing years.  Additionally, since 2000, the Huntsville and Oak Ridge communities have helped organize or host several Tennessee Valley Corridor summits to advance federal missions and to create new investments, programs, and jobs in both the public and private sectors. The upcoming Summit to take place on May 27-28 of this year in Oak Ridge, Tenn. will be the 21^st in a series of regular economic development Summits the Corridor has organized throughout the Tennessee Valley and in Washington, D.C

 

The Tennessee Valley Corridor is a multi-state regional economic development organization dedicated to promoting the Tennessee Valley Corridor as one of the nation's premier science and technology centers, and to leveraging the Valley's abundant research and technology assets and institutions for maximum regional economic development and new job creation.

 

Building relationships and strong collaborations among our federal institutions, world-class research universities and dozens of corporate leaders in science and technology, the Tennessee Valley Corridor has helped showcase the Valley's superior quality of life and the people, business, natural and scientific resources needed for high-tech research, development, business and investment in the 21st Century.

 

These strong federal and regional assets include: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal; the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center; the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex; the Tennessee Valley Authority; the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education; the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; the National Transportation Research Center; the Center for Rural Development; the National Safe Skies Alliance; several world-class research universities; and dozens of corporate leaders in science and technology.

 

For more information or to contact the Oak Ridge-Huntsville Partnership Office, please call (256) 722-5576.  For more information on the Tennessee Valley Corridor, please visit www.tennvalleycorridor.org.

The 150 North Alabamians attending the Chamber of Commerce's annual spring trip to Washington, D.C., will get to hear from Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and President Barack Obama's Auburn-born press secretary Robert Gibbs.

 

The trip begins on April 26 with a reception followed by updates on April 30 and 31 on all matters of federal government that impact the Tennessee Valley: NASA, defense, health policy, business concerns and military commands moving to Redstone Arsenal over the next two years.

"This trip is an old tradition," said Mike Ward, vice president of government affairs for the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce. "I've been here for 19 years, and it was going on long before that.

 

"It's an important opportunity for our community leadership to interact with our congressional delegation so we can all get a better understanding of what our needs are."

 

Ward said the trip usually gets 150 to 180 chamber members, making it one of the largest chamber groups to visit.

 

"About half of our local economy is a function of federal spending," he said. "It is in a lot of people's best interests to pay attention to what happens in Washington.

 

"It is enlightened self-interest on one hand, but also a sense of community service that people really value here."

 

Attendees will meet with Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, as well as Reps. Parker Griffith from the 5th District and Robert Aderholt from the 4th District.

 

Overviews will be provided by:

 

Lt. Gen. Jim Pillsbury, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Materiel command;

 

Alan Ladwig, senior adviser for NASA;

 

Michael Eastman, executive director of Labor Law Policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce;

 

Patrick O'Brien, director of the Office of Economic Adjustment for the Department of Defense;

 

James P. Gelfand, senior manager of health policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and

 

Richard Alpaugh, deputy to the commanding general for the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command.

 

There will also be a panel discussion with leaders from the National Society of Black Engineers, Aerospace Industries Association and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Tennessee, like many territories, is putting its trust in the clean energy sector. Unlike some, however, it’s trumpeting results more than goals.
      

On Feb. 26, Wacker Chemie announced it had secured the land to build a $1-billion, 500-employee hyperpure polycrystalline silicon plant to Charleston, in Bradley County, just northeast of Chattanooga.
      

Tennessee is getting used to good news, as Wacker’s was the third announcement in eight months to unveil a billion-dollar project, after Volkswagen’s in summer 2008 and Hemlock Semiconductor’s own polysilicon plant announcement in December 2008.
      

"Under Governor [Phil] Bredesen’s leadership, we’ve developed a strategy for the creation of ‘green collar’ jobs in Tennessee," said Matt Kisber, commissioner of the Tennessee Dept. of Community and Economic Development, at the Wacker announcement on Feb. 26. "That strategy has resulted in more than $2.5 billion dollars in capital investment and over a thousand new jobs being announced in the past year, and we truly believe Tennessee is well-positioned for the growth of a sustainable economy in the U.S."
      

Among a slew of incentives the state has created, most recently the potential for a future national carbon emissions tax convinced the state legislature to promise in 2008 to offset a portion of such taxes for a select group of companies, including Wacker ("vock-r") and Hemlock/Dow Corning, which is investing $1 billion in its own polysilicon plant in Clarksville, at the state’s western end.
      

"It’s part of a long-range plan, and a lot of great vision by our governor," says says Ross Tarver, chairman of the Cleveland/Bradley Industrial Development Board, of Bredesen’s legislative vision. Bredesen’s tenure will end in 2010 because of term limits. "Obviously he wants to leave a legacy behind when he does leave, that Tennessee is going to be known for its alternative energy vision."

 

John Bradley, senior vice president of economic development for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), says the carbon tax legislation was the turning point.
      

"They were very strategic in legislation in recruiting industries such as this," he says. He thinks the Hemlock announcement toward the end of 2008 "piqued Wacker’s interest even more" in moving forward in Tennessee. As with VW and Hemlock, he says of the Wacker deal, "there is just going to be more down the road — customers and other industries involved in solar."
      

U.S. Congressman Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), a recently announced candidate for governor, thinks the state could go from third to first in automotive industry manufacturing in the next 15 years, and could be the absolute leader in the south when it comes to export of alternative energy solutions.
      

"Twenty years ago, Chattanooga embraced the notion of sustainability, before the nation understood it was not a fad, but a trend," says Wamp.

      

Asked if the renewable energy initiatives now in play in Washington have the strongest across-the-board support of the many measures up for debate in Congress, Wamp, who served for eight years as co-chair of the renewable energy caucus in the U.S. House of Representative, simply says, "Yes."
      

"People ask me all the time — ‘my business is hurting, what should I do next?’ Get a crew, and learn to weatherize a home. Look at the stimulus — $6.5 billion into weatherizing homes. The DOE is not prepared, and the private sector is going to have to do it. Alternative energy is so much in vogue today that there is money being spent by the federal government that can’t even be spent in a timely manner because the private sector is not yet ready."

      

Tennessee — and more specifically, the Chattanooga area — might very well be ready. In addition to the big-impact VW plant, the area has seen recent energy-sector investments from Ahlstom (power plant modules) and wind turbine tower manufacturer Aerisyn, among others.
      

"Our quality of life dramatically improved when we cleaned up our own city," Wamp says. "My mother was on the original Moccasin Bend task force that led the cleanup of the riverfront. Now it’s a super city, and everybody talks about it. Technology has been enhanced, and there is a desire on behalf of leaders to recruit and retain new, green manufacturing technology and industries. It’s almost a perfect storm for growth. People are real excited about it. What we’ve been doing for 25 years in southeast Tennessee is [now] paying dividends, even in the middle of a global recession. We’re not going to have the brain drain we had 30 years ago."

 Wamp is thrilled to see the big projects extend the economic development vision for the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor that he’s promoted during his 14 years in the U.S. Congress.
      

He says he got the idea from reading the work of Dr. George Kozmetsky, one of the architects of Silicon Valley, who said that the World War II R&D infrastructure stretching from Huntsville, Ala., to Oak Ridge, Tenn., had the potential to be another technology region. Now it stretches across 11 congressional districts in five states, most recently adding the western North Carolina district of one Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who made his first claim to fame as a quarterback for the University of Tennessee.
      

"When VW lands in Chattanooga, and when Wacker lands next door, it is not an accident to us," says Wamp. "It doesn’t eliminate the recession, but it makes us more resilient. It gives us growth in the middle of a severe downturn, so we’re able to stabilize, and not lose too much ground. It might exceed 15,000 jobs in the region to support those two investments.
     

 It also reinforces Wamp’s belief in manufacturing as economic bedrock.
      

"What I say to people is ‘If somebody doesn’t build it, make it or grow it, you can’t service it or sell it," he says.

      

As a longtime community leader and proprietor of Cleveland, Tenn.-based Anheuser-Busch distributor Tarver Distributing, Ross Tarver is well versed in service and selling, in keeping with the venerable brewer’s motto: "Making Friends Is Our Business."

      

Today, having played a role in attracting the Wacker project, he knows even better the truth of that slogan.
      

"In the German culture, trust is not taken lightly. I think they trusted all the individuals associated with the project," says Tarver, chairman of the Cleveland/Bradley Industrial Development Board.
      

Wacker first considered the area for a plant in 2005. But, as Tarver explains it, demand for the product was so high that the time frame for constructing a greenfield plant was not conducive, and Wacker expanded at its 95-year-old site in Burghausen, Bavaria, instead, where operations just started up in November 2008.
      

But the individuals in Tennessee were sure their site was the North American choice, and so were equally sure to keep up the cordial relations.
      

"We maintained contact with their executives on a friendly basis," says Tarver. "I would occasionally contact a few of them, ask them how they were doing — small talk."
      

The small talk turned big again in June 2008, when company officials contacted the Tennessee team, comprising, among others, Gary Farlow, vice president of economic development for the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce; Kisber; Bradley; and Reagan Farr, commissioner of revenue for the state.
      

"All the players they dealt with in 2005 were still in those positions of responsibility in 2008," says Tarver. "We had gained their friendship and their trust, and I think that was some of the major difference in making the decision. There are still a lot of papers to be signed and agreements to be reached, but bottom line, no matter how many documents you get signed, you have to trust the individuals you’re doing business with."

     

Indeed, the $20-million purchase of land announced in late February was just the next step on the long road ahead. Wacker was not able to make an executive available for an interview. The company on March 18 forecast a rough year ahead for all divisions but its polysilicon division. Christof Bachmair, senior manager of media relations and information at the company’s German headquarters, said this by e-mail:
      

"While the acquisition of the land in Tennessee is an important prerequisite to execute quickly on our intention to set up a new polysilicon plant, we have not yet determined when we will actually start with this project. Consequently, many key data points ... are still work in progress."
      

Amid the general economic malaise, qualified statements such as that are close enough to good news for most folks.
      

Some data points about the Wacker project are well established. Among them are close proximity to a 500-kilovolt power line and a dependable water source in the Hiwassee River.
      

Also in proximity is a major chlor alkali plant operated by Olin Corporation, a company playing a major role in the project. First, significant acreage Olin owned was approved for sale by its board to the Bradley Cleveland Industrial Development Board as part of the 550-acre (223-hectare) site Wacker will occupy.

"Olin provided Wacker about 130 acres [52.5 hectares] for its new project and provided about six acres [2.4 hectares] for building a new access road that will be beneficial for both of our businesses," says John McIntosh, president of Olin’s Chlor Alkali Products Division, in a prepared statement. The rest of the parcel came from the Wright family, via Wright Bros. Construction Co.
      

Second, the Olin plant will supply Wacker with chlorine through a new pipeline.
      

"This is a long-term contract that will be beneficial to all of us seeking to build a strong, long-term business enterprise in Bradley County," says McIntosh. "On behalf of our employees at Olin’s Chlor Alkali Products Division who live in Bradley County, I want to welcome Wacker Chemie AG to our community. We are excited to be working with our new customer and helping them to succeed."
      

TVA, a cornerstone of the region’s economic development past, present and future, was pretty thrilled too, having also been central to landing Hemlock on one of its certified megasites, across the state in Clarksville.

"You have the number one and number two companies in the world in the industry," says Bradley. "It’s amazing to land one of these, but to get two is just mind-boggling."
      

Bradley says one of the things TVA studies is whether a community can handle it when a massive project comes to town. Though the Wacker site near Hiwassee Industrial Park was not a megasite, it was a parcel on which TVA and local agencies had performed significant due diligence of their own. As for the power itself, the TVA electricity will come in at about half the rate Wacker pays in Germany. But Bradley says reliability can be just as important as price to such a high-tech, 24/7 operation.
      

"They just can’t allow for a hiccup," he says. "Reliability is key, and I would say reliability in this case is more important than price, because the financial implications are much higher. Think about the loads — 100 to 130 megawatts in phase one. A nuclear plant is 1200 megawatts. Fully built out, they could be a third of a nuclear plant. Not everybody out there can handle that size of a load. We’re selling the fact that we have the reliability, and we have a very diverse portfolio across coal, nuclear and hydro. Companies are very interested in utilities that have that."
      

According to published reports, the Wacker plant will pay an average wage of $41,600 a year. Wacker will qualify for statutory incentives on the state and local level, including the FastTrack Infrastructure Development Program, the FastTrack Job Training Assistance Program and the Super Jobs Tax Credit. Bradley County commissioners authorized their own $50-million incentive package. A key provision is a 25-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) arrangement whereby the company will pay just 50 percent of real and personal property taxes through 2038. The same offer will be made to other Wacker divisions, customers or suppliers who locate in the same general physical footprint.

Unlike many business recruitment efforts, the Tennessee team working the Wacker project was fortunate enough to have another big prospect looking at the same parcel at the same time. Though the parcel had been studied by Wacker in 2005, it had not been put under option since that time, says Tarver.
      

"We had had another large industrial prospect here at the time, and we had the property optioned in the event we could land this other prospect," he says. "It just happened it worked out that we had two very large prospects interested in this same location, and we had to choose which company we wanted to partner with, which one we felt would be the most benefit to the community. We chose the right horse in the race ... though I’m not saying the other company isn’t a great company.
      

Having visited Wacker’s Burghausen campus, Tarver and others are eager to see the company’s sophisticated and environmentally responsible operations and training hit the ground running in Tennessee. He already has seen the VW and Wacker announcements’ result in the eyes of his fellow citizens as he makes his retail rounds.
      

"Before, you saw a lot of desperation on people’s faces," he says. "If nothing else, with VW and with Wacker, it has really inspired a lot of hope in people that we will have a brighter tomorrow for our children and grandchildren. It’s something that will be great for the next 50 to 100 years."
     

Tarver is also eager to continue building the relationships he and his colleagues have cultivated with their German friends. Asked if the executives from a nation synonymous with beer had deigned to sample the Anheuser-Busch products he’s been distributing for most of his life, Tarver says, "We have a large selection of new craft brews within Anheuser-Busch — bocks, ales, Hefeweizen — all through the new Michelob craft brewing company, and they were quite impressed with them —very surprised, as a matter of fact.
     

"We’ve enjoyed many of those over the last eight to 12 months," he says. "We’ve made a lot of friends."

Tennessee is betting big on solar.

 

By promising to spend some $200 million on infrastructure and training, as well as tax credits, to lure the two biggest players in manufacturing the raw material used to ultimately create solar panels, Tennessee has raised its profile in the green sector from virtual anonymity to a veritable heavyweight.

 

Matt Kisber, the state’s economic development commissioner, likens the state’s investments in recruiting Hemlock Semiconductor to Clarksville, Tenn., and Wacker Chemie to Cleveland, to the recruitment of automakers Nissan and Saturn to the state in the 1980s — moves that laid the groundwork for the state’s current status as a hotbed of automotive suppliers.

 

Hemlock and Wacker Chemie are each expected to invest more than $1 billion and employ upwards of 500 people to manufacture polycrystalline silicon, the key material used to produce solar cells that make up photovoltaic panels.

 

“You’ve got the underpinnings of what could become the growth of a large industry in our state,” Kisber says. “We have recruited the big anchors of the industry and because we were successful at getting No. 1 and No. 2 in the world, we have an excellent opportunity to bring the next pieces of the value chain to the state.”

 

Interest in solar power as an alternative energy source is getting more attention now than ever, spurred largely by President Barack Obama’s promise to invest in the development of domestic energy sources that are also easy on the environment.

 

Tennessee aims to capitalize on that momentum, but to do so will mean upping the ante before its bet pays off.

 

 

Key to getting a return on the state’s investment in luring Wacker Chemie and Hemlock Semiconductor will be the ability of various communities to recruit their customers — businesses that process the material and slice it into silicon wafers, then make the wafers into solar cells and ultimately assemble the panels.

 

These companies will likely seek traditional tax and infrastructure incentives, but they also have unique needs, Kisber says.

 

A possible impediment to the industry’s development was that the manufacturing plants themselves are large users of electricity, and in Tennessee that largely comes from TVA’s coal-burning plants.

 

Anticipating that the federal government will institute what’s known as a carbon tax, i.e. a tax on carbon-emitting sources like TVA’s coal plants, Bredesen’s administration pushed through the Tennessee General Assembly a “green energy tax” to help offset the potential impact of a nationwide carbon tax that could hurt companies dependent on TVA power, the majority of which is produced from burning coal.

 

“The issue of carbon became, without the green energy tax credit, probably an insurmountable obstacle for Tennessee,” Kisber says.

 

To qualify for the credit, a manufacturer must make a capital investment greater than $250 million and create a product considered necessary to produce renewable energy.

 

The state is also working closely with Tennessee’s congressional delegation to ensure that national legislation will not hinder efforts to land such industries, he says.

 

Wacker Chemie’s planned location scarcely an hour south Interstate 75 from Knoxville made green business recruitment a higher priority for Innovation Valley Inc., the public-private partnership that includes six Knoxville-area economic development organizations.

 

“This really helps us to pinpoint how we are going to target industries,” says Rhonda Rice, executive vice president of the Knoxville Chamber, an Innovation Valley partner.

 

In addition to potential suppliers and customers of Wacker, solar-related companies interested in carrying out research and development work with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee are also being targeted. At a recent event at ORNL, Rice said she met the vice president of a Michigan-based solar firm.

 

After plying him with a business card, “‘He said, ‘I would love to hear from you,’” she says. “He said, ‘You have something no one else has. He’s exactly right.’”

 

Rice cites the development of the Midway Business Park in East Knox County, which has met with legal opposition from nearby residents, as central to the strategy.

 

“There’s some basic principals (in green business recruitment) that are the same, but how you go about it and who you target and what you’re offering is different,” she says. “We’re looking at buildings that have alternative heat sources and rooftops that are made of grass to help with runoff … (and) we want companies who are going to come in and who are willing to build a LEED-certified building. That’s very different.

 

“If I don’t have this business park, I can guarantee you, we won’t be in the radar of these site consultants when they’re looking for opportunities. We’ll never even know what we’ve missed.”

A couple of years ago, Rice says that Knox County adjusted its payment-in-lieu-of-tax or PILOT program to offer extra incentives for manufacturers that install pollution control measures beyond legal requirements.

 

And she says she hopes the state will adjust its incentives to attract more capital-intense, research and development-oriented companies.

 

“The change may be, we’re not going after the big box manufacturer to the same degree we used to be,” she says. “But some of your very highly capital intensive projects, a high investment, may only employ 100 people but the salaries and the job skills associated with that are very high. So we want to market to those type of companies saying, again, here’s what we have here.”

 

In addition to customers, suppliers and vendors, the state is also targeting venture capital firms to help move research and development into the marketplace.

 

“It’s been proven where innovation and investment take place in a particular industry, venture tends to follow it,” Kisber says. “I know there are opportunities by some who are seeing Tennessee emerge in a leadership position in this field.”

Probing solar’s secrets

 

Repeated credit is given to the governor’s own scientific prowess in landing two key manufacturers within a highly technical industry.

 

Kisber describes meetings between the governor and the CEO of Dow Corning, majority owner of Hemlock Semiconductor, and Thom Mason, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The governor spent a couple of hours peppering them with questions regarding the technological potential and limitations of solar.

 

These encounters led Bredesen earlier this year to announce his intent to create, with ORNL and UT, a research institute that would focus on improving solar technologies.

 

ORNL already has had preliminary conversations with Dow Corning regarding next-generation solar technologies, Mason says.

 

While polysilicon-based products are a mature technology, manufacturers also have an interest in solar power that’s more efficient, more user-friendly and, most important, more cost effective.

 

The lab’s work in solar has been somewhat limited since the late 1980s, according to Mason, when the lab set the world record for efficiency in the conversion of light into electricity. The relatively small amount of federal funding for solar in recent years has, for the most part, flowed to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

 

But Mason says the lab’s materials research programs are primed to help the industry develop better ways of collecting and transmitting the sun’s power. Thin film technology, for example, has the potential to reduce the amount of material, and therefore the cost needed for solar panels. ORNL’s experts in polymer chemistry could assist in development of cheaper, more versatile materials that could replace silicon entirely, Mason says.

 

The UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Advanced Materials is already engaged and such work, and its profile will be raised when construction begins this fall at its new home at the former UT dairy farm. The institute has received $10 million in state and $20 million in federal funds.

 

The 188-acre farm site off Alcoa Highway and Fort Loudoun Lake is envisioned as a cutting-edge research park that ultimately could include 16 buildings, greenways,and possibly a hotel, conference center and restaurants.

 

A new solar institute, at least UT’s portion, will likely also be located at the site, says Billy Stair, ORNL director of communications and external relations.

 

Federal stimulus money, of which the lab will receive initially more than $70 million, could be used to jump start programs that Mason says he is hopeful will ultimately develop into a solar center similar to the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative, which involves the University of Tennessee, ORNL and a number of public and private research partners. The center is focused on development of alternative fuels derived from cellulose found in plants such as poplar trees and switchgrass.

 

“That’s the model from my point of view,” Mason says, adding that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has said he too would likely pursue a similar course for solar research.

 

“What we’re doing now is kind of in anticipation of that opportunity coming,” he says. “We’ve got a group that’s looking at where ORNL can contribute, working with UT, and who are the right partners so that we’re ready when that call for proposals comes.”

 

Having Wacker and Hemlock setting up shop in Tennessee helps the state make its case, Mason says.

 

“If you can say we’ve got industry partners who are interested in contributing to the research and are interested in taking the results and moving (them) into the market place that improves your case,” he says.

Training the workforce

 

With unemployment at its highest rate in decades, many workers are hoping skills developed in other industries will allow them to find new lines of high-paying work.

 

At the Hemlock plant, the average pay will be $70,000 to $80,000 a year, says James Chavez, president and CEO of the Clarksville Chamber. The state will provide nearby Austin Peay University with $6.4 million to establish a two-year associate’s degree program in chemical engineering technology to train potential workers.

 

“Those kids (that graduate with the degree) or people that are going back for one-year certificate …(have the) opportunity to interview for a job that makes $40,000 to $50,000 a year,” Chavez says. “That is certainly going to change the future for a lot of families.”

 

Pellissippi State Technical Community College is developing a series of non-credit green training courses, with plans to incorporate them into for-credit programs, aimed at helping workers re-tool for the new economy.

 

Pellissippi now offers 24 online classes, ranging from the basics of renewable energy to more technically-oriented fare.

 

Blount County entrepreneur Douglas Benton took Pellissippi’s 16-week online course for photovoltaic system design and installation with the ultimate goal of achieving certification from the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners to design and install solar panels.

 

With a background in information technology and, more recently, as a real estate agent and professional wedding photographer, Benton set his entrepreneurial energies toward green energy as the home-buying business went bust and watching the documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

 

Last year he opened a scooter and bicycle shop, Wheels 4 Tomorrow, in Alcoa. More recently, he has launched a vegetable gardening service, has begun selling wind turbines and is getting into the solar business.

 

“I’m doing more weird stuff than you ever dreamed of,” Benton says.

 

Accustomed to calling companies hawking various IT services, he is now preparing to sell renewable energy options to area businesses.

 

Coburn says the new program has gotten a lot of interest, particularly from those with backgrounds in manufacturing and construction.

 

“So you’re talking about a learner that can quickly adapt,” he says. “I see a lot of the skills transferring. They just need to get this component of solar or weatherization.”

Beginning in July, Pellissippi will offer its first in-class photovoltaic course to individuals interested in working for a company that installs solar panels, says Brad Coburn, director of industrial training.

 

Coburn has applied for a state grant to cover the costs of the courses, which range from $249 to $2,120, for displaced workers.

 

Ultimately, he hopes to incorporate the renewables courses into existing engineering technology programs.

 

And like everyone interested in the future of renewable energy, he’s hopeful that the federal stimulus package will give the nascent program a shot in the arm.

 

“We’re looking for those grant dollars now,” he says. “If something like that happened we could buy equipment, it would just really put some legs to the program.”

The state is moving to expand an economic development program credited with landing two of the state's biggest industrial deals last year.

 

State lawmakers are working on a bill that would give the state Department of Economic and Community Development more power to create the large industrial parks called megasites.

 

The measure would let the state purchase, develop and turn land over to local authorities using proceeds from government bonds. The legislation also would allow a megasite authority to purchase land for new highway ramps, rail spurs and other improvements that are needed to make the site viable.

 

The bill has cleared the Senate and is close to passage in the House. It is meant to help one megasite in West Tennessee's Haywood County that has fizzled, but its provisions also could be used by other rural communities to put together megasites with the state's help, supporters said.

 

"It's not specifically designed for Haywood County," said Matt Kisber, the state's commissioner of economic and community development. "It could be utilized by any community that is willing to put in the resources."

 

The proposal comes on the heels of last year's decisions by Hemlock Semiconductor Corp. to build a $1.2 billion plant near Clarksville and by Volkswagen AG to build a $1 billion plant near Chattanooga.

 

 

The sites were two of only three in the state selected for the megasite program, a joint effort between the state, local officials and the Tennessee Valley Authority to set aside large tracts of land for industrial development.

 

The third site, along I-40 in southwestern Haywood County near Stanton, has failed to take off. The reason is that the local government — which had to buy the site and develop it, under the original 2007 megasite law — did not have enough money or resources to do so.

 

The bill making its way through the legislature now would allow the state to set up the megasite for Haywood County on behalf of local authorities before an option on the land expires this fall, supporters say.

 

"The motivation is to get the land purchased sooner rather than later," said Sen. Lowe Finney, the measure's sponsor. "This site has been passed over."

Tennessee’s top economic developer, who met on April 16 in Germany with possible Volkswagen suppliers, says the Chattanooga plant will create the jobs and impact originally envisioned.

 

“I’m not worried it will provide as much bang for the buck,” said Matt Kisber, state economic and community development commissioner.

 

Despite the economic slump, he said he and Gov. Phil Bredesen believe Volkswagen is “an anchor project that will draw thousands more automotive jobs to the state.”

 

VW is “a strong company” and well positioned in the market, said Mr. Kisber, who will talk about opportunities in the state for German companies at the Southeastern Automotive Supplier Forum in Hanover, Germany.

 

He’ll join Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield, Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, state Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr and Trevor Hamilton, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for economic development.

 

Mr. Hamilton said the group also will build ties with officials of Lower Saxony, the state where VW is headquartered and 20 percent owner of the car maker. Mr. Hamilton said the delegation will see how VW manages training at its main Wolfsburg plant and visit a supplier park in Emden.

 

He said Mr. Farr will be available to speak to German companies about tax credits Tennessee offers.

 

“He’s part of the incentive discussion,” Mr. Hamilton said.

 

Frank Fischer, VW’s chief executive in Chattanooga, will also take part in the forum with the Tennessee delegation.

 

Mr. Kisber said now is the time for Tennessee to double its marketing efforts to woo companies and follow up on a recruiting trip last October.

 

“VW is further along in selecting its suppliers,” he said.

 

Mr. Kisber said the forum is a chance to show suppliers what VW knows that Tennessee is emerging as the central hub of the growing Southern automotive industry.

 

To lure VW, it’s estimated that tax breaks amounting to $577.4 million will be spent or given up by governments.

 

Volkswagen plans to invest $1 billion in the local economy for the plant and create 2,000 jobs at the plant slated to start production in early 2011.

 

A University of Tennessee study has shown the new Volkswagen plant is expected to generate $12 billion in income growth and an additional 9,500 jobs over the life of the project.

 

After visiting Germany, Mr. Kisber will travel to Beijing, China, and meet with government and business leaders, he said.

Gov. Phil Bredesen and Tennessee Commissioner of Economic and Community Development Matt Kisber applauded Volkswagen Group of America’s decision to award a $147 million dollar contract to M-Tek, Incorporated of Manchester, Tenn. on April 2. The company will provide interior door panels for a new Volkswagen midsize sedan scheduled to begin production at Enterprise South Industrial Park in early 2011.

“I appreciate Volkswagen’s continued investment in our state and its confidence in the productivity of our workforce and the quality of Tennessee-made products,” said Gov.Bredesen. “Tennessee businesses are already benefitting from Volkswagen’s decision and we look forward to helping them grow as they implement their future business strategies.”

“We’ve long suggested the impact of Volkwagen’s $1 billion dollar investment would be felt beyond the Chattanooga area and this announcement is proof of that,” said Commissioner Kisber. “In the past two weeks alone, we’ve seen Volkswagen sign a major agreement with a Tennessee supplier and commit $5.28 million to public education in Tennessee. The ripple effect of this project is already being felt.”

“One of the reasons Volkswagen chose Tennessee was its central location to excellent automotive suppliers. We’re pleased to partner with M-Tek, a local company who shares Volkswagen’s culture of continuous improvement,” said Frank Fischer, CEO and chairman, Volkswagen Group of America, Chattanooga Operations. “Volkswagen is committed to not only contracting with locally based companies, but also to contracting with the best companies in their sector. M-Tek’s philosophy of excellence and ‘state of the future’ manufacturing sets it apart, and we look forward to working with them on the new mid-sized sedan.”

M-Tek has already started to supply the Volkswagen contract and expects to eventually locate a final assembly operation plant near Volkswagen at Enterprise South, it was stated.

The Volkswagen contract will mean continued employment for about 60 to 70 M-Tek employees, including a 20-employee operation expected in the Chattanooga plant.

“This is a challenging environment for all of us in the automotive supply industry,” said Howard Tucker, corporate senior manager, human resources for M-Tek. “This agreement with Volkswagen is a tremendous vote of confidence in the productivity and dedication of our employees and we look forward helping make Volkswagen’s Tennessee facility a success.”

An additional $55 million has been awarded to local firms, including work sourced by both Volkswagen and state and local governments. Construction is expected to begin in early May for a training center on the Enterprise South industrial site which will house a 160,000 square foot state-of-the-art Volkswagen Training Academy. On March 20, the Volkswagen project at Enterprise South was recognized by Trade and Industry Development magazine as the winner of its 2009 Corporate Investment and Community Impact award.

In addition to the M-Tek announcement, Volkswagen is also working with the Northeast Tennessee Valley Regional Industrial Development Association to hold a “Doing Business with Volkswagen” forum for companies interested in becoming potential suppliers to Volkswagen in various business sectors including construction, automotive suppliers, or facility maintenance/supplies. The event will be held Tuesday, April 28, at 9 a.m. at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tn. Seating and reservations are limited. For more information please call (423) 279-3238 or email info@netvaly.org.

About M-Tek, Inc.
M-Tek, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kasai Kogyo Company, manufactures a wide range of automotive parts for several North American assembly plants that include door trim panels, rear shelf, trunk trim, dash insulators and plastic injection trim. M-Tek has been cultivated as a complete facility in which engineering, testing, and quality form a disciplined environment focused on a single objective – continuous improvement.

While state and national unemployment levels have reached the highest rates in years, Tullahoma’s 2008 calendar year manufacturing employment totals offer optimism and reflect increases.

 

The Industrial Board of Coffee County recently released its 2008 annual report that shows manufacturing-related jobs in Tullahoma increased by 179, from 2,341 in 2007 to 2,520 in 2008.

 

Ted Hackney, the Industrial Board’s exe- cutive director, summed up the overall situation this week.

 

"There was an increase in jobs in Tullahoma, but overall the picture implies that they were down countywide," he said.

 

Manufacturing totals from Tullahoma, Manchester, Coffee County and Arnold Center, show that jobs were down overall by 76, from 5,541 in 2007 to 5,465 in 2008.

 

Hackney said some companies were faced with difficult challenges, going into a new year and having to scale back workforces.

 

He said M-TEK, which manufactures plastic automotive interior parts, had to lay off employees, marking the first time such an incident has occurred in its 22-year history.

 

M-TEK, however, recently announced it has added Volkswagen to its customer base and will be expanding in its work for the automaker, which is constructing a plant in Chattanooga.

 

Gary Morgan, executive director for Workforce Solutions, which is a Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development subcontractor that aids dislocated workers, compared Coffee County’s overall unemployment rate in January 2008 to January 2009.

 

It was 5.3 percent a year ago and climbed to 8.9 percent this January.

 

He said Workforce Solutions receives confirmation from the Labor Department when large-scale layoffs are announced.

 

Morgan said the Deutsch Industrial Products Division in Tullahoma has informed the state that it will be laying off 82 employees effective May 3.

 

Dillard’s department store in Tullahoma’s Northgate Mall, has said 102 employees will be laid off between May 3 and May 30.

 

However, on a bright note, he said Tullahoma should see Omar Supplies, headquartered in University Park, Ill., expanding its workforce after acquiring the Oak Technical vinyl glove plant, located in Tullahoma’s industrial park.

 

Omar is planning a $3 million expansion and plans to add 90 to 100 jobs by the year’s end.

 

Morgan said the company has indicated that 60 employees should be added in just the next few months.

Oak Ridge will receive $755 million in stimulus money to jump-start environmental cleanup projects and create about 1,500 new jobs, the Department of Energy announced on March 31.

 

Gerald Boyd, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge manager, said the money will be spent over the next two and a half years for dozens of projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 National Security Complex, and the East Tennessee Technology Park.

 

Also, some of the money will go to expand operations at DOE's Transuranic Waste Processing Center, where the nastiest nuclear waste in Oak Ridge's inventory is being prepared for disposal.

 

DOE received $6 billion for environmental cleanup from the fund established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and Oak Ridge received the third-most money among the DOE sites. The Hanford Operations near Richland, Wash., will receive $1.9 billion, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will receive $1.6 billion for cleanup of nuclear legacies that date to the World War II Manhattan Project.

 

One of the primary purposes of funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is to create jobs and stimulate the economy, and Boyd said the Oak Ridge hiring could begin shortly. The projects will require a lot of construction-type jobs, but also many technical positions and specialties associated with handling radioactive materials, evaluating environmental risks and project management.

 

The stimulus money will be funneled through DOE's managing contractors in Oak Ridge, but the majority of the actual work will be subcontracted, Boyd said.

 

Boyd received a loud round of applause this morning when he announced the funding at the Industry Day conference. More than 300 representatives of companies seeking stimulus contracts were in attendance at Pollard Auditorium. The event was sponsored by the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association.

 

The DOE official said the Oak Ridge stimulus money will be divided among four sites. ORNL will receive $239 million; Y-12, $292 million; ETTP, $144 million; and about $80 million will go to the Transuranic Waste Processing Center.

 

Multiple projects will take place at each site, with many different schedules and completion dates. According to the stimulus requirements, all projects funded by the program must be completed by Sept. 30, 2011.

 

Each of the DOE sites will initially receive 80 percent of their total stimulus allotment. The remaining 20 percent will be distributed later, depending on how each site performs from the standpoint of efficiency and safety, officials said.

 

Boyd said high-performing sites may also be eligible to receive additional funding, above and beyond the stated amounts.

Renovation isn't finished on a former Oak Ridge National Laboratory office building, but four high-tech startups are already leasing space there, officials said on April 27.

 

Formerly called Building 2033, the 28,000-square-foot structure has been renamed the Halcyon Commercialization Center.

 

It's a first for national labs, officials said. Private-sector companies can lease space there and work with ORNL scientists to bring new products and services to market.

 

About 70 people crowded into a third-story room Monday to celebrate the center's first open house. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., was the keynote speaker.

 

"We have an opportunity to turn it (the center) into another great technology success story for our region," Mike Cuddy, president and CEO of Technology 2020, told attendees.

 

Tech 2020 is a public-private partnership that seeks to grow new technology-oriented businesses. It will market and lease space in the center.

 

Halcyon Corp. LLC , which is a subsidiary of the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, a nonprofit regional group that finds new uses for DOE properties, is leasing the building from the Department of Energy and will manage it.

 

The 15-year-old, three-story building was remodeled with $692,000 in HUD funding. Total renovation costs will exceed $1 million. Lease rates for space in the new center are about $15 per square foot. David Snider, vice president of Tech 2020, said office space in downtown Knoxville is "in the $20s (per square foot)."

 

The building is "part of a greater whole," said Lawrence Young, president of CROET. He called it a "key ingredient" in the Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park.

 

That 12-acre park - which eventually will be expanded to 40 acres - is taking shape near the commercialization center at the west end of the lab's campus. It is dominated by the $14 million National Security Engineering Center that will serve as headquarters for Pro2Serve. With 115,000 square feet of space, the center will be headquarters for the Oak Ridge-based engineering firm that is now under construction.

 

Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan said the building and the park are "already having a tremendous impact on the community through the generation of jobs and revenue."

An investment firm has purchased a fifth building that was part of the Department of Energy uranium-enrichment complex.

 

Manhattan Project LLC, an affiliate of Fulcra Enterprises Inc. of Cornelius, N.C., paid $2 million for Building K1007, a 132,000-square-foot building that the Bechtel Jacobs Co. now leases.

 

To date, Fulcra has purchased five buildings at the former K-25 site - now named East Tennessee Technology Park - for a total of $5.57 million.

 

Maribel Koella and Matt Fentress of the commercial real estate firm NAI Knoxville handled all the building sales.

 

The buildings have been purchased from Heritage Center LLC, a subsidiary of the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee.

 

CROET is a nonprofit regional organization that seeks to find new uses for old Department of Energy buildings and land that is no longer needed for DOE's mission.

 

CROET President Lawrence Young said proceeds from the building sales are plowed back into site redevelopment efforts, including two speculative industrial buildings near K-25 that will be under construction soon.

 

Bechtel Jacobs is the Department of Energy contractor hired to clean up the former K-25 site.

 

Once the Bechtel Jacobs lease ends, Young said, the new owner likely will seek other tenants for the building, which once housed computer operations for former DOE contractors.

 

"Their plans are similar to plans we had," Young said. "They'll invest in the building to maintain it and increase its value."

 

Other buildings at the former K-25 site purchased by Fulcra Enterprises range in size from 14,000 square feet to 80,000 square feet.

Memphis, Tennessee based Biofuelds America, Inc. is seeking roughly $20 million in equity investment towards development of a ligno-cellulosic bio-refinery called Project Tennessee in Marion County.

Pete Reeves, CEO, said Project Tennessee will be developed on a 35-acre closed ethanol facility and will utilize wood waste and municipal solid waste as feed stocks to produce ethanol, high value bio-chemicals such as lignin and furfural as well as electricity.

The plant is projected to cost $62.3 million and will create 80 green jobs.

The plant is slated for operation next year, he said.

The plant will initially produce 30 MMGY of ethanol with projections to produce 100 MMGY at full capacity by the end of its fourth year of operation.

The plant will process self-generating electricity for its own use. The excess energy estimated at 15MW will be sold to local utilities as electricity.

BFA has feedstock supply agreements in place and has an off take agreement from CHS to purchase and market its ethanol, it was stated.

Project Tennessee will draw part of its funding from public debt issued by the Industrial Development Board of Marion County in the amount of $20 million.

Mr. Reeves said Project Tennessee will utilize bank debt to finance a substantial portion of its development cost.

Based on projections, total bank participation required is $19.7 million.

BFA is currently in negotiations with SunTrust Bank to provide the debt facility. The debt facility will be partially guaranteed under the U.S. Department of Labor Section 9003 Bio-refinery Assistance Program. This federal program provides a guaranty to the lending institution of up to 80% of the borrower’s indebtedness for development and construction of a commercial scale bio-refinery or for retrofitting an existing facility that uses eligible technology to develop bio-fuels.

Mr. Reeves said, “Our goal is to maintain a public/private funding structure and to partner with one or more equity providers that share our vision of producing alternative fuels and bio-chemicals to expand our business platform and to increase shareholder value. This investment opportunity is not limited just to Project Tennessee. BFA has plans to develop a number of other bio-refineries throughout the United States.

"Project plans are already underway for a plant in East St. Louis, Ill., and another in Mississippi. Future projects will be started once the initial three are brought on stream or are nearing completion.”

The Regional Alliance for Economic Development launched a new Web site on April 25 that could lead site selection consultants directly to the region’s virtual front door.

 

The alliance debuted the new Web site at its annual meeting on April 25 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

 

The Web site — located at www.tricitiesprospector.com — provides detailed information about the region, giving site selection consultants the data they need in considering a move here.

 

“Site selectors are lazy just like the rest of us. And if they can get everything they need right from their desks, that’s the wave of the future. We have to be there,” said Newt Raff, 2009 alliance chairman and president of First Tennessee Bank.

 

The new Web site is a product of GIS Planning Inc. of San Francisco. Kathleen Atkins, with GIS Planning, said a 2008 study conducted at the University of California at Berkeley found that 750,000 businesses across the country are looking for new sites for expansion each year. That doesn’t include relocations.

 

The study showed that most of those businesses — 85 percent of them — use the Internet to search for and find expansion sites.

 

However, searching for potential locations hasn’t been easy — until now.

 

At an international economic development conference last October, GIS Planning introduced its new national Web site — www.zoomprospector.com — which serves as a national database of regions across the nation. The site allows prospects looking for land or property to identify various search criteria. The site then matches that criteria with communities in its database and links the prospects to those communities.

 

The site includes information from 180 economic development organizations and their regions in 37 states.

 

“This is a way to elevate a community that may not have been considered before,” Atkins said. “We’re expecting this to be a game-changing technology.”

 

From zoomprospector.com, users are linked to local Web sites, including the new tricitiesprospector.com, which provides further details about the region such as demographics, land and building inventory, and existing businesses. Geographic information is also included such as traffic counts and location of colleges and universities, highways, airports and railroads. Site visitors can even get a close-up virtual tour of specific locations, thanks to Google Earth and Google Street View.

 

And visitors can download files in PDF, Excel and Word formats from the site, creating their own portfolio on various properties.

 

Brandon Talbert, the alliance’s manager of marketing and client services, said the Web site’s property database is currently incomplete, but the alliance is working with local real estate brokers and property owners to add available land and buildings in the region. He said the alliance expects to have a “substantial” database in the next couple of weeks.

 

Talbert said brokers can even input information themselves on the Web site for free.

 

Atkins said the site can be a big asset for small and medium-sized businesses — many of which cannot afford to hire site selection consultants on their own. She said the Web site gives those businesses access to a sophisticated site selection analysis — free of charge.

 

Tom Ferguson, interim president of the alliance, said the new Web tools will supplement the organization’s existing marketing strategies, including its main Web site at www.alliancetnva.com.

 

“We believe it’s one of the most exciting things we can bring into our organization this year,” he said.

 

Tricitiesprospector.com includes details on two counties in Southwest Virginia and eight counties in Northeast Tennessee. Specifically information is included on Scott and Washington counties in Virginia and Sullivan, Washington, Hawkins, Hancock, Greene, Unicoi, Carter and Johnson counties in Tennessee.

 

For more information contact the alliance at 323-8102 or toll free at 1-866-704-8102 or send e-mail to info@alliancetnva.com.

Businesses, nonprofit organizations and local governments will be able to apply for billions of dollars in federal stimulus money in the coming months to help expand broadband Internet access in rural areas.

 

Tennessee may receive more than $150 million to improve broadband connections, officials said.

 

“The goal is to provide service to unserved and underserved areas,” said Michael Ramage, executive director of Connected Tennessee, a Nashville nonprofit whose mission is expanding broadband access. “Ten percent of the state’s households don’t have access to broadband, mostly in rural Tennessee.”

 

The federal stimulus package passed by Congress provides $7.2 billion to expand broadband access in the nation, officials said.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will receive $2.5 billion for rural utility services, and $4.7 billion will go to the National Communication and Information Administration’s Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, Mr. Ramage said.

 

Nearly $4 billion will go to improving broadband infrastructure, he said.

 

Mr. Ramage said his office held a meeting with more than 50 entities, including some from Southeast Tennessee, that are interested in applying for broadband funding. He said Connected Tennessee is working with anyone who wants to apply for the stimulus dollars.

 

“There are still areas in Southeast Tennessee that are unserved and need to be served,” he said. “Every broadband provider in Southeast Tennessee is thinking about (applying for a grant).”

 

Bledsoe Telephone Cooperative General Manager Greg Anderson said his company plans to apply.

 

Bledsoe Telephone has been working to make broadband available to all its subscribers, Mr. Anderson said.

 

Eighty-seven percent of the company’s subscribers have broadband access in Bledsoe County, and all the company’s customers in Sequatchie County have broadband access.

 

But there aren’t enough actual subscribers to fund the costs of building broadband infrastructure, he said.

 

A stimulus grant could provide the money to deploy broadband and ease the dependence on subscription revenue, he said.

 

“It would provide the money to do what it is hard to justify from a business perspective now,” said Mr. Anderson.

 

“The bottom line is, everyone wants broadband but no one wants to pay for it,” he said. “We are deploying broadband right and left, but the number of people subscribing to the service is not sufficient to sustain the business in the long run.”

 

Details of the stimulus program are supposed by be finalized by the beginning of May. The first round of grants is to be issued by fall and work can begin shortly after that, Mr. Ramage said. It can take several months for a broadband network to be put into place, he said.

 

Jessica Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, said a meeting will be held Monday to discuss the state’s strategy in applying for broadband grants.

 

The grants will be competitive, and each state is only guaranteed one grant, she said.

 

Mr. Ramage said broadband can open up opportunities for people in rural areas.

 

“There is so much work that is done on the Internet. When a student comes home from school and does not have access to the Internet, they are at a disadvantage.”

Robotic vehicles, some moving like giant six-legged spiders, roamed other-worldly landscapes piecing together astronaut habitats in movies shown on April 21 at the Von Braun Center. This wasn't science fiction.

"What you're seeing here is the future of exploration for NASA," said Dr. Raymond "Corky" Clinton, acting manager of the Science and Mission Systems Office at Marshall Space Flight Center.

 

He was among the speakers as the Pathfinder Chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems opened its 20th annual symposium. The theme for this year's event, which continues today, is "A Retrospective: Past, Present and Future of Unmanned Systems."

 

Tuesday morning was all about the future.

 

"It's our time," Clinton said. "The challenge of our time is to return to the moon."

 

Unmanned systems, some similar to the ground robots now used by the Army, will help lay the groundwork and build the infrastructure to allow astronauts to spend months, even years, on the moon.

 

That time will teach us what we need to know before sending astronauts to Mars, said Dr. Robert Ambrose, deputy division chief of Johnson Space Center's Automation, Robotics and Simulation Division.

 

Orbital mechanics mean that astronauts will spend 300 days or more on Mars, independently.

They'll have to use machines and techniques they know will work to come home safely.

 

"No Home Depot, no CARE packages," he said. "So, frankly, we're going to practice that on the moon."

 

He said the giant, spidery robot is a heavy-lift vehicle called ATHLETE - All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer. One version can separate into two parts, allowing it to pick up a bulky payload from different sides.

 

Other, smaller rovers and robots are also in development for various lunar tasks. But Clinton noted that NASA is also working with unmanned aerial systems for Earth science projects, including missions to study hurricanes and to map soil moisture.

NASA's needs overlap those of the Pentagon's in many areas, he said. By sharing information, the groups can get more bang for taxpayers' research and development dollars.

 

Other speakers included Jim McCormick, program manager of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Tactical Technology Office. He described work under way on everything from hummingbird-like vehicles that a soldier or police officer might send on a reconnaissance mission inside a building to the recent, hands-off, autonomous, midair refueling of a fighter jet.

 

Some of the guests at the symposium were also at the first, said Mike Ray, president of the Pathfinder chapter and Huntsville manager for Survice Engineering. They've seen the use of unmanned air and ground vehicles become widespread in recent years.

 

He described the growth as "exponential."

 

Ray said local companies are finding global customers. Mesa Robotics, for instance, has taken a step beyond military work to sell its ground vehicles to police departments and mining companies.

 

Collaboration among federal agencies and partnerships with private companies to develop uses for unmanned systems can keep costs down and innovation high, said Terry Griffin, second vice president of the Pathfinder chapter and vice president for defense at BFA Systems.

 

That's especially important in this economic climate, he said.

 

"It's more important than ever to leverage the technology," he said. "We need NASA and the Army to work together."

Gov. Phil Bredesen joined representatives of Nissan, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Tennessee Valley Authority and others on April 22 in celebrating Earth Day 2009 and highlighting the combined potential of solar and electric vehicle technologies in Tennessee.

 

Bredesen, who previously proposed that state government help develop a network of public charging stations for electric vehicles in partnership with local governments and private partners, test drove an all-electric vehicle that Nissan shipped from Japan, according to a news release.

 

Nissan is expected to introduce electric vehicles for U.S. commercial and government fleets in late 2010 and for mass market globally by 20012.

 

As part of the state's expanding commitment to clean energy technology, Bredesen also used the occasion of Earth Day to point out the crossover potential between electric vehicles and another part of the clean-tech sector that's expanding in Tennessee: solar energy.

 

Specifically, he invited Nissan, ORNL and TVA to join the state in exploring research opportunities to develop solar-powered charging stations on a limited basis in areas including Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville.

 

"Given Tennessee's growing interest in both solar energy and electric vehicles, it seems natural that these technologies could complement each other," Bredesen said. "We can and should be exploring opportunities that highlight the Volunteer State's leadership in both areas."

 

Nissan's move toward electric vehicles is occurring at the same time Tennessee is raising its solar profile. Major suppliers, including Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie AG, have announced plans to add thousands of jobs in Tennessee as the solar industry expands. To build on the economic activity, Bredesen recently proposed a solar research institute at ORNL and the University of Tennessee to make the state a leader in basic solar science.

 

State officials plan to coordinate with Nissan, ORNL, TVA and other partners to explore federal support for solar- and electric vehicle-related research alongside any commitment the state might make. Nationally, Tennessee could be well-positioned for future federal investments given President Obama's agenda for a cleaner energy future.

 

Bredesen added: "Pioneering practical ideas that bring together automotive innovation and solar science is a logical play for Tennessee at a time when the nation is watching us on both fronts."

Everything from moon rovers to robots roaming the streets of a combat zone were in the spotlight as the Pathfinder Chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems held its 20th annual symposium on April 22-23.

 

The theme for the program at the Von Braun Center is "A Retrospective: Past, Present and Future of Unmanned Systems."

"It's a celebration of the success of unmanned systems," said Terry Griffin, second vice president of the Pathfinder chapter and vice president for defense at BFA Systems.

 

While unmanned systems have been around a long time, he said, they have really demonstrated their field capabilities to meet the changing tactics of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than half of the Army's total flight hours in Iraq and Afghanistan are logged by unmanned aircraft systems, Griffin said. The use of ground systems is also growing.

 

"We sent robots over to successfully deal with the IED threat," he said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

 

Among the events at this year's symposium will be a presentation Wednesday afternoon by more than a dozen former unmanned aerial and ground system project managers, Griffin said.

 

The AUVSI meeting has traditionally focused more on Department of Defense efforts, he said.

 

But this year will feature other groups and agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, universities and colleges, and the use of unmanned systems in customs and border protection.

 

"This symposium also includes a good amount of experience and representation from NASA," Griffin said.

 

Dr. Corky Clinton, manager of Science & Mission Systems at Marshall Space Flight Center, will be the morning keynote speaker Wednesday.

 

Other presentations include an update on the Von Braun Center for Science Innovation by Executive Director Marty Kress; a robotics center update by Dr. Mary Yarbrough, vice president of Calhoun Community College; and Battlefield Assistance Ground Robots by Dr. Gary Gilbert of the Army.

Providing protection and centralization of the Army's computer network system while also making connectivity and information accessible to the war fighter is crucial in supporting military objectives, said the Army's first commander of the newly stood up 7th Signal Command (Theater).

Brig. Gen. Jennifer Napper told an audience of information technology employees that the 7th Signal Command is committed to providing and protecting "one team, one network" and to being the pre-eminent provider of LandWarNet, the Army's globally interconnected communications and computing systems.

 

"This is a growing field ... We are about assuring maneuverability through cyberspace" for the Army, Napper said. "You need to be able to go unobstructed, unimpeded to the information you need to know. I'm not sure we can guarantee that today on our networks."

Napper's comments were made April 14 during the ninth annual Redstone Arsenal Information Security and Assurance Conference and Exposition, hosted by the Garrison and the Aviation and Missile Command. The event at Bob Jones Auditorium included about 550 participants and more than 30 exhibitors.

This year's theme was "Providing Electronic Force Protection for the Warfighter." Topics during the conference included "How to Create Synergy and Success with the Compliance Triad," "Hacking Techniques," "Cyber Counter Intelligence," "Transitioning to the Enterprise," "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th President," "Legalities of Cyber Investigations" and "The Latest Internet Security Risks and Trends."

Napper spoke to conference attendees about "Defensive Operations in Cyberspace" designed to protect the integrity of the Army's network system. The 7th Signal Command, based at Fort Gordon, Ga., was stood up in 2008 under Napper's command. Its mission is to centralize the Army's network in one location and provide access to LandWarNet capabilities that support Army forces in the states and in theater.

The idea of creating a command to centralize, manage and protect Army computer networks first surfaced in 1999 as a result of concerns that Internet warfare is a serious threat to the effectiveness of all military branches, Napper said.

Computer hackers and viruses pose a real threat to Army networks, and the Army is spending millions of dollars annually to protect against cyber attacks, she said.

"We are working to defend these networks in a more active manner," Napper said, adding that studies are being done to determine "what it takes to really invest in and have a true defense of our networks."

The military must establish globally consistent network security and privacy policy standards and procedures to "dramatically improve network defense postures. (In the Army) there are at least 20 commands who think they own and operate networks ... We have a mess," she said.

With the use of LandWarNet throughout the Army and the Department of Defense, standards and procedures will be in place, economies and efficiencies will be realized, and joint interoperability will be ensured.

"When we operationalize the network, we will eliminate existing network capability gaps as units prepare, deploy and transition through all operational phases," Napper said. "We've got to get to a point with our network where we can be truly expeditionary ... We need to turn the network into an enterprise. It's time to come together as a team and make this an enterprise in support of the war fighter."

In the face of looming legislative pressures for cleaner energy, the nation's largest public utility agreed on April 2 to buy more than a nuclear reactor's worth of electricity from renewable energy sources.

The Tennessee Valley Authority board gave President and CEO Tom Kilgore authority to sign contracts totaling up to 2,000 megawatts of renewable and clean energy by 2011, with some of the power entering TVA's seven-state system as early as 2010.

TVA began the search in December and received more than 60 offers, some of which have been withdrawn because the providers have since committed to other utilities. TVA executives refused to say how much the federal utility is prepared to spend or to identify potential generators.

The quantity of renewable energy being sought is substantially more than TVA will get from the $2.5 billion completion of a second 1,200-megawatt reactor at the Watts Bar nuclear station by 2013.

"We applaud and welcome the fact that TVA is preparing for the 21st century by making this kind of commitment. Two-thousand megawatts is a major step in the right direction," said Steve Smith, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy director.

TVA executives said internal studies suggest the Tennessee Valley lacks the potential capacity to meet TVA's renewable energy needs, so they are looking outside the region. Smith conceded the region's renewable infrastructure is lacking, but urged TVA to help grow it through the agency's economic development activities.

Kilgore said TVA has little interest in building its own renewable energy generators, though TVA in the 1990s developed the first commercial wind farm in the Southeast.

The most likely near-term source of renewable generation are Western wind farms in the Dakotas and landfill gas recovery operations, said Van Wardlaw, TVA's power supply and fuels executive vice president.

While purchases outside the region will do little to improve air quality within TVA's 80,000-square-mile service territory, Kilgore said TVA's goal is to "reduce TVA's environmental footprint by increasing the renewable and clean energy resources in our generation mix."

The agency now generates a small amount of renewable energy at its own solar sites, wind turbines and a methane recovery project at a Memphis wastewater treatment plant. It also buys wind power from 15 privately owned turbines located on TVA's Buffalo Mountain wind farm near Oliver Springs.

TVA, which supplies some 8.7 million consumers, hopes to get more than half of its total electricity from zero or low carbon-emitting sources by 2020.

The utility currently gets about 60 percent of its power from coal-fired power plants increasingly under the gun to reduce emissions -- most recently from a federal court ruling brought by North Carolina against four TVA plants closest to the North Carolina border.

Various energy bills before Congress would require a 20-25 percent clean energy mix by 2020. Kilgore said those proposals would not count nuclear power, which represents another third of TVA's power, or existing hydroelectric generation, which accounts for another 10 percent of TVA's power.

"Renewable energy and energy efficiency will be part of our clean energy portfolio," Kilgore vowed.

Meanwhile, TVA is in the early stages of an incentive-driven program to reduce energy consumption during high demand periods by up to 1,400 megawatts by 2012. Pilot tests with 13 commercial customers last summer produced a 70-megawatt reduction in peak power use by offering cheaper rates at night and more expensive prices during the daytime.

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) told a forum on renewable electricity choices on April 16 that solar panels, underwater river turbines, and wood chips “are promising for TVA, but Tennessee mountaintops are absolutely the wrong place for wind turbines three times as tall as Neyland Stadium skyboxes, not to mention the transmission lines that come with them.”

Witnesses at the TVA Congressional Caucus forum—called “Choices – TVA and Renewable Electricity”—included TVA Chairman Bill Sansom and Joe Hoagland, vice president environmental science, technology and policy; Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; executives of manufacturers of solar power equipment; and a company that proposes to provide electricity from turbines submerged in the Mississippi River. Alexander and Congressman Heath Shuler (D-N.C. 11) co-chair the TVA Congressional Caucus, of which Congressman Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn. 4), who also participated in the forum, is a member.

Senator Alexander also said, “An unbroken line of 500-foot turbines with flashing lights stretching from Chattanooga to Bristol would produce only one-fourth the electricity of the Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear plant – and yet you would still need the nuclear plant because wind only blows 18 percent of the time here and you can’t store wind power. For our region, wind turbines would raise electricity rates, provide a puny amount of power, and destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.”

TVA is negotiating to purchase out-of-state wind power from the Dakotas in an effort to increase the portion of its electricity produced by renewable electricity. Congress is considering legislation that would require utilities to produce 20 percent of electricity from certain renewable sources by 2021.

Alexander said that “until there is a breakthrough in the cost of solar power, it will be many years before renewable electricity from the sun, wind, and earth can supply as much as 10 percent of TVA’s electricity supply. Such renewable electricity today is about one and one-half percent of the nation’s electricity supply. In the meantime, TVA should push conservation, new nuclear power plants, and air-pollution-control equipment for coal plants in order to have both clean air and enough low-cost electricity to keep our jobs, heat our homes, and power our computers.”

The Senator said coal, nuclear, and natural-gas plants are “an essential bridge to a clean-energy future—and even to expanding renewable power.” For example, he said two new plants making parts for solar panels came to Tennessee in part because each could buy 120 megawatts of electricity from TVA which is 62 percent coal, 33 percent nuclear, 4 percent hydro, and 1 percent natural gas.

Alexander said, “Conservation should be TVA’s secret weapon because conservation offers more immediate promise for clean, reliable energy than renewable energy. We waste a lot of electricity. Tennesseans lead the country in per-capita use of electricity, using 43 percent more than the national average. If TVA customers were to reduce electricity use to the national average, TVA could avoid building four nuclear power plants the size of Watts Bar Unit 1, or five coal plants the size of Bull Run, or nine natural-gas plants the size of the new plant planned for Jackson.

“In addition,” he said, “TVA has the equivalent of seven to eight nuclear power plants worth of unused electric capacity at night. If we electrified half our cars and trucks, we could plug them in at night without building one new power plant. And, if every TVA household switched 10 light bulbs from the typical incandescent bulbs to fluorescent bulbs, it would be the equivalent of three-fourths of the Watts Bar Unit 1 plant,” he said.

Alexander said Tennessee already is the 16th cleanest state in clean energy production because 40 percent of TVA power comes from nuclear power and hydroelectric dams.

The Senator said that cost has to be a major priority and that most renewable sources being considered would raise monthly electric bills. According to the Nashville Tennessean, last December, ten percent of Nashville Electric Service customers told TVA they couldn’t afford to pay their electric bills.

Among the promising choices for renewable electricity in the TVA region, Alexander pointed to:

• Solar – He spotlighted the two new polysilicon plants for solar equipment at Clarksville and Cleveland and work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as Sharp Manufacturing in Memphis. Still, he said, solar power is less than one hundredth of one per cent of electricity nationally and costs four times more than electricity from coal, according to the Department of Energy.

• Hydropower – Upgrading existing TVA dams and putting underwater turbines in the Mississippi River together could produce the equivalent of one-half the output of the Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear plant.

• Biomass – One southern utility is opening a plant where woodchips will be burned to produce the equivalent of one-twelfth of a new nuclear power unit.

The Senator also said that “a Nobel Prize should be reserved for the scientist who discovers a commercially viable way to remove carbon from existing coal plants. We have all the coal we need, and today it provides 60 percent of TVA electricity as well as 50 per cent of the nation’s electricity. We also know how to get rid of three major pollutants—sulfur, nitrogen and mercury—and strong federal laws should require us to do it. The one puzzle that hasn’t been solved is what to do with the carbon from coal plants.”

Since coming to the U.S. Senate, Alexander has introduced legislation during each two-year Congress to establish stronger clean-air rules for pollutants from coal plants, including carbon. He is also the lead Republican sponsor of legislation to end “mountaintop removal,” the practice of taking off the tops of mountains to find coal and dumping waste into streambeds.

Making buildings more environmentally friendly will pay off economically for businesses after an upfront investment, says one of the creators of the LEED certification for existing structures.

 

Paul von Paumgartten, whom a moderator at a Chattanooga conference dubbed the “godfather of LEED,” said Thursday that applying for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification while refitting an existing building or erecting a new one can cost up to $30,000.

 

But the director of energy and environmental affairs with Johnson Controls Inc. in Milwaukee said that cost will be returned quickly from efficient electric and water use.

 

Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey said that building sustainable buildings is the right thing to do and can promote the economy.

 

“LEED certification is about common sense,” Mr. Ramsey said. “There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. This conference is about finding better ideas” for business and the environment.

 

In the near future, Mr. von Paumgartten said, environmentally friendly features will be a common component in construction and renovation projects, which will lower costs.

 

Also, the federal government will mandate that all businesses take steps to conserve electricity, Mr. Paumgartten said.

 

Businesses which stay ahead of the curve can save money and thrive, he said, comparing sustainable buildings to hybrid cars.

 

The American car industry failed to invest in hybrids 15 years ago, in contrast to Japanese manufacturers, he said.

 

“You can see the impact of not seeing what’s coming,” Mr. von Paumgartten said.

 

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., who opened the event, said government and businesses should work together to create environmental building standards.

 

“I don’t think you have to regulate everything, but I think there’s a great balance we can strike between private initiative and good government regulation,” Mr. Wamp said.

 

“That’s exactly what you”re here today to focus on.”

 

Sustainable designs are important because commercial buildings use nearly 40 percent of all energy in the nation and contribute 40 percent of atmospheric emissions, Mr. von Paumgartten said. The use of fiber-optic, LED and solar lights in building renovations in the next few years can save businesses half of their light bills, he said.

Tootle through the brand new Crossroads at Wolf Creek subdivision and — save for a giant plywood poster marking the lot — you wouldn’t notice much difference between two homes under construction there and the other residences sprouting up in a typical Knoxville area development.

 

Well, actually, that’s the whole idea.

 

Last September, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, local building contractor Schaad Companies and Knoxville architectural firm BarberMcMurry announced a partnership to construct four houses with sharply less energy demand than typical residential buildings. Officially known as the Zero Energy Building Research Alliance, or ZEBRAlliance, the project aims to transfer research and development by ORNL into mainstream home building. While the homes won’t actually be completely energy self-sufficient, it’s expected they’ll be about 60 percent more efficient than homes of a similar size and make.

 

“We’re doing something unprecedented,” said Jeff Christian, ORNL researcher who’s leading the project.

 

The homes will be outfitted with approximately 400 sensors to measure the effectiveness of construction and appliances, and to compare the homes with each other and other control homes in the neighborhood.

 

The research side of the partnership is being funded by the Department of Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority, while Schaad is footing the bill for construction of the houses, ultimately to be sold in the private market. BarberMcMurry is supporting the staff time involved in creating new home designs that put energy efficiency at a premium.

 

The project also involves a couple dozen building equipment, appliance and material manufacturers, eager to test their products in a controlled environment that will ultimately be equipped with 400-some sensors for purposes of evaluating the various design, construction techniques and technologies featured in the houses.

 

“Those who fully appreciate what we’ve done are clamoring to be part of this,” Christian said.

 

During a recent tour of the construction site, Christian explained the first house features structural insulated panels, or SIPS, which are essentially pre-built walls, insulation included, that make it easier to create an airtight space essential to achieving the energy savings the team is hoping for. The second house uses a more common construction technique known as optimum value framing, which reduces the amount of wood and boosts the amount of insulation.

 

The fourth and fifth homes will feature conditioned crawl spaces rather than full basements. Conditioning the spaces, Christian explained, helps stem the heat and air loss found in systems installed in typical crawl spaces exposed to the elements.

 

“That’s another part of our understanding in what works best,” said Kelly Headden, senior vice president for BarberMcMurry.

 

Following construction, the homes will be monitored and evaluated for 30 months before being sold. An asking price for the homes has not yet been determined and will depend on the market value, according to Townes Lavidge Osborn, spokeswoman for Schaad Companies.

 

She said the cost of these first homes is higher than traditional construction because the technologies are new and builders are still in the learning process.

 

As important as the outside walls that shape the homes is an inside wall that serves essentially as the nerve center of the house. Called the utility wall, it contains all of the homes’ plumbing and heating and air ductwork, along with a separate fresh air ventilation system, and proves key to the homes’ energy savings.

 

“We spent a fairly intensive week to start our project,” working with ORNL researchers, said Headden. “(The design) really centers around trying to keep everything as compact as possible around the central wall … and having your runs for ducts, your runs for hot water pipes … be as short as possible. Then beyond that we were just trying to have a nice home that flowed well, that had the types of things you looked for in a home you would buy.”

 

The benefit of the utility wall is two-fold, Christian said. First, he said, homes typically waste 20 gallons per day simply waiting for hot water to arrive through the pipes — that’s out of a total of 64 gallons per household per day.

 

Achieving the desired energy savings requires an unusual attention to detail, both in the initial design of the home and in its construction. Christian himself took a two-day vacation and hired on with the construction crew, for $80 a day, to demonstrate and assist in making sure the structure was airtight.

 

Not all contractors are willing to master the learning curve required to build energy-efficient homes of the future, Christian said. But he and Patrick Hughes, who heads up ORNL’s buildings technology program, credit Schaad and CEO Jenny Banner with a willingness to learn whole new building technologies and construction techniques.

 

A lull in the housing market provides opportunity for those in the business to focus on what’s next, Headden said.

 

“It is a good time … to learn new technologies,” he said. “We’ve learned a great deal. The technology, just the level of thought (researchers) put into detail is very different than you’re typical residential project, and I think it will show in the end. We’re all sort of waiting to see the results of the testing when it comes back in the couple of years.

 

“Our hope is not to develop a niche but to be able to apply this across the board in the rest of our (projects),” Headden said.

 

Schaad is already applying knowledge gained through the public/private partnership, Osborn said.

 

“What the construction people have learned, they are already incorporating into the homes they are building,” she said.

 

Being able to demonstrate that the technologies can work in the real world will help ensure they actually are, Christian said.

 

“In the end it’s going to be this incredible performance, and somebody’s going to say, ‘Whoa, that’s how I want to build a house,’ ” he said.

The amount of radioactive waste and spent fuel rods will continue to grow and be stored at TVA’s three nuclear plants now that plans for a permanent storage site in Nevada have been shelved.

 

TVA already stores almost 3,000 metric tons of nuclear waste at the Sequoyah plant in Soddy-Daisy; Watts Bar near Spring City, Tenn.; and Browns Ferry in Athens, Ala., according to utility officials.

 

TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said on-site storage used at nuclear plants is a “proven, safe and secure solution for the foreseeable future.” However, securing a permanent storage solution is “key” for the future.

 

Both nuclear opponents and advocates say the growing debate about nuclear waste storage also will widen to include questions about the proposed nuclear expansions at TVA and other utilities.

 

TVA is expanding its Watts Bar plant and considering whether to finish the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Hollywood, Ala., about 55 miles southwest of Chattanooga.

 

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said creating nuclear waste, let alone storing it locally, isn’t safe.

 

“It’s irresponsible to be producing it when there is no safe storage solution for it, and the nuclear industry has passed the buck over and over, and then blamed the government. Meanwhile, the toxic, radioactive waste just keeps piling up.”

 

Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States, and TVA’s nuclear plants provide up to about 30 percent of electricity used in Tennessee Valley.

 

The Obama administration’s decision to scrap plans to develop a storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, reopens the question of where a regional, interim storage site, or even a spent fuel reprocessing facility, might be located.

 

And one answer could be Oak Ridge in East Tennessee, where scientists in the town that built the atom bomb went on record in 2006 to say they wanted to be the first to recycle spent fuel in the United States.

 

Oak Ridge National Laboratories spokesman Mike Bradley said pilot research there has succeeded in producing “pellet-sized quantities of reprocessed fuel.”

 

“The goal is to scale the process to the point where metric tons of spent fuel could be recycled instead of stored indefinitely,” he said in a statement from ORNL nuclear programs management.

 

Should the goals be realized, “the discussion about a permanent nuclear repository and the expansion of America’s nuclear capacity would be changed in a profound way,” according to the statement. “In the meantime, the existing inventory of spent fuel housed at various nuclear reactors such as those at TVA could be gradually reduced instead of expanded.”

 

In 2006, the Department of Energy announced that Oak Ridge was one of 11 sites chosen to receive up to $16 million in grants for “detailed siting studies” of reprocessing plants and, at the least, interim storage facilities.

 

Representatives of a Oak Ridge development organization that finds uses for former Oak Ridge Laboratory land said the city is ideal for such a new nuclear technology.

 

“We invented it, and we have the world’s first nuclear reactor here,” said Joe Lenhard at the time. Mr. Lenhard is a former Oak Ridge National Laboratory manager and founding chairman of the community organization.

 

Since then, the Bush administration plan that paid for the studies, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, has moved away from specifying locations for the technologies it advances to double nuclear energy use and reprocess nuclear waste. Nuclear trade groups have said they doubt President Obama will continue to support the GNEP plan, but the energy issues will continue to be debated.

 

“Nobody wants this stuff. And rightly so,” said Mr. Smith with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “Trying to create another nuclear fuel out of this spent fuel turned out to be phenomenally expensive and produced even more waste that is a nuclear proliferation risk.”

A company that processes radioactive debris is buying an abandoned, high-tech building for treating low-level waste and for classified research.

 

IMPACT Services Inc. is acquiring the Theragenics Corp. building in the Horizon Center Business Park, said Sammy Jones, IMPACT chief operating officer.

 

IMPACT Services plans to operate a "white-glove" waste processing facility in the back of the 67,000-square-foot plant.

 

A research center for companies working on the next generation of reactors as part of the nuclear power renaissance also is planned there, Jones said.

 

Companies and government agencies are "aggressively asking" to use the classified facilities in the building, he said.

 

IMPACT Services is making a $10 million investment in its growing Oak Ridge operations and the Theragenics Building, Jones said.

 

That includes a $3 million expansion of its current facility at the K-25 site, a former uranium enrichment complex renamed East Tennessee Technology Park.

 

IMPACT Services is boosting employment there from 25 workers to 60 employees within the next three months, Jones said.

 

The company intends to hire at least 150 employees over the next two years for its operations in the former Theragenics Building. Those workers would have average annual salaries of more than $60,000, he said.

 

Also planned is a 140,000-square-foot expansion of the building - which the company has renamed the Secure Support Facility - that would require an additional investment of at least $10 million.

 

The company started looking at the Theragenics Building last year and is purchasing it from HJN Properties LLC.

 

The HJN development company, headed by former East Tennessee auto dealership magnate Herb Newton, bought the building and 21 acres last summer and began marketing it.

 

Theragenics, a Georgia corporation, built the state-of-the-art building in 2000.

 

It was planned as a facility for irradiating tiny seeds that are surgically implanted for battling prostate cancer.

 

Theragenic's corporate strategy shifted, however, and the building never went into production. The company shuttered the plant in 2005.

 

Jones said IMPACT Services and its partner firm, Omega Consultants Inc., eyed the building because of its unique properties.

 

Located in a corner of Horizon Center, the Theragenics property includes 18 fenced-in acres far from homes.

 

It's ideal for classified operations where only those with the highest security clearances are allowed, Jones said.

 

"I don't know if there's another facility like this in the eastern United States," he said. "What this can do for Oak Ridge is phenomenal."

 

Only small shipments of low-level radioactive items will be processed there for shipment to storage sites, he said.

 

Members of the Oak Ridge Board of Zoning Appeals last month approved granting a special exception for the company's planned operation.

 

Jones said the company would be seeking a property tax break available under Oak Ridge's tax incentive program.

 

"We'd be foolish not to," he said.

The Tennessee Valley Authority will use an independent university research group to guide health monitoring of residents and verify cleanup of contaminated areas from a massive coal ash spill, the agency's top executive said on March 31.

"TVA is developing a plan to respond to individual health concerns, including a process for determining whether there are health effects that may be related to ash released," TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore told a U.S. House Transportation subcommittee in Washington.

Since 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled 100 days ago from a breached storage area at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant -- about 40 miles west of Knoxville -- residents have been wrestling with conflicting health data and warnings from government agencies and activist groups.

"We need more information and increased communications," resident Sarah McCoin, a member of the Tennessee Coal Ash Survivors Network, told the subcommittee. "Many families fear they are poisoning their children by remaining in their homes and they do not have the resources to pay for testing those children. They need help, they need answers."

Knoxville-based TVA, the nation's largest public utility, is working out a contract with Tennessee-based Oak Ridge Associated Universities to develop health testing protocols for physicians and possibly arrange clinics.

ORAU vice president Donna Cragle, the consortium's director of occupational exposure and worker health, couldn't say when the testing might begin. "There are a lot of things we have to do in order to put the program together and do it well," she said. "We are working as fast as we can to make it happen."

ORAU, an education and research consortium of 100 universities including Georgia Tech, Duke, Tennessee, Tulane, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt, has provided similar screenings of Cold War nuclear workers for the Department of Energy. Those screenings led to millions of dollars in payouts for workers suffering respiratory problems from beryllium exposure.

"It is not unlike the beryllium situation, where it was difficult for them to find answers about particular health effects they might have," Cragle said. "Anytime someone has an exposure or perceives that they have had an exposure it is very stressful. And if you can't find somebody who has the medical experience to help you with that, it becomes even more stressful."

Anda Ray, TVA's top environmental officer, said ORAU will call in toxicologists to design a series of medical tests focusing on health problems that could result from toxins in coal ash.

Those include metals such as selenium, which can damage the nervous system, and arsenic, which has been linked to numerous health problems, including cancer.

ORAU will provide the protocol to local doctors and the public, then look for health trends.

"TVA will not have access to any personal information, no medical records," Ray said.

The Oak Ridge group also will review results of air, water and soil monitoring from government agencies and outside groups to independently verify accuracy and determine whether the cleanup has been thorough enough.

TVA, which expects to spend as much as $825 million on the cleanup, intends to finance related research, including beneficial uses for fly ash, through grants of up to $300,000 over three years, ORAU spokeswoman Pam Bonee said.

"We understand this is a difficult time for residents of the Kingston community, and we are working to make things right," Kilgore told the subcommittee.

Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., whose district includes the Kingston plant, said he was pleased to learn that TVA has so far purchased land and homes in the spill area appraised at nearly $20 million. But he warned "if TVA cannot fulfill their duty to make my constituents whole" he would push for EPA oversight and appointment of a cleanup czar to "hold TVA accountable.”

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are looking at how developing nerve cells may hold a key to predicting and preventing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

 

St. Jude scientists have linked movement and changes of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brains and retinas of young mice to certain diseases. Now, for the first time, they can use ORNL-developed software to analyze these vast amounts of data in record time.

 

"St. Jude has identified neuron shape abnormalities and neuron migration issues that are linked to specific diseases," said Shaun Gleason of ORNL's Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division. "However, because they have so much data, they can't study it in great detail."

 

Gleason said ORNL is working with Michael Dyer of St. Jude's Department of Developmental Neurobiology to develop computer software that will automate the process of tracking changes in the shape and position of neurons over time.

 

One of Gleason's group members, Ryan Kerekes, already has written software to track the movement of neurons by homing in on each cell's centrosome—a key cellular structure. This will enable the software to scour a sequence of video images at high speed, looking for specific patterns of migration, Gleason said.

 

"For example, a member of the St. Jude staff took several weeks to analyze the image data generated by three experiments using a largely manual approach," Gleason said. "Our algorithm can analyze the same data set in approximately two minutes with almost identical results.

 

"When St. Jude researchers analyze their images, they look for several specific changes, but there may be much more relevant information in those images that they don't have the ability to look for. Our software is designed to help them find this information in a more efficient and objective manner, so they can understand more of what's going on earlier in the developmental process."

 

The next stage in software development will be focused on automatically detecting when and how neurons branch or grow. Branching patterns and branch orientations can be critical to distinguishing between normally developing neurons and those with the potential to cause disease, Gleason said.

 

"The ultimate goal of this research is to develop computational tools that recognize how neurons change and move in ways that are unexpected or abnormal, so that neuroscientists at St. Jude and elsewhere can develop ways of addressing these changes to treat and ultimately to prevent neurological diseases," Gleason said. "This research team, being composed of image and computational analysis experts at ORNL and experienced neuroscientists at St Jude, is in a great position to solve some challenging problems in a unique way."

 

The work is funded by the Seed Money Fund of ORNL's Laboratory Directed Research and Development program and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

 

ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.

A high-tech power cable designed to prevent rolling blackouts caused by everything from a wayward squirrel to terrorists is being readied for New York City's financial district.

 

Now undergoing final tests at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the superconductor cable to be installed in Manhattan next year could prove key to the smart, secure, super grid of the future.

 

Scientists fired 60,000 amps through a cable during a critical test on March 24 - an electrical jolt comparable to turning on the air conditioning in 2,000 homes at the same time. It was enough juice to lift a 1,000-pound bundle of conventional cable two feet off the ground.

 

But nothing seemed to happen. No sparks, no sound, no movement.

 

A roomful of invited government and corporate observers waited for an explanation.

 

"Bottom line is, it worked," said Patrick Murphy, project manager for the Department of Homeland Security. The guests broke into applause.

 

"It was spectacularly unspectacular, which was exactly what we wanted," said Brad Buswell, Homeland Security's acting undersecretary for science and technology.

 

Chilled by liquid nitrogen to minus-321 degrees Fahrenheit, this cable becomes super-efficient when cool, carrying up to 10 times more electricity than a copper cable of the same diameter. It also has a unique, built-in, surge-suppressing capability.

 

"Nothing is attack proof," Murphy said. But this cable could be a cornerstone of what he calls "resilient reinforcing microgrids."

 

Power distribution now follows a hub-and-spoke design. That means the failure of a single power station can put a cluster of neighborhoods in the dark. This latest superconductor cable promises to link power stations so they can operate "more like an Internet" and back each other up.

 

Homeland Security calls the Oak Ridge-Manhattan experiment "Project Hydra," recalling the many-headed beast of Greek mythology that grew two heads for every one cut off.

 

The $39 million project will lay superconductor cable linking two large Consolidated Edison Corp. substations about 1,000 feet apart serving thousands of people on Manhattan's west side.

 

For security reasons, the stations have not been publicly identified.

 

The Oak Ridge lab, a Department of Energy facility, has been conducting basic research on superconducting wire for two decades. Since 2000, American Superconductor Corp. of Devens, Mass., has been working to refine and commercialize that research under a licensing partnership.

 

Less than a year ago, Oak Ridge scientists were still testing the new cables in an open bath of foggy liquid nitrogen. They are now testing the final prototype, which has layers of superconductive wire ribbon wrapped around a liquid nitrogen core.

 

"When you get it cold below superconducting transition temperature, it can carry an enormous amount of current," explained Chris Rey, who is overseeing the Oak Ridge tests.

 

In normal operation, the superconductor wire has little or no loss of electrical current known as resistance. But when a power spike occurs that could lead to a blackout, the cable comes out of its superconductor state and acts "exactly like a surge protector," he said. The extra electricity dissipates as heat.

 

American Superconductor CEO Greg Yurek said there have been 15-20 superconductor cable projects of various kinds built around the world since 1997. Project Hydra will be the first with "fault limiter" capability to suppress surges - a kind of firewall for the grid.

 

"Our sense is we are kind of at the tipping point now, once we are in Manhattan," Yurek said. "The eyes of the utility world are actually viewing this with great interest."

 

Terrorists are not the only threat to the power grid. So is the growing consumer demand for electric gadgets from plasma TVs to plug-in electric vehicles.

 

The cascading 2003 blackout that affected millions from the Midwest to the Northeast began with a single sagging power line in Ohio. The cost for repairs and losses to commerce: $6 billion to $10 billion, according to Homeland Security.

 

"So we see that as a pretty important mission - to keep the lights on," Murphy said.

 

Superconductor electrical cables are not for everyone and everywhere. They cost about twice as much as copper cable and require special expertise to maintain the nitrogen coolant.

 

In urban settings like Manhattan, however, where utility pipes, cables and water lines are as crowded underground as the vehicles on the streets above them, the advantages may balance out.

 

"Space and real estate in New York are very hard to come by, and anyone who has seen an underground dig in Manhattan, particularly, knows the very, very congested situation you have underground," Consolidated Edison spokesman Mike Clendenin said.

 

"The superconductors offer the promise that they can take much more electricity through a much smaller cable," he said. "If it works, it truly is what fiber optics did for telecommunications."

 

Buswell said that while the financial district of New York was an obvious spot for an initial installation of resilient superconductors, he's sure "there are dozens of other places around the country that would be interested in being hardened for energy continuity," such as emergency command centers.

 

"We have to get a success first," he said after the Oak Ridge test. "And I think this was a big milestone towards that success."

A specialized engineering technology team from Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) provided critical support on an advanced diagnostics program and a recent successful F119 engine test at Pratt and Whitney’s West Palm Beach engine test facility.

 

Dr. Jeffery Lovett, the lead for Pratt & Whitney’s (P&W) Exhaust System Technology group expressed his appreciation for the “excellent support provided by AEDC and Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) on our advanced augmentor diagnostics probe program over the past couple of years, which culminated in a very successful engine test.”

 

The comments were included in a letter of appreciation to the 717th Test Squadron Technical Director Dr. Charles Vining. Dr. Lovett also credited ATA engineers Gregg Beitel and David Plemmons for their role in working with the company’s team in developing and fabricating the traversing rake probe system. He also recognized ATA Combustion Engineer Kent Wilcher for his role in developing and executing the engine tests.

 

Don Gardner, ATA’s lead engineer on the team, said it’s important to understand why diagnostic probes are needed in ongoing augmentor work.

 

An augmentor, also known as an afterburner, is a component added to some supersonic military aircraft engines to provide a temporary increase in thrust, both for supersonic flight and for takeoff.

 

“There are rules and tools for doing augmentor light off, development and design work that were developed back in the 1950s and 1960s,” he said. “Things have changed so much in terms of turbine engine exit conditions with the spacing, the augmentors themselves and the

operating temperatures. Those things have changed so much that those rules don’t apply very well any more.

 

“The new high performance engines are driving this to a point where there is much less oxygen available, the speeds are faster, which results in light-off problems and a lot of engine instability issues.”

 

Beitel said the challenges to augmentor design and operation are more complicated than some engineers realize.

 

“Even the exhaust of these turbine engines drive how that augmentor operates because you’ve got this turbulent, moderate temperature flow stream coming out of the engine core,” he explained. “Now all of a sudden you want to stick this pipe on it and dump fuel in it to get short periods of augmented-plus power for high performance.

 

Those working on these engines during the development process don’t necessarily know what the exit conditions are from the turbine core to be able to adequately design the augmentor.  And then when it’s fielded they find these combustion instabilities due to turbulence and the way the fuel flow system works, creating headaches with combustion stability problems and screech and rumble issues.”

 

Beitel continued, “In an attempt to try to solve some of these issues they have with augmentors, it makes sense that the more measurements you have on these components during its operating envelope the better. More measurements will help them to try to solve some of those issues, particularly with combustion instability and light off.

 

“Those are two huge problems that they would like to resolve. A lot of that occurs inside the augmentor around the flame holder which is actually just downstream of the turbine exit – sometimes, eight feet away from the nozzle exit, and it’s up inside the engine. So, you have to actually get measurements down inside the engine. So, as a result, the traversing strut concept was first proposed by P&W and AFRL.”

 

This proposal provided AEDC with a window of opportunity.

 

“The requirement to make measurements up inside the engine gave us a unique opportunity to work with the engine manufacturer to develop hardware, diagnostics systems that actually work configured to go inside the engine,” Gardner said. “So, the engine manufacturer knew what this hardware was going to look like and could work with their designers to modify the engine casing and the liner (internal).”

 

The traversing rake probe designed by the AEDC/P&W team was inserted inside the engine, something aircraft companies are often reluctant to do.

 

“To me this collaborative effort was really amazing,” said Kent Wilcher. “We were able to make measurements directly in the flow field environment. The probe extracts gas samples to measure products of combustion and fuel and with that data we try to calculate fuel-to-air ratios. This allowed us to make these measurements and improve the rules and tools for augmentor development in the future and allow P&W to set engine schedules and things based on real data instead of some rig data plus some models.”

Leaders of one of the largest and one of the smallest commands moving to Redstone Arsenal said on April 27 that the number of federal workers who plan to follow their jobs range between 40 percent and 70 percent.

 

Lt. Gen. Jim Pillsbury, deputy commander for the Army Materiel Command, told about 150 chamber members from across the Tennessee Valley that 220 employees with his command have come to Redstone. He expects 400 total to be here by next summer.

 

All 1,200 positions will be in Huntsville by late 2011, and at least 40 percent, "and maybe 50 percent," of the Washington-area work force will move with AMC.

 

"Lots of folks who had been on the fence are moving," said Pillsbury, whose last station was at Redstone and who plans to move back to Huntsville with his wife, Becky, when he retires. "And lots aren't."

 

The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce hosts a trip to Washington every spring, and the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber is a co-sponsor.

 

The group also heard from Richard Alpaugh, deputy to the commanding general of the Army Security Assistance Command. USASAC oversees contracts for selling weapons to America's allies, as well as providing training for those security systems.

 

Alpaugh said he's been with the USASAC for 32 years, "but I'm far from being senior" in tenure at the command now at Fort Belvoir, Va. Even though the majority of the command's workers have lived in Virginia for a long time, most plan to come to Redstone.

 

"We (initially) thought 30 to 40 percent would transfer... (but now it looks as if) up to 70 percent will make the move," he said.

 

Alpaugh credited the Tennessee Valley's hospitality, as well as good living conditions, for persuading the federal workers to move.

 

Alpaugh said the command employs 120 to 150 people, 32 of whom have already moved to the Tennessee Valley. Thirteen additional people have been hired, and another 20 are expected to follow their jobs to Redstone by next summer. Because he'll be retiring soon, Alpaugh - who has visited more than 50 countries with his job - said he won't be moving.

 

He explained that USASAC is one part of the Department of Defense that actually makes money. The command has $100 billion in contracts with foreign countries to provide them with what they need to protect themselves from potential foes.

 

He said USASAC sells everything from ceremonial rifles to the Kingdom of Tonga to the Patriot missile system in the United Arab Emirates.

 

Crown princes and other foreign dignitaries will visit Redstone to negotiate their weapons contracts, and Alpaugh recommended that local residents serve as goodwill ambassadors for their country.

 

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle asked if commercial flight capability would affect USASAC's ability to do its job. Alpaugh said it would help if Huntsville International Airport had international connections - or even more frequent direct connections to Washington - because federal workers now receive travel comp hours.

 

The longer it takes them to reach their overseas destinations, he noted, the less time they're able to do their jobs.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen hopes that by honoring those responsible for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennesseans and North Carolinians will focus harder on preservation efforts in the future.

 

Bredesen spoke on April 24 at a gathering of leaders from both states atop Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the country's most visited national park. It was the first official event of dozens this year celebrating the 75th anniversary of the national park.

 

"The opportunities to preserve these things for the future diminish year by year, and so as we honor those who had the foresight 75 years ago, I ask the people here to rededicate themselves once again to preserving things for future generations," Bredesen said.

 

Park officials held the event to recognize the work of area residents, community leaders and state officials in establishing and maintaining the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 

Among the nearly 200 gathered were state legislators, descendants of the landowners displaced when the park was created and representatives of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

 

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue has said she would not attend because of travel costs but would send a representative. She and Bredesen issued official proclamations for the occasion.

 

North Carolina Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Dee Freeman, who was representing Perdue, noted the clear "Carolina blue" sky and scenic vistas from the top of Clingmans Dome.

 

"Looking ahead to the next 75 years, let us commit to making sure that when that time passes and the assembly is here again that they're seeing the same unspoiled beauty that we're enjoying," Freeman said.

 

The 75th anniversary celebration will include a groundbreaking of a new Oconaluftee visitors center in North Carolina on June 15 and a park rededication on Sept. 2.

 

Park officials are hoping President Barack Obama will become the first sitting president to visit the park since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who originally dedicated it.

 

Bredesen said he sent Obama a formal invitation to attend and included a photo of Roosevelt's appearance.

 

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park encompasses 520,000 acres and is visited by more than 9 million people each year. The park and Clingmans Dome straddle the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

 

Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson noted that the park was promoted 75 years ago as a "tourist mecca for the newly developed automobile industry."

 

"Here was a place to drive and view the scenic beauty of the mountains," he said.

 

"That vision of the mountains of the Smokies as a major tourist destination has worked out OK — beyond the optimistic expectations of the '20s and '30s."

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in the Budget Committee hearing on the Senate version of the president’s budget offered a clean-energy amendment that he said "would put America on a path toward energy independence without adding to the deficit or raising taxes."

Sen. Alexander made the following remarks as he offered the amendment:

“The President’s budget would impose on the American people a $640 billion energy tax — a national sales tax, in effect, on electricity and gasoline prices in the middle of a recession.”

“My amendment would show that we can have an aggressive clean-energy policy without new taxes and higher prices in the middle of a recession. It creates a deficit-neutral reserve fund to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil by increasing clean-energy development, expanding domestic production, and enhancing energy conservation and efficiency.”

“Majority Leader Reid said today he was willing to consider putting into reconciliation the $646 billion national sales tax on energy proposed by the president’s budget. It’s not in Chairman Conrad’s budget, and I appreciate that. Senator Byrd, who authored the reconciliation process, has said to do such a thing would be an ‘outrage.’”

Alexander’s amendment would encourage Congress to enact legislation to:
· Construct at least 100 new nuclear plants by 2030.
· Electrify at least half our cars and trucks within the next 20 years.
· Capture carbon dioxide from existing coal plants.
· Provide for energy research to make solar power cost-competitive with power from fossil fuels, and to assure the safe processing and storage of nuclear waste.
· Push for conservation and efficient use of energy.
· Allow for the development of natural gas and oil resources on the Outer Continental Shelf.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander renewed his call on April 21 for Congress to place tough new restrictions on dirty air from coal-fired power plants and urged his fellow lawmakers not to wait until they figure out what to do about carbon dioxide emissions.

 

The Maryville Republican said he and U.S. Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., plan to file legislation that would impose stiffer controls on sulfur, nitrogen and mercury emissions from coal plant smokestacks.

 

"We have technology to make the air cleaner, and we should be using it," he said.

 

It's not the first time Alexander has called for tougher pollution controls. He has pushed similar legislation since 2004, but the bill has never gotten any traction in Congress.

 

Several factors could improve the chances that Alexander's bill or some other pollution-control legislation will win approval this year.

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last week that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollutants are a public health risk, a stark reversal of the position taken by the Bush administration and one that could help spur congressional action.

 

President Barack Obama has expressed support for climate change legislation and said the United States needs to be a leader on the issue.

 

Congress also appears ready to tackle climate change. A U.S. House committee opened a series of hearings Tuesday on a draft bill that calls for cutting carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020.

 

Alexander said he and Carper will host a roundtable Thursday in the U.S. Capitol on their legislation to establish stiff standards for sulfur, nitrogen and mercury.

 

"There is no need to delay dealing with sulfur, nitrogen and mercury while we figure out what to do about carbon," he said.

 

Air pollution from coal-fired power plants can cause asthma and respiratory disease in humans and damage the nation's natural resources, such as Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 

In the past, Alexander's legislation also has included restrictions on carbon emissions. However, the new version that he intends to file with Carper would not cover carbon. An aide said Alexander plans to file a separate bill to deal with carbon emissions.

 

Meanwhile, the Tennessee Valley Authority should go ahead and put sulfur, nitrogen and mercury controls on all of the large coal plants it intends to keep open, Alexander said.

 

"But TVA actions alone will not be enough to give us clean air in the Great Smoky Mountains and East Tennessee," he said. "We need strong national standards like those in our legislation because much of our dirty air blows in from coal power plants in other states."

 

Alexander also used an Earth Day speech on the Senate floor to call for passage of legislation that he has sponsored to ban the practice of "mountaintop removal" coal mining.

 

"Coal is essential to our energy future," he said, "but we'll create many more jobs by saving our mountaintops to attract tourists than we will by blowing them up to find coal."

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., urged the Tennessee Valley Authority on Tuesday to nearly double its nuclear power generation by finishing or building a total of four reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site here.

 

“This is a fabulous technological engineering facility,” Sen. Sessions said after touring the half-finished Bellefonte plant. “I am more motivated than ever to see this facility operate and am more confident than ever that it will.”

 

The Alabama Republican, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said TVA will need what he said will be “clean and safe” power from more nuclear reactors here. Sen. Sessions urged TVA to finish the original two reactors it began building in 1974 and add the next generation of reactors on the same site.

 

“There is just no doubt that this will save money for the people in this region,” he said.

But anti-nuclear activists question such savings.

 

 “TVA began gutting part of the original Bellefonte plant, and the new reactors are still an unproven technology that seems to get more expensive the more it is developed,” said Sara Barczak, energy director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

 

Sen. Sessions conceded “it is still an unknown” how much, if any, the Obama administration will push for nuclear power.

 

The president will appoint members to both the TVA board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this year, and those panels could shape how much investment in nuclear power is made in the Tennessee Valley. The Obama administration has balked at rapid deployment of nuclear reprocessing facilities and raised more questions about licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage plant.

 

“Those two decisions were not good,” Sen. Sessions said. “There is a great deal of fear among those who may invest five or six billion dollars in a new nuclear plant that they don’t get caught in a regulatory nightmare.”

 

NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said federal regulators have tried to be more responsive in the past decade to those the NRC regulates. She said she was impressed by TVA’s “very deliberate manner in which they are looking at every component” of those plants it is reviving and finishing. TVA now operates six reactors and plans to finish another reactor in Tennessee by 2012.

 

TVA suspended construction at the original twin-reactor complex here in 1988 when the growth in power demand slowed and plant building costs soared. In 2006, TVA ultimately scrapped plans to ever finish the original reactors in favor of building a new simpler and less costly reactor design from Westinghouse Corp. known as the AP-1000.

Congressman Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., was the keynote speaker at a recent East Tennessee Economic Council breakfast.

Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and president and CEO of UT-Battelle, and member of ETEC, introduced Davis, stating that Davis represents the 4th congressional district which includes Roane County. ETEC is a network of companies that promotes Oak Ridge-based government-sponsored science, technology and national security programs.

Davis has served in the Congress since 2003 and is a member of the House Appropriations Committee/Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

Davis started his talk joking about Pi Day stating that "Anyone who is a champion for Pi Day is a champion for Oak Ridge."

National Pi Day was resolved by the 111th Congress on March 12, designating the day as March 14, the day in which the month and day of the calendar is 3/14, the first three digits to the mathematical formula for pi (3.14).

The bill has been the brunt of jokes in several Tennessee newspapers but basically the bill was designed to recognize the importance of National Science Foundation's math and science education programs, and encourage schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.

Davis also made a joke about the bill but then talked about the national budget deficit.

"We are trying to soften that blow in uncertain times," Davis said.

"Our democracy is a nation of laws. What's in store for Oak Ridge in Washington will always be on the table for Oak Ridge."

Davis told ETEC that he tries not to play politics in Washington when making tough decisions.

"I look at things from the American standpoint, not the left or right," he said. "I'd like to see more American Democrats in Washington and more American Republicans in Washington."

The congressman addressed the three current issues being talked about in Washington and the U.S., the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the auto bailout and the stimulus package.

Davis said he voted no five times against the TARP, or "big bank bailout if you voted for it."

He said he did not trust Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's judgment and that the TARP "didn't have the right strings attached."

Davis also said the bonuses paid out of the TARP were wrong and that he looked at the auto bailout differently.

"It wasn't about the big three, it was about the 147 factories in my district," he said. "I feel like if you establish a debt you should pay for it."

The congressman said he wants three things from government: non-intrusion, non-oppressive and don't waste money.

"I'll use the same process to make decisions," he said. "I will justify to you the way I voted."

He also talked briefly about the Blue Dog Democratic Coalition, which among other things, promotes fiscal conservatism and accountability.

"My office is getting hundreds of calls to support Obama's plan but if you ask what the plan is, they don't know," he said. "It's not about Obama, it's about America."

He also talked briefly about health care, and global warming and energy.

"I believe what you do here (Oak Ridge) is important and want you to keep me informed," Davis said.

Oak Ridge got nine digits of good news on April 3 when the Department of Energy announced $755 million in stimulus funding would be used for cleanup projects in the Atomic City.

 

Some information on the work isn't yet available, including details of the estimated 1,500 jobs to be created and how to apply for them. But DOE has laid out general plans for distributing the funds among four Oak Ridge sites. The federal agency also identified a long list of projects to be accomplished over the next 2 1/2 years.

 

Of the Oak Ridge allotment, $239 million will be spent at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; $292 million at the Y-12 National Security Complex; $144 million at the East Tennessee Technology Park; and about $80 million at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center.

 

Many of the projects have been proposed for years but didn't have the money or the urgency provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Congress passed in February to stimulate the nation's sagging economy and create jobs.

 

"If it wasn't for this (stimulus) money, we'd probably be delayed two or three more years getting started," Gerald Boyd, DOE's Oak Ridge manager, said.

 

In order to qualify for the stimulus money, DOE's Oak Ridge team had to submit plans for work that could be started by June 17 and completed by Sept. 30, 2011.

 

Here are some of the projects:

·         A 7-acre scrap yard, with piles of radioactive metals and other junk, will be cleaned up and made available for other uses at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.

 

·         A notorious area known as Corehole No. 8, where the soil is hotly contaminated from leakage of an underground tank and nuclear pipelines, will be excavated at ORNL. Workers also will remove the underground tank and dispose of the radioactive materials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

 

·         Sixteen monitoring wells will be drilled and installed on private properties located across the Clinch River from ORNL's nuclear burial grounds. The wells will be used to determine whether radioactive and hazardous waste is migrating underneath the river via cracks and breaks in the underground rock formations.

 

·         DOE's Oak Ridge landfill for wastes generated by Superfund cleanup projects will be expanded from its current capacity of 1.2 million cubic yards to 1.65 million cubic yards - the maximum permitted under current agreements with environmental regulators. The accelerated cleanup activities are making the landfill expansion a priority.

 

·         Contractors will tackle the mercury pollution in Y-12's old storm sewers, where spills of the toxic metal gathered decades ago during the plant's work on thermonuclear bombs. The storm lines have collapsed in some areas and are cracked in multiple locations, allowing the mercury to leak into the environment. "I can tell you there is visible mercury inside some of these storm systems," Y-12's John Krueger said.

 

·         Miles and miles of pipelines and equipment, once used to process uranium hexafluoride in a gaseous form, will be removed from the historic K-27 building - a sister facility to the original K-25 plant - to prepare the 374,000-square-foot building for demolition.

 

·         Several of the oldest buildings in ORNL's 100-acre central campus, which was constructed during the World War II Manhattan Project, will be demolished and removed. A top priority is Building 3026, where heavily shielded "hot cells" were used to remotely process highly radioactive materials. The work is considered urgent because no fire-suppression system exists, and a fire in that area could rapidly spread radioactivity across the lab and contaminate some of the modern research operations.

 

The demolition of old buildings is complicated by the fact that some are adjacent to facilities where lab operations are still under way.

 

"That is going to no doubt represent some significant safety-documentation issues," projects director Dirk Van Hoesen said. "Basically, things are going to be busy at ORNL for the next couple of years."

The Energy Department will spend $6 billion as part of President Barack Obama's stimulus package to clean up nuclear weapons sites at Cold War-era facilities, with more than half the money going to sites in Washington and South Carolina, a senior official told Congress on April 22.

In Tennessee, $755 million is slated for projects in Oak Ridge to demolish and dispose of uranium-enrichment plant buildings, buildings from the era of the Manhattan Project and highly contaminated uranium processing buildings; and restore soil to protect area groundwater. It would also help increase waste management activities.

The money could create up to about 1,500 jobs and provide a big boost to local "shovel ready" projects in need of funding, according to Department of Energy officials in Oak Ridge.

The largest chunk of money in Oak Ridge -- $292 million -- will go to the Y-12 National Security Complex. About $144 million will go to East Tennessee Technology Park, formerly known as the K-25 site; $239 million will be spent at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and $80 million will be used at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center, where a work shift will be added to speed up work.

DOE has until 2011 -- or about two and a half years -- to spend the money.

The Oak Ridge projects include work under what is known as the Integrated Facilities Disposition Plan, primarily at Y-12 and ORNL. Officials have been working on that plan for about two years but haven't had much money available to implement it, DOE officials have said.

All the projects at the three Oak Ridge sites are important, the officials have said, but top priorities at ORNL and Y-12 are demolition and demolition preparation activities at Building 3026 and Alpha-5, which have problems ranging from hazardous materials to old age.

Out at ETTP, the stimulus money will allow DOE and its contractors to complete preparations for demolition of the 383,000-square-foot K-27 Gaseous Diffusion Building.

Throughout the nation, the government will focus on decontaminating and demolishing tainted facilities, removing radioactive waste and trying to restore soil and groundwater, Ines Triay, the department's acting assistant secretary for environmental management, told a Senate Armed Services panel.

More than $1.9 billion will be spent on cleanup at the Hanford site, a former plutonium production complex on the Columbia River in southeastern Washington. The site produced plutonium used in the first nuclear bomb. The government said there are more than 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste in 177 underground storage tanks there along with 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel and nine tons of plutonium.

In South Carolina, the government will spend more than $1.6 billion at Savannah River Site to shut down nuclear reactors and ship more than 4,500 cubic meters of waste out of the state.

Triay told the Senate panel that cleanup projects have been delayed to pay for more urgent programs. She said the total cost estimate for necessary cleanup is $14.3 billion.

Other states receiving parts of the $6 billion in nuclear cleanup money include:

• Idaho: $468 million for the Idaho National Laboratory to demolish excess nuclear and radiological facilities.

• New Mexico: $384 million for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a waste site in Carlsbad. The money will be used to demolish buildings and for waste shipment work.

• New York: $148 million for projects at facilities in Brookhaven, West Valley and Niskayuna.

• Ohio: $138 million for demolition and remediation work at Miamisburg and Portsmouth.

• Utah: $108 million for waste removal along Colorado River.

• Illinois: $99 million for work at Argonne National Laboratory.

• Kentucky: $79 million for work at a uranium facility in Paducah.

• California: $62 million for work at the National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University and the Energy Technology Engineering Center west of San Fernando Valley.

• Nevada: $44 million to install groundwater monitoring gear and demolish buildings at the Nevada Test Site.

If the space shuttle keeps flying and NASA stays on track with Marshall Space Flight Center-managed Ares rockets, the space agency will need a lot more cash for the next six years.

 

A Congressional Budget Office report released on April 17 shows that NASA will need at least $4 billion more a year - increasing its budget to $23 billion - to keep the space shuttle going until 2015, pursue its goal of 79 advanced science missions and stay on course with Ares.

 

"It's been pretty evident that choices are going to have to be made," said Mark McDaniel, a Huntsville lawyer and space expert.

 

"Either put more money in the NASA budget, which has to come from somewhere, or retire the space shuttle and try to figure out what we are going to do with the five years America won't have access to space. I don't think that taking a knife to the science programs is any kind of solution.

 

"What's NASA there for? It's there for science and research."

 

NASA aims to use the Ares I, part of the Constellation program, to loft six people to the International Space Station by 2015 and possibly four people to the moon by 2020. There have been efforts in Congress and indications from the White House, however, that the space shuttle might be extended for at least 18 months.

 

Last week U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, told The Times that the nation couldn't afford a space shuttle, space station and new rockets. "Something's probably going to have to give," he said.

 

U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, has said on many occasions that priorities need to be set and that he would not support programs that delayed Ares development.

 

The CBO report also shows that if NASA's budget remains at its current level, about $19 billion, the Ares I first launch to the space station will slip by about 18 months to late 2016; also, the goal of returning astronauts to the moon will be delayed by three years until 2023.

 

The budget could remain flat and allow the Constellation program to stay on track, but only if NASA were to slash its science programs from a planned 79 missions to 44, according to the CBO.

The proposed high-speed rail between Atlanta and Chattanooga is being left behind at the station in President Barack Obama’s new $13 billion initiative to promote faster trains.

 

The White House is targeting $8 billion in this year’s stimulus package and an additional $1 billion in annual budget requests for each of the next five years to 10 existing passenger rail corridors across the country.

 

But in its new “Vision for High-Speed Rail,” the U.S. Department of Transportation isn’t getting onboard yet with the decade-old plan for a bullet train to connect the Atlanta and Chattanooga airports.

 

“It’s unfortunate that the president’s approach seems to be just giving vitamins to Amtrak, which frankly is a system that has not been successful,” U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said on April 17. “I think if you really want a successful high-speed rail network, then you have to throw the ball deep, think like Dwight Eisenhower did with the interstate highway system in the 1950s and put more money in this and look for a bolder technology.”

 

U.S Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the $8 billion to be spent this year and next on high-speed rail should begin “to build a world-class network of high-speed passenger rail corridors.” The initial plan supports “shovel-ready” projects that can create jobs and upgrade intercity travel “over the next several years while also creating a pipeline of projects to enable future corridor development.”

 

The Chattanooga-Atlanta route eventually could be part of that pipeline. Local backers of a high-speed route along Interstate 75 in North Georgia are trying to convince Mr. LaHood to provide $15 million for additional study of the route and the feasibility of a magnetic levitation train that can travel more than 300 miles an hour, or more than twice as fast as the high-speed trains included in the stimulus package.

 

“We’re trying to get an audience with Secretary LaHood to make our case,” said Joe Ferguson, an executive with the Enterprise Center who is working on the proposed mag-lev train corridor through Chattanooga.

 

Tennessee and Georgia transportation officials are pushing a proposed high-speed rail route from Atlanta to Nashville through Chattanooga. Although not among the targeted corridors in the Obama stimulus plan, Mr. Ferguson said he still is encouraged by the president’s support for faster trains. The success of those ventures could spur more interest and funding in the future for a bullet train to Chattanooga, he said.

 

Local backers of a high-speed train, including Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield and state Senate Transportation Committee member Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, have been pushing for a mag-lev train to be built from Atlanta to Chattanooga’s Lovell Field to help relieve some of the growing pressure on Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, the world’s busiest airport last year.

 

The Federal Railroad Administration has estimated a mag-lev train from Atlanta to Chattanooga would cost about $4.5 billion. But Mr. Ferguson stressed “that is still cheaper than building another runway at the Atlanta airport.”

 

David Spear, a spokesman for Georgia Department of Transportation, said the stimulus plan identified two corridors through Atlanta for potential stimulus funding Amtrak’s Crescent City route that runs from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, and an East Coast route that runs from Charlotte, N.C., to Atlanta and continues through Macon and Savannah, Ga., before reaching Jacksonville, Fla.

 

By upgrading tracks and equipment, Mr. Obama said trains capable of going from 100 mph up to 150 mph may speed along such corridors. Such trains can move passengers for only one-third of the fuel consumption of comparable car traffic, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

 

“Unfortunately, that route (from Atlanta to Chattanooga) doesn’t qualify for the stimulus funds because it was not on a high-speed corridor,” Mr. Spear said. “But we would hope to get some of the funding from last year’s bill to begin an environmental assessment of the routes and technology we could use for the Atlanta-to-Chattanooga route.”

Col. Art Huber, Arnold Center commander since December of 2006, will be succeeded by Col. Michael T. Panarisi later this year. Date for the formal change of command has not been announced.

 

In his new assignment, Col. Huber will command the 312th Aeronautical Systems Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. This wing manages the Air Force’s fighter and bomber fleet.

 

Col. Panarisi, a holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross among other decorations, will come to Arnold Center from an assignment as commander of the 412th Operations Group at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

 

A native of Chicago, he graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1986 with a degree in engineering mechanics. His first overseas assignment was to RAF Lakenheath in England as an F-111F instructor and flight weapons systems officer.

 

He also served in Southwest Asia before attending Test Pilot School, graduating as a distinguished graduate and R. L. Jones Trophy winner. He later graduated from the Air Command and Staff College and was assigned to headquarters, U.S. Air Forces, Europe at Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany. He has also served a tour at U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

 

As a master navigator, Panarisi has accumulated more than 2,000 flight hours in 39 different aircraft types, including nearly 100 combat and combat support missions. His other decorations include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and the Air Medal.

 

He is married to the former Rebecca Sue Smith, of Oak Forest, Ill., and they have a son, Michael J.A. Panarisi.

Dieter K. Schliemann was an electrical engineer by profession, but it was his hobby as a ham radio operator and his volunteer work in this field that enabled children around the world to become interested in space and science, his friends said.

 

It was "through his efforts, tens of thousands of school students (received) a better understanding of what it is like to live and work on the International Space Station," said Frank H. Bauer in a recent statement after Schliemann's death on Feb. 9.

 

Bauer, who was then-chairman of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS), said Schliemann "was instrumental in leading and supporting many key activities" in the field of space and ham radio.

 

Schliemann's wife, Tina, said her husband was already very active in ham radio when they were married 21 years ago after emigrating to this country.

 

Tina Schliemann, a native of Holland, and her husband, who was born and raised in Germany, met in South Africa while he was working at a nuclear plant that was being built near Cape Town.

 

The political unrest caused by apartheid in South Africa during the 1980s led to several American companies like Stone & Webster, a Massachusetts-based engineering company her husband worked for, to leave the country, she said.

 

Tina Schliemann said her husband got another engineering job with the same company at the Commanche Peak Nuclear Plant near Fort Worth, Texas. After about a year there, she said, her husband proposed to her, and they were married in Houston.

 

About two years later, the couple moved here after Dieter Schliemann got a job at the nearby unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant. But he was not at the plant long when the Tennessee Valley Authority decided to halt its construction.

 

Instead of moving again, Tina Schliemann said her husband worked as an engineering consultant, traveling to several countries around the world including Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan and Saudia Arabia. She said she had accompanied him on several of his overseas assignments.

 

Tina Schliemann said her husband also started a small computer business here and was very involved in a volunteer ham radio program to get students more interested in space.

 

While serving as president of the Scottsboro Ham Radio Club, Dieter Schliemann helped develop satellite communications with the International Space Station so students could learn more about what is being done in space.

 

In a recent statement after Schliemann's death, fellow ham radio operator Keith Pugh of Fort Worth recalled his friend's volunteer work in the program, including his communication services at the Soviet Space Exhibit in Texas in 1991.

 

"Dieter was an excellent example of the ideal contributor to our marvelous hobby," he said. "He constantly provided positive ideas and assistance. He will be truly missed by everyone and deserves a special place in amateur radio heaven."

 

Bauer said that even after Schliemann had been told by doctors he had leukemia and had only two weeks to live, he continued to work on the ham radio/space satellite program for the benefit of students.

 

"He shunned the spotlight, yet he quietly took the initiative, never shying away from solving problems," Bauer said. "He was a wonderful friend and a dedicated volunteer."

Sixty students from Huntsville High and Johnson High took part in the annual Job Shadow Day at Redstone Arsenal on April 16. The students were given tours, hands-on experiences, and mentoring from the Software Engineering Directorate, Prototype Integration Facility, and the Test Measurement and Diagnostic Equipment labs.

But new this year is the integration of a pilot program called Army Education Outreach Program launched by the Aviation and Missile Command. The AEOP is designed to engage and guide students and teachers in science, math, engineering and technology. Shadow Day was hosted by AMCOM in partnership with the Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center.

 

"Today, you are a part of an effort to explain what we do," said Ronnie Chronister, AMCOM deputy commander. He welcomed the students at SED and explained the command's mission as it relates to the different organizations that the students were about to experience. "What we do is all about supporting Soldiers out there who are fighting for us every day.

"When you leave here today, when you go to college, I want to make sure that you know that there may be something you want to do out here and know what you need to do that will get you a job on Redstone Arsenal," Chronister said. "I need you to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions."

And ask questions they did, as the students made their whirlwind tour. Carrying notepads and listening intently, many asked about how systems worked, what mathematical equations are used to bring concepts to life, and what types of classes or degrees to pursue to get a job on Redstone.

Annie Chu, a junior from Huntsville High with the AP Chemistry class, said she was really excited when she learned she would be part of the Job Shadow Day tour. "I want to find a career in math and science, and this is really a good place to come and find a career in that," she said.

Chu said much of her interest in math and science was influenced by her father, an electrical engineer for BAE Systems at Research Park. Although she doesn't know which college she wants to attend, she will definitely pursue a degree in math and science. She said she liked the precision in mathematics in order to determine, for example, exactly where a rocket will land before it is launched. "I want to get my hands on that," she said. She recently applied for a job with AMCOM's Summer Hire Program as a lab technician and is awaiting a response. The summer hire program recently closed for the summer, and Chu hopes she will get the opportunity to work on Redstone. "This was really awesome," she said of Job Shadow Day. "I really loved it."

During the Virtual Army Experience scenario with America's Army in SED, students were wide-eyed as they entered the room and got very excited to play the game. Anthony Donatelli, UAH industrial engineering graduate and one of the employees at SED, hosted the group as they played VAE. "I never thought I'd be doing this much cool and fun stuff after I graduated," he told the students. "This is what I do day in and day out," he said pointing to the games.

Marcus Burwell, a junior from Johnson High with the Honors English class, said he wants to become an aviator and fly Chinooks in the military. But first he'd like to take the opportunity to go to college, hopefully on a football scholarship, and get a degree in mechanical engineering. "This program you put on today was really a positive thing," he said. He especially liked the mentoring process during the tour which he said showed that employees on the Arsenal really love what they do. "You succeed in what you love," he said.

Burwell's favorite group activity was the Kiowa Warrior simulator in which he had the opportunity to fly for a few minutes during the 20-minute time slot. Though none in his family have a military background or work for the government, he said any government position would be great. He thanked Redstone for giving him and his class the opportunity to see what goes on inside Redstone.

"Can I have your job?" asked one student of Chronister during the feedback session at the end of the day. Chronister laughed and quipped she should probably think twice before wanting his job. Pay attention to the folks who gave you the tours today, he said. "They're the ones with the fun jobs."

On a scale of 1 to 10, students rated all the group activities a "12." When asked which activity they liked best, in unison, they said, "the games," referring to America's Army.

"It was an exceptionally interesting and great tour," said Johnson High counselor Annie Horton. Three people from Redstone visited the classes the day prior to explain what students can expect during Job Shadow Day and how it relates to the AEOP. "This experience should help clear their minds on their choices for careers," Horton said. "It also sparked their interest in science and engineering."

For more information about the AMCOM Army Education Outreach Program, call Angie Kielsmeier at 876-2023 or e-mail angela.kielsmeier@us.army.mil.

When Josh Pratt forgets his homework at home, he likes knowing he can just pull out his cell phone and call his parents in between classes at Hardin Valley Academy. "It's cool not having to sneak around. We do appreciate it."

 

Pratt is a junior at Knox County's newest public high school. Unlike other schools where cell phones and music players are not allowed, Hardin Valley is taking a new approach to technology.

 

Along with the latest laptop computers and learning tools, teachers find ways to allow and even use devices like cell phones and iPods in the classroom. Hardin Valley students are allowed to use their cell phones and mp3 players in the hallways in between classes, during lunch and other free time, said principal Sallee Reynolds. If the rule is abused, the devices are taken away until the end of the day.

 

Hardin Valley social studies teacher David Combs said he recently had students use their cell phones in a lesson on communication during World War I. Students "telegraphed" messages to each other as if they were communicating with other foreign leaders.

 

"It required a bit of monitoring, but it was much more effective than taking notes," Combs said.

"It's a real shift in thinking for most of us," said assistant principal George Ashe. "But the students know when it's time to learn, it's time to learn."

 

The approach at Hardin Valley reflects an effort at schools nationwide to keep up with the latest technology and embrace it whenever possible.

 

"The kids are the ones pushing us forward," said Becky Ashe, interim director of curriculum for Knox County Schools. "We're just trying to make use of the tools these students use every day."

Calling it a "technology curve," Ashe said it's an ongoing struggle for teachers to find the time to do things like keep up their class Web pages, which every teacher now has, and still be able to teach the basics.

 

"Part of it is a funding issue," she said. Knox County doesn't have a line item in the budget specifically for technology. So most schools provide their own computers and other equipment through fundraisers, coupon book sales and corporate donations.

 

At Hardin Valley, corporate donors funded the school to provide a laptop computer to every teacher when the building opened.

 

That makes a huge difference for teachers like Debbie Sayers, a science teacher who returned to the classroom after a 10-year break. "There's something new all the time."

 

For example, Sayers can pull up Web sites with graphics to illustrate how molecules move, or show how chemical compounds react together. She can share them with the entire class using a Smart Board, an interactive whiteboard screen on the wall, where chalk boards would have been 20 years ago. Teachers also can upload their notes from the board directly onto the class Web page.

 

More than half of all public middle and high school classrooms in Knox County have Smart Boards or a similar product. "Our goal is to have a board set up for every classroom in the system," Ashe said.

 

That's quite a goal, considering each board and projector cost around $2,500.

 

With tuition covering much of the budget for technology, students at area private schools often have easier access to computers and other devices than their peers in public schools.

 

At Sacred Heart Cathedral School, students as young as kindergarten use classroom computers daily. "It's our job to prepare students for the world they'll be living in," said Ann Wayburn, technology coordinator.

 

She also said Smart Boards are easy to use even for the young children. "But we have to put them lower to the floor," she said.

 

Sayers said you don't always need a high-tech device to get in touch with students' tech habits. Cell phones work just as well. "We've used them as flashlights during experiments. Sometimes I'll let students look up information on the Internet from their phones."

 

Teachers also are learning how to make videos and "podcasts" of upcoming assignments, study guides and other information and post them on their Web pages. Students can then download the videos onto their computers or even their mp3 players to watch when it's convenient.

 

But all the gadgets can be a distraction, even at Hardin Valley. "But so were calculators in the beginning," said Reynolds. "We tell students just to do what is expected of them. Otherwise, they'll lose the privilege."

 

Technology also is helping schools save money on supplies. "Very seldom do we put paper memos in teacher mailboxes any more," Reynolds said. "We use e-mails to contact teachers and parents."

 

Some teachers are embracing the changes faster than others. David Dixon started his career as a music teacher. But two years ago, he agreed to be the full-time director of technology for Gresham Middle School.

 

"It takes a very creative teacher to recognize all the ways you can use technology," he said.

 

Along with keeping the systems up and running, Dixon is helping fellow teachers navigate the equipment, some of which is not exactly new. "People are amazed there is no county budget for computers. We use them until they won't run anymore."

 

Computers have been a part of the classroom for more than 20 years. Teachers at Gresham have each had one for at least the last decade. Educators are still finding new ways to use them.

 

"All the textbooks approved in core content areas like reading and math are also available online," said Ashe. "It means students don't have to carry their textbooks home. It also means parents can be more involved by helping their kids study at home."

 

Calling it a "dream," Ashe said as educators look at new ways students can use laptops in class, she'd like one day to be able to provide rental laptops for students. "A lot of our kids already have their own laptops. We want to make sure every child has the same opportunity."

 

But the most encouraging trend, according to Ashe, is the way technology is changing how teachers teach. "It's forcing us to move away from lecturing and more toward setting up activities so students can actually learn for themselves."

Gov. Phil Bredesen says smaller four-year colleges should stop investing money in graduate programs and leave that to the state’s larger schools.

 

Bredesen told The Chattanooga Times Free Press that the University of Tennessee in Knoxville needs to pour resources into becoming one of the best colleges in the country so it can draw the brightest students and researchers.

 

He said smaller four-years schools like the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga need to offer fewer programs, avoid duplication and narrow their focus.

 

“The other four-year schools are living in a shadowland right now,” Bredesen said. “They are mostly trying to be mini UTKs or mini Vanderbilts.”

 

Legislators want to see higher education cut costs, the governor said, and one of the best ways is to trim graduate programs at smaller four-year schools.

 

Bredesen believes state leaders should focus on developing one high-level research institution in Tennessee: UT in Knoxville.

 

But UTC Chancellor Roger Brown said graduate programs in education and nursing at regional schools such as UTC fulfill community needs, and eliminating them would be shortsighted.

 

Future employers such as Volkswagen want to see graduate-level education spread across the state so training is accessible to employees, he said.

 

“At UTC, we really have not tried to be another UT Knoxville,” Brown said. “We are not asking for doctorates in every department. That is just not our mission.”

 

Bredesen, who has called for a study of the state’s college systems, thinks now is the time to restructure higher education because of vacancies in high-level posts in both the University of Tennessee system and the state Board of Regents.

 

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make these changes, and I would like to take care of it,” the governor said. “I think there are some clear issues that should be tackled.”

This fall, East Tennessee State University will have a full College of Pharmacy, and be anticipating the graduation of its inaugural class of pharmacists the following spring.

 

“What’s hard to believe is we are 13 months from graduating our first class,” said Pharmacy Dean Larry Calhoun on Thursday, the day after a short visit from two members of the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education.

 

The ACPE visit is standard procedure for any institution seeking accreditation. It is conducted by an ACPE board member and staff member.

 

“They actually just take an overview of how the college is developing,” Calhoun said. “And basically, it’s just a checkup on how we’re doing for that intense full-site visit in the spring of next year.”

 

A full report of the two-person team’s findings, opinions and recommendations will be made public in June.

 

The College of Pharmacy is eligible for a vote on full accreditation in June 2010, only weeks after the first class graduates. The school must have graduated one class to be accredited.

 

The school was granted “Candidate Status” by the ACPE in January 2007. That is the step below accreditation.

 

“From my perspective I’m pleased with where we are in our development,” Calhoun said of the college, which enrolled its first class in fall 2006. “I think we had two good evaluation team members who gave us some good tips, good advice. I feel like we’re progressing in every standard.”

 

For the inaugural class, most of the actual classroom work is done. The last year of their pharmacy education will focus on work in the field. The students will work in the community, in hospitals and in acute and ambulatory settings. Students rotate through these settings and then choose two more elective experiences.

 

“And this is basically where they find out if their three years of didactic work has made a difference,” Calhoun said. “And we’re excited about them moving into the practice environment because we’re really excited about that class.”

 

Because there are enough experienced students in the school now, students will participate heavily in screening the class enrolling this fall. At that time there will be nearly 300 students in the college. Calhoun said students have the most insight about who would make a good candidate for the college and who would not.

 

“Obviously these individuals are in the midst of pharmacy school,” he said. “They understand what it takes from a student perspective.”

 

Research at the college is growing, too. And that means the school is hiring.

 

“We are probably going to add four to five new faculty members to the pharmacy practice department this year, as we move into our fourth year of the college,” Calhoun said.

 

Probably the biggest indicator of growth in the college is the eagerness of the students in the first class to actually practice pharmacy out in the community.

 

“When I see students in the class of 2010 in the hallways, they’re ready to move from the classroom environment to the field environment full-time,” Calhoun said.

A team of MTSU students took home the NASA Safety Systems Award at this month's Great Moonbuggy Race held at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala.

 

This is the second straight year an MTSU team won the award.

 

The vehicles entered in the race are human-powered and based on the original Lunar Roving Vehicle design: a compact, lightweight, flexible and durable all-terrain vehicle that could be transported to the moon and also carry astronauts on the lunar surface.

 

"These students worked extremely hard to accomplish this distinguished recognition for MTSU," said Saeed Foroudastan, the MTSU faculty adviser who supervised the Moonbuggy project.

A team of University of Tennessee students won a $75,000 grant in a national competition for designing a 21st century green home for Norris, a model Anderson County community built 75 years ago by TVA.

 

Students competed against 41 other collegiate teams in the Environmental Protection Agency's annual People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition, held on April 18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

 

UT was among six winners that also included the universities of Arizona and South Florida; Columbia and Drexel universities; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

"The original Norris house represented the sustainable home of the 1930s and survives as a symbol of innovation," said Tim Ezzell of UT's Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment. "The student team created a design for the next 75 years."

 

The 21st century model meshes with quaint homes in the tiny planned community, built as affordable housing with then-cutting-edge technologies for workers building Norris Dam.

 

The new house uses natural ventilation, winter sunlight and summer shade. It features a solar-powered hot-water heater, high-efficiency heat pump and a system for collecting and storing rainwater. The kitchen has built-in recycling and composting areas, said Catherine Wilt, a policy director for the institute.

 

EPA's grant could help fund an actual home. Talks are under way with Norris officials on possible sites.

 

"The judges were impressed by the level of work the students did and that we had community involvement," Wilt said. She said students worked extensively with residents and Norris officials on the project.

 

Local building codes were followed, and the model is compatible with the town's National Historic Register standing.

 

UT students began work on the project in September, underwritten by an EPA grant of $10,000, supplemented by $5,000 from TVA.

 

UT's team members are architecture students Levi Hooten, Daniel Luster, Joan Monaco and Samuel Mortimer, and planning graduate students Bethany Wild, Ramune Matuliauskaite-Morales and Thomas Herbert.

MTSU students are sanding and painting a rocket as well as applying last-minute upgrades in preparation for a competition April 18 in Tony, Ala.

 

"The students are working pretty much every day," said Ahad Nasab, professor of engineering technology at MTSU and advisor of the Blue Raider rocket team.

 

Alliant Techsystems and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are sponsoring the third annual University Student Launch Initiative. Nineteen college teams from around the country will convene for USLI, which challenges school teams to design, build and fly a reusable rocket carrying a scientific payload to an altitude of exactly one mile. The winning team will have the opportunity to see a space shuttle launch.

 

Dozens of teams submitted proposals to NASA to participate in the USLI during the fall of 2008, and 19 finalists have been designing their rockets and payloads throughout the school year.

 

Panels of scientists and engineers from NASA and its partners will judge the student teams' design work, test flights and meticulous documentation.

 

Also among the finalists are teams from Fisk University and Vanderbilt University.

 

Rudie Gostowski, a NASA engineer who advises Fisk University, contacted Nasab about entering the competition.

"This happened pretty late in the game," the professor said. "We just started talking about it last October when other teams were halfway done in the projects. But we have caught up."

 

Between six and eight students are involved in some way in the project — half from aerospace and half from engineering technology.

 

Joseph Prince, an aerospace technology senior from Hendersonville, grew up around rockets.

"My grandfather worked in the Marshall Space Flight Center (as an electrical engineer)," Prince said.

 

He agreed to lead the MTSU team.

 

"We started this rocket from scratch in October," said Prince. "We designed it, built and tested it."

 

Along the way, Prince faced panels of scientists and engineers during video conferences for critical-design and flight-readiness reviews. He also sent in 250 pages to explain the preliminary design.

 

"MTSU prepared me with the math skills necessary to complete the project, but everything else is what I have studied over the years," he said.

 

The team has had three test launches, ground testing to make sure ejection charges can safely and reliably separate the rocket for recovery when it lands and simulations.

 

While some teams may gauge temperatures as part of their scientific payload, Prince wanted the on-board scientific test to be more complex.

 

"Our payload is a safe and cost-effective way to measure the fallout damage in the event an area were to become contaminated by radioactive material — as in a nuclear transport accident," Prince said.

 

The group will also be expected to submit a final report on the scientific data obtained from their payload.

 

The rocket is eight feet tall and six feet in diameter. It goes 538 miles per hour, and is powered by rocket fuel similar to the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters.

 

In order to work with the fuel, Prince had to have training and certification.

 

"I have taken approved safety and technical tests to get certified as well as designed, built, launched and recovered another rocket," he said.

 

Prince said he has been able to experience the same designer reviews as NASA rocket scientists do before they are given clearance to launch.

 

The team will arrive in Alabama on Wednesday for safety checks and then must assemble and fuel the rocket.

 

"MTSU prepared me with the math skills necessary to complete the project, but everything else is what I have studied over the years," he said.

 

The team has had three test launches, ground testing to make sure ejection charges can safely and reliably separate the rocket for recovery when it lands and simulations.

 

While some teams may gauge temperatures as part of their scientific payload, Prince wanted the on-board scientific test to be more complex.

 

"Our payload is a safe and cost-effective way to measure the fallout damage in the event an area were to become contaminated by radioactive material — as in a nuclear transport accident," Prince said.

 

The group will also be expected to submit a final report on the scientific data obtained from their payload.

 

The rocket is eight feet tall and six feet in diameter. It goes 538 miles per hour, and is powered by rocket fuel similar to the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters.

 

In order to work with the fuel, Prince had to have training and certification.

 

"I have taken approved safety and technical tests to get certified as well as designed, built, launched and recovered another rocket," he said.

 

Prince said he has been able to experience the same designer reviews as NASA rocket scientists do before they are given clearance to launch.

A student team from Purdue University today won the $25,000 grand prize in this year’s Global Venture Challenge at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Their entrepreneurial proposal was based on their company, SiMetal, which specializes in fabrication of low-cost, high-quality, light-emitting dioxide (LED) chips.

 

Members of the winning team were James Cruse, Carlos Kemeny, Matthew Lynall and Isaac Wildeson.

 

Second place and a $10,000 prize went to a team from Clark Atlanta University-Morehouse College. Their presentation was based on the company, Apex Plastics.

 

A team from Duke University won third place and $5,000 for proposal on CPS Biofuels.

 

This is the fourth year for the educational contest in which teams present technology-based business proposals. The event is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and UT-Battelle, the contractor that manages ORNL for DOE.