On Thursday, April 12, five researchers from the Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division (NSITD) and Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division (RNSD) received Joule Awards from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Office of Nonproliferation and Arms Control (NPAC).
Arden Dougan, Safeguards Technology Development Program Director for NPAC, presented awards for two ORNL projects. Brandon Grogan, Jordan Lefebvre, and Murray Purves of NSITD, and William Wieselquist of RNSD received the Joule Award for the project “Inverse Depletion Theory (INDEPTH) Software for Environmental Sampling Analysis to the International Atomic Energy Agency.” Jeffrey Chapman (NSITD) received the award for the project “Coincidence Counter Signal Splitter (C2S2),” which was a collaborative effort with researchers from Savannah River National Laboratory.
Congress mandates that DOE sets targets and tracks progress toward achieving performance goals for each program. The NPAC/NA-241 metric—known within NPAC as the Joule metric—tracks safeguards tools deployed and used in international regimes that address an identified safeguards deficiency. For fiscal year 2017, NPAC recognized seven projects across the DOE laboratory complex with Joule awards.
