When Darleane invited me to come to the US to work as a postdoc for her, it literally changed the course of my life. I would not be where I am now without her. She was an incredible scientist and an amazing human being. She will be deeply missed by by all of her students, postdocs and colleagues.

A very sobering piece by former LANL director Sig Hecker. thebulletin.org/2025/08/refl...

Couch companion

New group picture - Sudowe Research Group 2025

Very happy to say that the second paper from @slabbxo.bsky.social's dissertation was just published online in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

NEW: I got a RARE look inside the underground complex where America conducts its subcritical nuclear weapons experiments. I was told reporters hadn't been down there since the mid-1990s. Read on to learn how American maintains its stockpile without underground tests. www.npr.org/2025/01/29/n...

Once created, element 119 will contain 119 protons—the most of any element discovered. It will sit on a new, eighth row of the periodic table, and it could be the first element to be named since 2016. cen.acs.org/physical-che... #chemsky🧪 #scinews

A long weekend and freezing temperatures are perfect for building models. First up, Fokker Dr. 1, Snoopy's mortal enemy!

Follow up paper to the genetic study on the dogs in the Chornobyl exclusion zone that was published last year. #NukeSky www.popsci.com/science/cher...

Honest. Decent. Principled. A Lifetime of Selfless Service. #ThankYouJimmyCarter 🙏

The perfect shirt doesn't exi... Ca-48 + Bk-249 = Ts-294 #Nukesky

It's been a while since I posted a cat picture. So please say Hello to the fluffy Cookie.

A @newscientist.bsky.social cartoon for Christmas

I recommend this article @nytimes.com by W.J. Hennigan. Excellent analysis of the consequences of the collapse of the global arms control regime. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

75 years ago today, the US Atomic Energy Commission and US Air Force conducted a secret experiment at the Hanford Reservation in Washington State, exposing thousands of people living downwind to dangerous levels of radioactive iodine-131 and xenon-133 from freshly-irradiated or “green” uranium fuel.

They were up to some interesting shenanigans on our campus, but nuclear science is still going strong at CSU.

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Nuclear Scientist: We can just decay correct the content of the cup.

30 years ago, the U.S. airlifted highly-enriched uranium out of Kazakhstan—one of the great nonproliferation success stories. Longest C5 flight ever. For an excerpt from The Dead Hand: wapo.st/4eIE7yI And for key documents, see posting at Natl Security Archive: nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEB...

Ore specimen.

With all the new followers I guess it is time for an introduction. Hi, I am Ralf and I am a professor in the Environmental & Radiological Health Sciences Department at Colorado State University, where I teach courses on radiochemistry, radiation measurements and environmental radioactivity.

I need to add this one to my lecture materials. In this case "perpetual" means 16,000 years.

Earlier this months some of our students got to tour an in-situ uranium mine in Wyoming. This was the largest producing mine in the US in 2023.

Our distillation setup for the determination of tritium in water. Sodium hydroxide and potassium permanganate are added to the sample to retain carbon-14 and to oxidize organics.

MS Word keeps wanting to change "complexants" to "complex ants" and now I am imagining a chemical separation system based on sophisticated, but emotionally vulnerable, ants.

This week we taught a module on environmental radioactivity for the undergraduate class on Environmental Health Field Methods Class. The students got to use gamma spectrometry to identify an unknown sample and sampled radon in air and in soil.

Thanks to Anilu and Rich, these two shields now have a lot less rust and a great new coat of paint! They are certainly the center piece of our teaching lab. GO RAMS!

Maelle won second place in the Advanced Stage Basic Research Poster category for work on Ra-226 separations. 🎉

Strong showing (8 posters) at the CVMBS Research Day today!

For twenty-three years there has been a truce in the "ridiculous presents war" between my best friend and me. No more! He just crossed the line!

When you start a sample count and begin to panic because there are no discernable peaks in the spectrum. Then you realize that the sample is still sitting on the desk next to you. How is your day going?

The gnomes have been drinking, not me!

I see a paper with the title "Radiochemistry: A Hot Field with Opportunities for Cool Chemistry" and I expect more than just medical applications.

Serious question: When did radiochemistry become synonymous with radiopharmaceutical chemistry? What happened to radiochemistry being the science of studying the chemical properties of radioactive elements?

Wow. This is tough news. www.9news.com/article/mone...

As grad prospective email season hits its peak, remember Inigo's guide to a solid email intro:

This article has some some good comparative information on annual releases from different facilities and relative abundances in the ocean that can be useful when discussing this issue.

There is no such thing as too much cuteness, right?

The outlook is grim, which does not surprise anyone working in the nuclear field. I have some very strong opinions on this topic, but maybe we could start by reviving at least the summer schools and fellowship programs that existed ten years ago?

How does another former laboratory director feel about the movie? Definitely a unique point-of-view.

The Radiochemistry of the Elements - Scanned reports from the National Research Council's Subcommittee on Radiochemistry. They are dated, but they do contain good information on the fundamental radiochemical properties of different elements.

Free to watch and online now: "Oppenheimer: Science, Mission, Legacy," a 3-part doc that includes interviews with experts and materials from LANL's National Security Research Center’s unclassified collections — much of which has never been shared publicly. discover.lanl.gov/news/0921-op...