Latest news with #StevenMiller
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Legislators tour Idaho National Laboratory nuclear research facilities as lab plans new reactors
Idaho state Rep. Steven Miller, R-Fairfield, looks through protective glass into a hot room while touring facilities at Idaho National Laboratory in southern Idaho. (Photo courtesy of the Idaho National Laboratory) IDAHO FALLS – Members of the Idaho Legislature's budget committee toured Idaho National Laboratory research facilities Wednesday as the lab is in the process of building its first new nuclear reactors in 50 years. Some of INL's top officials told the Idaho Legislature's Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee they expected the next four years to usher in a new nuclear renaissance that INL will be at the center of. 'It's really intended to get INL back into the role of building and operating new reactors on site and supply chains that need to be exercised, getting us back into design and then ultimately building them and operating them,' INL Deputy Director Todd Combs said. The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC for short, is a powerful legislative committee that sets all of the budgets for every state agency and department. JFAC's tour included stops at Idaho National Laboratory's Research and Education Campus located in Idaho Falls as well as the Hot Fuel Examination Facility and the Sample Preparation Laboratory located at the Materials and Fuels Complex. The Materials and Fuels Complex is part of a vast 890 square-mile research complex located in the desert west of Idaho Falls that is often referred to simply as 'the site.' INL currently operates four nuclear reactors and is considered the country's leading nuclear energy research and development national laboratory. But Combs told JFAC members INL does a lot more than nuclear energy and fuels research. INL researchers and staff also focus on cyber security, electric vehicle infrastructure, artificial intelligence, or AI, homeland security and defense. INL has built armor for the Abrams tanks and conducted research into vulnerabilities in the electric grid and how to combat those vulnerabilities. INL teams have conducted research on electric vehicle infrastructure like charging stations and built the system that powered the Mars Perseverance rover. 'One might ask, how does this align currently with what the Trump administration is trying to accomplish?' Combs said. 'And if you look at executive orders like Unleashing American Energy, and if you look at Secretary of Energy (Chris Wright), his initial memo, and everything he's been talking about since he took over as secretary of energy, we fall right in line with what they're trying to accomplish.' INL celebrated its 75th anniversary last year, and Combs told legislators the lab is growing and ramping up research and operations. Since 2017, INL has grown from about 3,750 employees to 6,500 employees today. Since what is now known as INL was founded in 1949, 52 reactors have been built and demonstrated on the site, Combs said. INL currently operates four nuclear reactors, but the lab is in the process of building its first new reactors in 50 years. 'We've got a number of projects right now over the next decade that are coming online as well that are going to be reactors, 53 and 54 and beyond,' Combs said. INL made headlines last month when state officials and Department of Energy officials announced a waiver to a 1995 nuclear waste settlement agreement that allows for the shipment of spent nuclear fuel into Idaho for research at INL. A waiver was necessary because the 1995 settlement agreement called for limiting new shipments of spent nuclear fuel into Idaho and removing certain types of spent nuclear fuel in order to prevent the state from becoming a dumping ground for the nation's spent nuclear fuel. Although the Idaho Legislature adjourned the 2025 legislative session on April 4 and is not in session now, JFAC regularly conducts interim meetings to keep an eye on the state budget and learn about how different agencies and organizations spend the money that JFAC approves in the budget every year. 'I've never been out there (to INL's site),' Sen. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, said. 'Born and raised in Idaho. You would think I would have (visited before), but no. I loved it, and it was fascinating. The thing that really grabbed me was they did so much more than just the nuclear energy. I had no idea about the tanks and all that kind of stuff they're doing, and the AI. It's just cutting-edge scientific stuff going on out there.' CONTACT US 'It's good, I think, for the whole JFAC bench to get a chance to see that and to see we've been involved in buying buildings (that INL uses),' Grow added. 'The state is involved in this, even though we tend to think that it's a federal (facility).' A clear highlight for several JFAC members was entering a hot room at the Sample Preparation Laboratory that is under construction at the site. There isn't yet any nuclear material in the hot room because it is under construction. But once nuclear materials enter the facility, the public won't be able to enter the hot room that JFAC members entered Wednesday. Legislators did not vote on any bills or budgets during the three-day interim meeting tour. The tour kicked off Monday at College of Eastern Idaho, where two health care officials told legislators that Idaho's near total abortion ban has caused OB-GYNs and other medical professionals to leave the state. JFAC members may conduct a fall interim tour this year as well, although a legislative staffer told the Idaho Capital Sun on Wednesday that plans are not finalized. The next regular session of the Idaho Legislature is scheduled to begin in January. Rep. Wendy Horman, an Idaho Falls Republican who serves as a JFAC co-chair with Grow, said the entire three-day spring tour was valuable. Horman said the tour gave legislators who normally work out of the Idaho State Capitol in Boise a rare opportunity to get a closer look at important facilities and programs located in eastern Idaho that they might not have otherwise seen. 'I was so proud to see the way our community here welcomes legislators from across the state, and wanted to share with us the great things they're doing to help the citizens of Idaho,' Horman said. An Idaho Capita Sun reporter participated in the entirety of Wednesday's tour of INL facilities, and the reporter agreed not to take any photos, in accordance with INL's photo policy. Instead, an INL photographer documented the JFAC tour. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Daily Mail
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Trump aide reveals the 'villains and monsters' who will be sent to Alcatraz for life in explosive tirade
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller revealed why President Donald Trump decided to reopen the famous Alcatraz prison in an explosive interview on Fox News on Monday. 'Alcatraz was built at a time when this country was strong and it knew how to take care of villains and monsters,' Miller said. Miller explained that Alcatraz was an important American symbol that would help send a message to the criminals roaming the streets. 'There are people in this country, as President Trump has said, who will do nothing with their lives but rape, maim, and murder,' he continued. 'They cannot be rehabilitated, they cannot be saved, they cannot be coached into some better way of living. They are always going to hurt, they are always going to steal, they are always going to attack.' Miller said that he was not concerned about the extraordinary estimated cost of rebuilding the facility to modern standards after it was closed in the 1960s. 'That's easily refurbished,' he said, describing concerns about the cost as 'nonsense.' Earlier Monday, Trump detailed his thoughts about his effort to reopen Alcatraz. 'Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate,' he said to reporters at the White House. 'Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies ... it's right now a museum believe it or not.' Reopening the prison, he said, would serve as a very strong symbol of law and order. 'We'll see if we can bring it back in large form, and a lot, but I think it represents something, right now it is a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting,' he said. The Alcatraz prison has been featured in many movies and television shows, but most prominently in the Michael Bay film 'The Rock' where ex-military terrorists seize the island to stage chemical weapon rockets to threaten San Francisco. 'It sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong, miserable, weak, it's got a lot of qualities that are interesting,' Trump said. Alcatraz island in the San Francisco Bay was initially the site of a military fort before it was turned into a maximum security prison in 1934 for the country's most notorious prisoners. Gangsters Al Capone, George "Machine-Gun" Kelly, and Robert Stroud were among the famous criminals housed in the institution. Escaping the prison was considered impossible, as 36 people in 14 different escape attempts failed. The site is now a museum controlled by the National Parks Service as about 1.2 million visitors visit the island location every year.
Euronews
17-04-2025
- Science
- Euronews
What are milky seas? 400 years of sailors' stories are shedding light on ocean bioluminescence
ADVERTISEMENT 'The whole appearance of the ocean was like a plane covered with snow. There was scarce a cloud in the heavens, yet the sky appeared as black as if a storm was raging.' These are the words written by a sailor in 1854, after encountering the rare phenomenon seafarers called 'milky seas'. These glowing ocean events have baffled humans for centuries. The 'awful grandeur' the nineteenth-century sailor described - which made him think the end was nigh - we now know to be a form of bioluminescence : light emitted by living organisms during chemical reactions in their bodies. But this oceanic bioluminescence is still shrouded in mystery. To try and understand this phenomenon, researchers in the US have created a database combining 400 years of sailors' eyewitness accounts with modern satellite data. Related Toxic dust and stressed seals: What the shrinking Caspian Sea could mean for people and nature Millions of people are tuning in to watch a 24-hour livestream of moose migrating in Sweden The team at Colorado State University (CSU) and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere say this will help research vessels anticipate when and where a milky sea will occur, enabling them to collect samples. 'Milky seas are incredible expressions of our biosphere whose significance in nature we have not yet fully determined,' says Professor Steven Miller, co-author of a new study about the database. 'Their very existence points to unexplored connections between the surface and the sky, and between microscopic to the global scale roles of bacteria in the Earth system. 'With the help of this new database, forged from sea-faring ships of the 17th century all the way to spaceships of modern times, we begin to build a bridge from folklore to scientific understanding.' What causes milky seas? From snow white to 'a brilliant and bright green', ghostly grey to turquoise, milky seas have been observed in various shades over the years. They cover a wide distance - sometimes over 100,000 square kilometres - and can last for weeks on end. This steady glow differentiates them from other, more common kinds of bioluminescence in water, like the flashing of plankton. They are so vast and bright that they can sometimes be seen from space. Milky seas are believed to be caused by bacterial activity - most likely from a luminous microscopic bacteria called Vibrio harveyi . This specific strain was found living on the surface of algae within a bloom by a research vessel that managed to take a sample in 1985. But as the milky displays occur only rarely, and typically in remote regions of the Indian Ocean , scientists have struggled to get the biological information to confirm this. 'It is really hard to study something if you have no data about it,' says Justin Hudson, a PhD student in CSU's Department of Atmospheric Science and the paper's first author. 'There is only one known photograph at sea level that came from a chance encounter by a yacht in 2019,' he adds, 'so, there is a lot left to learn about how and why this happens and what the impacts are to those areas that experience this.' Related Scientists were in Antarctica when a giant iceberg broke free. Here's what they found in its shadow HMS Erebus: Can archaeologists solve this 'mysterious puzzle' before climate change stops them? How are milky seas connected to climate events? The new database shows that sightings usually happen around the Arabian Sea and Southeast Asian waters. It also reveals that they are statistically related to the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño Southern Oscillation when sea surface temperatures vary. Since both these climate phenomena can impact global weather, the researchers are curious to know exactly how milky seas are linked to these patterns. 'The regions where this happens the most are around the northwest Indian Ocean near Somalia and Socotra, Yemen, with nearly 60 per cent of all known events occurring there. At the same time, we know the Indian monsoon's phases drive biological activity in the region through changes in wind patterns and currents,' says Hudson. ADVERTISEMENT 'It seems possible that milky seas represent an understudied aspect of the large-scale movement of carbon and nutrients through the Earth system. That seems particularly likely as we learn more and more about bacteria playing a key role in the global carbon cycle both on land and in the ocean.' He notes that the regions where milky seas occur feature a lot of biological diversity and are important economically to fishing operations - so there are significant local implications too. 'We have no idea what milky seas mean for the ecosystems they are found in,' adds Miller. 'They could be an indication of a healthy ecosystem or distressed one - the bacteria we suspect are behind it are a known pest that can negatively impact fish and crustaceans,' he says. ADVERTISEMENT 'Having this data ready allows us to begin answering questions about milky seas beyond hoping and praying a ship runs into one accidentally.'
