Research needs and opportunities in radiation chemistry workshop

Program Document · Sun Apr 19 00:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:1302247

Barbara, Paul F

There is a growing urgency for forefront basic research on ionizing radiation-induced chemical reactions, due to the relevance of these reactions in such areas of critical national need as environmental waste management, environmental remediation, nuclear energy production, and medical diagnosis and radiation therapy. Fortunately, the emergence of new theoretical and experimental tools for the study of radiation-induced chemical and physical processes, i.e. Radiation Chemistry, makes future progress quite promising. Nevertheless, a recent decline in he number of young investigators in radiation chemistry, as well as a natural obsolescence of large research facilities in radiation chemistry are serious obstacles to further progress. Understanding radiation-induced processes is of vital significance in such diverse fields as waste remediation in environmental cleanup, radiation processing of polymers and food, medical diagnosis and therapy, catalysis of chemical reactions, environmentally benign synthesis, and nuclear energy production. Radiation chemistry provides for these fields fundamental quantitative data, such as reaction rate coefficients, diffusion coefficients, radiation chemical yields, etc. As well as providing useful quantitative information of technological and medical importance, radiation chemistry is also a valuable tool for solving fundamental problems in chemistry and in material sciences. Exploiting the many facets of radiation chemistry requires a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the underlying chemical and physical processes. An understanding of the structure and dynamics of “tracks” produced by ionizing radiation is a central issue in the field. There is a continuing need to study the ultrafast processes that link the chemistry and physics of radiation-induced phenomena. This is especially true for practically important, but less well understood, nonstandard environments such as interfacial systems, supercritical media, and heterogeneous systems. These various goals necessitate the development and application of complementary programs of experiment and theory, and will involve the use of nonconventional radiation sources and the study of novel homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical systems. There is also a need to upgrade other types of instrumentation used in radiation chemistry in the national laboratories, including high field electron paramagnetic resonance, and modern analytical tools. The development and enhancement of these various tools will allow for a much wider use of the national radiation chemistry facilities.

• Research Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC) (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• OSTI ID: 1302247
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English