Many of us remember writing that dreaded essay about how we spent our summer vacation — often struggling to recall what we did or make it sound interesting.
That won’t be a problem for the almost 800 students at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory this summer.
Tenisha Meadows, a graduate student in chemistry at WSU, is working to understand conditions that affect the processing of legacy tank waste at places like Hanford. She is using a scientific measurement technique called spectroscopy to observe what is happening inside the tank. This data will improve predictions of when certain solids will form, which in turn helps us understand the correlation between material characteristics and process history.