City Residents Speak
Out at LRDP Meeting
by Dan Krotz

Approximately 30 community members and 15 Lab employees attended a Monday meeting convened to give Berkeley residents the opportunity to voice their opinions over the future of Berkeley Lab. Their input, which will inform the development of the Lab’s upcoming Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), included concerns over traffic congestion, impacts to the Strawberry Creek watershed, new building construction, and the Molecular Foundry. The public scoping meeting is one of several steps that lead to Berkeley Lab’s 2004 LRDP, which outlines the physical requirements — including changes in both population and building space — needed to meet the Lab’s mission through year 2025. Full story.

Correction On Date for
Open Enrollment Info

The date for the last Open Enrollment information session was incorrect in yesterday’s edition of “Today at Berkeley Lab.” It takes place tomorrow, from 10 a.m. to noon, in the Building 50 Auditorium.

UC Will Wait To
Address Budget
By Carrie Sturrock

Normally, this is the time of year when the University of California submits a budget request to the state Department of Finance. But with California's ongoing fiscal crisis, this isn't a normal year. So the UC Regents plan to wait until after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issues a budget proposal in January before they approve a budget request. In more than 30 years at the university, Larry Hershman, UC's vice president for budget, doesn't remember ever doing it this way. "Well, we struggled over this, obviously," he said. "It wasn't an easy decision. ... We felt funny about asking the regents to vote for a budget that was dead on arrival." Full story.

Glitches in Yucca
Waste Burial Plan
by Keay Davidson

By 2010, if the U.S. Energy Department gets its way, then an underground burial site for spent nuclear reactor fuel would open for business, thousands of feet beneath the Nevada desert. But chemists' new findings raise questions about plans for the repository at Yucca Mountain, just northeast of Las Vegas — and at a very bad time, only 13 months before the agency plans to ask for federal nuclear regulators' approval to build the site. Full story.

Pioneering Biochemical
Engineer Passes Away

Wilke

Charles Wilke, a pioneer in the field of biochemical engineering, and former Lab researcher in Environmental Energy Technologies, died last month at his home in El Cerrito. He was 86 and had been battling cancer. Wilke established an international reputation in the 1950s in the field of diffusion and mass transfer. He then shifted direction in the early 1960s to help establish the budding field of biochemical engineering. He began working for the Lab in 1953 and retired last year. Go here to read Robert Sanders’ UC Berkeley press release.

Long-time Lab Scientist
Ruth-Mary Larimer Dies

Larimer

Ruth-Mary Larimer, a former Nuclear Science Division employee, passed away earlier this month. Born in 1926, Larimer began work at the Radiation Lab in 1954 as a radioisotope technician in the Health Chemistry Department. Later, she worked at the 60-inch Cyclotron on campus. In 1962 she moved to the 88-inch Cyclotron and a few years later transferred into the Nuclear Chemistry Division, which later became the Nuclear Science Division. She retired from the Lab in 1991, but continued to work part-time at the cyclotron until a few months ago.