Sen. Patty Murray (left) and Secretary Steven Chu
On Aug. 7, Sen. Patty Murray invited Dr. Steven Chu to tour the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Chu is the 12th Secretary of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). On Aug. 11, Murray and Chu visited the Tri-Cities, which includes Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, to investigate the critical DOE work done in these cities.
Murray is the senior member of the senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittees and wants to be more informed of Washington’s energy sources.
Chu is a Chinese American physicist, well known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser lights.
He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and was the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has received the Nobel Prize in physics for his research on atoms. ♦