In response to a renewed international interest in molten salt reactors, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a novel technique to visualize molten salt intrusion in graphite.
For as long as he could remember, Brenden Ortiz wanted to do only one thing. “My childhood dream was to be a scientist. All I wanted to do was tinker in a lab like a pure scientist,” Ortiz said.
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.