The search for materials that can withstand the extreme environment inside advanced fusion research facilities and fusion power reactors is becoming more intense.

A focal point for this search is ORNL’s Material Plasma Exposure Experiment. At the heart of the experiment is a device that ena...

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Andrew Briggs

Andrew Briggs is the inaugural chair in nanomaterials at the University of Oxford. He is best known for his early work using acoustic microscopy to solve problems in materials science and for more recent work developing materials and techniques for quantum technologies. His laborato...

ORNL is proud of its role in fostering the next generation of scientists and engineers. We bring in talented young researchers, team them with accomplished scientists and engineers, and put them to work at the lab's one-of-a-kind facilities. The result is research that makes us proud and prepar...

A casual observer might be forgiven for thinking the Manhattan Project produced nothing more than a bomb. In reality, the physicists who harnessed the atom also opened the door to a practically inexhaustible energy source.

That reality was clear to future Nobel Prize-winner Eugene Wigner. When Wi...

ORNL researchers and partners at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Wisconsin-based Eck Industries have developed aluminum alloys that are both easier to work with and more heat tolerant than existing products.

What may be more important, however, is that the alloys—which contain cerium—h...

We sat down with ORNL Director Thom Mason to discuss the energy challenge: How is the national laboratory finding ways to provide the energy needed to support a higher quality of life for a growing global population without harm to the environment or intractable conflict over finite resources? ...