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From left are Analytics and AI Methods at Scale group leader Feiyi Wang, technical lead Mike Matheson and research scientist Hao Lu.

The team that built Frontier set out to break the exascale barrier, but the supercomputer’s record-breaking didn’t stop there.

Staff working on construction and facility updates in preparation for the Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer.

Making room for the world’s first exascale supercomputer took some supersized renovations.

Frontier’s exascale power enables the Energy, Exascale and Earth System Model-Multiscale Modeling Framework — or E3SM-MMF — project to run years’ worth of climate simulations at unprecedented speed and scale. Credit: Mark Taylor/Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The world’s first exascale supercomputer will help scientists peer into the future of global climate change and open a window into weather patterns that could affect the world a generation from now.

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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.

ORNL researchers Ganesh Ghimire, Sudershan Gangrade, Shih-Chieh Kao and Michael Kelleher

ORNL researchers tested a new modeling framework that simulates a flood event from precipitation to inundation.

ORNL’s organocatalyst deconstructs mixed plastics at different temperatures, which facilitates recovering their individual monomers separately, in reusable form. Credit: Jill Hemman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Little of the mixed consumer plastics thrown away or placed in recycle bins actually ends up being recycled. Nearly 90% is buried in landfills or incinerated at commercial facilities that generate greenhouse gases and airborne toxins. Neither outcome is ideal for the environment.

Photo collage with text that reads " A New era of discovery"

ORNL, a bastion of nuclear physics research for the past 80 years, is poised to strengthen its programs and service to the United States over the next decade if national recommendations of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, or NSAC, are enacted.

ORNL’s Ben Sulman and Shannon Jones at a mangrove habitat in Port Aransas, Texas

To better understand important dynamics at play in flood-prone coastal areas, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists working on simulations of Earth’s carbon and nutrient cycles paid a visit to experimentalists gathering data in a Texas wetland.

ORNL’s Fulvia Pilat and Karren More recently participated in the inaugural 2023 Nanotechnology Infrastructure Leaders Summit and Workshop at the White House, held Sept. 11–13. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL’s Fulvia Pilat and Karren More recently participated in the inaugural 2023 Nanotechnology Infrastructure Leaders Summit and Workshop at the White House.

The ORNL DAAC gathers, processes, archives and distributes information on key land processes, including the shifting ecological and geomorphological features of the U.S. Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins gathered by the NASA Delta-X mission shown here. Credit: NASA Delta-X

In 1993 as data managers at ORNL began compiling observations from field experiments for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the information fit on compact discs and was mailed to users along with printed manuals.