Three staff members in ORNL’s Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate have moved into newly established roles facilitating communication and program management with sponsors of the directorate’s Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division.
Scientists at ORNL are looking for a happy medium to enable the grid of the future, filling a gap between high and low voltages for power electronics technology that underpins the modern U.S. electric grid.
ORNL and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, co-hosted the 2023 National Society of Black Physicists Annual Conference with the theme "Frontiers in Physics: From Quantum to Materials to the Cosmos.” As part of the three-day conference held near UT, attendees took a 30-mile trip to the ORNL campus for facility tours, science talks and workshops.
New computational framework speeds discovery of fungal metabolites, key to plant health and used in drug therapies and for other uses.
In summer 2023, ORNL's Prasanna Balaprakash was invited to speak at a roundtable discussion focused on the importance of academic artificial intelligence research and development hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
The 2023 top science achievements from HFIR and SNS feature a broad range of materials research published in high impact journals such as Nature and Advanced Materials.
ORNL will lead a new DOE-funded project designed to accelerate bringing fusion energy to the grid. The Accelerate award focuses on developing a fusion power plant design concept that supports remote maintenance and repair methods for the plasma-facing components in fusion power plants.
Two fusion energy leaders have joined ORNL in the Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate, or FFESD.
Nuclear engineering students from the United States Military Academy and United States Naval Academy are working with researchers at ORNL to complete design concepts for a nuclear propulsion rocket to go to space in 2027 as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DRACO program.
ORNL is leading three research collaborations with fusion industry partners through the Innovation Network for FUSion Energy, or INFUSE, program that will focus on resolving technical challenges and developing innovative solutions to make practical fusion energy a reality.