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The Advanced Reactors Technical Summit III, hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Feb. 10-11, had a record 180-plus participants. (Photo by Rachel Brooks)

Moving advanced nuclear reactors from the drawing board to the field was the focus of the Advanced Reactors Technical Summit III, hosted by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and attended by 180 experts from industry, government and academia. The conference, ...

Researchers used experimental data to create a 23.7-million atom biomass model featuring cellulose (purple), lignin (brown), and enzymes (green). (Image credit: Mike Matheson, ORNL)
Ask a biofuel researcher to name the single greatest technical barrier to cost-effective ethanol, and you’re likely to receive a one-word response: lignin. Cellulosic ethanol—fuel derived from woody plants and waste biomass—has the potential to become an affordable, renew...
In pure water, lignin adopts a globular conformation (left) that aggregates on cellulose and blocks enzymes. In a THF-water cosolvent, lignin adopts coil conformations (right) that are easier to remove during pretreatment.
When the Ford Motor Company’s first automobile, the Model T, debuted in 1908, it ran on a corn-derived biofuel called ethanol, a substance Henry Ford dubbed “the fuel of the future.”
Proton density after laser impact on a spherical solid density target: irradiated by an ultra-short, high intensity laser (not in picture) the intense electro-magnetic field rips electrons apart from their ions and creates a plasma.

Since lasers were first produced in the early 1960s, researchers have worked to apply laser technology from welding metal to surgeries, with laser technology advancing quickly through the last 50 years. Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy all play important roles...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Joe Giaquinto investigates chemical clues for trace-level radioactivity. Giaquinto leads ORNL’s Nuclear Analytical Chemistry and Isotopics Laboratory, which makes critical contributions to nuclear forensics and nonprolifera

A group of nuclear detectives at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory takes on tough challenges, from detecting illicit uranium using isotopic “fingerprints” to investigating Presidential assassination conspiracies. 

In a Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport Center project to probe a battery’s atomic activity during its first charging cycle, Robert Sacci and colleagues used the Spallation Neutron Source’s vibrational spectrometer to gain chemical inform

Rechargeable batteries power everything from electric vehicles to wearable gadgets, but obstacles limit the creation of sleeker, longer-lasting and more efficient power sources. Batteries produce electricity when charged atoms, known as ions, move in a circuit from a positive end ...

ORNL’s Ralph Dinwiddie uses infrared cameras to create heat maps of working materials that reveal their thermal properties and subsurface structure. This 1998 image of an aging aircraft’s engine cowling revealed severe subsurface corrosion.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are pioneering the use of infrared cameras to image additive manufacturing processes in hopes of better understanding how processing conditions affect the strength, residual stresses and microstructure of ...
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The International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry has announced formal verification of four new chemical elements, recognizing the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and its collaborators for the discovery of elements 115 and 117. In their r...

Cantilever schematic: Schematic representation of the atomic force microscope interacting with the material surface. (Credit: Rama Vasudevan, ORNL)
Understanding where and how phase transitions occur is critical to developing new generations of the materials used in high-performance batteries, sensors, energy-harvesting devices, medical diagnostic equipment and other applications. But until now there was no good way to study a...