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Media Contacts
![Porter Bailey started and will end his 33-year career at ORNL in the same building: 7920 of the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-01/2020-P17836.jpg?h=4cdfc2d0&itok=2rFoZlS6)
Porter Bailey started and will end his 33-year career at ORNL in the same building: 7920 of the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center.
![asset management](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2023-05/Picture9.png?h=cf4f3851&itok=rVU02eNT)
East Tennessee occupies a special place in nuclear history. In 1943, the world’s first continuously operating reactor began operating on land that would become ORNL.
![Researchers Adam Guss and Melissa Tumen-Velasquez work with microbes to understand how the organisms consume plastics and break them into chemical components that can be used to make higher-value products.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-11/2020-P17629.jpg?h=98541007&itok=54ubVna4)
From soda bottles to car bumpers to piping, electronics, and packaging, plastics have become a ubiquitous part of our lives.
![Suman Debnath is using simulation algorithms to accelerate understanding of the modern power grid and enhance its reliability and resilience. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-01/Suman%20Debnath%20Square.jpg?h=439d043c&itok=1umME5uH)
Planning for a digitized, sustainable smart power grid is a challenge to which Suman Debnath is using not only his own applied mathematics expertise, but also the wider communal knowledge made possible by his revival of a local chapter of the IEEE professional society.
A collaboration between the ORNL and a Florida-based medical device manufacturer has led to the addition of 500 jobs in the Miami area to support the mass production of N95 respirator masks.
![Jianlin Li employs ORNL’s world-class battery research facility to validate the innovative safety technology. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2022-01/2020-P14810-blurred_0.jpg?h=245bf488&itok=DMmYlD02)
Soteria Battery Innovation Group has exclusively licensed and optioned a technology developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed to eliminate thermal runaway in lithium ion batteries due to mechanical damage.
![Oak Ridge National Laboratory entrance sign](/themes/custom/ornl/images/default-thumbnail.jpg)
The life of celebrated ORNL biologist Liane Russell was remarkable in many respects — from her childhood flight from Austria ahead of the Nazi invasion to her 60-year career as a trailblazing woman in the field of genetics to her decades of advocacy for environmental causes.
![Xunxiang Hu, a Eugene P. Wigner Fellow in ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division, designed this machine to produce large, crack-free pieces of yttrium hydride to be used as a moderator in the core of ORNL’s Transformational Challenge Reactor and other microreactors. Credit: Xunxiang Hu/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-09/HuYHxphoto.jpg?h=eef83f16&itok=7KfkqQLh)
About 60 years ago, scientists discovered that a certain rare earth metal-hydrogen mixture, yttrium, could be the ideal moderator to go inside small, gas-cooled nuclear reactors.
![A selfie from the Curiosity rover as it explores the surface of Mars. Like many spacecraft, Curiosity uses a radioisotope power system to help fuel its mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-09/Curiousity_1.jpg?h=86a9dded&itok=Jo0vD321)
Radioactive isotopes power some of NASA’s best-known spacecraft. But predicting how radiation emitted from these isotopes might affect nearby materials is tricky
![3D-printed 316L steel has been irradiated along with traditionally wrought steel samples. Researchers are comparing how they perform at various temperatures and varying doses of radiation. Credit: Jaimee Janiga/ORNL](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-08/X2001337_TCR_IrradiatedMaterials_Bumpus_jnj-04.jpg?h=e3a8e2b5&itok=pXslTCBN)
It’s a new type of nuclear reactor core. And the materials that will make it up are novel — products of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s advanced materials and manufacturing technologies.