Filter News
Area of Research
News Type
Media Contacts
![By producing 50 grams of plutonium-238, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have demonstrated the nation’s ability to provide a valuable energy source for deep space missions. By producing 50 grams of plutonium-238, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have demonstrated the nation’s ability to provide a valuable energy source for deep space missions.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/front_page_slide_assets/2015-P07524.jpg?itok=MEy22Na3)
With the production of 50 grams of plutonium-238, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have restored a U.S. capability dormant for nearly 30 years and set the course to provide power for NASA and other missions.
![Processing plutonium-238 Processing plutonium-238](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/news/images/Pu-238%20art.jpg?itok=3k_Y0YT_)
Since its 1977 launch, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has travelled farther than any other piece of human technology. It is also the only human-made object to have entered interstellar space. More recently, the agency’s New Horizons mission flew past Pluto on July 14, giving us our first close-up lo...
![Vanadium atoms (blue) have unusually large thermal vibrations that stabilize the metallic state of a vanadium dioxide crystal. Red depicts oxygen atoms.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-06/82289_web.jpg?h=05d1a54d&itok=_5hHRzzR)
For more than 50 years, scientists have debated what turns particular oxide insulators, in which electrons barely move, into metals, in which electrons flow freely.