Skip to main content
Mars Rover 2020

More than 50 current employees and recent retirees from ORNL received Department of Energy Secretary’s Honor Awards from Secretary Jennifer Granholm in January as part of project teams spanning the national laboratory system. The annual awards recognized 21 teams and three individuals for service and contributions to DOE’s mission and to the benefit of the nation.

QLAN submit - A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Stanford University and Purdue University developed and demonstrated a novel, fully functional quantum local area network, or QLAN, to enable real-time adjustments to information shared with geographically isolated systems at ORNL using entangled photons passing through optical fiber. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

A rapidly emerging consensus in the scientific community predicts the future will be defined by humanity’s ability to exploit the laws of quantum mechanics.

An ORNL-led team studied the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the trimer state, shown here, to pinpoint structural transitions that could be disrupted to destabilize the protein and negate its harmful effects. Credit: Debsindhu Bhowmik/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

To explore the inner workings of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, researchers from ORNL developed a novel technique.

Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation has licensed a novel method to 3D print highly resistant components for use in nuclear reactor designs. USNC Executive Vice President Kurt Terrani, formerly of ORNL, said the novel method will allow the company to make parts with desired complex shapes more efficiently. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

A novel method to 3D print components for nuclear reactors, developed by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been licensed by Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation.

This protein drives key processes for sulfide use in many microorganisms that produce methane, including Thermosipho melanesiensis. Researchers used supercomputing and deep learning tools to predict its structure, which has eluded experimental methods such as crystallography.  Credit: Ada Sedova/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

A team of scientists led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Georgia Institute of Technology is using supercomputing and revolutionary deep learning tools to predict the structures and roles of thousands of proteins with unknown functions.

ORNL’s Eva Zarkadoula seeks piezoelectric materials for sensors that can withstand irradiation, which causes cascading collisions that displace atoms and produces defects. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

To advance sensor technologies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers studied piezoelectric materials, which convert mechanical stress into electrical energy, to see how they could handle bombardment with energetic neutrons.

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.

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.

Pellet selector

When it’s up and running, the ITER fusion reactor will be very big and very hot, with more than 800 cubic meters of hydrogen plasma reaching 170 million degrees centigrade. The systems that fuel and control it, on the other hand, will be small and very cold. Pellets of frozen gas will be shot int...

Processing plutonium-238

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...

ORNL Image

ITER, the international fusion research facility now under construction in St. Paul-lez-Durance, France, has been called a puzzle of a million pieces. US ITER staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using an affordable tool—desktop three-dimensional printing, also known as additive printing—to help them design and configure components more efficiently and affordably.