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.
Inspections will play a crucial role in the decisions to extend operating licenses for many of the nation’s aging nuclear power plants, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a tool that could help. “The question that needs to be answered is whether the concrete structures th...
Award-winning author Richard Rhodes, who wrote the book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” told an Oak Ridge audience that despite new forms of clean energy being developed, coal is still the world’s primary producer of energy, listing several reasons.
“In a world...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is marking the 50th anniversary of the startup of its Molten Salt Reactor Experiment this month. A workshop on molten salt reactor technologies Oct. 15-16 at ORNL will bring together government representatives, U.S. and international researchers, ...
A research demonstration unveiled today at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory combines clean energy technologies into a 3D-printed building and vehicle to showcase a new approach to energy use, storage and consumption. The Additive Manufactur...
The probe of an atomic force microscope (AFM) scans a surface to reveal details at a resolution 1,000 times greater than that of an optical microscope. That makes AFM the premier tool for analyzing physical features, but it cannot tell scientists anything about chemistry. For that they turn to the mass spectrometer (MS).
Six researchers with the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory received awards at this week's Society of Automotive Engineers International (SAE) World Congress. Scott Sluder received SAE's Lloyd L. Withrow Distinguished Speaker Award, which ...
Less than 1 percent of Earth’s water is drinkable. Removing salt and other minerals from our biggest available source of water—seawater—may help satisfy a growing global population thirsty for fresh water for drinking, farming, transportation, heating, cooling and industry. But desalination is an energy-intensive process, which concerns those wanting to expand its application.
Representatives from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) are meeting at ORNL this week as part of an agreement between the two institutions to work together on the advancement
Graphene, a strong, lightweight carbon honeycombed structure that’s only one atom thick, holds great promise for energy research and development. Recently scientists with the Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures, and Transport (FIRST) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), led by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, revealed graphene can serve as a proton-selective permeable membrane, providing a new basis for streamlined and more efficient energy technologies such as improved fuel cells.