When Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in 2017, winds snapped trees and destroyed homes, while heavy rains transformed streets into rivers. But after the storm passed, the human toll continued to grow as residents struggled without electricity for months. Five years later, power outages remain long and frequent.
Researchers in the geothermal energy industry are joining forces with fusion experts at ORNL to repurpose gyrotron technology, a tool used in fusion. Gyrotrons produce high-powered microwaves to heat up fusion plasmas.
ORNL has been selected to lead an Energy Frontier Research Center, or EFRC, focused on polymer electrolytes for next-generation energy storage devices such as fuel cells and solid-state electric vehicle batteries.
Five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers are leveraging the behavior of nature at the smallest scales to develop technologies for science’s most complex problems.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory physicist Elizabeth “Libby” Johnson (1921-1996), one of the world’s first nuclear reactor operators, standardized the field of criticality safety with peers from ORNL and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and their technologies have received seven 2022 R&D 100 Awards, plus special recognition for a battery-related green technology product.
ORNL Corporate Fellow and Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences researcher Bobby Sumpter has been named fellow of two scientific professional societies: the Institute of Physics and the International Association of Advanced Materials.
As climate change leads to larger and more frequent wildfires, researchers at ORNL are using sensors, drones and machine learning to both prevent fires and reduce their damage to the electric grid.
Travis Humble has been named director of the Quantum Science Center headquartered at ORNL. The QSC is a multi-institutional partnership that spans industry, academia and government institutions and is tasked with uncovering the full potential of quantum materials, sensors and algorithms.
To further the potential benefits of the nation’s hydropower resources, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed and maintain a comprehensive water energy digital platform called HydroSource.