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Lu Huang, USS industrial research engineer prepares a lightweighted advanced high strength steel component for neutron research at the Spallation Neutron Source’s VULCAN instrument.
The demand for lighter, stronger, and more durable materials for use in vehicles has never been higher. Companies are looking at new and advanced materials such as lightweight advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) to develop automotive components that help increase gas efficiency, red...
The electromagnetic isotope separator system operates by vaporizing an element such as ruthenium into the gas phase, converting the molecules into an ion beam, and then channeling the beam through magnets to separate out the different isotopes.

A tiny vial of gray powder produced at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the backbone of a new experiment to study the intense magnetic fields created in nuclear collisions.

Assembly of the PROSPECT neutrino detector. (Credit: PROSPECT collaboration / Mara Lavitt)
The Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment (PROSPECT) has completed the installation of a novel antineutrino detector that will probe the possible existence of a new form of matter. PROSPECT, located at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Department of Energy...
From left, ORNL’s Rick Lowden, Chris Bryan and Jim Kiggans were troubled that target discs of a material needed to produce Mo-99 using an accelerator could deform after irradiation and get stuck in their holder.

“Made in the USA.” That can now be said of the radioactive isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), last made in the United States in the late 1980s. Its short-lived decay product, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), is the most widely used radioisotope in medical diagnostic imaging. Tc-99m is best known ...

New exascale earth modeling system for energy
A new earth modeling system will use advanced computers and have weather scale resolution to simulate aspects of Earth’s variability and anticipate decadal changes that will critically impact the United States’ energy sector. The Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM, relea...
A tetradentate ligand selects americium (Am, depicted by green spheres) over europium (Eu, blue spheres). Red indicates oxygen atoms and purple, nitrogen atoms that are the key to the ligand’s selectivity. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S.
After used nuclear fuel is removed from a reactor, it emits heat for decades and remains radioactive for thousands of years. The used fuel is a mixture of major actinides (uranium, plutonium), fission products (mainly assorted metals, including lanthanides) and minor actinides (i.e....
Eugene Dumitrescu, Ben Lawrie, Matthew Feldman, and Jordan Hachtel (from left) have conducted investigations aimed at controlling the dissipative nature of quantum systems and materials. The cathodoluminescence microscope used in their work appears at rig
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are conducting fundamental physics research that will lead to more control over mercurial quantum systems and materials. Their studies will enable advancements in quantum computing, sensing, simulation, and mater...