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.
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.
As scientists study approaches to best sustain a fusion reactor, a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory investigated injecting shattered argon pellets into a super-hot plasma, when needed, to protect the reactor’s interior wall from high-energy runaway electrons.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have received five 2019 R&D 100 Awards, increasing the lab’s total to 221 since the award’s inception in 1963.
Using additive manufacturing, scientists experimenting with tungsten at Oak Ridge National Laboratory hope to unlock new potential of the high-performance heat-transferring material used to protect components from the plasma inside a fusion reactor. Fusion requires hydrogen isotopes to reach millions of degrees.
In a step toward advancing small modular nuclear reactor designs, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have run reactor simulations on ORNL supercomputer Summit with greater-than-expected computational efficiency.
Scientists have tested a novel heat-shielding graphite foam, originally created at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, at Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X stellarator with promising results for use in plasma-facing components of fusion reactors.