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.
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.
Two decades in the making, a new flagship facility for nuclear physics opened on May 2, and scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have a hand in 10 of its first 34 experiments.
Practical fusion energy is not just a dream at ORNL. Experts in fusion and material science are working together to develop solutions that will make a fusion pilot plant — and ultimately carbon-free, abundant fusion electricity — possible.
To achieve practical energy from fusion, extreme heat from the fusion system “blanket” component must be extracted safely and efficiently. ORNL fusion experts are exploring how tiny 3D-printed obstacles placed inside the narrow pipes of a custom-made cooling system could be a solution for removing heat from the blanket.
A team of researchers has developed a novel, machine learning–based technique to explore and identify relationships among medical concepts using electronic health record data across multiple healthcare providers.
ORNL manages the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy Program, or INFUSE, with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, to help the private sector find solutions to technical challenges that need to be resolved to make practical fusion energy a reality.
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.
Marcel Demarteau is director of the Physics Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For topics from nuclear structure to astrophysics, he shapes ORNL’s physics research agenda.
The INFUSE fusion program announced a second round of 2020 public-private partnership awards to accelerate fusion energy development.