The 21st Symposium on Separation Science and Technology for Energy Applications, Oct. 23-26 at the Embassy Suites by Hilton West in Knoxville, attracted 109 researchers, including some from Austria and the Czech Republic. Besides attending many technical sessions, they had the opportunity to tour the Graphite Reactor, High Flux Isotope Reactor and both supercomputers at ORNL.
Raina Setzer knows the work she does matters. That’s because she’s already seen it from the other side. Setzer, a radiochemical processing technician in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Isotope Processing and Manufacturing Division, joined the lab in June 2023.
As current courses through a battery, its materials erode over time. Mechanical influences such as stress and strain affect this trajectory, although their impacts on battery efficacy and longevity are not fully understood.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted its Smoky Mountains Computational Science and Engineering Conference for the first time in person since the COVID pandemic broke in 2020. The conference, which celebrated its 20th consecutive year, took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Knoxville, Tenn., in late August.
In June, ORNL hit a milestone not seen in more than three decades: producing a production-quality amount of plutonium-238
It was reading about current nuclear discoveries in textbooks that first made Ken Engle want to work at a national lab. It was seeing the real-world impact of the isotopes produced at ORNL
Eric Myers of ORNL has been named a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, effective June 21.
ORNL’s electromagnetic isotope separator, or EMIS, made history in 2018 when it produced 500 milligrams of the rare isotope ruthenium-96, unavailable anywhere else in the world.
Growing up in suburban Upper East Tennessee, Layla Marshall didn’t see a lot of STEM opportunities for children.
“I like encouraging young people to get involved in the kinds of things I’ve been doing in my career,” said Marshall. “I like seeing the students achieve their goals. It’s fun to watch them get excited about learning new things and teaching the robot to do things that they didn’t know it could do until they tried it.”
Marshall herself has a passion for learning new things.
A series of new classes at Pellissippi State Community College will offer students a new career path — and a national laboratory a pipeline of workers who have the skills needed for its own rapidly growing programs.