Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.
In response to a renewed international interest in molten salt reactors, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a novel technique to visualize molten salt intrusion in graphite.
ORNL, a bastion of nuclear physics research for the past 80 years, is poised to strengthen its programs and service to the United States over the next decade if national recommendations of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, or NSAC, are enacted.
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.
The Exascale Small Modular Reactor effort, or ExaSMR, is a software stack developed over seven years under the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project to produce the highest-resolution simulations of nuclear reactor systems to date. Now, ExaSMR has been nominated for a 2023 Gordon Bell Prize by the Association for Computing Machinery and is one of six finalists for the annual award, which honors outstanding achievements in high-performance computing from a variety of scientific domains.
Dean Pierce of ORNL and a research team led by ORNL’s Alex Plotkowski were honored by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office for development of novel high-performance alloys that can withstand extreme environments.
To support the development of a revolutionary new open fan engine architecture for the future of flight, GE Aerospace has run simulations using the world’s fastest supercomputer capable of crunching data in excess of exascale speed, or more than a quintillion calculations per second.
ORNL scientists found that a small tweak created big performance improvements in a type of solid-state battery, a technology considered vital to broader electric vehicle adoption.
ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.
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.