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Tyler Gerczak, a materials scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is focused on post-irradiation examination and separate effects testing of current fuels for light water reactors and advanced fuel types that could be used in future nuclear systems. Credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Ask Tyler Gerczak to find a negative in working at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and his only complaint is the summer weather. It is not as forgiving as the summers in Pulaski, Wisconsin, his hometown.

Isabelle Snyder standing in front of screen dislaying national map of US power grids

Isabelle Snyder calls faults as she sees them, whether it’s modeling operations for the nation’s power grid or officiating at the US Open Tennis Championships.

L-R, Researchers Nils Stenvig, Isabelle Snyder and Travis Smith are developing tools and deploying sensors to aid decision-making as Puerto Rico rebuilds and modernizes its power grid.

As Puerto Rico works to restore and modernize its power grid after last year’s devastating hurricane season, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have stepped up to provide unique analysis, sensing and modeling tools to better inform decisions.

Schematic drawing of the boron nitride cell. Credit: University of Illinois at Chicago.

A new microscopy technique developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago allows researchers to visualize liquids at the nanoscale level — about 10 times more resolution than with traditional transmission electron microscopy — for the first time. By trapping minute amounts of...

Rose Ruther and Jagjit Nanda have been collaborating to develop a membrane for a low-cost redox flow battery for grid-scale energy storage.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a crucial component for a new kind of low-cost stationary battery system utilizing common materials and designed for grid-scale electricity storage. Large, economical electricity storage systems can benefit the nation’s grid ...

Kevin Robb, a staff scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is taking what he learned from developing the Liquid Salt Test Loop—a key tool in deploying molten salt technology applications

Thanks in large part to developing and operating a facility for testing molten salt reactor (MSR) technologies, nuclear experts at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are now tackling the next generation of another type of clean energy—concentrating ...

ORNL Image

For the past six years, some 140 scientists from five institutions have traveled to the Arctic Circle and beyond to gather field data as part of the Department of Energy-sponsored NGEE Arctic project. This article gives insight into how scientists gather the measurements that inform t...

A conceptual illustration of proton-proton fusion in which two protons fuse to form a deuteron. Image courtesy of William Detmold.

Nuclear physicists are using the nation’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to study particle interactions important to energy production in the Sun and stars and to propel the search for new physics discoveries Direct calculatio...

The interior of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Alcator C-Mod tokamak. A team led by Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s C.S. Chang recently used the Titan supercomputer

The same fusion reactions that power the sun also occur inside a tokamak, a device that uses magnetic fields to confine and control plasmas of 100-plus million degrees. Under extreme temperatures and pressure, hydrogen atoms can fuse together, creating new helium atoms and simulta...