After completing a bachelor’s degree in biology, Toya Beiswenger didn’t intend to go into forensics. But almost two decades later, the nuclear security scientist at ORNL has found a way to appreciate the art of nuclear forensics.
When geoinformatics engineering researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory wanted to better understand changes in land areas and points of interest around the world, they turned to the locals — their data, at least.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were the first to use neutron reflectometry to peer inside a working solid-state battery and monitor its electrochemistry.
Like most scientists, Chengping Chai is not content with the surface of things: He wants to probe beyond to learn what’s really going on. But in his case, he is literally building a map of the world beneath, using seismic and acoustic data that reveal when and where the earth moves.
Scientists have long sought to better understand the “local structure” of materials, meaning the arrangement and activities of the neighboring particles around each atom. In crystals, which are used in electronics and many other applications, most of the atoms form highly ordered lattice patterns that repeat. But not all atoms conform to the pattern.
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.
Researchers from Yale University and ORNL collaborated on neutron scattering experiments to study hydrogen atom locations and their effects on iron in a compound similar to those commonly used in industrial catalysts.
U2opia Technology, a consortium of technology and administrative executives with extensive experience in both industry and defense, has exclusively licensed two technologies from ORNL that offer a new method for advanced cybersecurity monitoring in real time.
A partnership of ORNL, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee and TVA that aims to attract nuclear energy-related firms to Oak Ridge has been recognized with a state and local economic development award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium.
The word “exotic” may not spark thoughts of uranium, but Tyler Spano’s investigations of exotic phases of uranium are bringing new knowledge to the nuclear nonproliferation industry.