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The electromagnetic isotope separator system operates by vaporizing an element such as ruthenium into the gas phase, converting the molecules into an ion beam, and then channeling the beam through magnets to separate out the different isotopes.

A tiny vial of gray powder produced at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the backbone of a new experiment to study the intense magnetic fields created in nuclear collisions.

Graphical representation of a deuteron, the bound state of a proton (red) and a neutron (blue). Credit: Andy Sproles/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are the first to successfully simulate an atomic nucleus using a quantum computer. The results, published in Physical Review Letters, demonstrate the ability of quantum systems to compute nuclear ph...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Arnab Banerjee has charted several accomplishments in his neutron studies of quantum phenomena.

Raman. Heisenberg. Fermi. Wollan. From Kolkata to Göttingen, Chicago to Oak Ridge. Arnab Banerjee has literally walked in the footsteps of some of the greatest pioneers in physics history—and he’s forging his own trail along the way. Banerjee is a staff scientist working in the Neu...

Illustration of satellite in front of glowing orange celestial body

A shield assembly that protects an instrument measuring ion and electron fluxes for a NASA mission to touch the Sun was tested in extreme experimental environments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory—and passed with flying colors. Components aboard Parker Solar Probe, which will endure th...

Julie Smith

It may take a village to raise a child, according to the old proverb, but it takes an entire team of highly trained scientists and engineers to install and operate a state-of-the-art, exceptionally complex ion microprobe. Just ask Julie Smith, a nuclear security scientist at the Depa...

Composites scientist and engineer Vlastimil Kunc with the latest large-scale 3Dprinter at the MDF.

Vlastimil Kunc grew up in a family of scientists where his natural curiosity was encouraged—an experience that continues to drive his research today in polymer composite additive manufacturing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “I’ve been interested in the science of composites si...

Germina Ilas (left) and Ian Gauld review spent fuel data entries in the SFCOMPO 2.0 database.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory provided significant contributions and coordination in the development of the Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA’s) recently released Spent Fuel Isotopic Composition (SFCOMPO) 2.0—the world’s largest open database for spent
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...

ORNL’s Frank Combs and Michael Starr of the U.S. Armed Forces (driver) work in ORNL’s Vehicle Security Laboratory to evaluate a prototype device that can detect network intrusions in all modern vehicles. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

A new Oak Ridge National Laboratory-developed method promises to protect connected and autonomous vehicles from possible network intrusion. Researchers built a prototype plug-in device designed to alert drivers of vehicle cyberattacks. The prototype is coded to learn regular timing...