For a second straight summer, Rachel Seibert spent her days at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researching advanced nuclear reactors. The Ph.D. candidate may not have had such an opportunity more than a decade ago, but thanks to a unique internship ...
Moving advanced nuclear reactors from the drawing board to the field was the focus of the Advanced Reactors Technical Summit III, hosted by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and attended by 180 experts from industry, government and academia. The conference, ...
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will support two new DOE-funded projects to explore, develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear reactor technologies. The projects announced Jan. 15 will allow industry-led teams with participan...
With the production of 50 grams of plutonium-238, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have restored a U.S. capability dormant for nearly 30 years and set the course to provide power for NASA and other missions.
Inspections will play a crucial role in the decisions to extend operating licenses for many of the nation’s aging nuclear power plants, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a tool that could help. “The question that needs to be answered is whether the concrete structures th...
Award-winning author Richard Rhodes, who wrote the book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” told an Oak Ridge audience that despite new forms of clean energy being developed, coal is still the world’s primary producer of energy, listing several reasons.
“In a world...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is marking the 50th anniversary of the startup of its Molten Salt Reactor Experiment this month. A workshop on molten salt reactor technologies Oct. 15-16 at ORNL will bring together government representatives, U.S. and international researchers, ...
When it’s up and running, the ITER fusion reactor will be very big and very hot, with more than 800 cubic meters of hydrogen plasma reaching 170 million degrees centigrade. The systems that fuel and control it, on the other hand, will be small and very cold. Pellets of frozen gas will be shot int...
Representatives from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) are meeting at ORNL this week as part of an agreement between the two institutions to work together on the advancement
Blowing bubbles may be fun for kids, but for engineers, bubbles can disrupt fluid flow and damage metal.