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For NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission, Nidia Gallego produces components of carbon-bonded carbon fiber (CBCF, in gray) for insulating an iridium-clad plutonium heat source power supply (inert prototype shown in silver).

Growing up in Colombia, Nidia Gallego was a diamond in the rough; she had no inkling that she would later shine as a scientist. Her father, a salesman, and mother, a homemaker, had not had the opportunity to complete high school themselves and urged their six children to stay in schoo...

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HTS International Corporation and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have signed an agreement to explore potential collaborations in advanced manufacturing research.

Map of locations associated with FRED observations.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) scientists have released a new global, centralized database of plant root traits, or identifying characteristics, that can advance our understanding of how the hidden structure of plants belowground may interact with and relate to life aboveground. ...

Depicted at left, small nanoparticles stick to segments of polymer chain that are about the same size as the nanoparticles themselves; these interactions produce a polymer nanocomposite that is easier to process because nanoparticles move fast, quickly ma
Polymer nanocomposites mix particles billionths of a meter (nanometers, nm) in diameter with polymers, which are long molecular chains. Often used to make injection-molded products, they are common in automobiles, fire retardants, packaging materials, drug-delivery systems, medical devices, coatings, adhesives, sensors, membranes and consumer goods.
Molecules of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium preferentially bind to copper atoms in a metal-organic framework compound. The metal atoms are therefore symbolically represented as shells in this image. Image credit: Thomas Häse, Leipzig U
Deuterium and tritium—heavy isotopes of hydrogen—not only have numerous applications in science and medicine, but could also contribute to the energy mix of tomorrow as fuels for nuclear fusion. However, the process of filtering deuterium out of the natural isotopic mixture of hydrogen...
A study led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory subjected tungsten to low energies, akin to normal operations of a fusion reactor (left), and high energies emulating plasma disruptions (right).
A fusion reactor is essentially a magnetic bottle containing the same processes that occur in the sun. Deuterium and tritium fuels fuse to form a vapor of helium ions, neutrons and heat. As this hot, ionized gas—called plasma—burns, that heat is transferred to water t...
Jason Newby is a physicist in the Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division at ORNL.
Not everyone can look back on their life and pick the specific instance that brought them to their current field and dictated the course of their career. For Jason Newby, that instance was a high school physics class that would eventually lead to him studying nuclear technology and i...
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Rich Davies recently joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as deputy director of the Sustainable Transportation Program. Having previously worked in vehicle and manufacturing research, program management, and strategic planning at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), he comes to ORNL ...

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Merlin Theodore is used to the role of pathfinder, having been the first among her family of 11 siblings to pursue graduate studies and then take up a career as a technology innovator. That path led to the doorstep of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she was recently hired as director of the US ...

Using 3-D printing, ORNL researchers rapidly prototyped a complex gearbox pattern and created sand molds to make no-waste aluminum parts for industry partner, Emrgy Hydro.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has successfully developed and tested a novel sand casting technique to quickly design complex patterns to fabricate components for industry partner Emrgy Hydro, makers of hydropower devices designed to generate electricity from slow or shallow water flo...