Skip to main content
Default image of ORNL entry sign
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...
Default image of ORNL entry sign
By using additive manufacturing to print active components of motors, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are conducting research that cannot be done with conventional methods. “To date, 3-D printed induction motors are made of plastic core pieces with copper windings ...
Default image of ORNL entry sign
High-resolution imaging of materials produces complex, copious data. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing a visual analytics system that could essentially “look over a scientist’s shoulder,” learning from human actions and improving its predictions of ...
Default image of ORNL entry sign

Trane Commercial Systems and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have coaxed 20 percent greater performance out of a baseline commercial rooftop air conditioning unit with the potential for even better efficiency by switching refrigerants. Through a cooperative research and develo...

Default image of ORNL entry sign
The next-generation Earth system model will simulate climate systems at unprecedented resolution over an unprecedented time scale in order to understand climate change, Earth system feedbacks and potential tipping points. The Accelerated Climate Model for Energy project, led...
Default image of ORNL entry sign

Inventors and innovators are invited to submit their ideas to JUMP, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s latest buildings technology crowdsourcing platform. JUMP, launched in partnership with General Electric, AO Smith and United Technologies Research Center, aims to solicit nove...

Default image of ORNL entry sign
Bioenergy researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have explained the molecular mechanism of an effect that has puzzled scientists for years. A team led by Jeremy Smith has discovered that lignin, when pretreated with a tetrahydrofuran-water solvent, shifts from a globul...
Fullerenes appear as small silver spheres spread consistently throughout a network of small molecules, or polymers, in this schematic illustration of the morphology of a BHJ film with solvent additives. Credit: ORNL.
Advances in ultrathin films have made solar panels and semiconductor devices more efficient and less costly, and researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory say they’ve found a way to manufacture the films more easily, too. Typically the films—used b...
Alvin Weinberg, then the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, marks 6000 power hours performance of his brainchild, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, in October 1967.

The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), which ran a brief four years in the 1960s but earned an enduring legacy as an innovative reactor technology concept, this year marks a half century since its June 1965 startup. A workshop on molten salt reactor technologies, "From the ...

An artist’s rendering of the five protein structures solved using neutrons shown on top of the MaNDi instrument detectors. Image credit - ORNL/DOE
Plants and other biomass can be converted into a variety of renewable high-value products including carbon fibers, plastics, and liquid fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel that are beneficial for reducing petroleum use and vehicle emissions. Breaking down plants in order to release...