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Staff working on construction and facility updates in preparation for the Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer.

Making room for the world’s first exascale supercomputer took some supersized renovations.

Frontier’s exascale power enables the Energy, Exascale and Earth System Model-Multiscale Modeling Framework — or E3SM-MMF — project to run years’ worth of climate simulations at unprecedented speed and scale. Credit: Mark Taylor/Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The world’s first exascale supercomputer will help scientists peer into the future of global climate change and open a window into weather patterns that could affect the world a generation from now.

Logo that reads U.S. Department of Energy INCITE Leadership Computing

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has allocated supercomputer access to a record-breaking 75 computational science projects for 2024 through its Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, program. DOE is awarding 60% of the available time on the leadership-class supercomputers at DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to accelerate discovery and innovation. 

ORNL scientists developed a method that improves the accuracy of the CRISPR Cas9 gene editing tool used to modify microbes for renewable fuels and chemicals production. This research draws on the lab’s expertise in quantum biology, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Credit: Philip Gray/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientists at ORNL used their expertise in quantum biology, artificial intelligence and bioengineering to improve how CRISPR Cas9 genome editing tools work on organisms like microbes that can be modified to produce renewable fuels and chemicals.

Kim Tutin, founder and chief executive officer of Captis Aire, receives the EPA Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Credit: Eric Vance/USEPA

The founder of a startup company who is working with ORNL has won an Environmental Protection Agency Green Chemistry Challenge Award for a unique air pollution control technology. 

The sun sets behind the ORNL Visitor Center in this aerial photo from April 2023. Credit: Kase Clapp/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

In fiscal year 2023 — Oct. 1–Sept. 30, 2023 — Oak Ridge National Laboratory was awarded more than $8 million in technology maturation funding through the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF.

Photo 1: Event organizers from the Nuclear Energy Fuel Cycle Division. Credit: Carol Morgan/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The heat is on at this year’s Molten Salt Reactor Workshop – where top research and industry minds are melding to advance development on molten salt technology – at ORNL.   

Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator, a partnership among Techstars, ORNL, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee System, is based in downtown Knoxville. Credit: Shutterstock

The application to participate in the third cohort of the Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator in Knoxville, Tennessee, is open through Nov. 29, 2023.

Professional women in the IAEA’s Lise Meitner Programme 2023 cohort and supporters assembled at ORNL. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted the second  2023 cohort of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Lise Meitner Programme in October.

When exposed to radiation, electrons produced within molten zinc chloride, or ZnCl2, can be observed in three distinct singly occupied molecular orbital states, plus a more diffuse, delocalized state. Credit: Hung H. Nguyen/University of Iowa

In a finding that helps elucidate how molten salts in advanced nuclear reactors might behave, scientists have shown how electrons interacting with the ions of the molten salt can form three states with different properties. Understanding these states can help predict the impact of radiation on the performance of salt-fueled reactors.