Polyphase wireless power transfer system achieves 270-kilowatt charge, s...
After used nuclear fuel is removed from a reactor, it emits heat for decades and remains radioactive for thousands of years. The used fuel is a mixture of major actinides (uranium, plutonium), fission products (mainly assorted metals, including lanthanides) and minor actinides (i.e....
One drop of liquid, a cutting-edge laser 3D-printer and a few hours are all it takes to make a fidget spinner smaller than the width of a human hair. The tiny whirligig was created by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences to illustrate the facility’s unique resources and expertise available to scientists across the world.
The third annual Molten Salt Reactor Workshop allowed leading voices on advanced reactors—including scientists from the national laboratory system, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reactor design firms and universities—to discuss current efforts in molten salt reactor work and pu...
Rice University researchers have learned to manipulate two-dimensional materials to design in defects that enhance the materials’ properties. The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and colleagues at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combi...
No two scientists have the same story about how they ended up in their field. Some people seem to have been born scientists; others develop their love for it as budding minds full of curiosity. Then there are those who don’t discover science until later in life, but when they do, the...
Researchers have long sought electrically conductive materials for economical energy-storage devices. Two-dimensional (2D) ceramics called MXenes are contenders. Unlike most 2D ceramics, MXenes have inherently good conductivity because they are molecular sheets made from the carbides ...
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...
It’s not enough to design new drugs. For drugs to be effective, they have to be delivered safely and intact to affected areas of the body. And drug delivery, much like drug design, is an immensely complex task.
Barely wider than a strand of human DNA, magnetic nanoparticles—such as those made from iron and platinum atoms—are promising materials for next-generation recording and storage devices like hard drives. Building these devices from nanoparticles should increase storage capaci...
When it comes to a challenging application for embedded instrumentation and control, none quite beats an environment of molten salt at 700 degrees Celsius. But that is just the application chosen by scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory...