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Media Contacts
![Emma Betters Thumbnail](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-10/emma%20betters_sized.jpg?h=e91a75a9&itok=k1X4xVjl)
Growing up in Florida, Emma Betters was fascinated by rockets and for good reason. Any time she wanted to see a space shuttle launch from NASA’s nearby Kennedy Space Center, all she had to do was sit on her front porch.
![These fuel assembly brackets, manufactured by ORNL in partnership with Framatome and Tennessee Valley Authority, are the first 3D-printed safety-related components to be inserted into a nuclear power plant. Credit: Fred List/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-10/FramatomeCB1.jpg?h=7c790887&itok=oVGkqZYZ)
The Transformational Challenge Reactor, or TCR, a microreactor built using 3D printing and other new advanced technologies, could be operational by 2024.
![stacked poplar logs](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-10/poplar_sized.jpg?h=e91a75a9&itok=Oq847ULr)
Popular wisdom holds tall, fast-growing trees are best for biomass, but new research by two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories reveals that is only part of the equation.
![Oak Ridge National Laboratory entrance sign](/themes/custom/ornl/images/default-thumbnail.jpg)
![Oak Ridge National Laboratory entrance sign](/themes/custom/ornl/images/default-thumbnail.jpg)
Rufus Ritchie came from Kentucky coal country, a region not known for producing physicists.
![Xunxiang Hu, a Eugene P. Wigner Fellow in ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division, designed this machine to produce large, crack-free pieces of yttrium hydride to be used as a moderator in the core of ORNL’s Transformational Challenge Reactor and other microreactors. Credit: Xunxiang Hu/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-09/HuYHxphoto.jpg?h=eef83f16&itok=7KfkqQLh)
About 60 years ago, scientists discovered that a certain rare earth metal-hydrogen mixture, yttrium, could be the ideal moderator to go inside small, gas-cooled nuclear reactors.
![Paul Abraham uses mass spectrometry to study proteins.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-09/2019-P16536.jpg?h=8f9cfe54&itok=QMxGFQhK)
Systems biologist Paul Abraham uses his fascination with proteins, the molecular machines of nature, to explore new ways to engineer more productive ecosystems and hardier bioenergy crops.
![3D-printed 316L steel has been irradiated along with traditionally wrought steel samples. Researchers are comparing how they perform at various temperatures and varying doses of radiation. Credit: Jaimee Janiga/ORNL](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-08/X2001337_TCR_IrradiatedMaterials_Bumpus_jnj-04.jpg?h=e3a8e2b5&itok=pXslTCBN)
It’s a new type of nuclear reactor core. And the materials that will make it up are novel — products of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s advanced materials and manufacturing technologies.
![VERA’s tools allow a virtual window inside the reactor core, down to a molecular level.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-08/Godfrey_2d_pin_power.png?h=507248e9&itok=SIcNrXUE)
As CASL ends and transitions to VERA Users Group, ORNL looks at the history of the program and its impact on the nuclear industry.