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Media Contacts
![Summer Widner, Stephanie Timbs, James Gaugler and James Avenell of ORNL are part of a team that processes thorium-228, a byproduct of actinium-227. As new uses for thorium are realized, particularly in medicine, the lab expects the demand for the radioisotope to grow.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-08/Part%20of%20Th-228%20Team_1.jpg?h=09b6d1d3&itok=1_l1hx2l)
As a medical isotope, thorium-228 has a lot of potential — and Oak Ridge National Laboratory produces a lot.
![ORNL used novel additive manufacturing techniques to 3D print channel fasteners for Framatome’s boiling water reactor fuel assembly. Four components, like the one shown here, were installed at the TVA Browns Ferry nuclear plant. Credit: Framatome](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-08/3D-printed%20channel%20fastener_0.jpg?h=17d1be53&itok=xLToVHZi)
Four first-of-a-kind 3D-printed fuel assembly brackets, produced at the Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have been installed and are now under routine operating
![Benjamin Sulman, a scientist in ORNL’s Environmental Sciences Division, creates Earth system models that simulate how plants, microbes and soils interact and influence the cycling of carbon, water and nutrients in their environment. His work aims to helps researchers across disciplines better understand complex, rapidly changing ecosystems, including coastal wetlands and Arctic permafrost soils. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-06/2020-P17155.jpg?h=8f9cfe54&itok=6M4vpxvC)
As rising global temperatures alter ecosystems worldwide, the need to accurately simulate complex environmental processes under evolving conditions is more urgent than ever.
![Balendra Sutharshan](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-06/2021-P01348.jpg?h=d33ebf6f&itok=qwQNPmu1)
In the mid-1980s, Balendra Sutharshan moved to Canada from the island nation of Sri Lanka. That move set Sutharshan on a path that had him heading continent-spanning collaborations and holding leadership posts at multiple Department of Energy
![Brenda Smith, shown here working with a gas viscometer in her research lab, is one of several people concurrently researching the thermophysical properties of feedstock gas. Their research will support computational researchers who are designing processes to separate isotopes. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, US Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-05/2021-P01103_0.jpg?h=13f436e5&itok=lMLI1EqU)
For years Brenda Smith found fulfillment working with nuclear batteries, a topic she’s been researching as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
![ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin and Rama Vasudevan (foreground) use scanning probe microscopy to study bulk ferroelectricity and surface electrochemistry -- and generate a lot of data. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-05/KalininVasudevan_2017-P03014_0.jpg?h=1116cd87&itok=KEEOB4hi)
At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists use artificial intelligence, or AI, to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for energy and information technologies.
![Parans Paranthaman, a researcher in the Chemical Sciences Division at ORNL, coordinated research efforts to study the filter efficiency of the N95 material. His published results represent one of the first studies on polypropylene as it relates to COVID-19. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-04/2021-P01675.jpg?h=18f5407d&itok=B3UCcJxT)
When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Parans Paranthaman suddenly found himself working from home like millions of others.
![Technicians John Dyer and T. Dyer use a manipulator arm in a shielded cave in ORNL’s Radiochemical Engineering Development Center to separate concentrated Pm-147 from byproducts generated through the production of Pu-238.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-03/Promethium%20feature_0.jpg?h=a1f525db&itok=6XSsJdot)
A new method developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory proves one effort’s trash is another’s valuable isotope. One of the byproducts of the lab’s national plutonium-238 production program is promethium-147, a rare isotope used in nuclear batteries and to measure the thickness of materials.
![Verónica Melesse Vergara speaks with third and fourth graders at East Side Intermediate School in Brownsville. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-02/EWeek_vergara_0.jpg?h=c44fcfa1&itok=-FdYpHed)
Twenty-seven ORNL researchers Zoomed into 11 middle schools across Tennessee during the annual Engineers Week in February. East Tennessee schools throughout Oak Ridge and Roane, Sevier, Blount and Loudon counties participated, with three West Tennessee schools joining in.
![The Perseverance rover](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-07/pia23492_0.jpg?h=d1cb525d&itok=A5U6cgBE)
On Feb. 18, the world will be watching as NASA’s Perseverance rover makes its final descent into Jezero Crater on the surface of Mars. Mars 2020 is the first NASA mission that uses plutonium-238 produced at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.