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A team from ORNL, joined by university students, recently traveled to the Ohio State University Research Reactor to conduct a novel experiment on nuclear thermal rocket fuel coatings — one that could help propel NASA’s astronauts to Mars faster and more efficiently. 

ORNL’s annual workshop has become the premier forum for molten salt reactor, or MSR, collaboration and Â鶹ӰÒô, convening industry, academia and government experts to further advance MSR research and development. This year’s event attracted a record-breaking 365 participants from across the country, highlighting the momentum to bring MSRs online.

Researchers for the first time documented the specific chemistry dynamics and structure of high-temperature liquid uranium trichloride salt, a potential nuclear fuel source for next-generation reactors. 

At ORNL, a group of scientists used neutron scattering techniques to investigate a relatively new functional material called a Weyl semimetal. These Weyl fermions move very quickly in a material and can carry electrical charge at room temperature. Scientists think that Weyl semimetals, if used in future electronics, could allow electricity to flow more efficiently and enable more energy-efficient computers and other electronic devices.

The world’s fastest supercomputer helped researchers simulate synthesizing a material harder and tougher than a diamond — or any other substance on Earth. The study used Frontier to predict the likeliest strategy to synthesize such a material, thought to exist so far only within the interiors of giant exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.

Brian Sanders is focused on impactful, multidisciplinary science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, developing solutions for everything from improved imaging of plant-microbe interactions that influence ecosystem health to advancing new treatments for cancer and viral infections. 

Advanced materials research to enable energy-efficient, cost-competitive and environmentally friendly technologies for the United States and Japan is the goal of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Japan’s National Institute of Materials Science.

ORNL researchers used electron-beam additive manufacturing to 3D-print the first complex, defect-free tungsten parts with complex geometries. 

Researchers set a new benchmark for future experiments making materials in space rather than for space. They discovered that many kinds of glass have similar atomic structure and arrangements and can successfully be made in space. Scientists from nine institutions in government, academia and industry participated in this 5-year study. 

A collection of seven technologies for lithium recovery developed by scientists from ORNL has been licensed to Element3, a Texas-based company focused on extracting lithium from wastewater produced by oil and gas production.