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Most modern ocean models focus on two categories of waves: a barotropic system, which has a fast wave propagation speed, and a baroclinic system, which has a slow wave propagation speed. To help address the challenge of simulating these two modes simultaneously, a team from DOE’s Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories has developed a new solver algorithm that reduces the total run time of the Model for Prediction Across Scales-Ocean, or MPAS-Ocean, E3SM’s ocean circulation model, by 45%.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory became the first to 3D-print large rotating steam turbine blades for generating energy in power plants.

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Magnesium oxide is a promising material for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and injecting it deep underground to limit the effects of climate change. But making the method economical will require discovering the speed at which carbon dioxide is absorbed and how environmental conditions affect the chemical reactions involved.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Caterpillar Inc. have entered into a cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, to investigate using methanol as an alternative fuel source for four-stroke internal combustion marine engines. The collaboration supports efforts to decarbonize the marine industry, a hard-to-electrify transportation sector.

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Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are turning air into fertilizer without leaving a carbon footprint.

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Four researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been named ORNL Corporate Fellows in recognition of significant career accomplishments and continued leadership in their scientific fields.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Karen White, who works in ORNL’s Neutron Science Directorate, has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award.White, who manages the section that provides the machine controls, computing infrastructure, and protection systems across all neutron science technical areas, received the award during the biennial International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems, held October 7-13, 2013, in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have made a significant stride toward understanding a viable process for direct air capture, or DAC, of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This DAC process is in early development with the aim of achieving negative emissions, where the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the envelope of gases surrounding Earth exceeds the amount emitted.

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Since UT-Battelle began managing ORNL in 2000, 97 ORNL researchers have reached this milestone

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In October, President Biden signed an executive order outlining how the United States will promote safe, secure and trustworthy AI.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has joined a global consortium of scientists from federal laboratories, research institutes, academia and industry to address the challenges of building large-scale artificial intelligence systems and advancing trustworthy and reliable AI for scientific discovery.

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Caldera Holding has licensed ORNL's membrane solvent extraction technique to separate rare earth elements in mined ore. The company also owns the Pea Ridge iron mine in Missouri. The mine is among the first in America shown to have relatively high amounts of dysprosium — critical for permanent magnets.

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Used lithium-ion batteries from cell phones, laptops and a growing number of electric vehicles are piling up, but options for recycling them remain limited mostly to burning or chemically dissolving shredded batteries.

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Benjamin Manard, an analytical chemist in the Chemical Sciences Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been selected for the 2023 Emerging Investigator Lectureship from the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

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Guided by machine learning, chemists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed a record-setting carbonaceous supercapacitor material that stores four times more energy than the best commercial material.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used their knowledge of complex ecosystem processes, energy systems, human dynamics, computational science and Earth-scale modeling to inform the nation’s latest National Climate Assessment, which draws attention to vulnerabilities and resilience opportunities in every region of the country.

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Seven scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been named among the world’s most influential researchers on the 2023 Highly Cited Researchers list, produced by Clarivate, a data analytics firm that specializes in scientific and academic research.

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In 1973, physicist Phil Anderson hypothesized that the quantum spin liquid, or QSL, state existed on some triangular lattices, but he lacked the tools to delve deeper. Fifty years later, a team led by researchers associated with the Quantum Science Center headquartered at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has confirmed the presence of QSL behavior in a new material with this structure, KYbSe2.

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Making room for the world’s first exascale supercomputer took some supersized renovations.Frontier’s 74 cabinets cover more than 7,300 square feet in the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s data center located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. That’s a space roughly 1,700 square feet larger than that occupied by its high-speed predecessor Summit and more than three times the size of the average American home for a machine that runs on 30 million watts of electricity.

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The team that built Frontier set out to break the exascale barrier, but the supercomputer’s record-breaking didn’t stop there.“The exascale number marks a major milestone itself, but it also marks the beginning of a new chapter in high-speed computing,” said Feiyi Wang, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory computer scientist who leads research into artificial intelligence and analytics.

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Frontier still holds the title of world’s fastest supercomputer after new TOP500 lists came out in November 2022, June 2023, and this week, and OLCF engineers expect further tuning to coax even faster speeds from its processors.

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Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory 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.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been leading a project to understand how a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, could threaten power plants.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Michael McGuire has received the lab’s Director’s Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Science and Technology and the Distinguished Researcher award for his leadership and contributions to materials research.

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When it comes to medical decisions, time is of the essence. In her research, Maria Mahbub applies machine learning to clinical practice guidelines to help reduce time to clinical decisions.

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In response to a renewed international interest in molten salt reactors, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a novel technique to visualize molten salt intrusion in graphite.

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Physicists William Raphael “Raph” Hix of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and John Lajoie, who will join ORNL on Nov. 6 from Iowa State University, have been elected Fellows of the American Physical Society.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have improved flaw detection to increase confidence in metal parts that are 3D-printed using laser powder bed fusion.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists identified a gene “hotspot” in the poplar tree that triggers dramatically increased root growth. The discovery supports development of better bioenergy crops and other plants that can thrive in difficult conditions while storing more carbon belowground.

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To better understand important dynamics at play in flood-prone coastal areas, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists working on simulations of Earth’s carbon and nutrient cycles paid a visit to experimentalists gathering data in a Texas wetland.

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Stephen Streiffer began his tenure as director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory with a focus on enabling staff members, an awareness of the laboratory’s rich history and a commitment to addressing the most significant scientific and technical challenges.

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Currently, the biggest hurdle for electric vehicles, or EVs, is the development of advanced battery technology to extend driving range, safety and reliability.New research has shown how a novel lithium-based electrolyte material (Li9N2Cl3) can be used to develop solid-state batteries that charge faster and store more energy than conventional designs.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used carefully planned chemical design, neutron scattering and high-performance computing to help develop a new catalytic recycling process. The catalyst selectively and sequentially deconstructs multiple polymers in mixed plastics into pristine monomers. The new organocatalyst has proven to efficiently and quickly deconstruct multiple polymers — in around two hours. Such polymers include those used in materials such as safety goggles (polycarbonates), foams (polyurethanes), water bottles (polyethylene terephthalates) and ropes or fishing nets (polyamides), which together comprise more than 30% of global plastic production. Until now, no single catalyst has been shown to be effective on all four of these polymers.

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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.

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Using neutrons to see the additive manufacturing process at the atomic level, scientists have shown that they can measure strain in a material as it evolves and track how atoms move in response to stress.

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A team led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a framework for designing solid-state batteries, or SSBs, with mechanics in mind. Their paper, published in Science, reviewed how these factors change SSBs during their cycling.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a bastion of nuclear physics research for the past 80 years, is poised to strengthen its programs and service to the United States over the next decade if national recommendations of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, or NSAC, are enacted.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with NASA, are taking additive manufacturing to the final frontier by 3D printing the same kind of wheel as the design used by NASA for its robotic lunar rover, demonstrating the technology for specialized parts needed for space exploration.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Tennessee State University have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen research cooperation and provide diverse undergraduate students enriching educational research opportunities at the lab.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, known as UTRGV, have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen research cooperation and establish a collaborative program for undergraduate research and education, further cementing relationships and collaboration between the lab and minority-serving institutions. El Laboratorio Nacional de Oak Ridge del Departamento de Energía del EEUU, o DOE, y la Universidad de Texas del Valle del Rio Grande, o UTRGV, han firmado un Memorándum de Entendimiento comprometiéndose a fortalecer la cooperación en la investigación científica y establecer un programa colaborativo para estudiantes de pregrado.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been selected to lead an Energy Earthshot Research Center, or EERC, focused on developing chemical processes that use sustainable methods instead of burning fossil fuels to radically reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions to stem climate change and limit the crisis of a rapidly warming planet.

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Using light instead of heat, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers found a way to release carbon dioxide from a solvent used in direct air capture to trap this greenhouse gas.

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For 25 years, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have used their broad expertise in human health risk assessment, ecology, radiation protection, toxicology and information management to develop widely used tools and data for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of the agency’s Superfund program.

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Scientist Xiaohan Yang’s research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory focuses on transforming plants to make them better sources of renewable energy and carbon storage.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced the establishment of its Center for AI Security Research, or CAISER, to address threats already present as governments and industries around the world adopt artificial intelligence and take advantage of the benefits it promises in data processing, operational efficiencies and decision-making.

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The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory — already the world’s most powerful accelerator-based neutron source — will be on a planned hiatus through June 2024 as crews work to upgrade the facility. Much of the work — part of the facility’s Proton Power Upgrade project — will involve building a connector between the accelerator and the planned Second Target Station at SNS.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have conducted a comprehensive life cycle, cost and carbon emissions analysis on 3D-printed molds for precast concrete and determined the method is economically beneficial compared to conventional wood molds.

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Quantum computers process information using quantum bits, or qubits, based on fragile, short-lived quantum mechanical states. To make qubits robust for applications, researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory sought to create a new material system.

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Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory is leading two nuclear physics research projects within the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, or SciDAC, program from the Department of Energy Office of Science. One of the projects is called Nuclear Computational Low-Energy Initiative, or NUCLEI. The other is Exascale Nuclear Astrophysics for FRIB, or ENAF.