Feature Articles

Practical fusion energy is not just a dream at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Experts in fusion and material science are working together to develop solutions that will make a fusion pilot plant — and ultimately carbon-free, abundant fusion electricity — possible.

Two decades in the making, a new flagship facility for nuclear physics opened on May 2, and scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have a hand in 10 of its first 34 experiments. ORNL researchers and their partners at other national laboratories and universities launched the first experiment on May 11. The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Michigan State University, will produce more than 1,000 new rare isotopes.

Some analysts say that the end of Moore’s Law is near, but Patrick Naulleau, the director of Berkeley Lab’s Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), says that it could be decades before the modern chip runs out of room for improvement, thanks to advances in materials and instrumentation enabled by the CXRO.

A new capability developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to identify urban neighborhoods, down to the block and building level, that are most vulnerable to climate change could help ensure that mitigation and resilience programs reach the people who need them the most.

ORNL’s suite of LandScan population distribution models is available online to the global public for the first time ever under a new open-source creative commons license.

Theoretical and experimental physicists from around the world gathered last month at Quark Matter 2022 to discuss new developments in high energy heavy ion physics. Highlights included a series of presentations and discussions about the latest findings from heavy ion research facilities—notably the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Large Hadron Collider at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN)—as well as future research directions for the field.

To achieve practical energy from fusion, extreme heat from the fusion system “blanket” component must be extracted safely and efficiently. ORNL fusion experts are exploring how tiny 3D-printed obstacles placed inside the narrow pipes of a custom-made cooling system could be a solution for removing heat from the blanket.