Patricia Huestis, a collaborator in the Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM) Energy Frontier Research Center, has been awarded the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award.

It’s hot in there! PNNL researchers take a close, but nonradioactive, look at metal particle formation in a nuclear fuel surrogate material. What they found will help fill knowledge gaps and could lead to better nuclear fuel designs.

Josef "Pepa" Matyas, a materials scientist in PNNL’s Nuclear Sciences Division, has been elected a fellow of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). He will be recognized at the ACerS annual meeting on September 30, 2019, in Portland, Ore.

Xenon search successful! A new scanning transmission electron microscope helps PNNL researchers find xenon deep in a section of nuclear fuel cladding.

Installing new access holes (up to 6 feet in diameter) could reduce the overall time and cost to retrieve waste from Hanford's underground storage tanks, according to a structural analysis of the tank domes by PNNL and Becht Engineering.

Researchers used novel methods to safely create and analyze plutonium samples. The approaches could prove influential in future studies of the radioactive material, benefitting research in legacy, national security and nuclear fuels.

Nuclear power figures prominently in our country's energy portfolio and is essential to our economic and environmental security.

In fast-neutron reactors, fuel is sealed in ~7 millimeter diameter steel tubes called cladding. When a high-energy "fast" neutron strikes an atom in the steel, it can knock the atom out of place, like a cue ball striking another billiard ball. This leaves two types of damage in the metal: an empty spot where the atom was, and the displaced atom wedged between other atoms. Over time, these defects typically drive undesirable rearrangement of the microstructure, potentially reducing the life of the cladding.

Discovery in action. These words describe what we do at PNNL. For more than 50 years, we have advanced the frontiers of science and engineering in the service of our nation and the the world.