An international team used PNNL microscopy to answer questions about how uranium dioxide—used in nuclear power plants—might behave in long-term storage.

PNNL’s Patrick Balducci delivered an information-packed tutorial on grid energy storage valuation at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Nuclear Process Science Initiative researchers at PNNL gain insights into the formation and rupture of high-pressure gas bubbles in nuclear fuel.

With support from DOE’s Office of Electricity and National Grid, PNNL led a groundbreaking study to accurately assess the full value of grid energy storage investments across a wide variety of use cases.

Energy storage is slowly shifting utility planning practices from the current paradigm, which ensures grid reliability by building reserve generation resources, to ensuring grid reliability by optimizing grid services.

A new PNNL tool makes it easy to see the differences across the country when it comes to the cost and affordability of electricity. Users can sort and compare nearly 100 metrics or variables and get individual county information.

Steve Short, a nuclear engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has been selected as a fellow of the National Society of Professional Engineers.

On October 22, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)​​​​​​​granted Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA's) Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station a 40-year operating license for its new Unit 2 reactor. This is the first nuclear reactor to be granted an operating license by the NRC in two decades.

Pressurized water nuclear reactors in the United States generate about 13 percent of U.S. electricity. Though efficient, these reactors face a unique challenge with stress corrosion cracking (SCC). This type of corrosion is one of the primary life-limiting degradation mechanisms of nickel-base alloy pressure boundary components, such as instrumentation and control rod nozzles, the welds that attach these nozzles to the reactor vessel, and welds that connect feedwater piping to the reactor vessel. As interest grows in a more sustainable and efficient fleet of nuclear reactors across the world, there is increasing interest in characterizing SCC initiation response.