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

A new radiation-resistant material for the efficient capture of noble gases xenon and krypton makes it safer and cheaper to recycle spent nuclear fuel.

A chemistry paper on the used nuclear fuel recycling process, led by PNNL lab fellow Gregg Lumetta, ranked 18th in Scientific Reports for downloads in 2019

Researchers at PNNL have come up with a novel way to use silicon as an energy storage ingredient, replacing the graphite in electrodes. Silicon can hold 10 times the electrical charge per gram, but it comes with problems of its own.

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

Scientists have witnessed the formation of the solid-electrolyte interphase, a critical component in lithium-ion batteries.

PNNL’s Nuclear Process Science Initiative (NPSI) has developed a book that examines processes used to separate nuclear materials.

PNNL and Argonne researchers developed and tested a chemical process that successfully captures radioactive byproducts from used nuclear fuel so they could be sent to advanced reactors for destruction while also producing electrical power.

Scientists have uncovered a root cause of the growth of needle-like structures—known as dendrites and whiskers—that plague lithium batteries, sometimes causing a short circuit, failure, or even a fire.

PNNL researchers have created a chemical cocktail that could help electric cars power their way through extreme temperatures where current lithium-ion batteries don’t operate as efficiently as needed.

PNNL researchers demonstrate how the excitation of oxygen atoms that contributes to better performance of a lithium-ion battery also triggers a process that leads to damage, explaining a phenomenon that has been a mystery to scientists.

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.

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.

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.