PNNL researchers and professional staff led discussions ranging from biothreats and climate change to science careers at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held this year in Seattle.
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.
When two powerful earthquakes rocked southern California earlier this month, officials’ attention focused, understandably, on safety. How many people were injured? Were buildings up to code? How good are we at predicting earthquakes?
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.
PNNL scientists today unveiled an updated tool designed to help stakeholders assess the nation's preparedness for biological-based dangers, also known as biothreats.
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.
Like detectives looking for clues, researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been working for nearly a decade on ways to identify the "fingerprints" of potential chemical threats.
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.
