During his doctorate work in southeastern Australia, PNNL fisheries engineer Brett Pflugrath examined weirs, or small dams built across rivers, and how they impact fish passage.
Like its namesake, Triton, a Greek god dubbed the herald of the sea, the Triton Initiative aims to deliver messages from the ocean about marine energy and how it affects nearby marine animals.
A new paper found that hydropower turbines with composite blades generate about 20 percent more power than turbines with traditional stainless steel blades at the same flow rate.
Mama and calf humpback whales—considered a vulnerable species that might be entangled in underwater equipment—star in a new animation video that depicts the marine mammals’ scale and movements relative to floating offshore wind farms.
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.
For decades, the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has played a role in establishing and maintaining sustainable hydropower for the region.