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.
Pumped-storage hydropower offers the most cost-effective storage option for shifting large volumes of energy. A PNNL-led team wrote a report comparing cost and performance factors for 10 storage technologies.
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.
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.
The inner Salish Sea’s future response to climate change, while significant, is predicted to be less severe than that of the open ocean based on parameters like algal blooms, ocean acidification, and annual occurrences of hypoxia.
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.
PNNL researchers are developing and evaluating bat tagging and tracking tools that will help design solutions to protect the bat population from wind turbines.
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.
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.
"It's sort of like using infrared goggles to see heat signatures in the dark, except this is underground." PNNL and CHPRC implemented a state-of-the-art approach to monitor the process of remediating residual uranium at Hanford's 300 Area.
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.
A recent study pinpointed the reaction front where lithium (Li) dendrites can come into contact with cathode materials. It also detailed the Li propagation pathway and reaction steps that lead to cathode failure.
