PNNL will lead three new grid modernization projects funded by the Department of Energy. The projects focus on scalability and usability, networked microgrids, and machine learning for a more resilient, flexible and secure power grid.
Advancing a more collective understanding of coastal systems dynamics and evolution is a formidable scientific challenge. PNNL is meeting the challenge head on to inform decisions for the future.
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.
PNNL helped teach the next generation of principal investigators about aerosols—tiny atmospheric particles that can affect the Earth’s climate—during the 2019 Aerosol Summer School.
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.
After 10 years, a specialized research aircraft operated by PNNL for the DOE completed is final campaign. PNNL staff are leading efforts to instrument a new plane for future research.
A study co-led by PNNL and reviewed in Science investigates how nanomaterials—both ancient and modern—cycle through the Earth’s air, water, and land, and calls for a better understanding of how they affect the environment and human health.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and PNNL partnered to complete—in record time—an environmental impact statement for the nation’s first small modular nuclear reactor, to be sited at Clinch River, Tenn.
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.
Researchers at PNNL are developing a new class of acoustically active nanomaterials designed to improve the high-resolution tracking of exploratory fluids injected into the subsurface. These could improve subsurface geophysical monitoring.
"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.