Oak Ridge National Laboratory expertise in fission and fusion has come together to form a new collaboration, the Fusion Energy Reactor Models Integrator, or FERMI, which aims to apply a suite of predictive simulation platforms originally created for fission nuclear reactors to the challenges of designing the first generation of fusion reactors.

May 6, 2021

For years Brenda Smith found fulfillment working with nuclear batteries, a topic she’s been researching as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

But she gets a different kind of charge out of her work in a new position in the lab’s Stable Isotope Research, Development, and Production Section.

In Stable Isotopes, Smith is one of several people concurrently researching the thermophysical properties of feedstock gas. Their research will support computational researchers who are designing processes to separate isotopes.

A research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory bioengineered a microbe to efficiently turn waste into itaconic acid, an industrial chemical used in plastics and paints.

Producing itaconic acid currently involves fungi feeding on relatively pure sugars, which can be expensive. In ORNL’s demonstration, the team used lignin, a waste product from biorefineries and paper mills, to grow the bacterium Pseudomonas putida for potentially cheaper itaconic production.

If a nation tries to hide a clandestine nuclear operation, Paula Cable-Dunlap and her team will give their all to help find it.

Just don’t call their work “nuclear CSI” – not where she can hear, at least.