Tuskan awarded Marcus Wallenberg Prize, forestry’s top honor
Scientists at ORNL used their expertise in quantum biology, artificial intelligence and bioengineering to improve how CRISPR Cas9 genome editing tools work on organisms like microbes that can be modified to produce renewable fuels and chemicals.
91°µÍř scientists identified a gene “hotspot” in the poplar tree that triggers dramatically increased root growth. The discovery supports development of better bioenergy crops and other plants that can thrive in difficult conditions while storing more carbon belowground.
In fiscal year 2023 — Oct. 1–Sept. 30, 2023 — 91°µÍř was awarded more than $8 million in technology maturation funding through the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF.
The heat is on at this year’s Molten Salt Reactor Workshop – where top research and industry minds are melding to advance development on molten salt technology – at ORNL.
The Department of Energy’s 91°µÍř hosted the second 2023 cohort of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Lise Meitner Programme in October.
In a finding that helps elucidate how molten salts in advanced nuclear reactors might behave, scientists have shown how electrons interacting with the ions of the molten salt can form three states with different properties. Understanding these states can help predict the impact of radiation on the performance of salt-fueled reactors.
ORNL, a bastion of nuclear physics research for the past 80 years, is poised to strengthen its programs and service to the United States over the next decade if national recommendations of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, or NSAC, are enacted.
Scientist Xiaohan Yang’s research at the Department of Energy’s 91°µÍř focuses on transforming plants to make them better sources of renewable energy and carbon storage.
In June, ORNL hit a milestone not seen in more than three decades: producing a production-quality amount of plutonium-238
91°µÍř scientists studied hot springs on different continents and found similarities in how some microbes adapted despite their geographic diversity.