Feature Articles

To meet energy demands and reestablish the nation’s energy dominance, U.S. companies are developing several types of advanced reactors.

One type of advanced reactor, a molten salt reactor, uses fuels dissolved in molten salt coolants instead of the solid fuels used in traditional nuclear reactors. These reactors feature enhanced safety features and high temperatures, which will offer utilities more flexibility in the form of efficient heat and electricity.

Over the next four years, PNNL and University of Arizona will develop open-source computational tools to better identify and characterize the viruses associated with the human microbiome.

Two Argonne scientists, Karen Mulfort and Di-Jia Liu, have been elected as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for achievements in their field.

Hydropower is a reliable source of energy. However, the inconsistent nature of water flows and electricity demand often challenges hydropower operators and reduces revenue.

Data centers are one of the fastest growing areas of America’s technology sector. These massive warehouses of servers make some of today’s most important technical achievements possible, such as the expanding use of artificial intelligence applications and cryptocurrency mining. Because they use a great deal of energy, they emit a substantial amount of waste heat. But rather than let the heat – well, go to waste – what if we could use it to create new revenue streams for businesses?

Everyday life depends on a robust infrastructure network that provides access to running water, communications technology and electricity, among other basic necessities. The experts who keep our national infrastructure secure and resilient also need a strong network to share their knowledge and train the next generation of professionals capable of solving complex infrastructure challenges. This means finding ways to bring government, academia and the private sector together. One way is through sabbaticals that temporarily place professors in our national labs.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Cincinnati achieved a breakthrough in understanding the vulnerability of microbes to the butanol they produce during fermentation of plant biomass. The discovery could pave the way for more efficient production of domestic fuels, chemicals and materials.

Argonne researchers used the lab’s Aurora exascale supercomputer to perform large-scale simulations of the universe, providing a testing ground to investigate Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s potentially game-changing observations of dark energy.