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Hear from ORNL scientists who worked on Perseverance mission

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Video published on YouTube by Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Three scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will discuss their work this afternoon on technologies for the Perseverance rover, which uses plutonium-238 produced at the lab and will touch down on Mars on Thursday.

Perseverance is scheduled to make its final descent into Jezero Crater on the surface of Mars on Thursday. It’s the first NASA mission that uses plutonium-238 produced at ORNL.

The plutonium-238 is encased in iridium-alloy cladding, and it is insulated by carbon-bonded carbon fiber. It’s used in the heat source module that fuels Perseverance’s multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator. As the plutonium decays, the heat that is released is converted into electricity, charging the rover’s batteries and powering the onboard advanced imaging and sensor systems. (Learn more about the Mars mission here.)

The online event today featuring the three ORNL scientists is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, and it is scheduled to start at 3 p.m.

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Japanese supercomputer displaces ORNL’s Summit as world’s most powerful

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A Japanese supercomputer has displaced the Summit supercomputer, pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as the world’s most powerful. Summit is a 200-petaflop IBM system. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)

Note: This story was last updated at 3 p.m. June 24.

A Japanese supercomputer has displaced the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the world’s most powerful and bumped other U.S. and Chinese machines down one spot on a semiannual list of the fastest systems.

Summit had been ranked the world’s most powerful supercomputer on the semiannual TOP500 list since June 2018. It was bumped to number two when the new TOP500 list was released Monday.

The new top system is installed in Kobe, Japan, and it is named Fugaku. In a high-performance test, it performed at 415.5 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

Fugaku’s performance was 2.8 times better than Summit’s, according to TOP500. Summit delivered 148.8 petaflops on the high-performance test.

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For members: ORNL contract extension valued at up to $8 billion

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The five-year non-competitive contract extension at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has an estimated value of up to $8 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The DOE Office of Science has explained why it did not have a full, open competition for the extension.

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Work starts to increase power of SNS proton beam

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Construction work has started on a part of a project to double the power of the proton beam in the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It’s the first construction work at SNS since 2006. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

Construction work has started on a part of a project to double the power of the proton beam in the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It’s the first construction work at the $1.4 billion SNS since 2006.

The current work is limited to what is known as the klystron gallery. It houses radio-frequency systems. They power the structures that are used to accelerate a negatively-charged hydrogen ion beam in the linear accelerator at SNS.

ORNL has previously said the klystron gallery construction could last about one year.

The work is part of a project called the proton power upgrade, or PPU. It will eventually double the power of the SNS proton beam from 1.4 megawatts to 2.8 megawatts. That could be a seven-year project. The potential cost has previously been estimated at $245 million.

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ORNL making molds to help produce COVID-19 test tubes

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An example of a 3D printer, the Cincinnati Machine, is pictured above at work in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility in Hardin Valley on Dec. 29, 2014. (Photo courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy)

Engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are making metal molds that companies will use to manufacture plastic tubes for COVID-19 test kits.

The work has been cited in two federal coronavirus task force press conferences at the White House this week.

On Monday, Brad Smith, a federal health official, said the ORNL work could help supply more than 40 million collection tubes per month in the next several weeks. Smith grew up in Knoxville, and he has been a business leader and entrepreneur, and served in Tennessee state government. He is now deputy administrator and director of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The ORNL work was also cited by President Donald Trump on Sunday.

The ORNL engineers are using additive manufacturing to produce the metal molds for the COVID-19 test kits. Additive manufacturing is the process of making an object by printing it with a material layer by layer. Printers known as 3D printers— some large, some small—can be used.

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ORNL researcher helps discover new species of cave snail

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Researchers discovered the Tennessee cavesnail, Antrorbis tennesseensis, in caves near Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The snail is less than two millimeters long. (Photo credit: ORNL/Nathaniel Shoobs and Matthew Niemiller)

A researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped discover a small cave snail.

The new snail species has been named the Tennessee cavesnail, or Antrorbis tennesseensis. Its name honors the state where it was found and the fact that several researchers involved in its discovery are affiliated with the University of Tennessee. A paper describing and naming the species was published in December.

The snail, which is less than two millimeters long, was found in two caves in Roane County a few miles south of the Oak Ridge Reservation. The reservation includes ORNL and parts of the city of Oak Ridge.

The snail is found on or under rocks far inside the caves, usually in streams that aren’t too muddy or silty, ORNL said. Researchers recommended that the species be listed as endangered.

The ORNL researcher is Evin Carter. He is a research associate and wildlife ecologist at ORNL, which is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. With only a handful of surveys completed so far, Carter has plans to survey the 40 or so other caves on the Oak Ridge Reservation, ORNL said.

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UT-Battelle gets five-year extension to manage ORNL

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory Sign
Photo by ORNL

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved a five-year extension of UT-Battelle’s contract to manage and operate Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The five-year extension took effect Wednesday, April 1, ORNL said in a response to questions.

The value of the extension wasn’t immediately available.

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More than 60 percent of ORNL staff working remotely

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory Sign
Photo by Oak Ridge National Laboratory

More than 60 percent of the 5,200 staff members at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working remotely.

No staff members have tested positive for COVID-19, a contagious respiratory disease that has spread around the world and can be deadly. But ORNL does have employees that have been put in self-quarantine by the lab’s medical director. That includes staff members who believe they, or a member of their household, may have come in contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19 or a person who has recently traveled to an area where widespread community spread of COVID-19 has been confirmed.

The remote work at ORNL is being done by staff members in a wide variety of jobs that include support functions like accounting, auditing, legal, technical editing, project management, and other activities, as well as researchers who can monitor data remotely or who are using the time to write or edit research publications and similar work, ORNL said in a response to questions on Wednesday.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 staff members continue to work on site, largely in facility operations positions that require hands-on tasks or monitoring, the lab said. These include technicians, front-line supervisors, electricians, firefighters, security personnel, and other types of workers.

“Some tasks have been shuffled to accommodate the need to work from home, but we are continuing to fulfill our mission commitments to the U.S. Department of Energy and the nation,” ORNL said.

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With key isotopes depleted, DOE plans production center at ORNL

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The U.S. Department of Energy has proposed an isotope production and research center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that could be important for medical, national security, and research projects.

In a budget request released in February, DOE said its supply of certain key enriched stable isotopes has been depleted, making the United States more dependent upon foreign imports for enriched stable isotopes. Isotopes are forms of an element that have the same number of protons but different number of neutrons in their nuclei.

DOE said the demand for enriched stable isotopes continues to grow substantially, including for the medical, national security, and fundamental research projects.

The new center at ORNL, the U.S. Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, would reduce the nation’s dependence upon foreign countries for those isotopes, DOE said.

DOE approved the mission need for the facility in January 2019. Although the cost range could change, the current project estimate is between $175 million and $298 million.

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ORNL supercomputer used to identify drug compounds that could help fight coronavirus

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A compound, shown in gray, was calculated to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, shown in cyan, to prevent it from docking to the Human Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2, or ACE2, receptor, shown in purple. (Image credit: Micholas Smith/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

Note: This story was last updated at 10:55 a.m.

The Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been used to identify drug compounds, including medications and natural compounds, that could help fight coronavirus, although more study is needed.

“The researchers used Summit, the world’s most powerful and smartest supercomputer, to identify 77 small-molecule drug compounds that might warrant further study in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is responsible for the COVID-19 disease outbreak,” ORNL said in a response to questions Wednesday.

The researchers performed simulations on Summit of more than 8,000 compounds to screen for those that are most likely to bind to the main “spike” protein of the coronavirus, rendering it unable to infect host cells. They ranked compounds of interest that could have value in experimental studies of the virus. They published their results on “ChemRxiv.”

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Fusion research: ORNL chosen for plasma materials experiment facility

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Scientists use a laser to align the plasma created at the Proto-MPEX (Materials Plasma Exposure Experiment) machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo credit: Ted Biewer/ORNL, U.S. Department of Energy)

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been chosen as the site of an experimental facility to test materials that would withstand the harsh conditions of the plasmas created in fusion devices, which, researchers hope, could eventually provide carbon-free energy to people around the world.

The proposed facility, the Materials Plasma Exposure Experiment facility, or MPEX, has an estimated cost range between $87 million and $175 million. It would be in an existing facility in an area at ORNL known as the Energy Systems Test Complex.

Fusion devices would use the same reactions that power the sun. Temperatures inside a fusion reactor could reach millions of degrees.

Scientists are studying materials that could withstand the conditions inside fusion reactors by exposing them to prototypical plasma conditions. Plasma, the heated matter created in a fusion device, has high-energy neutrons, electrons, and ions. MPEX would study materials that face the plasma. Finding materials capable of withstanding the harsh environment remains a major hurdle to using fusion to produce energy.

A critical decision for the MPEX facility was completed in early February by the U.S. Department of Energy. ORNL is a DOE Office of Science lab. The critical decision, CD-1, is the second step in the five-step process that DOE uses to manage projects. The CD-1 decision included an alternative selection and a cost range.

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About 600 experiments affected by HFIR shutdown

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The High Flux Isotope Reactor vessel at Oak Ridge National Laboratory resides in a pool of water illuminated by the blue glow of the Cherenkov radiation effect. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

About 600 experiments and roughly 500 users were affected by the nearly year-long shutdown of the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the lab said Thursday.

HFIR, which is used for research and isotope production, restarted October 29, 2019. It had been shut down since November 13, 2018, after an elevated radiation level was detected in the reactor’s primary cooling system.

Reactors users who had approved proposals when HFIR was shut down have been running those experiments since it restarted in the fall, according to a response to questions provided by ORNL spokesperson Morgan McCorkle on Thursday. The backlog is expected to be completed by the spring.

The shutdown did not affect the production of plutonium-238, but it did delay the production and distribution of some medical and industrial isotopes, the lab’s response said.

[Read more…]

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