Articles

Haiming WenThe nearly 500 samples of steels and advanced alloys in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) are part of a giant, seven-year Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) project led by Assistant Professor Haiming Wen of Missouri University of Science and Technology that will contribute to improving alloy performance and durability for advanced nuclear reactors.“The materials in a nuclear reactor are the key to the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors,” Wen said. “We want to improve the radiation performance of the materials such as steels.”The approximately $3 million innovative project funded by the U.S....

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IDAHO FALLS -- The U.S. Department of Energy - Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) has selected 37 new Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) projects, totaling approximately $1.4 million. These project awards went to 22 principal investigators from universities, 11 from national laboratories, one from industry, and three foreign universities.   The NSUF competitively selected these projects from a pool of high-quality RTE proposals submitted during the solicitation period. Each proposal was evaluated based on a variety of factors including technical approach, mission relevance, and scientific-technical merit.The NSUF, managed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL), provides unparalleled opportunities for...

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In June, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected one industry, three DOE national laboratory, and four university-led projects to take advantage of NSUF capabilities to investigate important nuclear fuel and material applications. DOE will support two of these projects with a total of $1 million in research funds. All eight of these projects will be supported by more than $4 million in facility access costs and expertise for experimental neutron and ion irradiation testing, post-irradiation examination facilities, synchrotron beamline capabilities, and technical assistance for design and analysis of experiments through NSUF."Advancing the next generation of nuclear energy is paramount to...

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Researchers view materials at the Irradiated Materials Characterization LaboratorySince its inception a decade ago, the Nuclear Fuels and Materials Library (NFML) has blossomed into one of the largest assortments of nuclear fuels and materials available to the general nuclear research community for individual testing and research. These specimens range from conventional and advanced steels to experimental alloys, as well as ceramics and fuels, many of which were used inside of nuclear reactors. Operated and managed by the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF), NFML was initially conceptualized by the NSUF staff who identified an abundance of legacy materials from past research and...

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To get a job done, you need the right tool. Researchers now have one that will make their job easier.Most experiments run through the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) have the same underlying goal: quantifying changes in material properties. These changes arise from the radiation damage caused to a sample placed in a nuclear reactor.When designing these material science experiments, NSUF researchers have to make some choices: which reactor or reactors among those available would be best to use, where to place a sample within the reactor, how long to irradiate the test material and to what radiation damage levels...

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All,Like the rest of the country we have been watching and monitoring the impacts of the COVID-19 virus. Because we are a distributed user facility, we have been tracking our partner facilities as they received guidance from their parent institutions. All NSUF partner institutions have been impacted at some level.As many facilities close or restrict access and activities, please work directly with the facilities conducting your work to determine how this will impact your project and milestones.The NSUF Program Office based at Idaho National Laboratory has been working remotely since March 17 and anticipate this will be the case for...

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Idaho National Laboratory (INL) postdoctoral researcher Kaustubh Bawane attributes much of his career success so far to a 2018 Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) award he received while working on his doctoral thesis at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.The NSUF access award allowed Bawane to irradiate the nuclear fuel cladding materials he was studying, use cutting-edge instruments often unavailable to university students and ultimately secure his two-year postdoctoral position at INL that started in February 2020. To add to the journey, Bawane was recently awarded a second NSUF project that will allow him to utilize Texas A&M University's Accelerator...

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The second FY 2020 Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) has opened. Proposals are due Thursday, March 12.The RTE award process offers an avenue for researchers to perform irradiation effects studies of limited scope on nuclear fuels and materials of interest utilizing NSUF facilities. Completion of RTE projects is expected within 9 months of award. Prospective researchers are strongly encouraged to request samples from the NSUF Nuclear Fuels and Materials Library.RTE proposals are solicited and awarded three times per year. They are reviewed and evaluated for technical merit, relevancy, and feasibility. The number of awards is dependent on the availability of funding. Further...

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When the Wright brothers were building the world’s first aircraft, the inventors’ primary concern was whether or not their machine could get off the ground. It’s easy to assume that neither Orville nor Wilbur were thinking about the infinite number of variables associated with airplanes today, many of which are unpredictable; or so it may seem. Today aerospace engineers utilize modeling and simulation to remove some of the danger the Wright brothers first experienced.“Aviation is a high cost and consequence industry,” said Eric Whiting, Division Director for Advanced Scientific Computing at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). “Anything you can do to...

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