High stresses combined with a corrosive environment can cause critical components inside power plants and other systems to crack and fail, sometimes with little warning.
Resources
News
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New experiments, new insights into stress corrosion cracking
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Understanding and Predicting Materials Behavior
One of the great challenges in the world of nuclear engineering is the behavior of materials under extraordinarily harsh conditions.
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US Energy Secretary Steven Chu visits ORNL, experiences nuclear in 3-D
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu made a quick visit to Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Wednesday, got a briefing on advanced computer simulations of nuclear energy and even took a turn experiencing the 3-D environment of a virtual reactor's nuclear core.
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Energy Secretary Chu to visit ORNL today
U.S. Secretary of Energy Secretary Steven Chu will visit Oak Ridge National Laboratory today to highlight steps the Obama Administration is taking to restart America's nuclear energy industry.
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US Energy Secretary touring Oak Ridge Laboratory
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is touring the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Nuclear Modeling and Simulation Energy Innovation Hub.
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Secretary of Energy visits Tennessee research lab
Some of the worlds fastest computers are changing our future, right in East Tennessee. Secretary Chu says nuclear power will play a key roll in the future of energy production and that's why research done at Oak Ridge will make our lives better.
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Emilio Baglietto: Better reactors grow from better simulations
Nuclear fission technology is the only viable grid-scale source of continuous, carbon-free electricity available today – but realizing its potential in the fight against global climate change requires substantial improvements in both the technological and the economic performance of new-generation reactors.
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Nuclear Energy After Fukushima
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Boost in Computing Power Stoking a Nuclear Revival
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ORNL Review: Nuclear 2.0 (pdf)
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HPC Source: Visualization
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Energy Secretary Steven Chu answers questions from an "Energy Matters" town hall.
In an online town hall held today dubbed "Energy Matters", U.S Secretary of Energy Steven Chu discussed President Obama's Clean Energy and Innovation Agenda announced during the State of the Union speech.
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Obama highlights next generation nuclear reactors in the SOTU
President Obama, in his State of the Union address Tuesday, cited work being performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory as an example of cutting edge research aimed at solving the energy challenge.
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After getting a shout-out from President Obama, ORNL’s Kothe says, ‘Now we’ve got to deliver’
It was about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday when Doug Kothe, nuclear engineer and director of the Consortium for the Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, got a call from ORNL colleague Jess Gehin. Gehin had been online at NPR.org and had found an advance copy of President Obama’s State of the Union address. He excitedly told Kothe that he needed to take a look at one of the lines in the speech.
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Supercomputer Starts Up 'Virtual Reactor'
The fields of nuclear energy and high-performance computing research may seem worlds apart. But in the minds of top experts, they have the potential, when working together, to lead to significant breakthroughs.
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CASL project powers nuclear energy resurgence
When Doug Kothe entered nuclear engineering school in 1983, the graduate chairman had this message: Don't worry about a job. There are lots of nuclear reactors to decommission. That was then. Three decades later, Kothe is leading one of the most significant U.S. nuclear engineering research and development projects in a generation. But the amazing reactor he's helping build doesn't use steel and concrete. It's virtual.