In December 2017, the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) entered into an extended 5 month scheduled outage to perform a number of high-priority jobs needed to ensure safe and reliable operation at higher powers. Most notable were the replacement of the facility’s inner reflector plug (IRP) and the accelerator’s radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ).

Searching for solutions to supersonic fluid flow behavior, researchers from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, and the US Air Force are using neutron radiography at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The team says a better understanding of spray dynamics will lead to improved fuel injector designs for the aeronautic and automotive industries as well as other spray-related applications used in agriculture, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing.

Engineers from Duke University are using cold (lower- energy) neutron scattering techniques at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to study the vibrational motions of atoms, called “phonons,” which is how heat propagates through thermoelectric materials.