Reining in Runaway Electrons
At temperatures hotter than the sun, even a small disruption can interfere with a fusion reaction. Scientists planning for the operations of ITER, an international fusion plant now under assembly, needed to solve the problem of runaway electrons, negatively charged particles in the soup of matter in the plasma within…
Matt LakinJanuary 7, 20255 min
Surprising Details in a More Precise Description of Fission
Nuclear fission — when the nucleus of an atom splits in two, releasing energy — may seem like a process that is fully understood. First discovered in 1939 and thoroughly studied ever since, fission is a constant factor in modern life, used in everything from nuclear medicine to power-generating nuclear…
Coury TurczynOctober 23, 20248 min
Frontier Simulations Provide New Insights Into Calcium-48’s Controversial Nuclear Magnetic Excitation
The nucleus of an atom is almost inconceivably small, and most people have little idea just how much of the world around them is shaped by the strong nuclear forces that hold those tiny subatomic particles together. Nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently used…
Jeremy RumseySeptember 3, 20248 min
ExaSMR Nominated for 2023 ACM Gordon Bell Prize
The Exascale Small Modular Reactor effort, or ExaSMR, is a software stack developed over seven years under the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project to produce the highest-resolution simulations of nuclear reactor systems to date. Now, ExaSMR has been nominated for a 2023 Gordon Bell Prize by the Association for Computing Machinery…
Coury TurczynSeptember 11, 20235 min
Oxygen-28 Unbound
Isotopes — atoms of a particular element that have different numbers of neutrons — can be used for a variety of tasks, from tracking climate change to conducting medical research. Investigating rare isotopes, which have extreme neutron-to-proton imbalances and are often created in accelerator facilities, provides scientists with opportunities to…
Coury TurczynAugust 30, 20238 min
Exascale’s New Frontier: ExaSMR
PI: Steven Hamilton, Oak Ridge National Laboratory In 2016, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (10¹⁸) or more calculations per second. That meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific…
Coury TurczynAugust 23, 20235 min
Predicting the Future of Fission Power
As renewable sources of energy such as wind and sun power are being increasingly added to the country’s electrical grid, old-fashioned nuclear energy is also being primed for a resurgence. For the past 20 years, fission reactors have produced a nearly unchanging portion of the nation’s electricity: around 20%. But…
Coury TurczynMay 22, 20237 min
Summit, neutrons crack code to uranium compound’s signature vibes
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers used the nation’s fastest supercomputer to map the molecular vibrations of an important but little-studied uranium compound produced during the nuclear fuel cycle for results that could lead to a cleaner, safer world. The study by researchers from ORNL, Savannah River National Laboratory and the…
Matt LakinMay 5, 20226 min
Forging Ahead with Frontier: Ready to Crush Science
Computational users at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) are running scientific codes on Frontier’s architecture in the form of a powerful test system at the OLCF called Crusher. Frontier, an HPE Cray EX supercomputer capable of 1018 calculations per second—or 10 with 18 zeroes—was installed in late 2021 and is…
Rachel McDowellMarch 28, 20228 min
The Magic is Gone for Certain Atomic Nuclei
Using the power of the Summit supercomputer, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have verified the results of a groundbreaking experiment to precisely measure the charge radii of neutron-rich potassium isotopes. The findings challenge current nuclear theory…
Coury TurczynApril 6, 20217 min
Solving A Beta Decay Puzzle
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 11, 2019—An international collaboration including scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) solved a 50-year-old puzzle that explains why beta decays of atomic nuclei are slower than what is expected based on the beta decays of free neutrons. The findings, published…
Jonathan HinesMarch 12, 20196 min
Award Finalists Demonstrate Improved QCD Code for Supercomputing
This article is part of a series covering the finalists for the 2018 Gordon Bell Prize that used the Summit supercomputer. The prize winner will be announced at SC18 in November in Dallas. There is a fine line between particle physics and nuclear physics at which the subatomic particles quarks and…
Katie Elyce JonesNovember 5, 20189 min
With Supercomputing Power and an Unconventional Strategy, Scientists Solve a Next-Generation Physics Problem
Using the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a team of researchers has calculated a fundamental property of protons and neutrons, known as the nucleon axial coupling, with groundbreaking precision. Led by André Walker-Loud of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the…
Katie Elyce JonesMay 30, 20189 min
Another First for Quantum
The beginnings of quantum computing bring about many firsts. In 2010 a team led by B. P. Lanyon simulated a hydrogen molecule, H2, on a quantum system for the first time. Last fall research scientists at IBM performed the first quantum calculations of molecules beyond hydrogen and helium. Now a…
Rachel McDowellMay 23, 20186 min
Nuclear Physicists Wield HPC to Uncover Magic Isotopes
Where do elements come from? How does the strong force bind subatomic particles into nuclei? What can scientists understand from nuclei with unusual proton–neutron ratios? Nuclear physicists at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are seeking answers to questions like these. One element is of…
Rachel McDowellMay 1, 20186 min