Latest Department of Energy Stories

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- TechConnect World, the world's largest annual innovation conference and marketplace for innovators, technology business developers, and investors, will be co-located in 2013 with the National Innovation Summit and Showcase (NISS), May 12-16 in Washington, D.C. In support of the White House and Congressional call for innovation commercialization initiatives, the National Innovation Summit and Showcase delivers the world's largest showcase of...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has created a machine capable of doing the unthinkable. In fact, it’s capabilities not only sound impossible, they sound fictional. By combining traditional CPUs with graphical processing units (GPUs), the Titan Supercomputer capable of spitting out 20 petaflops, making it 10 times more powerful than ORNL’s previous Jaguar supercomputer. For the uninitiated, a petaflop, says Buddy...

More than 50 UC Berkeley energy research projects on display Berkeley, Calif. (PRWEB) October 02, 2012 The largest student-run energy event in the West will convene on October 18 and 19 to examine the tensions driving innovation, investment and policy in energy. The Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) will host the annual BERC Symposium on the campus of UC Berkeley. Two keynotes and a range of panel discussions on October 19 will examine technical drivers, policy...

CANOGA PARK, Calif., Oct. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and its team members $1 million to evaluate the benefits of pressurized oxy-combustion in a fluidized bed reactor to economically capture greenhouse gases emitted by coal-fired power plants. As part of the award, which the DOE signed into contract today, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and its partners will contribute an additional $267,000 toward the project....

Images show how nickel, which enhances battery capacity, also appears to hinder charging rates Anyone who owns an electronic device knows that lithium ion batteries could work better and last longer. Now, scientists examining battery materials on the nano-scale reveal how nickel forms a physical barrier that impedes the shuttling of lithium ions in the electrode, reducing how fast the materials charge and discharge. Published last week in Nano Letters, the research also suggests a way to...

BLUE BELL, Pa., Sept. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced the successful completion of a project to transition nearly 5,000 users at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to the Google Apps for Government email and collaboration platform. INL expects the new tools to improve collaboration among its employees through better sharing of information technology infrastructure, resources and applications. The solution gives...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Sept. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- PartTec, Ltd., an Indiana-based manufacturer of radiation detection technologies, has signed an agreement to manufacture and market a neutron detector system that may help researchers identify the underlying causes of human diseases. Using the Neutron-Sensitive Anger Camera developed by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, biologists can study a wider variety of proteins. Insight gained from studying these...

Mass spectrometry protein assays that match sensitivity and accuracy of antibody-based clinical tests might speed drug discovery, basic biology research Combining two well-established analytic techniques and adding a twist identifies proteins from blood with as much accuracy and sensitivity as the antibody-based tests used clinically, researchers report this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition online. The technique should be able to speed up development of...

Fueling nuclear reactors with uranium harvested from the ocean could become more feasible because of a material developed by a team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The combination of ORNL's high-capacity reusable adsorbents and a Florida company's high-surface-area polyethylene fibers creates a material that can rapidly, selectively and economically extract valuable and precious dissolved metals from water. The material, HiCap, vastly outperforms today's...

PNNL tests adsorbent to extract uranium from the ocean When you take a dip in the ocean, nuclear fuel is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Uranium floats in Earth’s oceans in trace amounts of just 3 parts per billion, but it adds up. Combined, our oceans hold up to 4.5 billion tons of uranium – enough to potentially fuel the world’s nuclear power plantsfor 6,500 years. Countries such as Japan have examined the ocean as a uranium source since the 1960s, but previous...