News 2025
EMREL Collaboration Work with MIT was Highlighted in Nuclear Newswire
August 2025
Prof. Lance Snead and Prof. David Sprouster collaborated with researchers at MIT to study how nuclear-grade graphite ages in reactors. The collaboration showed a correlation between graphites pore-size distribution and its volume change helps connect to the failure of the material under irradiation. The open-access paper was published in Interdisciplinary Materials.
More information may be found here and here.
Abhinav's paper, "High-temperature nanoindentation creep studies on castable and sintered
nanostructured low-activation ferritic-martensitic alloys", was published in the Journal
of Nuclear Materials.
June 2025
Here, we present the creep characteristics of two reduced activation ferritic-martensitic steels of identical starting compositions formed by different fabrication routes: a nanostructured ferritic alloy commonly referred to as a castable nanostructured alloy (CNA) and a sintered nanostructured alloy (SNA) variant. Through a series of nanoindentation experiments spanning a temperature range of 25 ◦C to 650 ◦C, with a maximum load of 100 mN, we find creep behaviors in the cast and sintered materials to be remarkably similar. The creep stress exponent (n) for CNA and SNA were found to be in the range of 8–35 and the activation volume was ~14–42b3, underscoring a dominance of dislocation-mediated mechanisms in both alloys. Notably, we observed a decline in the creep stress exponent with increasing temperature, attributable to the heightened influence of thermally activated dislocations. This phenomenon suggests a potential transition in the deformation mechanism towards a thermally activated dislocation climb process, significantly impacting the observed creep behavior.
The full text may be found here.
EMREL participates in 2nd Annual Environmental Forum on Nuclear Energy's Role in Climate
Solutions hosted by Stony Brook University
April 2025
Here in this article, EMREL principle investigators (Jason Trelewicz, David Sprouster, and Lance Snead) participated in the 2nd Annual Environmental Forum on Nuclear Energy's Role in Climate Solutions, held on Governors Island. Following a student debate of NYU students regarding nuclear energy's role in addressing climate change, a panel of experts shared perspectives on nuclear energy’s future, economics, safety considerations and environmental impacts.
More information may be found here.
EMREL Successfully Teams on Three 20 M$ DOE-Office of Fusion Energy Awarded FIRE Grants
January 2025
Department of Energy announced selectees for $107 million in funding for six projects in the Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives to speed up commercialization by linking basic research with industry needs. EMREL was successfuly teamed on three of the awarded FIRE grants.
More information may be found here.
EMREL Awarded 2.3M$ Department of Energy, ARPA-E “Newton” Grant to Study the Use of
Compact Cyclotrons for Nuclear Waste Mitigation.
January 2025
EMREL team was selected for a project to optimize high-current cyclotron designs as low-cost, high performance drivers. The project will explore novel spallation targets centered around tungsten-based alloys for enhanced radiation resistance and superior thermal properties to state-of-the-art liquid targets.
More information may be found here.