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At least 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Rapid Radiological/Nuclear Consequence Assessment Tools

The goal of this work is to design a tool for rapid assessment of the areas impacted by airborne plumes and fallout from a radiological/nuclear incident, such as an Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) detonation or Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) release, for use by state and local technical specialists and emergency responders. The tool would produce information on the distances and areas near an incident location in which hazards may exist. This would inform consequence management decisions by state and local responders in the critical minutes following an event, as well as assist in emergency planning before an incident. The products would be intended for use before more detailed products are available from non-local assets, such as the federal Interagency Modeling and Atmospheric Assessment Center (IMAAC) and the Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC). The tool’s products could provide, for example, predictions of damage zones and dangerous fallout areas to help guide the emergency response, including protection of emergency responders and the public. The initial focus of this effort is on the more difficult IND decision support tools. Existing HAZMAT tools and RDD guidance, described in this report, can also be integrated into the decision support tool.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Identification and Resolution of Gaps in Mechanistic Source Term and Consequence Analysis Modeling for Molten Salt Reactors Salt Spill Scenarios

This report represents an assessment of the gaps in Mechanistic Source Term (MST) and consequence assessment modeling for Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs). The current capabilities for MELCOR and the MELCOR Accident Code System (MACCS) are discussed, along with updates needed in order to address specific needs for MSRs. A test plan developed by Argonne National Laboratories is discussed as addressing some of these gaps, while some will require additional attention. Further recommendations are made on addressing these gaps. This report satisfies the DOE NE Milestone M2RD-21SN0601061 to leverage MELCOR and MACCS to identify parameters of importance for source term assessments for salt spill experiments.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Designing Resilient Communities: A Consequence-Based Approach for Grid Investment Report Series (Final Report)

As part of the project “Designing Resilient Communities (DRC): A Consequence-Based Approach for Grid Investment,” funded by the United States (US) Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC), Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) partnered with a variety of government, industry, and university participants to develop and test a framework for community resilience planning focused on modernization of the electric grid. This report provides a summary of the development, description, and demonstration of the resulting Resilient Community Design Framework.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

ORNL Peer Review Summary and Recommendations for: Advanced Reactor Designs Security Analysis, Risk, and Recommendations: Risks, Consequences, and Possible Design Mitigation Approaches Associated with Select Advanced Reactors Study

The purpose of this document is to provide a summary of the peer review conducted for the "Advanced Reactor Designs Security Analysis, Risk, and Recommendations: Risks, Consequences, and Possible Design Mitigation Approaches Associated with Select Advanced Reactors" study prepared by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) International Nuclear Security (INS) program team requested that ORNL perform a peer review of the study report prior to publication as a final peer check before distributing the report to a broader audience.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Testing and Evaluation of Security Response at High-Consequence Nuclear Facilities

High-consequence nuclear facilities are required to implement a physical protection system (PPS) capable of preventing a design basis threat (DBT) adversary from completing radiological sabotage or theft of nuclear material. Response forces are a core component of the PPS. A rigorous testing and evaluation program is required to ensure that the response forces are appropriately trained and equipped and are capable of meeting the regulatory and mission requirements.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2024

Use of National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Data to Support Severe Accident Consequence Analysis at Locations Without Onsite Meteorological Data

Certain regulatory actions under 10 CFR Parts 50, 52, or the proposed part 53 require the assessment of the potential off-site consequence risks to public safety and the environment from a hypothetical severe accident. As an important part of these analyses, atmospheric transport and dispersion (ATD) modeling relies heavily on the prevailing weather patterns of a site. When considering future deployment of new reactor designs in areas where historical onsite meteorological data is not available,

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Digital Assurance for High Consequence Systems (DAHCS) Mission Campaign Whitepaper

The DAHCS (pronounced “Dax”) MC is a 7-year, $\$$45 million research portfolio within Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. The DAHCS MC arose in response to a great need: to ensure that the use of digital technologies does not weaken our nation’s high consequence systems. Digital technologies offer many benefits in speed, cost, and flexibility, and we seek to reap those benefits without introducing new system failures. However, digital technologies cannot be evaluated the same way as analog technologies. Initiatives across the nation highlight the capability gap that prevents efficient, effective digital assurance. The Challenge Today’s digital assurance tools, techniques, and methods are inadequate to confidently characterize, assess, and manage digital risk; they are ad hoc, slow, costly, and rarely scalable to increasingly complex digital technologies. The rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape exacerbates this problem because digital assurance now must secure against digital risks now and in the future, including those introduced by rapidly evolving technologies, adversaries, and systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Shorter function summaries for finite state machine-based high consequence systems using logic synthesis and tautologies (Final Report LDRD 24-1302)

Computer programs are often viewed as collections of functions – each function has parameters (inputs) and computes a return value, and each has potential side effects that modify program state (outputs). In this research, a Sandia symbolic execution tool designed to support “human-in-the-loop” analysis was modified to automatically create “function summaries,” and a new tool, “diaboolical,” was created to support enhancing readability of the summary using a novel approach to bit-vector simplification that leverages logic synthesis and tautologies. For this effort, students at Auburn University created several finite state machines (FSMs) to serve as exemplars for high-consequence systems. Function summaries for each of the machines were obtained, and then portions of the summaries were simplified using both diaboolical and the simplification procedure of a popular SMT solver. A comparison of the results shows that diaboolical can often produce smaller function summaries, with expression length improvements over the unsimplified function summaries ranging from 0% to 90% for diaboolical and 0% to 65% for the SMT solver, though diaboolical had a significantly greater cost in time. Diaboolical was evaluated against a collection of “arbitrary” C-code as well as FSM exemplars, and for both datasets it achieved an approximately 10% improvement in expression length compared to simplifications that could be obtained using existing techniques. Function summaries can assist assurance efforts that evaluate existing systems and their executable code. A smaller function summary is likely easier for humans to understand and could thus increase the ability and efficacy of assurance practices centered around the analysis of executable artifacts.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Assessing and Enabling Trustworthy Predictions for High-Consequence Decisions

Predictions from physics-based computational models provide critical information to inform high consequence decisions, e.g., engineering design decisions. The ability to assess the reliability of such predictions is therefore critical. However, to date, reliability assessment rely heavily on expert judgment and qualitative arguments. This report details the efforts of LDRD 233072 to develop quantitative methods to assess reliability of model predictions, especially in the context of simplifying assumptions that can impact their reliability.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

TA-54 Flanged Tritium Waste Container Operations, Radioactive Air Emissions Summary Volume 1: Stack Emissions & Off-Site Dose Consequence

In September 2025, pressure mitigation operations began on the four Flanged Tritium Waste Containers (FTWCs) that had been in storage at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Technical Area (TA-) 54, Area G, Building 1028. Each FTWC was opened at TA-54 and put into a stable configuration, then containers were moved to LANL’s Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility (WETF) for further processing in preparation for shipment off-site. Over the course of 13 operational days, the project had air emissions of 123 curies of tritium (hydrogen-3). The radiological dose to the hypothetical maximally exposed individual (MEI) member of the public from these emissions was 0.012 millirem. This is well within the limits established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which allows 10 millirem per year to any member of the public. Naturally occurring background radiation in Northern New Mexico averages about 300-400 millirem per year to residents. This report is intended to briefly summarize operations that took place in September and October 2025, provide documentation of the radionuclide air emissions from these operations, and summarize the off-site dose consequence to the public that resulted from these air emissions. Informal notifications addressing these areas were made via email to the EPA and NMED throughout the project, and summaries of these data were also posted on the LANL external web site 1 for FTWC operations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) Cyber Range Overview and Threat-to-Consequence Demonstration

This presentation was presented at the Aggregation and Grid Security Workshop - held on June 17-18, 2025, at NREL in Golden, Colorado. The goal of the two-day workshop was to address the critical cybersecurity challenges for the future electric grid. The threat-to-consequence demonstration showcases NREL's capability to model, simulate, test, and evaluate cyberattacks targeting energy systems that coincide with natural hazards, as well as the ramifications for the energy grid as a whole.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Summary of Potential Incidents and Consequences from Carbon Dioxide Pipeline and Storage Systems Construction and Operation

This document provides a high-level summary of the potential human and environmental impacts associated with carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) pipeline transport, injection, and storage activities. It also reviews lessons learned from natural and industrial analogs of CO 2 storage as well as case studies of notable accidental CO 2 releases. The analysis is structured into several key sections, each addressing specific resource impacts and potential consequences.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Mass Transport Limitations and Kinetic Consequences of Corn Stover Deacetylation

Alkaline pretreatment of herbaceous feedstocks such as corn stover prior to mechanical refining and enzymatic saccharification improves downstream sugar yields by removing acetyl moieties from hemicellulose. However, the relationship between transport phenomena and deacetylation kinetics is virtually unknown for such feedstocks and this pretreatment process. Here, we report the development of an experimentally validated reaction–diffusion model for the deacetylation of corn stover. A tissue-specific transport model is used to estimate transport-independent kinetic rate constants for the reactive extraction of acetate, hemicellulose and lignin from corn stover under representative alkaline conditions (5–7 g L -1 NaOH, 10 wt% solids loadings) and at low to mild temperatures (4–70°C) selected to attenuate individual component extraction rates under differential kinetic regimes. The underlying transport model is based on microstructural characteristics of corn stover derived from statistically meaningful geometric particle and pore measurements. These physical descriptors are incorporated into distinct particle models of the three major anatomical fractions (cobs, husks and stalks) alongside an unsorted, aggregate corn stover particle, capturing average Feret lengths of 917–1239 μm and length-to-width aspect ratios of 1.8–2.9 for this highly heterogeneous feedstock. Individual reaction–diffusion models and their resulting particle model ensembles are used to validate and predict anatomically-specific and bulk feedstock performance under kinetic-controlled vs. diffusion-controlled regimes. In general, deacetylation kinetics and mass transfer processes are predicted to compete on similar time and length scales, emphasizing the significance of intraparticle transport phenomena. Critically, we predict that typical corn stover particles as small as ~2.3 mm in length are entirely diffusion-limited for acetate extraction, with experimental effectiveness factors calculated to be 0.50 for such processes. Debilitatingly low effectiveness factors of 0.021–0.054 are uncovered for cobs—implying that intraparticle mass transfer resistances may impair observable kinetic measurements of this anatomical fraction by up to 98%. These first-reported quantitative maps of reaction vs. diffusion control link fundamental insights into corn stover anatomy, biopolymer composition, practical size reduction thresholds and their kinetic consequences. These results offer a guidepost for industrial deacetylation reactor design, scale-up and feedstock selection, further establishing deacetylation as a viable biorefinery pretreatment for the conversion of lignocellulosics into value-added fuels and chemicals.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Foliar Application of Nettle and Japanese Knotweed Extracts on Vitis vinifera: Consequences for Plant Physiology, Biochemical Parameters, and Yield

Climate change is expected to affect grapevine physiology, berry quality, and yield in the Douro Demarcated Region (DDR). In this study, nettle (NE) and Japanese knotweed (JKE) extracts were tested to verify their biostimulant effect on the physiological and biochemical parameters of grapevine leaves and in vine yields. In fact, some parameters were improved after foliar application of the plant extracts, namely the photosynthetic activity and consequently, the levels of photosynthetic pigments (Clb), starch, and total soluble sugars. We also observed a reduction in lipid peroxidation, which could play a crucial role in protecting cell membranes from oxidative damage induced by the climatic conditions prevalent in this region. Therefore, we confirmed that the foliar application of plant extracts, along with the enhancement of secondary metabolites and the upregulation of plant defense genes, as previously reported, resulted in the enhancement of grapevine physiology, while also increasing the yield at harvest. In the future, these plant extracts could serve as a vital tool for winegrowers in mitigating the effects of expected changes in climatic conditions.

Monteiro, Eliana (ORCID:0000000231675540)↗
DOE OSTI2017

Simultaneous Chiral Symmetry Restoration and Deconfinement Consequences for the QCD Phase Diagram

For studies of quark matter in astrophysical scenarios, the thermodynamic bag model is commonly employed. Although successful, it does not account for dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and repulsions due to the vector interaction which is crucial to explain recent observations of massive, two solar mass neutron stars. In Klähn and Fischer we developed the novel vBag quark matter model which takes these effects into account. This article extends vBag to finite temperatures and isospin asymmetry. Another particular feature of vBag is the determination of the deconfinement bag constant B{sub dc} from a given hadronic equation of state in order to ensure that chiral and deconfinement transitions coincide. We discuss consequences of this novel approach for the phase transition construction, the phase diagram, and implications for protoneutron stars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Modeling the U.S. Western Electric Interconnection to Understand the Consequences of Hydrometeorological Extremes and Options for Risk Mitigation

Electricity grid operators around the world face a dual challenge; withstanding increasingly severe weather and the longer term impacts of climate change, while simultaneously decarbonizing. Extreme weather events such as heat waves and droughts are rising in both severity and frequency, which is threatening the reliability of electricity grids through increased demand, generation capacity losses, and equipment failures. Consequently, incorporating hydrometeorological stressors into computational power systems analysis is becoming an even more critical tool in long term planning and short term operations. However, there is a general lack of open-source customizable grid simulation software capable of exhaustively stress testing the grid under hydrometeorological uncertainty, and/or examining potential risk mitigation pathways. A related, persistent challenge for power system modelers is striking an appropriate balance between model fidelity (e.g. spatial scale and time resolution) and computational tractability (wall clock run-time). In this study, we are proposing a solution to this problem with open-source software that allows users to seamlessly customize the scale and track the accuracy of grid operations models. Our approach allows users to search over numerous model parameters (network topology, mathematical formulation, economic hurdle rates, and transmission line scaling) to identify model instantiations that accommodate experimental design. Further, we use this approach to demonstrate the importance of including extreme weather events in model validation and model selection. Focusing on the occurrence of heatwaves and droughts in the U.S. Western Interconnection, we examine role of extreme events in balancing tradeoffs between model fidelity and run-time at the model design stage.

Economics↗
DOE OSTI2021

Natural variation in the consequences of gene overexpression and its implications for evolutionary trajectories

Copy number variation through gene or chromosome amplification provides a route for rapid phenotypic variation and supports the long-term evolution of gene functions. Although the evolutionary importance of copy-number variation is known, little is understood about how genetic background influences its tolerance. Here, we measured fitness costs of over 4000 overexpressed genes in 15 Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains representing different lineages, to explore natural variation in tolerating gene overexpression (OE). Strain-specific effects dominated the fitness costs of gene OE. We report global differences in the consequences of gene OE, independent of the amplified gene, as well as gene-specific effects that were dependent on the genetic background. Natural variation in the response to gene OE could be explained by several models, including strain-specific physiological differences, resource limitations, and regulatory sensitivities. This work provides new insight on how genetic background influences tolerance to gene amplification and the evolutionary trajectories accessible to different backgrounds.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

An Approach for Assessing Consequences of Potential Supply Chain and Insider Contributed Cyber Attacks on Nuclear Power Plants

The Stuxnet attack at the Natanz facility is an example of a targeted and successful cyber attack on a nuclear facility. Snowden's release of National Security Agency documents demonstrated the consequences of the insider threat. More recently, the United States tried to attack North Korea but failed, South Korea was attempting to attack North Korea, and both applied Stuxnet-like approaches. These sophisticated targeted attacks differ from web-site hacking events that are reported almost daily in the news mainly because targeted attacks require detailed design and operation information of the systems attacked and/or are often carried out by insiders. For instance, in order to minimize disruption of facilities around the world, Stuxnet remained idle until it recognized the specific configuration of the Natanz facility, demonstrating that the attackers possessed extremely detailed information about the facility. Such targeted cyber attacks could become a national-level military weapon and be used in coercion of hostile countries.

42 ENGINEERING↗