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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

Printed Proliferation: The Implications of Additive Manufacturing and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

The growth of additive manufacturing as a disruptive technology poses nuclear proliferation concerns worthy of serious consideration. Additive manufacturing began in the early 1980s with technological advances in polymer manipulation, computer capabilities, and computer-aided design (CAD) modeling. It was originally limited to rapid prototyping; however, it eventually developed into a complete means of production that has slowly penetrated the consumer market. Today, additive manufacturing machines can produce complex and unique items in a vast array of materials including plastics, metals, and ceramics. These capabilities have democratized the manufacturing industry, allowing almost anyone to produce items as simple as cup holders or as complex as jet fuel nozzles. Additive manufacturing, or three-dimensional (3D) printing as it is commonly called, relies on CAD files created or shared by individuals with additive manufacturing machines to produce a 3D object from a digital model. This sharing of files means that a 3D object can be scanned or rendered as a CAD model in one country, and then downloaded and printed in another country, allowing items to be shared globally without physically crossing borders. The sharing of CAD files online has been a challenging task for the export controls regime to manage over the years, and additive manufacturing could make these transfers more common. In this sense, additive manufacturing is a disruptive technology not only within the manufacturing industry but also within the nuclear nonproliferation world. This paper provides an overview of additive manufacturing concerns of proliferation.

3D↗
DOE OSTI2016

Pollutant Concentrations and Emission Rates from Scripted Natural Gas Cooking Burner Use in Nine Northern California Homes

METHODS: Combustion pollutant concentrations were measured during the scripted operation of natural gas cooking burners in nine homes. In addition to a base condition of closed windows, no forced air unit (FAU) use, and no mechanical exhaust, additional experiments were conducted while operating an FAU and/or vented range hood. Test homes included a 26m2 two-room apartment, a 134m2 first floor flat, and seven detached homes of 117–226m2. There were four single-story, four two-story and one 1.5 story homes. Cooktop use entailed boiling and simmering activities, using water as a heat sink. Oven and broiler use also were simulated. Time-resolved concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen oxides (NOX), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particles with diameters of 6 nm or larger (PN), carbon monoxide (CO), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) were measured in the kitchen (K) and bedroom area (BR) of each home. CO2, NO, NO2, and PN data from sequential experiments were analyzed to quantify the contribution of burner use to the highest 1h and 4h time-integrated concentrations in each room. RESULTS: Four of the nine homes had kitchen 1h NO2 exceed the national ambient air quality standard (100 ppb). Two other homes had 1h NO2 exceed 50 ppb in the kitchen, and three had 1h NO2 above 50 ppb in the bedroom, suggesting substantial exposures to anyone at home when burners are used for a single substantial event. In all homes, the highest 1h kitchen PN exceeded 2 x105 cm-3-h, and the highest 4h PN exceeded 3 x105 cm-3-hr in all homes. The lowest 1h kitchen/bedroom ratios were 1.3–2.1 for NO in the apartment and two open floor plan homes. The largest K/BR ratios of 1h NO2 were in a two-story 1990s home retrofitted for deep energy savings: ratios in this home were 3.3 to 6.6. Kitchen 1h ratios of NO, NO2 and PN to CO2 were used to calculate fuel normalized emission factors (ng J-1). Range hood use substantially reduced cooking burner pollutant concentrations both in the kitchen and bedroom of several homes. A hood with large capture volume and a measured flow of 108 L/s reduced concentrations 80-95%. IMPLICATIONS: These measurements demonstrate that operation of natural gas cooking burners without venting can cause short-term kitchen concentrations of NO2 to exceed the US outdoor health standard, and can elevate concentrations of NO, NO2, and ultrafine particles throughout the home. Results are generally consistent with a recent simulation study that estimated widespread 1h NO2 exposures exceeding 100 ppb in homes that use gas burners without venting. While operating a venting range hood can greatly reduce pollutant levels from burner use (and presumably from cooking as well), performance varies widely across hoods. Increased awareness of the need to ventilate when cooking would substantially reduce in-home exposure to NO2 and ultrafine particles in California homes. Helping consumers select effective hoods, for example by publishing capture efficiency performance ratings, also would help reduce exposure.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Criticality Accidents: Part I [Slides]

Criticality Safety is the art and science of preventing criticality accidents and ensuring that anyone that could be exposed to one makes it home alive at the end of the day.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Drive Systems for Photonic Bandgap (PBG) Accelerators

Since the first discussions of photonic band gap (PBG) structures, there have been very few practical applications considered even in the telecom field. Presumably, this is because of a lack of knowledge of how to proceed or how they might be used. Very serious concerns on how robust they might prove under all the varied operating conditions that might arise especially over long distances, not to mention the perceived costs and difficulties with their fabrication, even though there were many intriguing possibilities that should occur to almost anyone on first consideration. However, the differences between copper and plastic are difficult to overcome and this is especially true for accelerator applications.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Personnel Certifications for the Design, Installation and Maintenance of Photovoltaic Systems. Final Technical Report

The North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) is the most respected, well-established, and widely recognized national certification organization for professionals in the field of renewable energy. NABCEP’s certifications were created to facilitate consumer protection, improve quality assurance, and help employers judge the skills of existing or potential employees. The certifications also allow individuals to differentiate themselves from others in their field and advance their careers while fostering increased recognition of the profession. Since NABCEP’s founding in 2002, all of its certification exams have been administered in paper-and-pencil format twice per year at 30 exam sites around the United States. The biannual test administration and relatively low number of exam sites make it challenging for many qualified renewable energy professionals to take NABCEP’s certification exams. The rigorous nature of the exam, which leads to many candidates failing the exam on their first and sometimes second attempts, combined with the low number of annual test administrations means that anyone who fails will need to wait another six months for the chance to retake the exam. These factors limited the potential growth of NABCEP’s certification programs and the resultant quality assurance within the renewable energy industry. Thanks to a generous grant by the Department of Energy’s Solar Training and Education for Professional (STEP) program, NABCEP recently began updating its Photovoltaic (PV) Installation Professional Exam and developing three new specialty certifications in PV design, PV installation, and PV commissioning & maintenance. One of the primary objectives of this STEP-funded project was to develop the exams using a computer-based testing (CBT) model to increase the number of exam administrations and available exam sites for NABCEP’s certification exams. To successfully complete this project, NABCEP partnered with Castle Worldwide, Inc. With more than 25 years of experience in test development, test administration, analysis of examinations, and has a staff of 70 experienced personnel, NABCEP was confident that Castle’s team was more than qualified to help NABCEP make the transition to CBT examinations. NABCEP and Castle Worldwide jointly developed a project management plan that included key deliverables, scope management, a work breakdown structure, roles and responsibilities, and a project schedule with milestones. The project schedule was carefully monitored to ensure that activities along the critical path were not delayed and, when deemed necessary, the project was crashed to add resources so that activities could occur in parallel. NABCEP and Castle Worldwide staff met weekly to discuss any potential schedule variances and activities which might delay the closing of the project. NABCEP also recruited 46 subject matter experts (SMEs) to work with Castle’s staff on this project. NABCEP staff, SME’s, and Castle staff worked together to develop the Job Task Analyses that form the basis for the certification exams, create new examination forms, conduct passing score studies, and complete a psychometrical analysis of potential exam items. NABCEP’s SMEs utilized Castle’s item development platform during face-to-face meetings, webinars, and remote item authoring to write, review, and approve exam items. Castle also used their software to psychometrically analyze existing exam items to confirm the reliability and validity of the NABCEP’s certification exams. On January 3rd, 2018, NABCEP’s began offering its PV Installation Professional certification exam via CBT. The exam was available at Castle’s nearly 600 exam sites in the United States. A large number of sites will help to ensure better access for solar professionals in rural and remote areas, which drives down the implicit costs of taking the certification exams. Thanks to the STEP grant and the robust partnership between NABCEP and Castle Worldwide, Inc., personnel certifications will be much more accessible and affordable for renewable energy professionals.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2018

BPM Offset of NSLS-II Storage Ring Based on BBA Measurement

Beam based alignment (BBA) is the final calibration of the Beam position monitor (BPM) readings based on the quadrupole centers and it becomes essential process for the modern synchrotron light sources. For the convenient BBA implementation, usually BPMs are placed close to the quadrupoles and the beam is adjusted to pass the center of the quadrupoles. Therefore, measured BPM BBAs are, in fact, the BPM offsets relative to the quadrupole centers, and by observing their variations, we can estimate the relative movements of the BPMs. In NSLS-II, the BPM BBAs are measured whenever the beam-time allows and the variations are being observed. However, because changing BBAs in the BPM readings has direct and significant impact on the machine operation as well as the user experiments, they are not applied instantly. Instead, in NSLS-II, the official BBA values are managed by the snapshot archiving and retrieving system, called MASAR (MAchine Snapshot Archiving and Retrieve), so that they are well organized and can be easily set to any stored set of BBAs values. NSLS-II is implementing MASAR as a part of EPICS control system for the convenient and mistake-free machine operation. Each snapshot is a group of key-value pairs where keys are EPICS Process Variables (PVs). The snapshots are organized by configurations where each configuration has specific PV sets. And each configuration saves snapshots with titles corresponding their purposes such as normal user operations or specific beam studies. Anyone with control system account can save snapshots and they can be restored whenever needed. One of the configurations is “SR_BPM_BBAS" and the configuration includes the set of EPICS PVs for the storage ring BPM BBA values. This configuration also includes the BBAs of the in the straight sections, called ID (insertion device) BPMs playing important roles in user experiments. The ID BPM BBAs are also directly engaged in the active interlock (AI) machine protection system, which prevents the mechanical damage from the ID radiation. However, in estimating ID BPM BBAs, because there is no quadrupoles around them, interpolations from the surrounding sector BPM BBAs are used. This note focuses on the BPM offset variations based on the BBA measurement data and does not discuss about the ID BPM BBAs because they are not the direct measures of the offsets.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Sesame ASCII File Format Version 1.21

The intended audience for this document is a Sesame IO library developer or anyone trying to write or parse Sesame ASCII files with no regards to the meaning of the actual content. LA-UR-92-3407 “SESAME: The Los Alamos National Laboratory Equation Of States Database” is the current document for describing the data contained in Sesame Database. This document describes the physical format in Sesame’s ASCII files. It may have a little information about the data in these files. However, this data is only cursory. Historically Sesame ASCII files are fixed format based on old 80-character punch cards. A stack of punch cards is called a card deck. Card decks were read into a computer using card readers and the first version(s) of FORTRAN had fixed file formats. Sesame ASCII files originate from this. Each ASCII File Format file represents a card deck.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Development of a Versatile, Full-Featured Search Functionality for Indico [Slides]

Indico, CERN's popular open-source tool for event management, is in widespread use among facilities that make up the HEP community. It is extensible through a robust plugin architecture that provides features such as search and video conferencing integration. In 2018, Indico version 2 was released with many notable improvements, but without a full-featured search functionality that could be implemented easily outside of CERN. At both Fermi and Brookhaven National Laboratories, the user community viewed the lack of this popular feature as a significant impediment to deployment of the new software. In the meantime, CERN embarked upon a major redesign of their core search service, one that would also necessitate a rewrite of the Indico search interface. Seeing this pressing need, the two US labs decided to collaborate, with assistance from the CERN development team, on a project to develop the requisite search functionality for the larger user community. The resulting design exploits the simplified schema defined in the new CERN Search micro-service, based on Invenio and Elasticsearch, while still providing a flexible path to implementation for alternative backend search services. It is intended to provide a software package that can be installed easily and used out of the box, by anyone at any site. This presentation will discuss the design choices and architectural challenges, and provide an overview of the deployment and use of these new plugins.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Vault: National Security Then and Now

The employees at Los Alamos National Laboratory have always been the key to our mission success, dating all the way back to our inception in 1939 as Project Y. This was the secret Los Alamos Lab of the Manhattan Project charged with designing and producing the world’s first atomic weapons to help end World War II. Back then, prospective Lab employees received letters that directed them to an office at 109 E. Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, they were greeted by Dorothy McKibbin, secretary to Lab Director J. Robert Oppenheimer. Before anyone headed up the hill to begin work, Dorothy typed up the new employee’s personal information on what quickly became known as the McKibbin Card. Lab employees also had official badges, the black and white photos of which have become iconic over time. Today’s staff at the National Security Research Center, the Lab’s classified library, are just as vital as the Lab’s first workforce was. Our highly trained experts partner with researchers to solve global challenges.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Reducing the risks of wildfires

Anyone who has lived in New Mexico for at least a year realizes that the Land of Enchantment has six seasons. In addition to the four seasons everyone else has, we have a wildfire season, which typically comes during late spring and early summer. Wildfires sometimes even last through the monsoon season, when thunderstorms are lighter than usual. Wildfires, it seems, are inevitable in Los Alamos and the surrounding communities that make up part of northern New Mexico. In recent history, the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire destroyed 150,000 acres (including 7,500 acres of Laboratory property) and 235 Los Alamos homes. In 2011, the Las Conchas Fire burned more than 156,000 acres and threatened Los Alamos and the Lab. To minimize the chances of wildfires and to strengthen defenses against wildfires, the Laboratory every year carries out various fire-mitigation strategies throughout its 42 square miles.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Introduction to FLAG

The following guide is a tutorial-style introduction to the free Lagrange (FLAG) hydrocode for anyone who wants to get started with or learn more about FLAG.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Sensitive Resources Assessment and Forest Analysis for the Proposed Versatile Test Reactor, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a leading institution in advanced materials, supercomputing, neutrons, and nuclear science. As a research laboratory managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for DOE, ORNL has national priorities in energy, security, and scientific discovery that necessitate facility improvements and expansions. DOE is also committed to environmental stewardship. The laboratory is located on the ~32,000-acre (~13,000-ha) Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), much of which is categorized as a National Environmental Research Park (NERP) and a state Wildlife Management Area. DOE works with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), US Department of Agriculture, and other agencies to serve as an effective steward of the ORR. Accordingly, project managers must conform to environmental regulations, agreements, and policies at the federal, state, and institutional levels. Per 40 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) 1508.14, potential effects on research and science education also represent potential effects of federal actions on the NERP, and impacts on, e.g., deer harvest, must be considered on the Oak Ridge Wildlife Management Area when other aspects of the human environment are affected. The United States currently has no fast neutron testing capability to support advanced nuclear research and development. The proposed Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) will take advantage of current investments by the US government and private industry in nuclear reactors to expedite the design and construction process, using proven technology to create a world-class scientific infrastructure. The VTR will take advantage of fast neutrons provided by this proven technology, along with a capability to rapidly insert, conduct, and remove state-of-the-art experiments. An advantage of the VTR is that it can support future innovations in experimental capabilities without modifying the facility. The VTR will support progress in a variety of science and technology areas, including testing and qualification of advanced reactor fuels; testing and qualification of innovative structural materials; testing of innovative components and instruments; validation of advanced modeling and simulation tools; and versatility for future technical missions. Through proven technology, the VTR can take advantage of existing reactor designs and operating experience to reduce the risk, cost, and time for design and construction. The top available resources of DOE laboratories, industry, and universities will be used to expedite reactor design and construction toward developing the scientific infrastructure that affords a strong testing capability that can be sustained over many years. This report summarizes current knowledge of natural and cultural resources primarily within the VTR construction area. At the time of this report, the proposed VTR site design includes a construction area of ~150.4 acres (~69.9 ha), which contains an ~51.3-acre (~20.8-ha) operations area, located within forested natural areas of the ORR. The primary goal of the work presented here was to evaluate potential effects on sensitive resources that might result from development and construction activities associated with VTR. In addition to on-the-ground surveys during spring and summer 2020 by the ORNL Natural Resources Management Program and Aquatic Ecology Group staff, this report makes use of historical (pre-1995) and contemporary (1995 to present) data from additional confirmed sources (e.g., TDEC). Likewise, forest conditions were compiled from a 2011 forest inventory and supplemented with limited ground observations in 2020. The individuals who obtained and compiled the data presented here are familiar with and routinely assess sensitive resources on the ORR. Anyone who references this report must consider that the timing of surveys did not permit a complete delineation of the resources that will be affected. If the VTR project proceeds, additional surveys will be required to account for the seasonal patterns of various threatened and endangered species. Data deficiencies and potential resources that likely went undetected are indicated where possible. Accordingly, this report should facilitate more environmentally sound decisions during planning and 2 development of the VTR site, provide a foundation for further assessment of sensitive and cultural resources, and help project managers better address regulatory guidance and DOE policies on sustainable development in compliance with, for example, the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), Tennessee Rare Plant Protection and Conservation Act of 1985, Tennessee Nongame and Endangered or Threatened Wildlife Species Conservation Act of 1974, several federal and state regulations regarding aquatic resource protection, and site-specific policies as outlined in various ORR management plans developed by ORNL and TWRA for DOE.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Quantum Physics without the Physics

This report explains the basic theory and common terminology of quantum physics without assuming any knowledge of physics. It was written by a group of applied mathematicians while they were reading up on the subject. The intended audience consists of applied mathematicians, computer scientists, or anyone else who wants to improve their understanding of quantum physics. We assume that the reader is familiar with fundamental concepts of linear algebra, differential equations, and to some extent the theory of Hilbert spaces. Most of the material can be found in the book by Nielsen and Chuang and in the lecture notes on open quantum systems by Lidar. Another excellent online source of information is Wikipedia, even though most of its articles on quantum physics assume a solid understanding of physics.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Country-Level Climate Uncertainty for Risk Assessments (Vol.1)

This report uses the CMIP5 series of climate model simulations to produce country- level uncertainty distributions for use in socioeconomic risk assessments of climate change impacts. It provides appropriate probability distributions, by month, for 169 countries and autonomous-areas on temperature, precipitation, maximum temperature, maximum wind speed, humidity, runoff, soil moisture and evaporation for the historical period (1976-2005), and for decadal time periods to 2100. It also provides historical and future distributions for the Arctic region on ice concentration, ice thickness, age of ice, and ice ridging in 15-degree longitude arc segments from the Arctic Circle to 80 degrees latitude, plus two polar semicircular regions from 80 to 90 degrees latitude. The report provides simplified algorithms with which anyone on any country can determine their risk from climate change and to include in resilience evaluations. The full report is contained in 27 volumes.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Understanding Lustre Internals. Second Edition

The Lustre file system has become a preferred storage resource for systems on the Top500 list, and it is often the file system of choice for small- to medium-sized HPC systems that require parallel shared access to data. Several resources exist to help users deploy and configure Lustre, but the same cannot be said for resources that explain the inner workings of the Lustre source code. A previous ORNL technical report entitled "Understanding Lustre Filesystem Internals" (ORNL/TM-2009/117) provided an excellent summary of Lustre subsystem operations. However, that report is over a decade old and is based on Lustre version 1.6. Since that report was published, Lustre has evolved significantly. Several subsystems underwent significant code changes and many new features have been added to the file system, bringing the current Lustre version up to 2.15.This report aims to document and explain the internal workings of the latest version of the Lustre file system. It will provide more complete and up-to-date information than the previous technical report and should serve as a foundational document for anyone interested in Lustre software development. Key data structures will be described along with the APIs used for interaction among the various Lustre subsystems. Although the Lustre software is constantly being developed, the details in this document should remain relevant for the forseeable future.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Vehicle Tracking

The detection and tracking of vehicles moving at hypersonic speeds (> Mach 5) at altitudes of ~100 km has been of growing interest due to the ongoing development of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) by the U.S., Russia and China. This challenge is notably different from traditional ballistic missile systems whose re-entry vehicles move at hypersonic velocities but at much higher altitudes on a ballistic course. Hypersonic glide vehicles are also designed to be able to make sudden turns along their flight path making prediction of their trajectories difficult. Their ability to maneuver, combined with their high velocity and altitude make them difficult to track. The combination of these characteristics presents a challenge for anyone attempting to defend against a hypersonic glide vehicle attack by generally shortening the time available to react. That reaction can involve moving potential targets or attempting to detect the hypersonic glide vehicle and intercept it before it reaches the intended target. Figure 1 compares the trajectory of hypersonic vehicles compared to that of a traditional ballistic missile.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Agile Project Management for Research Software [Slides]

Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus on delivering the highest business value in the shortest time. It allows us to rapidly and repeatedly inspect actual working software (every two weeks to one month). The business sets the priorities. Teams self-organize to determine the best way to deliver the highest priority features. Every two weeks to a month anyone can see real working software and decide to release it as is or continue to enhance it for another sprint.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗