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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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At least 271 records · Page 15
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

The High Capacity Type B Waste Transport Cask to Serve Dismantling Project - 18344

The United States have already announced around 20 reactor shutdown and many more in the next 10 year. Financial constraints on plant operators and the low cost of fossil energy contribute to accelerate the shutdown of additional reactors. The industry has been gaining experience with reactor dismantling and is continuously trying to improve the cost efficiency of the upcoming projects. To do so, larger and more capacitive transport casks are needed to transport increasing volume of Low Level Waste (LLW) at a more attractive cost. Waste disposal is also a major cost element in a dismantling project. Consequently, the capacity to segment, package and transport the waste in the most optimized configuration will result in significant cost savings. While for LLW, the constraints for package requirements are limited, activated waste resulting mainly from reactor vessel and vessel internals segmentation require additional shielding to meet disposal and transportation regulations. The key element to succeed is the availability on the market of a licensed type B transport package with a larger payload that allows at the same time an optimization of the waste segmentation. AREVA TN has designed and licensed versatile high capacity type B casks for the transport of spent fuel canisters as part of the NUHOMS{sup R} system that can also be used to transport radioactive waste. While it will take a few more years to transport spent fuel to a consolidated interim storage facility and even more to a repository, the type B casks can be used to transport activated LLW from dismantled reactors to disposal sites. A first of a kind project will be performed with AREVA's partner NorthStar at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. AREVA's team will perform the reactor segmentation and package the material into an AREVA's large capacity type B cask. This unmatched cask capacity is expected to significantly decrease the LLW disposal costs, as well as the onsite operations costs, while optimizing the schedule. The package will be transported by rail to waste disposal facilities. This paper will present the main characteristics of the package, provide an update of the overall schedule, and explain the innovations that contribute to simpler and more cost effective transport and operation. Finally, it will emphasize the benefits of using larger type B casks for immediate and future transportation needs. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2015

Patient position alters attenuation effects in multipinhole cardiac SPECT

Purpose: Dedicated cardiac cameras offer improved sensitivity over conventional SPECT cameras. Sensitivity gains are obtained by large numbers of detectors and novel collimator arrangements such as an array of multiple pinholes that focus on the heart. Pinholes lead to variable amounts of attenuation as a source is moved within the camera field of view. This study evaluated the effects of this variable attenuation on myocardial SPECT images. Methods: Computer simulations were performed for a set of nine point sources distributed in the left ventricular wall (LV). Sources were placed at the location of the heart in both an anthropomorphic and a water-cylinder computer phantom. Sources were translated in x, y, and z by up to 5 cm from the center. Projections were simulated with and without attenuation and the changes in attenuation were compared. A LV with an inferior wall defect was also simulated in both phantoms over the same range of positions. Real camera data were acquired on a Discovery NM530c camera (GE Healthcare, Haifa, Israel) for five min in list-mode using an anthropomorphic phantom (DataSpectrum, Durham, NC) with 100 MBq of Tc-99m in the LV. Images were taken over the same range of positions as the simulations and were compared based on the summed perfusion score (SPS), defect width, and apparent defect uptake for each position. Results: Point sources in the water phantom showed absolute changes in attenuation of ≤8% over the range of positions and relative changes of ≤5% compared to the apex. In the anthropomorphic computer simulations, absolute change increased to 20%. The changes in relative attenuation caused a change in SPS of <1.5 for the water phantom but up to 4.2 in the anthropomorphic phantom. Changes were larger for axial than for transverse translations. These results were supported by SPS changes of up to six seen in the physical anthropomorphic phantom for axial translations. Defect width was also seen to significantly increase. The position-dependent changes were removed with attenuation correction. Conclusions: Translation of a source relative to a multipinhole camera caused only small changes in homogeneous phantoms with SPS changing <1.5. Inhomogeneous attenuating media cause much larger changes to occur when the source is translated. Changes in SPS of up to six were seen in an anthropomorphic phantom for axial translations. Attenuation correction removes the position-dependent changes in attenuation.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2004

Improving UV Resistance of High Strength Fibers Used In Large Scientific Balloons

For the last three decades, NASA has been involved in the development of giant balloons that are capable of lifting heavy payloads of equipment (such as large telescopes and scientific instruments) to the upper atmosphere. While the use of such balloons has led to scientific discoveries, the demand for competitive science payloads and observational programs continues to rise. The NASA Balloon Program Office has entered a new phase of research to develop an Ultra Long Duration Balloon (ULDB) that will lift payloads of up to 3,600 kg to altitudes of up to 40 km. The flight duration is targeted to ranges between 30 to 100 days. Attaining these target durations requires the development of a super-pressure balloon design. The use of textile structures have already been established in these missions in the form of high strength tendons essential for the super pressure pumpkin design. Unfortunately, high strength fibers lose significant strength upon exposure to Ultra Violet (UV) radiation. Such UV degradation poses a serious challenge for the development of the ULDB. To improve the mission performance of the ULDB, new methods for protecting the tendons from the environmental effects need to be developed. NASA and NC State University College of Textiles are undertaking a research program to address these issues. Four tracks have been identified to prepare finishes that are believed to enhance the resistance of high strength fibers to UV. These tracks are: (a) self-polymerizing, (b) diffusion application, (c) polymer-filled with 30-40% UV absorber, and (d) combination of dyeing plus surface application. Four high performance fibers have been selected for this research investigation. These are Vectran (trademark), Spectra (trademark), Kevlar (trademark) and, PBO (Zylon (trademark)). This work will address the current progress of evaluating the performance of the UV finishes. This will be accomplished by comparing the tensile properties (strength, breaking elongation, modulus, etc) of untreated, unexposed to UV fibers; untreated exposed to UV fibers; and treated exposed to UV fibers.

Said, M.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Simulation of 24,000 Electron Dynamics: Real-Time Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TDDFT) with the Real-Space Multigrids (RMG)

Here, we present the theory, implementation, and benchmarking of a real-time time-dependent density functional theory (RT-TDDFT) module within the RMG code, designed to simulate the electronic response of molecular systems to external perturbations. Our method offers insights into nonequilibrium dynamics and excited states across a diverse range of systems, from small organic molecules to large metallic nanoparticles. Benchmarking results demonstrate excellent agreement with established TDDFT implementations and showcase the superior stability of our time integration algorithm, enabling long-term simulations with minimal energy drift. The scalability and efficiency of RMG on massively parallel architectures allow for simulations of complex systems, such as plasmonic nanoparticles with thousands of atoms. Future extensions, including nuclear and spin dynamics, will broaden the applicability of this RT-TDDFT implementation, providing a powerful toolset for studies of photoactive materials, nanoscale devices, and other systems where real-time electronic dynamics is essential.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

ARCH: Large-scale knowledge graph via aggregated narrative codified health records analysis

Objective: Electronic health record (EHR) systems contain a wealth of clinical data stored as both codified data and free-text narrative notes (NLP). The complexity of EHR presents challenges in feature representation, information extraction, and uncertainty quantification. Here, to address these challenges, we proposed an efficient Aggregated naRrative Codified Health (ARCH) records analysis to generate a large-scale knowledge graph (KG) for a comprehensive set of EHR codified and narrative features. Methods: Using data from 12.5 million Veterans Affairs patients, ARCH first derives embedding vectors and generates similarities along with associated p-values to measure the strength of relatedness between clinical features with statistical certainty quantification. Next, ARCH performs a sparse embedding regression to remove indirect linkage between features to build a sparse KG. Finally, ARCH was validated on various clinical tasks, including detecting known relationships between entity pairs, predicting drug side effects, disease phenotyping, as well as sub-typing Alzheimer’s disease patients. Results: ARCH produces high-quality clinical embeddings and KG for over 60,000 codified and narrative EHR concepts. The KG and embeddings are visualized in the R-shiny powered web-API.3 ARCH achieved high accuracy in detecting EHR concept relationships, with AUCs of 0.926 (codified) and 0.861 (NLP) for similar EHR concepts, and 0.810 (codified) and 0.843 (NLP) for related pairs. It detected drug side effects with a 0.723 AUC, which improved to 0.826 after fine-tuning. Using both codified and NLP features, the detection power increased significantly. Compared to other methods, ARCH has superior accuracy and enhances weakly supervised phenotyping algorithms’ performance. Notably, it successfully categorized Alzheimer’s patients into two subgroups with varying mortality rates. Conclusion: The proposed ARCH algorithm generates large-scale high-quality semantic representations and knowledge graph for both codified and NLP EHR features, useful for a wide range of predictive modeling tasks.

Electronic health records↗
DOE OSTI2025

Dynamics of the transition from the metastable tetragonal st12 to the diamond-cubic phase in germanium characterized by neutron spectroscopy

The complex phase diagram of germanium allows for exotic crystalline phases recoverable from high pressure. Among these, the tetragonal st12 phase is unusual as it shares characteristics with amorphous Ge resulting in desirable band-gap characteristics. Here, we leverage a high neutron flux and large volume pressure capabilities to characterize st12-Ge and its dynamics upon conversion to diamond-cubic Ge with inelastic neutron scattering. Here, we exploit the characteristics of time-of-flight neutron scattering for time-resolved investigations. This analysis may suggest the existence of a transient disordered state upon annealing befitting the known structural relationship between st12-Ge and amorphous Ge, a relationship that can open the potential for band-gap tuning.

Elemental semiconductors↗
DOE OSTI2021

Nitrate, ammonium, and DON mass time series output for East River stream, vadose zone and groundwater subwatersheds from HAN-SoMo model

There is a growing understanding of the role that bedrock weathering can play as a source of nitrogen (N) to soils, groundwater and river systems. The significance is particularly apparent in mountainous environments where weathering fluxes can be large. However, our understanding of the relative contributions of rock-derived, or geogenic, N to the total N supply of mountainous watersheds remains poorly understood. This dataset contains model output from the High-Altitude Nitrogen Suite of Models (HAN-SoMo), a watershed-scale ensemble of process-based models to quantify the relative sources, transformations, and sinks of geogenic and atmospheric N through a mountain watershed. Our study is based in the East River Watershed (ERW) in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The East River is a near-pristine headwater watershed underlain primarily by an N-rich Mancos Shale bedrock, enabling the timing and magnitude of geogenic and atmospheric contributions to watershed scale dissolved N-exports to be quantified. Six calibration scenarios were developed to explore equifinality using >1600 N concentration measurements from streams, groundwater, and vadose zone samples collected over the course of four years across the watershed, from 2014-2018. The files in this dataset are named according to which calibration scenario they represent (1, 2, 3, NM1, NM2, and NC), and include daily time series model output of nitrate, ammonium and dissolved organic nitrogen concentrations for all six calibration scenarios described in Maavara et al., 2021, "Modeling geogenic and atmospheric nitrogen through the East River Watershed, Colorado Rocky Mountains," PLOS One (in press), for the stream, vadose zone, and groundwater in the five discretized subwatersheds: Rustlers Gulch, Copper Creek, East above Quigley (EAQ), the Middle East River (ME), and Lower Triangle (LT) from Gothic to the Pumphouse. The READ_ME.txt file includes details on units and naming conventions in each of these files. Model files are in .mat format, to be opened in MATLAB.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Managing ecosystem damage from extreme events

Large disturbances to ecosystems can severely impact the stability of a region's natural resources, habitats, and outdoor recreation. Because extreme events can be large and relatively infrequent, they test institutional capacity to support recovery and restoration. Here, when hurricanes and other large-scale disturbances like wildfires occur, much of the impacted landscape receives little to no active management. Ecosystems are often allowed to either recover or transition without much direct intervention, and successional dynamics are sometimes altered by novel invasive species, management history, or other environmental changes. Recovery and restoration are especially challenging for landscapes with highly fragmented private ownership, such as the forests of the eastern US. Acting alone, non-industrial private forest landowners have little capacity to effectively respond to unexpected forest loss and to oversee forest recovery, as the scale of actions needed after extreme events may require cooperation across ownerships or jurisdictions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Correlated dynamic disorder, octahedral tilts, and acoustic phonon softening in CsSnBr 3 and CsPbBr 3

Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have emerged as highly promising materials for optoelectronic applications, with all-inorganic MHPs presenting enhanced stability compared to their hybrid counterparts. Here, in this study, we investigate the atomic dynamics and structural fluctuations in single crystals of CsSnBr⁢ 3 and CsPbBr⁢ 3 through systematic inelastic neutron scattering (INS) measurements as a function of temperature. Our experiments are compared with first-principle simulations, augmented with large-scale molecular dynamics modeling, based on machine-learned neural network potentials. Through both INS and simulations, we find quasi-elastic diffuse rods in reciprocal space in both compounds, originating from fluctuating planar domains featuring correlated tilts of Br octahedron. The diffuse rods exhibit a slow, overdamped dynamic process, modulated across 𝑸 space, reflecting the strong lattice anharmonicity of the inorganic framework. We do not find evidence for dynamic off-centering of the Sn 2+ ions besides phonon vibrations at the center of the Br octahedron. These results offer valuable insights into the unusual anharmonic atomic dynamics and intricate correlated structural distortions in MHPs, which will be critical for rationalizing and further tailoring their thermal and optoelectronic properties.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Molecular mechanisms of mycorrhizal‐decomposer interactions and impacts on terrestrial biogeochemistry (Final Technical Report)

Soil microorganisms make nutrients available for plants and control a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions from terrestrial ecosystems by respiring CO 2 to the atmosphere, yet our understanding of how they do this is not clear enough to predict the rate of carbon (C) and nutrient flow through soils and the ecosystems they support. A common and abundant type of soil microorganism that associates with the roots of live plants, known as ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF), is often able to control the amount of nutrients and C that are released from soil (e.g., as CO 2 respired to the atmosphere) during decomposition by microorganisms.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Powder metallurgy hot isostatic pressing - workshop report

The findings of the powder metallurgy (PM) hot isostatic pressing (HIP) workshop confirmed that the accelerated adoption of this technology requires the following action items: 1. By 2035, the HIP infrastructure must be scaled to sizes larger than 4 .0 meters for manufacturing components relevant to energy and defense industries at large. 2. The community must develop cost-effective and agile standards, qualifications, and certification pathways for these HIP parts. 3. At the same time, domestic powder production should be expanded to a wide range of metallic alloys, including Cr-Mo steels, stainless steels, and titanium- and nickel-based superalloys, as well as to emerging alloy classes in the refractory space. 4. The above initiatives can be enhanced by implementing digital modeling and controls, including AI-driven simulations, in situ monitoring, and digital twins.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Rapid RASER MRI

Conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) relies on high-power Radio-Frequency (RF) pulses to excite nuclear spins and in turn generate NMR signals. These pulses require large high-power RF-amplifiers and cause heat deposition in the tissue, which must be minimized for safety, presenting a growing problem when moving toward ever-higher field MRI. An alternative to RF-pulse excitation is self-excitation of nuclear spins using Radiofrequency Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (RASER), where the nuclear spins undergo spontaneous transition, without RF excitation, from an over-populated state to a ground state. Here, the feasibility of recording rapid proton RASER MRI images of pyrazine at low concentration (120 mM) with large matrix (128x128 pixels) in as little as 78 ms is demonstrated at 500 MHz (11.7 T). We also recorded a time-series of images using a single bolus hyperpolarized pyrazine highlighting the feasibility of dynamic tracking. Here, the demonstrated approach allows recording MRI scans without transmit-receive electronics of the MRI scanner, which is highly desirable for portable MRI as well as the emerging field of hyperpolarized MRI using, e.g., HP protons, 129 Xe gas or HP 13 C labeled biomolecules as molecular tracers and imaging agents.

MRI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hierarchical Bayesian modeling for Inverse Uncertainty Quantification of system thermal-hydraulics code using critical flow experimental data

The best estimate plus uncertainty methodology in nuclear system thermal-hydraulic studies necessitates a comprehensive understanding of uncertainties in system code predictions. The forward uncertainty quantification (UQ) process involves the propagation of input uncertainties through the computational models to obtain uncertainties in the outputs. To this end, achieving an accurate estimation of input uncertainties is important, which is the focus of inverse UQ (IUQ). Traditionally, research in Bayesian IUQ within the nuclear engineering domain has largely relied on single-level Bayesian inference. While being effective for relatively small datasets, this approach encounters limitations for cases with large datasets. The use of a single-level model may prove inefficient, as the resultant posterior distributions can significantly differ when distinct subsets of data are employed. To address this issue, we employ an hierarchical Bayesian model for IUQ. Furthermore, this approach involves organizing observations into different groups based on the test conditions, thereby accommodating varying calibration parameters across these distinct groups. In this study, we developed and implemented a hierarchical Bayesian IUQ method to consider the grouping effect of critical flow measurement data from various geometries. Comparing the outcomes of IUQ under different selections of test data using hierarchical Bayesian IUQ against those obtained from single-level Bayesian IUQ, the forward propagation of hierarchical Bayesian IUQ results demonstrates a notably improved agreement with the experimental data.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Origin of large variations of current on/off ratio and switching voltage in atomically thin memristors: an exascale ab initio transport study

Nonvolatile resistive switching in two-dimensional monolayers opens a new avenue for high-density memory/computing devices. However, questions remain as to why the current on/off ratio and switching voltage vary significantly among different devices. Here, we simulate electronic transport of large systems consisting of a h-BN monolayer sandwiched by gold electrodes, enabled by an implementation of the nonequilibrium Green’s function method in the exascale density functional theory (DFT) code: Real-space MultiGrid. Systematic calculations reveal that the wide range of on/off ratios is due to variations in interface distances between the electrode and h-BN that significantly modulate their wavefunction overlap. In addition, DFT calculations demonstrate that the energy barrier of a gold atom dissociating from the electrode to h-BN increases dramatically with the interface distance, thereby explaining the strong dependence of the switching voltage on distance. Our work demonstrates the significance of interface distance in governing the current on/off ratio and switching voltage.

Electronic devices↗
DOE OSTI2015

Transition from a nanocrystalline phase to an amorphous phase in In-Si-O thin films: The correlation between the microstructure and the optical properties

We investigated the structural and optical properties of In-Si-O thin films as the phase abruptly changes from nanocrystalline (nc) to amorphous (a) with increasing Si content. In-Si-O thin films were deposited on Si substrate using a co-sputtering deposition method. The RF power of the In{sub 2}O{sub 3} target was fixed at 100 W, while the power applied to the SiO{sub 2} target was varied between 0 W and 60 W. At the Si = 2.8 at. %, i.e., at the onset of amorphous phase, the optical properties, including the dielectric functions, optical gap energies, and phonon modes, changed abruptly which were triggered by changes in the crystallinity and surface morphology. X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra showed crystalline (c-) In{sub 2}O{sub 3}-like peaks below Si = 2.2%. Additionally, a broad peak associated with an amorphous (a-) In{sub 2}O{sub 3} phase appeared above 2.8%. However, the Raman spectra of In-Si-O showed very weak peaks associated with c-In{sub 2}O{sub 3} below 2.2%, and then showed a strong Raman peak associated with a-In-Si-O above 2.8%. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements showed that oxygen vacancy-related peak intensities increased abruptly above Si = 2.8%. The contrasting results of XRD and Raman measurements can be explained as follows: first, the large enhancement in Drude tails in the a-In-Si-O phase was caused by Si-induced amorphization and a large increase in the density of oxygen vacancies in the In-Si-O thin films. Second, the apparently drastic increase of the Raman peak intensity near 364 cm{sup −1} (for amorphous phase, i.e., above Si = 2.8%) is attributed to a disorder-activated infrared mode caused by both the amorphization and the increase in the oxygen vacancy density in In-Si-O thin films.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

A modular and extensible CHARMM-compatible model for all-atom simulation of polypeptoids

Peptoids (N-substituted glycines) are a class of sequence-defined synthetic peptidomimetic polymers with applications including drug delivery, catalysis, and biomimicry. Classical molecular simulations have been used to predict and understand the conformational dynamics of single chains and their self-assembly into morphologies including sheets, tubes, spheres, and fibrils. The CGenFF-NTOID model based on the CHARMM General Force Field has demonstrated success in accurate all-atom molecular modeling of peptoid structure and thermodynamics. Extension of this force field to new peptoid side chains has historically required reparameterization of side chain bonded interactions against ab initio data. This fitting protocol improves the accuracy of the force field but is also burdensome and precludes modular extensibility of the model to arbitrary peptoid sequences. In this work, we develop and demonstrate a Modular Side Chain CGenFF-NTOID (MoSiC-CGenFF-NTOID) as an extension of CGenFF-NTOID employing a modular decomposition of the peptoid backbone and side chain parameterizations, wherein arbitrary side chains within the large family of substituted methyl groups (i.e., –CH 3 , –CH 2 R, –CHRR', and –CRR'R") are directly ported from CGenFF. We validate this approach against ab initio calculations and experimental data to develop a MoSiC-CGenFF-NTOID model for all 20 natural amino acid side chains along with 13 commonly used synthetic side chains and present an extensible paradigm to efficiently determine whether a novel side chain can be directly incorporated into the model or whether refitting of the CGenFF parameters is warranted. We make the model freely available to the community along with a tool to perform automated initial structure generation.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2026

Quark flavor equilibration of the quark-gluon plasma

The early stage of a heavy-ion collision is marked by rapid entropy production and the transition from a gluon saturated initial condition to a plasma of quarks and gluons that evolves hydrodynamically. However, during the early times of the hydrodynamic evolution, the chemical composition of the QCD medium is still largely unknown. We present a study of quark chemical equilibration in the (Q)GP using a novel model of viscous hydrodynamic evolution in partial chemical equilibrium. Motivated by the success of gluon saturated initial condition models, we initialize the QCD medium as a completely gluon dominated state. Local quark production during the hydrodynamic phase is then simulated through the evolution of time-dependent fugacities for each independent quark flavor, with the timescales set as free parameters to compare different rates of equilibration. We present the results of complete heavy-ion collision simulations using this partial chemical equilibrium model, and show the effects on hadronic and electromagnetic observables. In particular, we show that the development of flow is sensitive to the equilibration timescale, providing an empirical way to probe the chemical equilibration of the QCD medium.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Progress in pedestal and edge physics: Chapter 3 of the special issue: on the path to tokamak burning plasma operation

This paper describes the extensive progress that has been made in the understanding of tokamak pedestal physics since the 2007 publication of ‘Progress in the ITER Physics Basis’ (Ikeda 2007 Nucl. Fusion 47 E01–S500). It serves as Chapter 3 of the 2025 Nuclear Fusion Special Issue titled ‘On the Path to Tokamak Burning Plasma Operation’ (Campbell et al 2025 Nucl. Fusion ). This review was compiled by the pedestal and edge physics (PEP) community affiliated with the International Tokamak Physics Activity organization. It attempts to collect in one place citations to the majority of published literature on the pedestal physics topics that will be most important for the operation of a future power producing burning plasma tokamak. These include citations to publications describing the physics of the pedestal plasmas in many operating tokamaks worldwide and the pedestal physics projections for several near-term future devices including ITER. Descriptions of experimental results, interpretive modeling and predictive extrapolations are integrated together and comprehensive references are provided. This review is organized around four primary technical sections, viz.: pedestal structure, edge localized mode (ELM) characteristics, ELM control and regimes without large ELMs. Key results from many of the references are described briefly and set into the tokamak burning plasma power plant context. In addition, different perspectives on pedestal physics topics that are currently under debate within the community are also described, to provide guidance on needs for future research. Finally, attempts are made to describe conclusions from all of this progress consistent with discussions by the pedestal physics community at this time. The goal of this review is to provide a useful reference document for pedestal physics researchers going forward toward operation of a burning tokamak fusion plasma.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗