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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

Terry Turbopump Analytical Modeling Efforts in Fiscal Year 2016 - Progress Report

This document details the Fiscal Year 2016 modeling efforts to define the true operating limitations (margins) of the Terry turbopump systems used in the nuclear industry for Milestone 3 (full-scale component experiments) and Milestone 4 (Terry turbopump basic science experiments) experiments. The overall multinational-sponsored program creates the technical basis to: (1) reduce and defer additional utility costs, (2) simplify plant operations, and (3) provide a better understanding of the true margin which could reduce overall risk of operations.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2011

FY2011 Progress Report: Agreement 8697 - NOx Sensor Development

Objectives are: (1) Develop an inexpensive, rapid-response, high-sensitivity and selective electrochemical sensor for oxides of nitrogen (NO{sub x}) for compression-ignition, direct-injection (CIDI) OBD II systems; (2) Explore and characterize novel, effective sensing methodologies based on impedance measurements and designs and manufacturing methods that are compatible with mass fabrication; and (3) Collaborate with industry in order to (ultimately) transfer the technology to a supplier for commercialization.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Progress Report on Alloy 617 Notched Specimen Testing

Creep behavior of Alloy 617 has been extensively characterized to support the development of a draft Code Case to qualify Alloy 617 in Section III division 5 of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code. This will allow use of Alloy 617 in construction of nuclear reactor components at elevated temperatures and longer periods of time (up to 950°C and 100,000 hours). Prior to actual use, additional concerns not considered in the ASME code need to be addressed. Code Cases are based largely on uniaxial testing of smooth gage specimens. In service conditions, components will generally be under multi axial loading. There is also the concern of the behavior at discontinuities, such as threaded components. To address the concerns of multi axial creep behavior and at geometric discontinuities, notched specimens have been designed to create conditions representative of the states that service components experience. Two general notch geometries have been used for these series of tests: U notch and V notch specimens. The notches produce a tri axial stress state, though not uniform across the specimen. Characterization of the creep behavior of the U notch specimens and the creep rupture behavior of the V notch specimens provides a good approximation of the behavior expected of actual components. Preliminary testing and analysis have been completed and are reported in this document. This includes results from V notch specimens tested at 900°C and 800°C. Failure occurred in the smooth gage section of the specimen rather than at the root of the notch, though some damage was present at the root of the notch, where initial stress was highest. This indicates notch strengthening behavior in this material at these temperatures.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2012

Student Progress Report: Summer 2012 [Slides]

The Los Alamos SOURCES 4C code has been benchmarked for alpha particle beam problems and common neutron source materials (e.g. those containing plutonium or beryllium), but little benchmarking has been performed for more exotic isotopic neutron sources or uranium mixtures. This work extends SOURCES 4C benchmarking effort. Experimental data was found in the literature for several isotopic neutron sources, namely Am/Be, Am/F, Am/B, Cm/Be, 238 Pu/ 13 C, 252 Cf, and Am/Li.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Local System Support for PDB Biological Unit Search and Display (Final Progress Report)

The BIOMOL grant was for 'Local System Support for PDB Biological Unit Search and Display' to augment Rasmol's [Bernstein 2000] [Sayle, Milner-White 1995] existing macromolecular display functions with new capabilities by taking advantage of recent increases in local computing power in order to move functionality that is now scattered among various local and remote systems into one local package. Work included new algorithms for molecular surface display, an extended format for Protein Data Bank Entries, work on issues relating to the integration of multiple diffraction images formats.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

Year End Progress Report on Rattlesnake Improvements

Rattlesnake is a MOOSE-based radiation transport application developed at INL to support modern multi-physics simulations. At the beginning of the last year, Rattlesnake was able to perform steady-state, transient and eigenvalue calculations for the multigroup radiation transport equations. Various discretization schemes, including continuous finite element method (FEM) with discrete ordinates method (SN) and spherical harmonics expansion method (PN) for the self-adjoint angular flux (SAAF) formulation, continuous FEM (CFEM) with SN for the least square (LS) formulation, diffusion approximation with CFEM and discontinuous FEM (DFEM), have been implemented. A separate toolkit, YAKXS, for multigroup cross section management was developed to support Rattlesnake calculations with feedback both from changes in the field variables, such as fuel temperature, coolant density, and etc., and in isotope inventory. The framework for doing nonlinear diffusion acceleration (NDA) within Rattlesnake has been set up, and both NDA calculations with SAAF-SN-CFEM scheme and Monte Carlo with OpenMC have been performed. It was also used for coupling BISON and RELAP-7 for the full-core multiphysics simulations. Within the last fiscal year, significant improvements have been made in Rattlesnake. Rattlesnake development was migrated into our internal GITLAB development environment at the end of year 2014. Since then total 369 merge requests has been accepted into Rattlesnake. It is noted that the MOOSE framework that Rattlesnake is based on is under continuous developments. Improvements made in MOOSE can improve the Rattlesnake. It is acknowledged that MOOSE developers spent efforts on patching Rattlesnake for the improvements made on the framework side. This report will not cover the code restructuring for better readability and modularity and documentation improvements, which we have spent tremendous effort on. It only details some of improvements in the following sections.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Experimental study of an isochorically heated heterogeneous interface. A progress report

Outline of the presentation: Studying possible mix / interface motion between heterogeneous low/high Z interfaces driven by 2-fluid or kinetic plasma effects (Heated to few eV, Sharp (sub µm) interface); Isochoric heating to initialize interface done with Al quasimonoenergetic ion beams on Trident; Have measured isochoric heating in individual materials intended for compound targets; Fielded experiments on Trident to measure interface motion (Gold-diamond, tin-aluminium); Measured heated-sample temperature with streaked optical pyrometry (SOP) (UT Austin led (research contract), SOP tests → heating uniformity Vs thickness on Al foils. Results are being analyzed.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Measuring radiation damage dynamics by pulsed ion beam irradiation. 2015 Annual Progress Report for DOE/NE/NEET

The major goal of this project is to develop and demonstrate a novel experimental approach to access the dynamic regime of radiation damage formation processes in nuclear materials. In particular, the project exploits a pulsed-ion-beam method in order to gain insight into defect interaction dynamics by measuring effective defect interaction time constants and defect diffusion lengths. For Year 2, this project had the following two major milestones: (i) measurement of the temperature dependence of defect dynamics in SiC and (ii) the evaluation of the robustness of the pulsed beam method from studies of the defect generation rate. As we describe below, both of these milestones have been met.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2015

Solving The Long-Standing Problem Of Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions At The Highest Microscopic Level. Annual Continuation And Progress Report, August 15, 2014 -- August 14, 2015

The aim of this project is to develop a comprehensive framework that will lead to a fundamental description of both structural properties and reactions of light nuclei in terms of constituent protons and neutrons interacting through nucleon-nucleon (NN) and three-nucleon (3N) forces. This project will provide the research community with the theoretical and computational tools what will enable: an accurate prediction for fusion reactions that power stars and Earth-based fusion facilities; an improved description of the spectroscopy of exotic nuclei, including light Borromean systems; and, a fundamental understanding of the three-nucleon force in nuclear reaction and nuclei at the drip line.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Final Progress Report

In this project we have established guidelines for the design on organic chromophores suitable for producing high triplet yields via singlet fission. We have proven their utility by identifying a chromophore of a structural class that had never been examined for singlet fission before, 1,3-diphenylisobenzofuran, and demonstrating in two independent ways that a thin layer of this material produces a triplet yield of 200% within experimental error. We have also designed a second chromophore of a very different type, again of a structural class that had not been examined for singlet fission before, and found that in a thin layer it produces a 70% triplet yield. Finally, we have enhanced the theoretical understanding of the quantum mechanical nature of the singlet fission process.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Software Construction and Composition Tools for Petascale Computing SCW0837 Progress Report

The majority of scientific software is distributed as source code. As the number of library dependencies and supported platforms increases, so does the complexity of describing the rules for configuring and building software. In this project, we have performed an empirical study of the magnitude of the build problem by examining the development history of two DOE-funded scientific software projects. We have developed MixDown, a meta-build tool, to simplify the task of building applications that depend on multiple third-party libraries. The results of this research indicate that the effort that scientific programmers spend takes a significant fraction of the total development effort and that the use of MixDown can significantly simplify the task of building software with multiple dependencies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2015

FY-15 Progress Report on Cleanup of irradiated SHINE Target Solutions Containing 140g-U/L Uranyl Sulfate

During FY 2012 and 2013, a process was developed to convert the SHINE Target Solution (STS) of irradiated uranyl sulfate (140 g U/L) to uranyl nitrate. This process is necessary so that the uranium solution can be processed by the UREX (Uranium Extraction) separation process, which will remove impurities from the uranium so that it can be recycled. The uranyl sulfate solution must contain <0.02 M SO 4 2- so that the uranium will be extractable into the UREXsolvent. In addition, it is desired that the barium content be below 0.0007 M, as this is the limit in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2012

Productization and Manufacturing Scaling of High-Efficiency Solar Cell and Module Products Based on a Disruptive Low-Cost, Mono-Crystalline Technology (Final Technical Progress Report)

Final report for PV incubator subcontract with Solexel, Inc. The purpose of this project was to develop Solexel's Unique IP, productize it, and transfer it to manufacturing. Silicon constitutes a significant fraction of the total solar cell cost, resulting in an industry-wide drive to lower silicon usage. Solexel's disruptive Solar cell structure got around these challenges and promised superior light trapping, efficiency and mechanical strength, despite being significantly thinner than commercially available cells. Solexel's successful participation in this incubator project became evident as the company is now moving into commercial production and position itself to be competitive for the next Technology Pathway Partnerships (TPP) funding opportunity.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Mercury Remediation Technology Development for Lower East Fork Poplar Creek - FY 2015 Progress Report

Mercury remediation is a high priority for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) because of large historical losses of mercury within buildings and to soils and surface waters at the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12). Because of the extent of mercury losses and the complexities of mercury transport and fate in the downstream environment, the success of conventional options for mercury remediation in lower East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC) is uncertain. A phased, adaptive management approach to remediation of surface water includes mercury treatment actions at Y-12 in the short-term and research and technology development (TD) to evaluate longer-term solutions in the downstream environment (US Department of Energy 2014b).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

ORNL Interim Progress Report on Hydride Reorientation CIRFT Tests

A systematic study of H. B. Robinson (HBR) high burnup spent nuclear fuel (SNF) vibration integrity was performed in Phase I project under simulated transportation environments, using the Cyclic Integrated Reversible-Bending Fatigue Tester (CIRFT) hot cell testing technology developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2013–14. The data analysis on the as-irradiated HBR SNF rods demonstrated that the load amplitude is the dominant factor that controls the fatigue life of bending rods. However, previous studies have shown that the hydrogen content and hydride morphology has an important effect on zirconium alloy mechanical properties. To address the effect of radial hydrides in SNF rods, in Phase II a test procedure was developed to simulate the effects of elevated temperatures, pressures, and stresses during transfer-drying operations. Pressurized and sealed fuel segments were heated to the target temperature for a preset hold time and slow-cooled at a controlled rate. The procedure was applied to both non-irradiated/prehydrided and high-burnup Zircaloy-4 fueled cladding segments using the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-recommended 400°C maximum temperature limit at various cooling rates. Before testing high-burnup cladding, four out-of-cell tests were conducted to optimize the hydride reorientation (R) test condition with pre-hydride Zircaloy-4 cladding, which has the same geometry as the high burnup fuel samples. Test HR-HBR#1 was conducted at the maximum hoop stress of 145 MPa, at a 400°C maximum temperature and a 5°C/h cooling rate. On the other hand, thermal cycling was performed for tests HR-HBR#2, HR-HBR#3, and HR-HBR#4 to generate more radial hydrides. It is clear that thermal cycling increases the ratio of the radial hydride to circumferential hydrides. The internal pressure also has a significant effect on the radial hydride morphology. This report describes a procedure and experimental results of the four out-of-cell hydride reorientation tests of hydrided Zircaloy-4 cladding, which served as a guideline to prepare in-cell hydride reorientation samples with high burnup HBR fuel segments. This report also provides the Phase II CIRFT test data for the hydride reorientation irradiated samples. The variations in fatigue life are provided in terms of moment, equivalent stress, curvature, and equivalent strain for the tested SNFs. The CIRFT results appear to indicate that hydride reoriented treatment (HRT) have a negative effect on fatigue life, in addition to hydride reorientation effect. For HR4 specimen that had no pressurization procedure applied, the thermal annealing treatment alone showed a negative impact on the fatigue life compared to the HBR rod.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Used Fuel Disposal in Crystalline Rocks. FY15 Progress Report

The objective of the Crystalline Disposal R&D Work Package is to advance our understanding of long-term disposal of used fuel in crystalline rocks and to develop necessary experimental and computational capabilities to evaluate various disposal concepts in such media. Chapter headings are as follows: Fuel matrix degradation model and its integration with performance assessments, Investigation of thermal effects on the chemical behavior of clays, Investigation of uranium diffusion and retardation in bentonite, Long-term diffusion of U(VI) in bentonite: dependence on density, Sorption and desorption of plutonium by bentonite, Dissolution of plutonium intrinsic colloids in the presence of clay and as a function of temperature, Laboratory investigation of colloid-facilitated transport of cesium by bentonite colloids in a crystalline rock system, Development and demonstration of discrete fracture network model, Fracture continuum model and its comparison with discrete fracture network model.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2011

Progress Report on Development of Intermediate Fidelity Full Assembly Analysis Methods

While high fidelity modeling capabilities for various physics phenomena are being pursued under advanced modeling and simulation initiatives under the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, they generally rely on high-performance computation facilities and are too expensive to be used for parameter-space exploration or design analysis. One-dimensional system codes have been used for a long time and have reached a degree of maturity, but limit their validity to specific applications. Thus, an intermediate fidelity (IF) modeling method is being pursued in this work for a fast-running, modest-fidelity, whole-core transient analyses capability. The new approach is essential for design scoping and engineering analyses and could lead to improvements in the design of the new generations of reactors and to the reduction of uncertainties in safety analysis. This report summarizes the initial effort on the development of the intermediate-fidelity full assembly modeling method. The requirements and the desired merits of the IF approach have been defined. A three-dimensional momentum source model has been developed to model the anisotropic flow in the wire-wrapped rod bundle without the need to resolve the geometric details. It has been confirmed that the momentum source model works well if its affecting region is accurately imposed. The validity of the model is further verified by mesh and parameter sensitivity studies. The developed momentum source model, in principle, can be applied to any wire-wrapped bundle geometries and any flow regimes; while the modeling strategy can be applied to other conditions with complex or distorted geometry, such as flow in blocked channels.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2012

TORUS: Theory of Reactions for Unstable iSotopes: A Topical Collaboration for Nuclear Theory Project Period: June 1, 2010 – May 31, 2015 and Annual Continuation and Progress Report Year-2: March 1, 2011 – February 29, 2012

The TORUS collaboration derives its name from the research it focuses on, namely the Theory of Reactions for Unstable iSotopes. It is a Topical Collaboration in Nuclear Theory, and funded by the Nuclear Theory Division of the Office of Nuclear Physics in the Office of Science of the Department of Energy. The funding supports one postdoctoral researcher for the years 1 through 3. The collaboration brings together as Principal Investigators a large fraction of the nuclear reaction theorists currently active within the USA. The mission of the TORUS Topical Collaboration is to develop new methods that will advance nuclear reaction theory for unstable isotopes by using three-body techniques to improve direct-reaction calculations, and, by using a new partial-fusion theory, to integrate descriptions of direct and compound-nucleus reactions. This multi-institution collaborative effort is directly relevant to three areas of interest: the properties of nuclei far from stability; microscopic studies of nuclear input parameters for astrophysics, and microscopic nuclear reaction theory.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗