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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 289 records · Page 16
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2010

An overview of the global threat reduction initiative's physical protection work in Tanzania.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) established the Global Threat Reduction Initiative's (GTRI) mission to reduce and protect nuclear and radiological materials located at civilian sites worldwide. Internationally, over 80 countries are cooperating with GTRI to enhance security of facilities with these materials. In 2004, a GTRI delegation began working with the Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission, (TAEC). The team conducted site assessments for the physical protection of radiological materials in Tanzania. Today, GTRI and the Government of Tanzania continue cooperative efforts to enhance physical security at several radiological sites, including a central sealed-source storage facility, and sites in the cities of Arusha, Dar Es Salaam, and Tanga. This paper describes the scope of physical protection work, lessons learned, and plans for future cooperation between the GTRI program and the TAEC. Additionally the paper will review the cooperative efforts between TAEC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with regards to a remote monitoring system at a storage facility and to the repackaging of radioactive sources.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2010

The nature of airbursts and their contribution to the impact threat.

Ongoing simulations of low-altitude airbursts from hypervelocity asteroid impacts have led to a re-evaluation of the impact hazard that accounts for the enhanced damage potential relative to the standard point-source approximations. Computational models demonstrate that the altitude of maximum energy deposition is not a good estimate of the equivalent height of a point explosion, because the center of mass of an exploding projectile maintains a significant fraction of its initial momentum and is transported downward in the form of a high-temperature jet of expanding gas. This 'fireball' descends to a depth well beneath the burst altitude before its velocity becomes subsonic. The time scale of this descent is similar to the time scale of the explosion itself, so the jet simultaneously couples both its translational and its radial kinetic energy to the atmosphere. Because of this downward flow, larger blast waves and stronger thermal radiation pulses are experienced at the surface than would be predicted for a nuclear explosion of the same yield at the same burst height. For impacts with a kinetic energy below some threshold value, the hot jet of vaporized projectile loses its momentum before it can make contact with the Earth's surface. The 1908 Tunguska explosion is the largest observed example of this first type of airburst. For impacts above the threshold, the fireball descends all the way to the ground, where it expands radially, driving supersonic winds and radiating thermal energy at temperatures that can melt silicate surface materials. The Libyan Desert Glass event, 29 million years ago, may be an example of this second, larger, and more destructive type of airburst. The kinetic energy threshold that demarcates these two airburst types depends on asteroid velocity, density, strength, and impact angle. Airburst models, combined with a reexamination of the surface conditions at Tunguska in 1908, have revealed that several assumptions from the earlier analyses led to erroneous conclusions, resulting in an overestimate of the size of the Tunguska event. Because there is no evidence that the Tunguska fireball descended to the surface, the yield must have been about 5 megatons or lower. Better understanding of airbursts, combined with the diminishing number of undiscovered large asteroids, leads to the conclusion that airbursts represent a large and growing fraction of the total impact threat.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2012

Nonproliferation, Nuclear Security, and the Insider Threat

Insider threat concept is evolving and getting more attention: (1) Domestically, internationally and in foreign countries, (2) At the government, academia, and industry levels, and (3) Public awareness and concerns are also growing. Negligence can be an insider's action. Technology advancements provide more opportunities, new tools for the insider. Our understanding of the insider is shaped by our cultural, social and ethnic perceptions and traditions. They also can limit our recognition of the issues and response actions.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2011

Mediating Cyber and Physical Threat Propagation in Security Smart Grid Architectures

The power grid is a federated system. Regions of the system are controlled by different organizations and security of the grid is imposed from above through regulation of the security techniques used by the federants. This approach will be less effective as we move to a smart grid, where control of some elements of the grid rests in the customer’s home through technologies that enable remote access to appliances. These regions of the smart grid are less trusted, yet they interact in various ways with other parts of the grid. This paper demonstrates threat propagation in the smart grid from such regions, and discusses architectural approaches to mediating the impact of such flows.

Neuman, Clifford↗
DOE OSTI2022

Automated Threat Information Generation

Manual malware analysis is time consuming and is not scalable. This poster describes tools that INL has developed that automate and codify threat information.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Automatic threat recognition system and method using material disambiguation informed by physics in x-ray CT images of baggage

An automatic threat recognition (ATR) system is disclosed for scanning an article to recognize contraband items or items of interest contained within the article. The ATR system uses a CAT scanner to obtain a CT image scan of objects within the article, representing a plurality of 2D image slices of the article and its contents. Each 2D image slice includes information forming a plurality of voxels. The ATR system includes a computer and determines which voxels have a likelihood of representing materials of interest. It then aggregates those voxels to produce detected objects. The detected objects are further classified as items of interest vs. not of interest. The ATR system is based on learned parameters for a novel interaction of global and object context mechanisms. ATR system performance may be optimized by using jointly optimal global and object context parameters learned during training. The global context parameters may apply to the article as a whole and facilitate object detection. The object context parameters may apply to the individual object detections.

Paglieroni, David W.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Trends in Cybersecurity Threats to Clean Energy

As deployments of clean energy generation and storage assets continue to grow, the increased attack surface creates a greater risk for cyber threats, but is clean energy truly a target for cyber adversaries? This poster will present research on the trends in cyber incidents that have affected clean energy companies and assets as well as the trends in disclosed and exploited vulnerabilities. From a series of ransomware attacks on European wind manufacturers, to vulnerabilities exploited in solar assets to turn controllers into botnets, to attacks on communication infrastructure that have resulted in extended outages of remote control and monitoring, we explore the techniques used and the impacts to the clean energy sector. Key takeaways include understanding of how OT-focused malware is becoming more flexible and more destructive, how known vulnerabilities are being exploited, the growing number of IT and OT attacks that use built in tools and functionalities. Additionally, we highlight the presumed motivations and targeted sectors for various identified cyber adversaries. Viewers will leave with an understanding of how recent headlines fit into the development of cyberattack trends and what preventions they may need to take to protect against increasingly popular tactics.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hawaii Threat Brief

The Digital Energy Transformation is redefining how power systems operate, integrating physical infrastructure with digital technologies to enhance efficiency, visibility, and resilience. For islanded and digitally modernizing systems like Hawai‘i’s, this shift presents both new opportunities and evolving challenges in cybersecurity, supply chain assurance, and environmental resilience. This brief provides an overview of critical infrastructure dependencies and systemic risks associated with increasing digital integration. It summarizes recent energy-sector threat activity and case studies that illustrate adversary tactics and supply chain vulnerabilities, and identifies pathways to strengthen resilience.

25 - ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Energy Sector Threat Brief: 2024 Round Up

What major and minor cybersecurity events affected the energy sector in the last year? What trends were observed in the events, disclosure of vulnerabilities, and other headline news? This talk will focus on real-world events put in the context of an evolving geo-political landscape. We will discuss events that had operational impact as well as events affecting third-parties with exploration of how the impact of incidents is changing as more stakeholders are involved in new projects and the complexity of the modern grid. We will focus on lessons learned from the 2024 trends that operators and their partners can apply to stay ahead of the threats in 2025.

14 - SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Assessing the Threat: Weaving Cybersecurity into the Building Development Process

Today’s connected lighting systems have the potential to reduce energy consumption and operational costs via the use of the data they collect and share with other building systems (e.g., HVAC, building automation, security). However, many market available products are new to being networked, and when networked components in lighting and other building systems are not sufficiently secured, they present opportunities for criminals to exploit. Further, security vulnerabilities in one system can be used as lateral steppingstones that allow access to other prized assets on the same network. These cybersecurity concerns could deter the adoption and use of connected systems, which then could jeopardize long-term national objectives for reduced energy usage. The workflows described here and presented in more detail in the referenced reports are examples of how these frameworks and tools can be put to practical use during system design and specification.

attack surface, Building development, threat analy↗
DOE OSTI2022

Trade-off Analysis of Operational Technologies to Advance Cyber Resilience through Automated and Autonomous Response to Threats

The advancement of cyber resilience requires a preliminary stage of characterizing the trade-off space of mitigation options and how these might affect the stability and determinism of an operational technology (OT). This first step will set the stage for the proper cyber-secure and cyber-resilient design and confirm the affects that can be considered and approved by the OT and the security groups. To provide a baseline for this discussion, this paper provides a consideration of the cyberphysical interactions, possible mitigation steps against certain attacks and their corresponding affects that lend to the security design planning and evaluation process. As an integral part of the proposed scheme this work introduces the concept of systemwide fuzzer, i.e., a tool that manipulates the system state in an effort to determine mitigation response sequences that minimize detriments and maximize benefit in accordance with specified operational requirements.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Identifying management opportunities to combat climate, land, and marine threats across less climate exposed coral reefs

Conserving coral reefs is critical for maintaining marine biodiversity, protecting coastlines, and supporting livelihoods in many coastal communities. Climate change threatens coral reefs globally, but researchers have identified a portfolio of coral reefs (bioclimatic units [BCUs]) that are relatively less exposed to climate impacts and strongly connected to other coral reef systems. These reefs provide a proactive opportunity to secure a long-term future for coral reefs under climate change. To help guide local management efforts, we quantified marine cumulative human impact (CHI) from climate, marine, and land pressures (2013 and from 2008 to 2013) in BCUs and across countries tasked with BCU management. Additionally, we created a management index based on common management measures and policies for each pressure source (climate, marine, and land) to identify a country's intent and commitment to effectively manage these pressures. Twenty-two countries (79%) had increases in CHI from 2008 to 2013. Climate change pressures had the highest proportional contribution to CHI across all reefs and in all but one country (Singapore), but 18 BCUs (35%) and nine countries containing BCUs (32%) had relatively high land and marine impacts. There was a significant positive relationship between climate impact and the climate management index across countries (R 2 = 0.43, p = 0.02), potentially signifying that countries with greater climate impacts are more committed to managing them. However, this trend was driven by climate management intent in Fiji and Bangladesh. Our results can be used to guide future fine-scale analyses, national policies, and local management decisions, and our management indices reveal areas where management components can be improved. Cost-effectively managing local pressures (e.g., fishing and nutrients) in BCUs is essential for building a climate-ready future that benefits coral reefs and people.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2012

Receiver Operating Characteristic Analysis for Detecting Explosives-related Threats

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are interested in developing a standardized testing procedure for determining the performance of candidate detection systems. This document outlines a potential method for judging detection system performance as well as determining if combining the information from a legacy system with a new system can significantly improve performance. In this document, performance corresponds to the Neyman-Pearson criterion applied to the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves of the detection systems in question. A simulation was developed to investigate how the amount of data provided by the vendor in the form of the ROC curve effects the performance of the combined detection system. Furthermore, the simulation also takes into account the potential effects of correlation and how this information can also impact the performance of the combined system.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗