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Wind speeds at the NREL National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) vary dramatically from summer to winter. Wind speeds are low over the summer and high over the winter. The data collected from this site will allow validation of the survivability of the Sunfolding tracker under high wind events, increased understanding of the dynamic behavior of the Sunfolding tracker at different wind speeds.
This drilling data for Utah FORGE well 16B(78)-32 include a well survey, core summary, mud and mud temperature logs, daily reports of the drilling process, and additional data from the Pason oil and gas company. Well 16B(78)-32 serves as the production well for reservoir creation, fluid circulation, and demonstration of heat extraction for the FORGE project. It has been drilled as a doublet approximately 300 feet parallel to and above the injection well 16A(78)-32. The proposed total depth was 10,658 feet, which was exceeded. Spudding began on April 26th, 2023. As of June 20th, 2023, the total depth measured 10,947 feet and the vertical depth measured 8,357 feet. Drilling included the trial use of insulated drill pipe (IDP) from Eavor Technologies, which was considered a success. IDP restricts counter-current heat transfer between drilling fluid inside the drill string and hotter returning fluid in the annulus, thereby ensuring the bottomhole assembly (BHA) remains submerged in cool fluid. Eavor rented 350 joints of IDP to FORGE which were run in two consecutive BHAs at the well. The results of this trial are included here.
This report describes the fabrication, testing, and analysis of two families of passively-actuated creep-fatigue test articles. These test articles induce cyclic mechanical load in a test section actuated solely through a mismatch in the thermal expansion coefficient of two materials and driven by a change in the specimen temperature. Test articles of this type could provide material degradation data for a materials surveillance program in future operating molten salt reactors, where variations in the reactor temperature caused by normal or upset cycles would provide the temperature change in the sample. The purpose of the current experimental campaign is to demonstrate the feasibility of fabricating realistically-sized test articles, test the articles under repeated thermal cycling to assess their robustness, particularly the reliability of the bimetallic welds, and collect strain data from instrumented samples to validate the methods used to size the test articles to match key features of the mechanical response of operating reactor components. The thermal cycling tests are ongoing but the test data to date suggests the current test article design is viable, robust, and can be successfully designed to match a target mechanical response. Finally, the report describes preliminary work on welding refractory alloys to 316H stainless steel. Replacing the test article driver material, currently Alloy 617, with a refractory would increase the coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch and support further miniaturization of the test articles.
These couple of weeks I continued doing solvent tests with the 3D printed actuators. I made measurements and organized the data obtained from the tests. I was also able to get a logic gate design that worked according to the logic and was able to start printing and modifying the design. I've been understanding more about what parts of the design it would be best to modify and why certain ideas do not work versus others. I've been communicating with my mentor when I make edits to the design to ensure I keep moving forward with it and make it look closer and closer to what we need it to. I've continued to attend the seminars held by the department and learned more about the different methods of 3d printing and the different projects that are being worked on here.
In-situ digital optical microscopy data was successfully collected during the potentiodynamic polarization of iron in corrosive NaCl solution. This report serves as a foundation for future, more comprehensive experiments that correlate electrochemical responses to near-real time surface morphology tracking. The development of in-situ microscopy and roughness collection will help realize increases in data acquisition of the surface morphology during electrochemical experiments.
As a part of the US DOE-NE High Burnup Spent Fuel Data Project, ORNL is performing destructive examinations (DEs) of high burnup (HBU) (>45 gigawatt days per metric ton uranium) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) rods from the North Anna Nuclear Power Station operated by Dominion Energy. The SNF rods, called the “sister rods,” are all HBU and include four different kinds of fuel rod cladding: standard Zircaloy-4, low-tin Zircaloy-4, ZIRLO®, and M5®. The DEs are being conducted to obtain a baseline of the HBU rod’s condition prior to dry storage and are focused on understanding overall SNF rod strength and durability. Both composite fuel and empty cladding are being tested. While the data generated can be used for multiple purposes, a primary goal for obtaining the post-irradiation examination data will support SNF dry storage licensing and relicensing activities.This report documents the status of the ORNL Phase 1 DE activities related to full length rod heat treatments (FHT) applied to selected sister rods in Phase 1 of the sister rod test program. The results of this work and detailed examinations are summarized in the Sister Rod DE Status Report.
Traffic queues, especially queues caused by non-recurrent events such as incidents, are unexpected to high-speed drivers approaching the end of queue (EOQ) and become safety concerns. Though the topic has been extensively studied, the identification of EOQ has been limited by the spatial-temporal resolution of traditional data sources. This study explores the potential of location-based crowdsourced data, specifically Waze user reports. It presents a dynamic clustering algorithm that can group the location-based reports in real time and identify the spatial-temporal extent of congestion as well as the EOQ. The algorithm is a spatial-temporal extension of the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm for real-time streaming data with an adaptive threshold selection procedure. Here, the proposed method was tested with 34 traffic congestion cases in the Knoxville, Tennessee area of the United States. It is demonstrated that the algorithm can effectively detect spatial-temporal extent of congestion based on Waze report clusters and identify EOQ in real-time. The Waze report-based detection are compared to the detection based on roadside sensor data. The results are promising: The EOQ identification time of Waze is similar to the EOQ detection time of traffic sensor data, with only 1.1 min difference on average. In addition, Waze generates 1.9 EOQ detection points every mile, compared to 1.8 detection points generated by traffic sensor data, suggesting the two data sources are comparable in respect of reporting frequency. The results indicate that Waze is a valuable complementary source for EOQ detection where no traffic sensors are installed.
The Thermal Hydraulic Experimental Test Article (THETA) is a facility that will be used to develop sodium components and instrumentation as well as acquire experimental data for validation of reactor thermal hydraulic and safety analysis codes. The facility will simulate nominal conditions as well as protected/unprotected loss of flow accidents in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). High fidelity distributed temperature profiles of the developed flow field will be acquired with Rayleigh backscatter based optical fiber temperature sensors. The facility is being designed in partnership with systems code experts to tailor the experiment to ensure the most relevant and highest quality data for code validation. THETA is comprised of a traditional primary and secondary system. The primary system is submerged in the pool of sodium and consists of a pump, electrically heated core, intermediate heat exchanger, and connected piping and thermal barriers (redan). The secondary system, located outside of the sodium pool, consists of a pump, sodium to air heat exchanger, and connected piping and valves. Figure 1 illustrates the main components of the primary system. THETA will be installed in the Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop (METL) with the primary system in the 28 inch Test Vessel #4, Figure 2. The design work for the facility has been completed. Since the FY19 THETA status report, the THETA primary system components have been assembled and tested using de-ionized water. Some results of this testing at select Richardson and Reynolds numbers are included herein. The custom THETA sodium flowmeter (permanent magnet submersible sodium flowmeter) has been built and calibrated using sodium in an auxiliary facility against a NIST traceable vortex shedder type flowmeter. The permanent magnet flowmeter showed excellent performance, following the theoretical equation for measured voltage quite well, with an error < 3.5% at flow rates ranging from 3-24 GPM at temperatures up to 400 °C. The secondary sodium system for heat rejection from intermediate heat exchanger has been analyzed according to ASME code. All secondary side piping, fittings and a U-stamped air-to-sodium heat exchanger have been procured.
This submission has wave resource assessments which were conducted for six locations based on IEC requirements using the DOE WPTO Hindcast data and MHKiT. The locations are chosen to provide varying wave climates and include PacWave South, OR; Wave Energy Testing Site (WETS), HI; Molokai, HI; St. Paul, AK; Yakutat, Ak; and Sebastion, FL. It includes the data gathered and the resulting report. This submission also includes a link to Hindcast dataset and some relevant software.
Rationale Clumped isotope geochemistry examines the pairing or clumping of heavy isotopes in molecules and provides information about the thermodynamic and kinetic controls on their formation. The first clumped isotope measurements of carbonate minerals were first published 15 years ago, and since then, interlaboratory offsets have been observed, and laboratory and community practices for measurement, data analysis, and instrumentation have evolved. Here we briefly review historical and recent developments for measurements, share Tripati Lab practices for four different instrument configurations, test a recently published proposal for carbonate‐based standardization on multiple instruments using multi‐year data sets, and report values for 21 different carbonate standards that allow for recalculations of previously published data sets. Methods We examine data from 4628 standard measurements on Thermo MAT 253 and Nu Perspective IS mass spectrometers, using a common acid bath (90°C) and small‐sample (70°C) individual reaction vessels. Each configuration was investigated by treating some standards as anchors (working standards) and the remainder as unknowns (consistency standards). Results We show that different acid digestion systems and mass spectrometer models yield indistinguishable results when instrument drift is well characterized. For linearity correction, mixed gas‐and‐carbonate standardization or carbonate‐only standardization yields similar results. No difference is observed in the use of three or eight working standards for the construction of transfer functions. Conclusions We show that all configurations yield similar results if instrument drift is robustly characterized and validate a recent proposal for carbonate‐based standardization using large multiyear data sets. Δ 47 values are reported for 21 carbonate standards on both the absolute reference frame (ARF; also refered to as the Carbon Dioxide Equilibrated Scale or CDES) and the new InterCarb‐Carbon Dioxide Equilibrium Scale (I‐CDES) reference frame, facilitating intercomparison of data from a diversity of labs and instrument configurations and restandardization of a broad range of sample sets between 2006, when the first carbonate measurements were published, and the present.
The magnetized near detector (ND280) of the T2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment has been recently upgraded aiming to satisfy the requirement of reducing the systematic uncertainty from measuring the neutrino–nucleus interaction cross section, which is the largest systematic uncertainty in the search for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation. A key component of the upgrade is SuperFGD, a 3D segmented plastic scintillator detector made of approximately 2,000,000 optically-isolated 1 cm 3 cubes. The SuperFGD cube unit shows promising optical performance, including a high light yield of about 40 photoelectrons (p.e.) per channel, a low cube-to-cube crosstalk rate below 3%, and a sub-nanosecond time resolution of 0.96 ns. By combining tracking and stopping power measurements of final state particles, this novel detector enables precise 3D-imaging of GeV neutrino interactions with reduced systematic uncertainties. A detailed Geant4 based optical simulation of the SuperFGD building block, i.e. a plastic scintillating cube read out by three wavelength shifting fibers, has been developed and validated with the different datasets collected in various beam tests. In this manuscript the description of the optical model as well as the comparison with data are reported.
This report summarizes the 2020 fiscal year (FY20) status of the borehole heater test in salt funded by the US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Spent Fuel and Waste Science & Technology (SFWST) campaign. This report satisfies SFWST level-two milestone number M2SF-20SNO10303032. This report is an update of an August 2019 level-three milestone report to present the final as-built description of the test and the first phase of operational data (BATS la, January to March 2020) from the Brine Availability Test in Salt (BATS) field test.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP) requested Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to support the River Protection Project vitrification in an effort to support operations upon completion of startup activities (DOE 2012). This work was performed under the PNNL project titled “ORP Glass Support Work.” One task of this project—Enhanced Hanford Waste Glass Models—is the subject of this report. A previous task focused on generating property-composition data and models for the Hanford site low-activity waste (LAW) glasses with lower waste loadings, which are relevant to the commissioning of the LAW vitrification facility. The current task has the long-term objective of expanding the Hanford site LAW glass database and property composition models for the balance of the Hanford site tank waste treatment and immobilization mission. During the balance of the mission, LAW glasses with higher waste loadings will be produced. This report presents the glass compositions and glass property data developed in Phase 2 of the enhanced Hanford LAW glass property data development effort. When this effort is complete, enhanced LAW glass property models will be developed. Section 1.1 summarizes the status of the LAW glass composition regions and waste loading constraints prior to the data development effort documented in this report. Section 1.2 summarizes the LAW Phase 2 glass composition region and test matrix. Section 1.3 documents the quality assurance program used in performing the work discussed in this report.
The DOE Advanced Reactor Technologies program has supported efforts to recover and preserve metallic fuel data generated throughout the past fast reactor R&D programs. Those efforts are currently focused on establishing databases for information from the experiments conducted during the Integral Fast Reactor program including data generated at EBR-II, FFTF, and TREAT reactors, as well as out of pile transient testing data. These databases are essential for future licensing activities of metallic fuel based advanced fast reactors. This report describes the EBR-II Fuels Irradiation & Physics Database (FIPD) development, content updates, data qualification status, and user support. Future plans are also provided.
The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) creates a unique high neutron flux materials testing environment that subsequently causes neutron embrittlement damage to its beryllium reflector eventually requiring a replacement during a reactor Outage. Concurrently, a piece-for-piece core replacement is conducted to maintain reactor functionality called a core internals changeout (CIC). Once changeout is complete, ATR Reactor Engineering utilizes previous CIC data to model and predict criticality scenarios for the new unirradiated core. However, CIC data has been inconsistently reported over the years making it difficult to find data trends that could be useful for the modeling and prediction process. So nuclear requalification testing is conducted using different flux and irradiation tests to accurately verify the models and to recalibrate nuclear monitoring instrumentation in the ATR core allowing for safe re-start of normal operations.
The 252 Cf spontaneous fission (sf), prompt fission neutron spectrum (PFNS) is a fundamental quantity for nuclear physics measurements of neutron-emitting reactions. This energy distribution of neutrons emitted from fission has been considered a neutron data standard for decades and has been utilized as a reference for neutron detection efficiency, validation of Monte Carlo simulations, benchmarking of dosimetry standards, and more. A significant portion of the global collection of nuclear data on neutron-induced reactions is correlated with the 252 Cf (sf) PFNS. Despite the reliance on this quantity by the nuclear physics community, the historical collection of 252 Cf PFNS measurements display systematic disagreements that are not understood or easily explained. These experimental discrepancies could potentially bias the 252 Cf PFNS Standard evaluation. On top of this, these past experiments frequently employed correlated experimental measurement or analysis methods. The artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML)-informed californium chi-nuclear data experiment (AIACHNE) project was formed to (a) investigate these discrepancies utilizing AI/ML methods to identify outlying regions of literature data, assign these regions to features of the experiment itself, and perform an improved evaluation of the 252 Cf PFNS and (b) perform a new experimental measurement of this quantity designed to improve upon the existing literature database. Here, in this work, we report on the AIACHNE 252 Cf PFNS experiment utilizing a new analysis method uncorrelated with all previous measurements: neutron efficiency determinations based on elastic neutron scattering on 12 C and 9 Be . This new method provides an independent test of the existing literature data and evaluation of the 252 Cf (sf) PFNS. The method is described with detailed covariance quantification procedures, as well as a direct discussion of the sources of uncertainty described as requirements in the “Templates” series of papers. The 252 Cf (sf) PFNS reported in this work agrees well with the overall shape of the existing standard PFNS evaluation as well as many literature measurements, thus verifying the current evaluation utilizing new techniques. However, the results suggest that there are deficiencies in the angle-differential 12 C and 9 Be (𝑛, 𝑛) evaluated nuclear data, which produce unphysical structures in the reported result. While these structures are relatively minor, they become obvious because of the high statistical precision of the data and the expected smooth continuity of the 252 Cf (sf) PFNS.
A split sample/dual method research protocol is demonstrated to increase transparency while reducing the probability of false discovery. We apply the protocol to examine whether diversity in ownership teams increases or decreases the likelihood of a firm reporting a novel innovation using data from the 2018 United States Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey. Transparency is increased in three ways: 1) all specification testing and identifying potentially productive models is done in an exploratory subsample that 2) preserves the validity of hypothesis test statistics fromde novoestimation in the holdout confirmatory sample with 3) all findings publicly documented in an earlier registered report and in this journal publication. Bayesian estimation procedures that leverage information from the exploratory stage included in the confirmatory stage estimation replace traditional frequentist null hypothesis significance testing. In addition to increasing statistical power by using information from the full sample, Bayesian methods directly estimate a probability distribution for the magnitude of an effect, allowing much richer inference. Estimated magnitudes of diversity along academic discipline, race, ethnicity, and foreign-born status dimensions are positively associated with innovation. A maximally diverse ownership team on these dimensions would be roughly six times more likely to report new-to-market innovation than a homophilic team.
This summary report analyzes the independently tested performance of 13 germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) products purchased between February and July 2022. A companion full report (DOE 2023) provides additional information and discussion of the tested products, test methods, and results. The products were of three different types: • Seven portable, consumer-oriented GUV towers designed to be placed on the floor or a desk of an unoccupied room to disinfect air and surfaces. Five of these products used LED sources and two products had low-pressure mercury (LPM) sources. • One GUV whole-room luminaire designed to be installed on a ceiling to disinfect air when a room is occupied. This product had LED sources. • Five GUV troffer or high-bay style whole-room luminaires designed to be installed in or suspended from a ceiling to disinfect air and surfaces when a room is unoccupied. All five had LPM sources. Product testing covered radiometric and electrical performance for all 13 products as well as photobiological safety evaluation if product documentation included testable claims. Measurement results enable comparison between products and against manufacturer or vendor claims. Testing identified numerous issues related to the accuracy of claimed GUV product performance. Claims were often untestable, contradictory, ambiguous, or used incorrect units and/or terminology. When claims were testable, they often did not match test results. For example, three LED products that claimed to emit UV-C emitted only UV-A. Product claim issues were more common among consumer-oriented tower products, but all product types exhibited problems with accurate performance claims. The UV-C radiant efficiency (calculated as UV-C output power divided by electrical input power) of the products varied widely, even among similar products using the same source technologies. For example, the UV-C radiant efficiency of LPM products varied by greater than a factor of three for the same product type, indicating a large potential energy savings opportunity for products that are better designed for efficiency. LED products had orders-of-magnitude lower UV-C radiant efficiency than LPM products. This study also identified several testing challenges and limitations. Most significant among these is the capability to accurately test and report the performance of larger GUV products. Whereas integrating spheres are used to quickly measure total radiant flux (i.e., output power) and spectral distribution, goniometers are used to measure radiant intensity distribution (from which radiant flux can be calculated). Integrating spheres require a specialized and costly coating to test UV, and the testing laboratory for this round of products had only a 20-inch diameter hemisphere with this capability. The integrating sphere accommodated just 2 of the 10 UV-C emitting products. Goniometer testing had a different size limitation in that mirrors typically used to increase goniometer test distance to the far field reflect little to no UV. As a result, the study evaluated only 6 of 13 products in the far field. Electronic files of UV-C intensity data for the other 7 products, which would typically be imported into design software for designing GUV applications, may not be reliable for predicting irradiance at arbitrary far-field distances (IES 2022a; CIE 2020). Specifiers and buyers of GUV products need accurate performance claims and data to deploy GUV technology safely and effectively. This CALiPER GUV Round 1 report demonstrates the significant education and training manufacturers and vendors still require to accurately test and report the performance of their GUV products. Further industry standards and guidelines may address testing limitations and improve test methods, product performance, and the accuracy of performance claims.