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At least 325 records · Page 18

pyTCR: A tropical cyclone rainfall model for python

pyTCR is a climatology software package developed in the Python programming language. It integrates the capabilities of several legacy physical models and increases computational efficiency to allow rapid estimation of tropical cyclone (TC) rainfall consistent with the large-scale environment. Specifically, pyTCR implements a horizontally distributed and vertically integrated model [Zhu et al., 2013] for simulating rainfall driven by TCs. Along storm tracks, rainfall is estimated by computing the cross-boundary-layer, upward water vapor transport caused by different mechanisms including frictional convergence, vortex stretching, large-scale baroclinic effect (i.e., wind shear), topographic forcing, and radiative cooling [Lu et al., 2018]. The package provides essential functionalities for modeling and interpreting spatio-temporal TC rainfall data. pyTCR requires a limited number of model input parameters, making it a convenient and useful tool for analyzing rainfall mechanisms driven by TCs. To sample rare (most intense) rainfall events that are often of great societal interest, pyTCR adapts and leverages outputs from a statistical-dynamical TC downscaling model [Lin et al., 2023] capable of rapidly generating a large number of synthetic TCs given a certain climate. As a result, pyTCR significantly reduces computational effort and improves the efficiency in capturing extreme TC rainfall events at the tail of the distributions from limited datasets. Furthermore, the TC downscaling model is forced entirely by large-scale environmental conditions from reanalysis data or coupled General Circulation Models (GCMs), simplifying the projection of TC-induced rainfall and wind speed under future climate using pyTCR. Finally, pyTCR can be coupled with hydrological and wind models to assess risks associated with independent and compound events (e.g., storm surges and freshwater flooding).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Coreflood Tests to Evaluate Enhanced Oil Recovery Potential of Wettability-Altering Surfactants for Oil-Wet Heterogeneous Carbonate Reservoirs

Summary Oil-wetness and heterogeneity are two main factors that result in low oil recovery (OR) by waterflood in carbonate reservoirs. The injected water is likely to flow through high-permeability regions and bypass the oil in the low-permeability matrix. In this study, systematic coreflood tests were carried out in both “homogeneous” cores and “heterogeneous” cores with a wettability-altering surfactant. The homogeneous coreflood tests were conducted to evaluate surfactant retention, as well as to compare tertiary surfactant flooding with secondary surfactant flooding. The heterogeneous coreflood test was proposed to model bypassing in low-permeability matrix during waterfloods, and dynamic imbibition of surfactant into the low-permeability matrix. Surfactant retention results suggest that retention increases as initial oil saturation decreases. The retention of selected surfactant in the target reservoir cores was measured to be within a range of 0.07–0.12 mg/g-rock, which is economically acceptable. The results of homogeneous coreflood tests showed that both secondary waterflood and secondary surfactant flood can achieve high OR (>50%) from relatively homogeneous oil-wet cores. A shut-in phase after the surfactant injection resulted in a surge in oil production, which suggests that enough time should be given for wettability alteration by surfactants. The results of heterogeneous coreflood tests showed that more oil is bypassed in the tighter matrix by waterflood if the permeability is higher in the flooded layer and this bypassed oil is the target for the wettability-altering surfactant floods. Slow wettability-altering surfactant injection leads to imbibition into bypassed regions. When the oil-wet carbonate reservoirs have large unswept regions after waterflood, wettability-altering surfactants can significantly improve OR if enough time is given for imbibition.

Engineering↗

Oil Recovery Prediction for Polymer Flood Field Test of Heavy Oil on Alaska North Slope Via Machine Assisted Reservoir Simulation

The first ever polymer flood field pilot to enhance the recovery of heavy oils on the Alaska North Slope is ongoing. This study constructs and calibrates a reservoir simulation model to predict the oil recovery performance of the pilot through machine-assisted reservoir simulation techniques. To replicate the early water breakthrough observed during waterflooding, transmissibility contrasts are introduced into the simulation model, forcing viscous fingering effects. In the ensuing polymer flood, these transmissibility contrasts are reduced to replicate the restoration of injection conformance during polymer flooding, as indicated by a significant decrease in water cut. Later, transmissibility contrasts are reinstated to replicate a water surge event observed in one of the producing wells during polymer flooding. This event may represent decreased injection conformance from fracture overextension; its anticipated occurrence in the other production well is included in the final forecast. The definition of polymer retention in the simulator incorporates the tailing effect reported in laboratory studies; this tailing effect is useful to the simultaneous history match of producing water cut and produced polymer concentration. The top 24 best-matched simulation models produced at each stage of the history matching process are used to forecast oil recovery. The final forecast clearly demonstrates that polymer flooding significantly increases the heavy oil production for this field pilot compared to waterflooding alone. This exercise displays that a simulation model is only valid for prediction if flow behavior in the reservoir remains consistent with that observed during the history matched period. Critically, this means that a simulation model calibrated for waterflooding may not fully capture the benefits of an enhanced oil recovery process such as polymer flooding. Therefore, caution is recommended in using basic waterflood simulation models to scope potential enhanced oil recovery projects.

Keith, Cody Douglas↗

Multi-Mechanism Flood Hazard Assessment: Critical Review of Current Practice and Approaches

This report documents the initial findings from the Nuclear Regulatory commission (NRC)-sponsored research project Methods for Estimating Joint Probabilities of Coincident and Correlated Flooding Mechanisms for Nuclear Power Plant Flood Hazard Assessments.¹ This research project is a part of NRC’s Probabilistic Flood Hazard Assessment (PFHA) Research Program and will aid the development of guidance on the use of PFHA methods to evaluate infrastructure safety for existing and proposed US nuclear power plants (NPPs). More specifically, this project intends to provide technical background for the development of flood hazard curves for multi-mechanism floods (MMFs). MMFs are flood events caused by more than one flooding mechanism (e.g., flood events due to the simultaneous occurrence of precipitation-induced river flooding and storm surge).

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Physical Sciences Vistas Issue 2, 2020

Dedication and collaboration accelerate mission-essential LANSCE isotope production; Rigorous operations result in newly outfitted gloveboxes; Continuous improvements deliver high-value subcrit data; 'Magnet surge’ expands capabilities for higher tesla science.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

Transient voltage-reversal in transformers with multiple secondary coils

By using a transformer with multiple secondary coils, a single unipolar power source can drive multiple loads that have different steady-state operating-voltage requirements. We show that, during initial turn-on, a transient voltage that is opposite in sign to the operating voltage can be induced in one or more of the secondary coils. This is because the surging currents in the coils during turn-on produce a strong inductive interaction between all the coils. In a particular secondary coil, the voltage induced by a neighboring secondary can be larger, and opposite in sign to, the voltage directly induced by the primary coil. The effect is transient because, when the secondary circuits reach their steady-state operating currents, they no longer couple inductively to each other. We also show that, during the turn-on period, the voltage induced in a secondary coil can be significantly larger than its steady-state voltage. These transient effects are controlled by the values of the "coil-coupling" parameters, which are functions of the transformer geometry and of the magnetic permeability and electrical resistivity of the materials used. The results are derived from the circuit equations, and verified using PSpice simulations.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Multi-Mechanism Flood Hazard Assessment: Critical Review of Current Practice and Approaches

This report documents the initial findings from the Nuclear Regulatory commission (NRC)-sponsored research project Methods for Estimating Joint Probabilities of Coincident and Correlated Flooding Mechanisms for Nuclear Power Plant Flood Hazard Assessments.1 This research project is a part of NRC’s Probabilistic Flood Hazard Assessment (PFHA) Research Program and will aid the development of guidance on the use of PFHA methods to evaluate infrastructure safety for existing and proposed US nuclear power plants (NPPs). More specifically, this project intends to provide technical background for the development of flood hazard curves for multi-mechanism floods (MMFs). MMFs are flood events caused by more than one flooding mechanism (e.g., flood events due to the simultaneous occurrence of precipitation-induced river flooding and storm surge). Project activities include three main tasks: Task 1—Survey of current concepts and methods in assessing MMF hazards; Task 2—Critical assessment of selected methods and approaches for quantifying probabilistic MMF hazard risk; Task 3—Development of example case studies to illustrate best practices for quantifying probabilistic MMF hazard risk The initial findings from Tasks 1 and 2 are documented in this report. Task 1 comprised a survey of approaches and methods that have been applied to understand and assess flood hazards due to MMFs. Task 2 involved a critical review of the selected approaches and methods. To that end, the scope of this report includes documentation of (1) a reconnaissance-level survey of the current state of concepts and practice for MMF hazard assessment; (2) a generalized MMF assessment framework to address the distinctions among various types of flood-forcing phenomena, flood mechanisms (grouped into three mechanism types), and flood severity metrics; (3) a wide-ranging survey of approaches and methods that have been applied to various flooding phenomena and settings; and (4) a critical assessment of MMF hazard assessment methods. Studies were identified involving MMFs related to coastal flooding mechanisms, fluvial (rivers/streams) flooding mechanisms, and associated combinations of coastal and fluvial flooding mechanisms. Studies were also identified that address MMFs involving coastal and fluvial flooding mechanisms as well as coastal flooding mechanisms along with extreme precipitation (without specific attribution to fluvial or pluvial mechanisms). The studies identified for review in this report included assessments at varying spatial scales (from local to global) with differing geographic regions of focus using both observed and synthetic data. The majority of studies identified and reviewed were site-specific assessments focusing on relatively short return periods. Studies considered a range of flood severity metrics, made differing assumptions regarding the occurrence of extrema, and used multiple statistical techniques; the use of copulas for the development of joint distributions was a particularly popular analysis technique. The literature review highlighted the differences among existing studies relative to terminology used, means of presenting results, framework and techniques employed, and level of sophistication regarding the number and types of variables considered. Despite the significant diversity in existing studies, the review identified several promising techniques that will be considered in future work under this project, including the development of joint distributions for MMFs using copula and Bayesian-motivated approaches.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Arctic Coastal Erosion: Modeling and Experimentation

Increasing Arctic coastal erosion rates have put critical infrastructure and native communities at risk while also mobilizing ancient organic carbon into modern carbon cycles. Although the Arctic comprises one-third of the global coastline and has some of the fastest eroding coasts, current tools for quantifying permafrost erosion are unable to explain the episodic, storm-driven erosion events. Our approach, mechanistically coupling oceanographic predictions with a terrestrial model to capture the thermo-mechanical dynamics of erosion, enables this much needed treatment of transient erosion events. The Arctic Coastal Erosion Model consists of oceanographic and atmospheric boundary conditions that force a coastal terrestrial permafrost environment in Albany (a multi-physics based finite element model). An oceanographic modeling suite (consisting of WAVEWATCH III, Delft3D-FLOW, and Delft3D-WAVE) produced time-dependent surge and run-up boundary conditions for the terrestrial model. In the terrestrial model, a coupling framework unites the mechanical and thermal aspects of erosion. 3D stress/strain fields develop in response to a plasticity model of the permafrost that is controlled by the frozen water content determined by modeling 3D heat conduction and solid-liquid phase change. This modeling approach enables failure from any allowable deformation (block failure, slumping, etc.). Extensive experimental work has underpinned the ACE Model development including field campaigns to measure in situ ocean and erosion processes, strength properties derived from thermally driven geomechanical experiments, as well as extensive physical composition and geochemical analyses. Combined, this work offers the most comprehensive and physically grounded treatment of Arctic coastal erosion available in the literature. The ACE model and experimental results can be used to inform scientific understanding of coastal erosion processes, contribute to estimates of geochemical and sediment land-to-ocean fluxes, and facilitate infrastructure susceptibility assessments.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Improving tide-estuary representation in MPAS-Ocean (Final Report)

The overarching goal of this research is to produce a skill-assessed tide-estuary representation, including BGC (biogeochemistry) components of the ecosystem, into the MPAS-O global climate modeling system. Specifically, in the original proposal we proposed one-way nesting, into global MPAS-O, of a high-resolution model for TES (tidal and estuary systems) including the coupling of the BGC components. We have completed the proposed tasks during the past 4 years. Specifically, after extensive consultation with the MPAS-O group during the first year, we have decided to go beyond the original proposal and to two-way nest SCHISM into MPAS-O. As a result, SCHISM-CoSiNE (with CoSiNE being the BGC model) is now fully integrated into MPAS-O as a subroutine (more precisely, an analysis member) and can be invoked as MPAS-O is running with two-way exchange of information between the TES and global models (with proper spatial interpolation done on the fly). As originally proposed, we have also developed the new finite-volume (FV) model MPAS-OI (aka ELCIRC-sub) for TES. We have conducted several tests using the coupled MPAS-SCHISM- CoSiNE model and also MPAS-OI for Columbia River, San Francisco Bay and Chesapeake Bay. Four journal publications have been produced so far as the result of the project and 1 is under review (cf. Publication section). With these achievements, we will be ready to conduct fully coupled simulations of TES and global ocean anywhere, as soon as some missing capabilities in MPAS-O (e.g. tides, improved ability to handle the boundary conditions, and streamlining of the global BGC model) are worked out. The significance of the outcome of this project cannot be overstated. It marks the first time, as far as we know, that a global climate model is tightly coupled to a bona fide nearshore and terrestrial model (SCHISM system); in fact SCHISM is the first bona fide compound flooding model that seamlessly covers the coastal ocean, estuaries, rivers and watersheds (Ye et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2020). The coupled model will reduce the errors and uncertainties of the MPAS-O global climate model system. It also complements and extends on-going E3SM project, as the latter seeks in the long-term to include components required to simulate impacts of sea-level change and storm surge on coastal regions, including wave models and focusing resolution in coastal and storm-track regions, as an important component of the Cryosphere-ocean system. Note that a spectral wave model (the unstructured-grid version of Wave Watch III, aka Wind Wave Model) is already incorporated inside the SCHISM system and is therefore directly accessible in the coupled system.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Critical steps in preventing future pandemics. Early lessons from the Covid-19 crisis for addressing natural and deliberate biological threats.

This report summarizes a virtual workshop on early lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic as they pertain to proactively addressing future biological threats. Co-hosted by Sandia National Laboratory (Sandia) and the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) in August 2020, the discussion involved experts who at that time were leading innovative efforts in various U.S. government agencies, industry, and academia sharing observations from their ongoing pandemic response efforts. Based on the input by these expert participants, it is clear that even though the pandemic response is ongoing, the following recommendations will be important to consider for more successfully addressing biological threats in the future: Continue building on the cross-sector collaboration and agility shown in the COVID-19 response; Expand capabilities for detecting biological threats early; Prioritize ways to create and disseminate medical countermeasures even faster; Create the U.S. bio industrial base needed for rapid response to biological threats, and keep it healthy; and, Major government reorganization may not be needed if there is effective work to form coalitions, improve coordination, and expand steady-state and surge capacities.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Automation is all you need: Faster Earth system models with AI/ML

Focal Area: Data acquisition and assimilation enabled by machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced methods. Science Challenge: Tropical cyclones can in- duce extreme water cycle events through dramatic precipitation and storm surge. More reliable models of intensity will translate into better prediction of the impact of extreme events in large scale Earth systems simulations. We demonstrate and describe AI/ML methodologies for rapid assimilation of new, in situ data products.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Improved Understanding of Coupled Water and Carbon Cycle Processes through Machine Learning Approaches

Focal Area(s): This white paper addresses how explainable machine learning (ML) algorithms can improve insights gained from complex data (Focal Area 3). We will also address how ML approaches related to sensor compression and low energy AI hardware can be used for efficient data acquisition (Focal Area 1). Science Challenge: We will focus on the coupled water cycle and carbon cycle processes in terrestrial ecosystems and terrestrial-aquatic interfaces. Thus, our approaches will be centered around several data-model integration challenges indicated in EESD strategic plans for two science focus areas: Terrestrial Ecosystem Science and Hydrobiogeochemistry. We can use AI to correct systematic model errors due to biases in either data or model structure/processes. Error patterns in model predictions usually vary by region, model, season etc. But there are systematic patterns in them. e.g., soil moisture tends to be overestimated in the arid western continental United States underestimated in wetter eastern USA; some land surface models tend to underestimate moisture in wet seasons and overestimate in dry seasons. Moreover, the consequences of extreme events (e.g., drought, extreme flooding, storm surges associated with tropical storms, hurricanes) on carbon cycle processes are not well represented in ecosystem and Earth system models. Redox-sensitive processes (e.g., rapid oxidation/reduction of iron and other redox-sensitive elements in soil microsites subjected to fluctuated hydrology) in terrestrial-aquatic interfaces further challenge model predictions of hot-spots (and hot-moments) due to poor understanding of underlying mechanisms. Thus, AI/ML approaches can be used to learn patterns in the data and model errors and use them to build model equations and correct process-based model errors.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Alternative 3V0 Development for Ground Fault Overvoltage Protection with DERs/Renewables Interconnection (Final Report)

The ground fault overvoltage (GFOV) and the required traditional 3V0 installation has become a concerned issue for renewable/DER integration. Based on the alternative 3V0 methodology proposed by the PI and the feasibility study awarded by DOE SBIR/STIR project (Award No. DE-SC0018888), APS and RPI investigated development of a low-cost alternative 3V0 product based on the surge arrester current monitoring. The alternative 3V0 feasibility study completed by APS and RPI has verified that the alternative 3V0 is an effective solution (possibly the only one) under various circuit conditions and is competitive to traditional 3V0 methods.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

America Resilient Climate Conference

On April 14, 2021, scientists, policymakers, and other interested parties from research institutes, academia, and other organizations gathered together virtually at the America Resilient Climate Conference to discuss one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century: building resilience to climate change. Climate change affects the security and health of all Americans. Coastal areas are enduring more frequent and severe flooding due to sea level rise and storm surge; western states and Alaska have experienced increasingly devastating wildfires, driven in part by hotter, drier, and longer fire seasons; and communities across the nation have suffered through extreme precipitation events and heat waves. Even if emissions are reduced aggressively in the near future, the world—and the United States—will continue to feel the impacts of climate change for decades to come, due to the continued accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Consequently, it is essential to act now to protect natural and human assets from the gradual—as well as extreme—impacts of a changing climate. To build resilient communities, leaders and community members need science-based information about the potential impacts climate change will have decades into the future and for specific regions. Therefore, it is essential to develop high-resolution climate models that can project both various climate impacts and the interactions between earth system variables and humans down to regional and local scales. Collecting and curating data for such models and their computational requirements poses large challenges. In the future, artificial intelligence will be needed to increase their accuracy and reduce associated uncertainties. The investments in Earth system science and artificial intelligence made by the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal entities will be essential in addressing these challenges.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

LDMS-GPU: Lightweight Distributed Metric Service (LDMS) for NVIDIA GPGPUs

GPUs are now a fundamental accelerator for many high-performance computing applications. They are viewed by many as a technology facilitator for the surge in fields like machine learning and Convolutional Neural Networks. To deliver the best performance on a GPU, we need to create monitoring tools to ensure that we optimize the code to get the most performance and efficiency out of a GPU. Since NVIDIA GPUs are currently the most commonly implemented in HPC applications and systems, NVIDIA tools are the solution for performance monitoring. The Light-Weight Distributed Metric System (LDMS) at Sandia is an infrastructure widely adopted for large-scale systems and application monitoring. Sandia has developed CPU application monitoring capability within LDMS. Therefore, we chose to develop a GPU monitoring capability within the same framework. In this report, we discuss the current limitations in the NVIDIA monitoring tools, how we overcame such limitations, and present an overview of the tool we built to monitor GPU performance in LDMS and its capabilities. Also, we discuss our current validation results. Most of the performance counter results are the same in both vendor tools and our tool when using LDMS to collect these results. Furthermore, our tool provides these statistics during the entire runtime of the tool as a time series and not just aggregate statistics at the end of the application run. This allows the user to see the progress of the behavior of the applications during their lifetime.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Development of Digital Twin Predictive Model for PWR Components: Updates on Multi Times Series Temperature Prediction Using Recurrent Neural Network, DMW Fatigue Tests, System Level Thermal-Mechanical-Stress Analysis

The long-term operation (LTO) of nuclear power plant (NPP) beyond their original design life of 40 years, can lead to more material damage associated with cyclic fatigue under thermal-mechanical loading cycles and associated long-term exposure of reactor material to the deleterious reactor-coolant environments. However, under this LTO condition the reactor components can still safely operate but may require more frequent Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) of reactor components. Frequent NDE requirement may lead to frequent shutdown of the NPP. This in turn can lead to power outage and additional NDE-inspection-cost related economic loss. The economic loss can be minimized by reducing uncertainty in life estimation of safety-critical pressure boundary components and by implementing more digital approach such as by using upcoming digital-twin (DT) technology for predicting the structural states (e.g., time and location dependent inside/outside thickness temperature, stress, strain, plastic deformation, etc.) and associated fatigue life of a component in real time. Towards this goal Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) with the sponsorship of DOE Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program is working on the development of a DT framework that can be used for real time environmental fatigue prediction of reactor components. The DT framework is based on limited experiment-data, Artificial-intelligence (AI) – Machine-Learning (ML) - Deep-Learning (DL) based techniques and Multiphysics-computational-mechanics such as finite element (FE) based modeling tools. Towards this overall goal, following are some of the major contributions made during the FY21: 1) Multiple 82/182 dissimilar metal weld (DMW) specimens (both solid-weld and joint-weld representing the actual reactor multi-metal nozzles) were fatigue tested. The resulting fatigue lives were compared to the NUREG-6909 based best-fit and design fatigue curves. Additionally, the results of 52/152 DMW fatigue specimens (which were recently tested at Republic of Korea under the sponsorship of International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative - INERI program) were compared to the NUREG-6909 based best-fit and design fatigue curves. From the comparison of 82/182 and 52/152 DMW test data with NUREG-6909 best-fit curve, most of the reported test data fall way away from the NUREG-6909 suggested best-fit or mean curve. The NUREG-6909 suggested best-fit curve is the best-fit curve of austenitic stainless steel and due to lack of enough data on Nickel-based welds, this is currently being used for predicting the life of Nickel-alloy-based welded components. However, the above observation may require higher scaling factor (e.g., ASME suggested factor of 20 on cycles rather than the current NUREG-6909 suggested factor of 12 on cycles) for scaling the austenitic-stainless-steel best-fit-curve for estimating the design or safe-life of a welded component. Accordingly, for example, if a DMW component experience a strain amplitude of 0.6% the PWR-water life of the component would be 52 cycles instead of 85 cycles. However, more DMW tests are required to further ascertain the above-mentioned observations. 2) A system level CAD and finite element model were developed which consists of reactor pressure vessel (RPV), part of steam generator (SG), part of pressurizer (PRZ), hot leg (HL), and surge line (SL). This is with detailed nozzle geometry and thermal-mechanical material properties of different metals to simulate realistic thermal-mechanical stress under connected system global thermal-mechanical boundary conditions. 3) Different system level heat transfer analyses were performed with estimation of relevant heat transfer coefficients. The resulting data were used in subsequent system level thermal-mechanical stress analysis and for generating spatial-temporal training and validation data for a system level digital-twin based temperature predictor. Transient heat transfer analyses were performed considering thermal boundary condition under design-basis (DB) loading and EDF (Électricité de France) data-based grid-load-following (EDF-GLF) loading cycles. 4) System level thermal-mechanical stress analysis was performed for identifying damage-prone hotspots and for future extension of the model for cyclic state prediction. From the system-level model simulation under DB loading cycle it is found that HL and the SL nozzle that connect to the HL can experience significant stress and strain and could be one of the weakest links in the overall reactor coolant system (RCS). 5) An AI/ML based DT model was developed for multi-time-series temperature prediction at any inside/outside thickness locations of PWR pressure boundary components. This is by using Recurrent-neural-network (RNN) and keras machine learning libraries. The RNN model was validated against two laboratory test-based data sets with one obtained through ANL’s in-air fatigue test system and other through PWR-water test loop. The experimentally validated DT model further validated against FE model results to predict thermal scarification related spatialtemporal temperatures at random locations of a component. The well validated DT model was then used for demonstrating spatial-temporal temperature prediction under 100+ years of reactor operation subjected to combined DB, EDF-GLF and randomized grid-load-following (RANDOMGLF) loading Cycles. The expert-elicitation DT model framework was developed assuming field/input/process measurements can be available from a few existing plant sensors and can readily be used by the NPP operators. The above temperature prediction model will feed to the next-step stress analysis model based on which the life of a component can be predicted in realtime, which is one of our future works.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Separation and purification of Mo-99 produced from natural U 3 0 8 targets via photo-fission

The most-used medical isotope is 99m Tc (t½ = 6.0 h), which comprises over 80% of isotopes used in nuclear medicine today. It is normally derived from its transient equilibrium parent 99 Mo (t½ = 66 h). A recent surge of interest in using the more proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium (LEU) under the American Medical Isotope Production Act (AMIPA) has presented this technical challenge: can a domestic supplier meet the estimated weekly U.S. demand of 1500 6–day Ci of 99 Mo?

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗