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DOE OSTI2020

Materials and Fuels Complex Five-Year Investment Strategy (FY2020-FY2024)

The Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) mission is to provide the research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) foundation to extend the lives of the current operating reactor fleet, develop the next generation of nuclear reactors, and provide integrated nuclear fuel cycle solutions. The Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) serves as the foundation of a nuclear RD&D enabling test bed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and is an integral part of a National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) strategy. MFC facilities focus on developing and maintaining RD&D capabilities that can increase research throughput, reduce barriers to deployment, and facilitate commercialization of new ideas and technologies for clean and secure sources of energy. This document is a complimentary document to the Materials and Fuels Complex Five-Year Mission Strategy FY-20 – FY-24 (INL/EXT-20-57224) that defines specific implementation strategies for increasing research capability and throughput through targeted investments in research facilities, research instruments, and research staff. Refer to INL/EXT-20-57224 for details about MFC, its capabilities, and the overall mission strategy for the Materials and Fuels Complex.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Plasma Processing of SRF Cavities for the Next Generation of Particle Accelerators

What are the major goals of the project? Goal 1: Optimize interactively processing of the single-cell cavity by combining plasma treatment and vertical cold bath testing. Continue using single cell cavity as the test bed for new applications. Goal 2: Work on upgrading the plasma etching technology for multi-cell SRF cavities. Goal 3: Develop and adapt discharge configurations to critical cavity regions including the electron beam weld (EBW) and iris areas. Goal 4: Develop tailored methods to prepare surface properties for a specific function prior to any additional modification, such as (but not limited to) surface passivation in preparation of other superconducting materials and structures.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

DOE OSTI2020

BioGeoChemistry of Actinides (LLNL SFA OBER - SBR FY20 Program Management and Performance Report)

The focus of the BioGeoChemistry of Actinides SFA is to identify and quantify the biogeochemical processes and the underlying mechanisms that control actinide mobility in an effort to reliably predict and control the cycling and migration of actinides in the environment. The research approach includes: (1) Field Studies (Research Thrust 1) that capture actinide behavior on the timescale of decades and (2) Fundamental Laboratory Studies (Research Thrust 2) that isolate specific biogeochemical processes observed in the field. These research thrusts are underpinned by the unique capabilities and staff expertise at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), allowing the BioGeoChemistry of Actinides SFA to advance our understanding of actinide migration behavior in the environment, and serve as an international resource for environmental radiochemistry research (Figure 1). Research Thrusts 1 and 2 are guided by broad central hypotheses: Thrust 1 Hypothesis: Biogeochemical processes occurring on the timescale of years to decades lead to greater actinide recalcitrance in sediments and limit their migration in surface and groundwater. Thrust 2 Hypothesis: Long-term biogeochemical processes include mineral and surface alteration, which leads to stabilization of actinide surface associations or incorporation into mineral precipitates. Our strategic goal is to use the knowledge gained from our Science Plan to advance our understanding of the behavior of actinides, providing DOE with the scientific basis for remediation and long-term stewardship of DOE’s legacy sites and, more broadly, increasing our understanding of transport phenomena in environmental systems sciences with a particular emphasis on environmentally relevant (long-term) timescales. Although our focus is on actinide biogeochemistry, the increased focus on biogeochemistry at unique Test Bed locations associated with this SFA is providing fundamental information on redox processes and associated microbiological processes that control the cycling of redox sensitive metals under dynamic and transient biogeochemical conditions.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

DOE OSTI2020

Charge response and energy calibration of ProtoDUNE-

ProtoDUNE-SP is a test bed liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) for the far detector of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). This LArTPC was calibrated using cosmic-ray cathode-crossing muons, electric field maps, and purity-monitor data to correct for nonuniformities in the detector response and cosmic-ray stopping muons to perform the absolute energy scale calibration for further physics analysis.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Physical Security Model Development of an Electrochemical Facility

Nuclear facilities in the U.S. and around the world face increasing challenges in meeting evolving physical security requirements while keeping costs reasonable. The addition of security features after a facility has been designed and without attention to optimization (the approach of the past) can easily lead to cost overruns. Instead, security should be considered at the beginning of the design process in order to provide robust, yet efficient physical security designs. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate how modeling and simulation can be used to optimize the design of physical protection systems. A suite of tools, including Scribe3D and Blender, were used to model a generic electrochemical reprocessing facility. Physical protection elements such as sensors, portal monitors, barriers, and guard forces were added to the model based on best practices for physical security. Two theft scenarios (an outsider attack and insider diversion) as well as a sabotage scenario were examined in order to optimize the security design. Security metrics are presented. This work fits into a larger Virtual Facility Distributed Test Bed 2020 Milestone in the Material Protection, Accounting, and Control Technologies (MPACT) program through the Department of Energy (DOE). The purpose of the milestone is to demonstrate how a series of experimental and modeling capabilities across the DOE complex provide the capabilities to demonstrate complete Safeguards and Security by Design (SSBD) for nuclear facilities.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Ventilator Testbed

A number of open-source ventilator designs have been published online since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. These ventilator designs have been created and released to help address the limitations in manufacturing and distribution timelines, and to help drive availability of more cost efficient ventilators. Many of these ventilators have been designed to be relatively simple to build and to use components that can be easily-sourced and acquired in large numbers from local suppliers. A test bed for evaluating the performance of these open-source ventilators was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory as part of the Technology Evaluation and Demonstration program.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2020

Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Applications on a Pathfinder System

Work performed under this one-year LDRD was concerned with estimating resource requirements for small quantum test beds that are expected to be available in the near future. This work represents a preliminary demonstration of our ability to leverage quantum hardware for solving small quantum simulation problems in areas of interest to the DOE. The algorithms enabling such studies are hybrid quantum-classical variational algorithms, in particular the widely-used variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). Employing this hybrid algorithm, in which the quantum computer complements the classical one, we implemented an end-to-end application-level toolchain that allows the user to specify a molecule of interest and compute the ground state energy using the VQE approach. We found significant limitations attributable to the classical portion of the hybrid system, including a greater than greater-than-quartic power scaling of the classical memory requirements with the system size. Current VQE approaches would require an exascale machine for solving any molecule with size greater than 150 nuclei. Our findings include several improvements that we implemented into the VQE toolchain, including a new classical optimizer that is decades old but hadn't been considered before in the VQE ecosystem. Our findings suggest limitations to variational hybrid approaches to simulation that further motivate the need for a gate-based fault-tolerant quantum processor that can implement larger problems using the fully digital quantum phase estimation algorithm.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2021

RingIR AG-4000 Testing

The AG-4000 detector can identify gas phase species using molecular fingerprinting and has potential application for SARS-CoV-2 detection in near real time. As part of the development process Sandia will utilize the biological aerosol test bed deployed at the Aerosol Complex to evaluate the penetration of MS2 bacteriophage aerosol through the Ring IR system. The objective of this project is to provide experimentally derived measurements of the RingIR AG-4000 penetration efficiency, including external exhaust filter for mitigation of exhaust aerosol and operation using MS2 bacteriophage as a biological surrogate to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Technical Assistance for RingIR Aerosol Penetration Study with RingIR

Sandia provided technical assistance to RingIR to test and evaluate of the RingIR molecular detector. The detector can identify gas phase species using molecular fingerprinting and has potential application for SARS-CoV-2 detection in near real time. As part of the development process Sandia will utilize the biological aerosol test bed deployed at the Aerosol Complex to evaluate the penetration of MS2 bacteriophage aerosol through the RingIR system. The objective of this project is to provide experimentally derived measurements of the RingIR molecular detector penetration efficiency, including external exhaust filter for mitigation of exhaust aerosol and operation using MS2 bacteriophage as a biological surrogate to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Infrastructure and Testing Needs for Molten Salt Reactor Safeguards

Molten salt reactors (MSRs) are an attractive advanced reactor technology because of their increased fuel utilization and efficiency, the ease of fueling, and the potential to use alternative fuel cycles, including thorium and breeder/burner scenarios. Since an MSR has never been domestically operated for commercial electricity production, minimal infrastructure exists to support performance and materials testing, reactor licensing (including research, test, and operating reactors), and technology development in general. These factors could present challenges for the commercialization of the proposed design technology. Several research and development efforts and investments have begun to identify and supplement the infrastructure to accommodate the molten salt concept, including the United States Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy Molten Salt Reactor Program. This report reviews safeguards technology and domestic infrastructure to support the evaluation of nuclear safeguards (primarily material control and accounting) measures and approaches for salt-fueled MSRs. Recommendations for potential priority infrastructure investments, including safeguards measurement test beds and future research, are presented.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Materials and Fuels Complex Five-Year Mission Strategy (FY21- FY25)

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL), through its designated mission of advancing innovative nuclear energy solutions, is actively engaged in the research, development, demonstration and deployment of advanced nuclear technology, as well as in fostering private-public partnership for technology development. Key to the success of INL’s mission is the Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC), the only complex in the U.S. that hosts a world-class assemblage of facilities, capabilities and instruments for handling, testing, and characterizing radioactive materials. Driven by its mission/vision of “Engineering and Experiments that Drive the World’s Nuclear Energy Future,” MFC is at the center of INL’s – and indeed the Department of Energy’s – advanced nuclear technology development initiatives, providing essential capabilities such as engineering-scale high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel production, reactor demonstration facilities, post-irradiation examination, and transient irradiation testing. Furthermore, MFC provides an ideal environment for test beds that are utilized for research, development and demonstration (RD&D) activities on used fuel treatment, nuclear non-proliferation, forensics, and nuclear power sources used for space exploration missions conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Materials and Fuels Complex: Five-Year Investment Strategy (FY2021-2025)

The Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) vision is to “Advance nuclear energy science and technology to meet U.S. energy, environmental, and economic needs.” The Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) serves as the foundation of a nuclear RD&D enabling test bed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and is an integral part of a National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) strategy. MFC facilities focus on developing and maintaining RD&D capabilities that can increase research throughput, reduce barriers to deployment, and facilitate commercialization of new ideas and technologies for clean and secure sources of energy.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Materials and Fuels Complex (FY2021-2025 Five-Year Mission Strategy)

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Overview of Advanced Reactor Simulation Capabilities to Support Demonstrations

The Virtual Test Bed (VTB) was established to support the deployment of advanced reactors by facilitating the use of state-of-the-art modeling and simulation capabilities. These tools are able to solve previously prohibitive challenge problems in greater levels of fidelity and in a multi-physics framework. A VTB repository was recently set up to host models for a wide variety of reactor types and using a range of NEAMS-developed software. Table I summarizes the different capabilities already available in the repository and up-and-coming near/long term ones. The repository currently hosts models for a wide variety of reactor types, including High-Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors (HTGR), Sodium Fast Reactors (SFR), Fluoride salt cooled High-temperature Reactors (FHR), Molten Salt Reactors (MSR), and Heat-Pipe Microreactors (HP-MR). It should be noted that work is ongoing for all of the models and each example problem is at a different state of maturity.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2021

A novel MC TRT method: vectorizable variance reduction for the energy spectra

Data produced up to now gives us confidence that we will continue to see variance reduction behavior at amenable runtimes as we move this test bed forward. This method has characteristics of event and history based Monte Carlo transport, without the bulky modifications required by event based Monte Carlo while avoiding some overhead.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

DOE Microreactor Program: Summary of Experimental Capabilities Development and Activities

This document provides a summary of the experimental capabilities and activities developed and currently performed under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Microreactor Program. These capabilities, along with other laboratory capabilities, are available to support developer and other stakeholder needs. Specific experimental capabilities described in this document include the single primary heat extraction and removal emulator (SPHERE), the microreactor agile non-nuclear experimental test bed (MAGNET), microreactor applications research validation and evaluation (MARVEL), yttrium hydride fabrication, the Hypatia critical experiment series, and a brief overview of the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC), which provides the platform to conduct experiments and training with critical assemblies and fissionable material.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Portable Industrial Control Systems Simulator (Final Report)

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are more integrated than they have ever been before, but also the division between IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational Technology) is becoming a grey area. As the integration of IT and OT occurs more often, cyber attack will also increase. Cyber attacks on Critical Infrastructure can be highly detrimental to society, notably via compromised Industrial Control Systems (ICS). Virtual and physical simulation has been used in medical fields, mathematics, architecture, aeronautics, space, and many more. Virtualization & Simulation in a lab environment is ideal because there is a need for the ability to test theories and designs is a safe and cost-effective way without risking equipment damage or, more importantly, human life. Furthermore, OT and ICS are some of the most difficult systems to use for research and development. They are either committed to operations or widely expensive to set up in a life-like environment. Virtualization and simulation will allow these otherwise accessible systems to be a test bed for the training, development, and research of SRNL customers or engineers and scientists at SRNL. This will allow the testbed to fit into a small form factor and interact with a simulator with minimum hardware components for easy transports and replication effort within the environment.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2022

Materials and Fuels Complex (FY22 – FY26 Five-Year Investment Strategy)

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗