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LLM Benchmarking with LLaMA2: Evaluating Code Development Performance Across Multiple Programming Languages

The rapid evolution of large language models (LLMs) has opened new possibilities for automating various tasks in software development. This paper evaluates the capabilities of the LLaMA 2-70B model in automating these tasks for scientific applications written in commonly used programming languages. Using representative test problems, we assess the model's capacity to generate code, documentation, and unit tests, as well as its ability to translate existing code between commonly used programming languages. Our comprehensive analysis evaluates the compilation, runtime behavior, and correctness of the generated and translated code. Additionally, we assess the quality of automatically generated code, documentation, and unit tests. Here, our results indicate that while LLaMA 2-70B frequently generates syntactically correct and functional code for simpler numerical tasks, it encounters substantial difficulties with more complex, parallelized, or distributed computations, requiring considerable manual corrections. We identify key limitations and suggest areas for future improvements to better leverage AI-driven automation in scientific computing workflows.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

U.S. Department of Energy Hydrogen Program: 2023 Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Report; June 6-9, 2023

This document summarizes peer review comments and scores for the fiscal year 2023 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting (AMR), held June 6-9, 2023. This review process provides project- and program-level evaluations of DOE-funded research, development, demonstration, and analysis of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

AMR

LANL Meteorology Program Self-Assessment 2025 Update

The LANL Meteorological (Met) Program has been subject to several external reviews over the past 19 years. The DOE Meteorological Coordinating Council (DMCC) conducted an initial Met Program Site Assist Visit (SAV) in August 2006 (DMCC 2006). A follow-up SAV in August 2015 assessed progress (DMCC 2015), and in June 2023, the DOE Meteorological Subcommittee (DMSC), successor to the DMCC, conducted a second follow-up SAV (DMSC 2023), in which the Met Program was evaluated relative to the following 8 high-level questions: • What is the state of the meteorological services provided to its customers? • What is the quality of meteorological data provided to its customers and is it adequate and available to meet all customer needs? • What is the quality of atmospheric transport and diffusion modeling provided to its customers and is it applicable to complex wind flow patterns at LANL? • Are the current and future meteorological service customers being serviced appropriately? • Are there adequate human resources to meet present and future program customer needs and are they being appropriately leveraged? • Are existing instrumentation, facilities, and systems adequate to meet present and future customer needs? • Are LANL meteorological services conducted in an efficient, cost-effective manner? • Is meteorological data used to ensure safety & health of LANL personnel? More specific evaluations were performed relative to 23 performance objectives extracted from the ANSI/ANS-3.11- 2024 national standard and 14 separate performance objectives associated with consequence assessment and atmospheric transport and diffusion modeling in the consequence assessment element of DOE G 151.1-1B. In 2023, the DMSC SAV Team also reviewed the status of each of the 18 remaining recommendations from its 2015 SAV. Based on this review, DMSC stated in its Exit Briefing that the LANL meteorological program has gotten much stronger and more robust since 2015 and now represents one of the better managed programs within the DOE complex.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Scalability and Effectiveness of Smart Charge Management

The rise in electric vehicle (EV) adoption presents growing challenges for power grids, particularly from simultaneous residential charging, which can cause voltage fluctuations and increase feeder peak loads. Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, initiated a pilot program to evaluate managed residential EV charging through Smart Charge Management (SCM). This study analyzes real-world charging behavior data from the pilot and feeder-level base loads from BGE to simulate residential charging scenarios through 2035 across the Washington, DC–Baltimore region. Grid impacts under unmanaged charging are compared to three SCM strategies: TOU-immediate, TOU-distributed, and Load Balancing. Results show that the magnitude of peak reduction is highly feeder-dependent. Some feeders achieve reductions of more than 40% at high enrollment levels, while others show improvements closer to 10–15%. This heterogeneity reflects differences in baseline feeder load shapes, EV penetration, and plug-in behavior across customers. Results also highlight trade-offs between shifting load away from peak periods and minimizing secondary demand peaks, offering practical insights for future utility program design.

Electric vehicle

Radiative Corrections to Superallowed β Decays in Effective Field Theory

The accuracy of V u d determinations from superallowed β decays critically hinges on control over radiative corrections. Recently, substantial progress has been made on the single-nucleon, universal corrections, while nucleus-dependent effects, typically parametrized by a quantity δ NS , are much less well constrained. Here, we lay out a program to evaluate this correction from effective field theory (EFT), highlighting the dominant terms as predicted by the EFT power counting. Moreover, we compare the results to a dispersive representation of δ NS and show that the expected momentum scaling applies even in the case of low-lying intermediate states. Our EFT framework paves the way toward calculations of δ NS and thereby addresses the dominant uncertainty in V u d . Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS

LANL Meteorology Program Self-Assesment 2024 Update

The DOE Meteorological Coordinating Council (DMCC) conducted an initial LANL Meteorological (Met) Program Assist Visit in August 2006 (DMCC 2006). A follow-up assist visit in August 2015 assessed progress (DMCC 2015), and in June 2023, the DOE Meteorological Subcommittee (DMSC), successor to the DMCC, conducted a second follow-up assist visit (DMSC 2023), in which the Met Program was evaluated relative to the following 8 high-level questions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Moving Beyond Direct Load Control: A Maturity Model for Realizing the Promise of Demand Flexibility

This report discusses a new maturity model that regulators and utilities can use to guide and expand demand flexibility programs and enable the resources to provide more grid services. The model has six demand flexibility categories: planning and design; customer engagement; program operations; evaluation, measurement and verification; distributed energy resource orchestration; and data infrastructure. Within each category, capabilities are identified and described on a maturity scale that ranges from performing below expectations to improving on best practices.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION

VA Community Determinants of Health Data Curation Documentation FY26-Q2

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) places the health and well-being of our nation’s veterans as its top priority. VA is dedicated to offering timely access to high-quality, evidence-based mental health care that meets the needs of veterans and supports their reintegration into society. One of our core missions is to prevent suicide among veterans through innovative approaches and resources. With funding from the VA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (OMHSP), the Community Determinants of Health (EDH) Data project has developed innovative datasets associated with specific health outcomes, a methodology for transforming spatiotemporal data from one spatial reference (e.g., a 1 km grid) to another (e.g., U.S. Census Tracts), and capabilities for modeling health outcomes. These datasets represent an enhancement of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), addressing key gaps by introducing finer spatial resolution (Census Tract) and additional geographical covariates into existing data. The curation and standardization of these datasets is a complex task since they often originate from various sources and are measured at different spatial and temporal resolutions. For example, U.S. Census data products typically use census blocks, block groups, or counties, while data like weather data are available on 1 km grids. Some economic data may only be available at the ZIP code level. In this context, ‘standardized’ means that all datasets share the same spatial extent (e.g., U.S. Census Tract and/or County), and ‘curated’ implies a repeatable process with data provenance and the use of appropriate methodologies for covariate conversion. The Community Determinants of Health datasets draw from multiple sources, resulting in variables with varying degrees of availability, patterns of missing data, and methodological considerations across different sources, geographies, and years.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS

Progress Towards Developing Neutron Tolerant Magnetostrictive and Piezoelectric Transducers

Current generation light water reactors (LWRs), sodium cooled fast reactors (SFRs), small modular reactors (SMRs), and next generation nuclear plants (NGNPs) produce harsh environments in and near the reactor core that can severely tax material performance and limit component operational life. To address this issue, several Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) research programs are evaluating the long duration irradiation performance of fuel and structural materials used in existing and new reactors. In order to maximize the amount of information obtained from Material Testing Reactor (MTR) irradiations, DOE is also funding development of enhanced instrumentation that will be able to obtain in-situ, real-time data on key material characteristics and properties, with unprecedented accuracy and resolution. Such data are required to validate new multi-scale, multi-physics modeling tools under development as part of a science-based, engineering driven approach to reactor development. It is not feasible to obtain high resolution/microscale data with the current state of instrumentation technology. However, ultrasound-based sensors offer the ability to obtain such data if it is demonstrated that these sensors and their associated transducers are resistant to high neutron flux, high gamma radiation, and high temperature. To address this need, the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR-NSUF) is funding an irradiation, led by PSU, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Reactor to test the survivability of ultrasound transducers. As part of this effort, PSU and collaborators have designed, fabricated, and provided piezoelectric and magnetostrictive transducers that are optimized to perform in harsh, high flux, environments. Four piezoelectric transducers were fabricated with either aluminum nitride, zinc oxide, or bismuth titanate as the active element that were coupled to either Kovar or aluminum waveguides and two magnetostrictive transducers were fabricated with Remendur or Galfenol as the active elements. Pulse-echo ultrasonic measurements of these transducers are made in-situ. This paper will present an overview of the test design including selection criteria for candidate materials and optimization of test assembly parameters, data obtained from both out-of-pile and in-pile testing at elevated temperatures, and an assessment based on initial data of the expected performance of ultrasonic devices in irradiation conditions

Reinhardt1, Brian

Estimating Return on Investment for Energy Technical Assistance Programs

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of State and Community Energy Programs engaged the National Laboratory of the Rockies to assess the return on investment (ROI) of technical assistance (TA) programs that support state, local, and Tribal energy planning. Although TA delivers value through capacity building, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge transfer, these benefits are often intangible and challenging to monetize. This study reviews existing ROI frameworks and synthesizes the most relevant elements into a hybrid approach tailored to energy TA programs. The proposed framework integrates monetary and non-monetary outcomes through early logic model development, baseline data collection, and the use of proxies for intangible benefits. As a case study, this paper applies this approach to the Communities Local Energy Action Program (Communities LEAP), demonstrating how ROI can inform program design, data strategy, and performance assessment. Findings underscore that ROI should be applied selectively and planned from the outset to ensure data alignment and attribution accuracy. The framework offers TA practitioners a structured approach that can be leveraged for future programs to evaluate and communicate the multifaceted value of TA investments.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY

SPC-71188 Rev 0 MARVEL Control Drum Rotary Shaft Seal Procurement Specification

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This procurement specification defines the requirements for fabrication of the MARVEL Control Drum Rotary Shaft Seal.

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SPC-3186 Rev 8 Reactor Support Frame and Outer Shield Build to Print Fabrication Specification

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This procurement specification defines the requirements for fabrication of the Reactor Support Frame (RSF) and Outer Shield.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN

SPC-71250 Rev 0 MARVEL Upper Shield Build to Print Fabrication Specification

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This procurement specification defines the requirements for fabrication of the Upper Shield Assembly.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN

SPC-3184 Rev 7 MARVEL Reactor Structures Build to Print Fabrication Specification

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core and under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This procurement specification defines the requirements for fabrication of the MARVEL Primary Coolant System (PCS), Fuel and Core System (FCS), and Reactor Sub-Structure Assemblies, including the Upper Confinement Structure.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN

SPC-70796 Rev 2 MetCar M-312 Bearings Procurement Specification

A. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This procurement specification defines the requirements for fabrication of the MARVEL MetCar M-312 bearings. B. Any conflict between this specification and referenced Codes and Standards, or any supplementary specifications in the procurement documents requires written clarification from the Contractor prior to proceeding with any work. Any deviation from the procurement documents requires approval by the Contractor with the change request process.

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SPC-70525 Rev 2 Beryllium Metal Procurement Specification

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. Key to this design are neutron reflector components constructed of Beryllium Metal (S-65) which is a structural grade of hot-pressed beryllium block. MARVEL will be located at the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility. Any conflict between this specification and referenced Codes and Standards, or any supplementary specifications in the procurement documents requires written clarification from the Contractor prior to proceeding with any work. Any deviation from the procurement documents requires approval by the Contractor with the change request process.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN

SPC-70804 Rev 1 Zircar ZAL-45 Alumina Standoff Plates for Use in MARVEL

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core and Stirling engines under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This procurement specification defines the requirements for fabrication of the MARVEL ZAL-45 standoff plates manufactured by Zircar. The design requires eight (8) ceramic standoff plates; however, the requested quantity shall be twelve to account for required testing after receipt of materials. Any conflict between this specification and referenced Codes and Standards, or any supplementary specifications in the procurement documents requires written clarification from the Contractor prior to proceeding with any work. Any deviation from the procurement documents requires approval by the Contractor with the change request process.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN