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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Major Power Rivalry and Nuclear Risk Reduction: Perspectives From Russia, China, and the United States

Since its founding in 1992, the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) has had an abiding interest in nuclear threat reduction. In the 1990s it did some of the leading thinking about cooperative threat reduction with post-Soviet entities. In the early 2000s it focused increasingly on strengthening the nonproliferation regime. Since 2015 one of its primary interests has been exploring the future of cooperative strategies to reduce nuclear/strategic dangers. That future faces many challenges, both technical and geopolitical. By 2020, a rising sense of urgency of nuclear danger had clearly taken shape in the United States and internationally, driven in significant measure by the renewal of major power rivalry and potential military flashpoints among those powers. And that urgency has driven a rising national and international exploration of what can be done to reduce nuclear dangers.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Nuclear Weapon Culture

Presentation Overview: Nuclear Weapon Culture; Nuclear Weapon Culture; Manhattan Project Secrecy & Intelligence; Pre-Hiroshima & Nagasaki; Surety; Propaganda; Living in the Nuclear Age

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Nuclear Weapon Deterrence Principles

Presentation Overview: Nuclear Weapon Deterrence Principles; Deterrence Basics; Key Elements of Nuclear Deterrence; Nuclear Deterrence Theories; Nuclear Deterrence Cold War; Nuclear Deterrence Today; New Deterrence Challenges

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Nuclear Weapon Security DOD Perspective

Presentation Overview: Nuclear Weapon Security DOD Perspective; DOD and DOE Nuclear Security Policy Standards; Weapon Secure Storage Methods; Modes of Transportation: DOD and DOE; Security Breeches; Basic Security Classification Practices

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Report on the recovery of legacy 1997-1998 Depth-of-Burial / Tunnel-and-Hole-Closure explosion data from the Kazakhstan former Soviet nuclear test site, Semipalatinsk.

In 1996, negotiations between the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NNC), the U.S. Defense Special Weapons Administration (DSWA) and the U.S. Department of Energy led to an agreement for a joint series of experiments at the former Soviet nuclear test site Semipalatinsk (STS). These experiments had a dual purpose: to close holes and tunnels originally created for the purpose of testing nuclear weapons, and to characterize explosive sources at a former nuclear test site. This report covers the recovery of legacy data from the experiments conduct in 1997 and 1998. Two teams collected data. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), in collaboration with the NNC, collected the near-source (local) data out to approximately 20 km. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), with funding from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL), also in collaboration with NNC, collected regional data, 200 – 1000 km distant, leveraging the KZ regional seismic network that LDEO had recently installed in collaboration with NNC. The two teams also worked together to some extent, regarding instrumentation and planning. This report primarily addresses the near-source data collected by the LANL/NNC team.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Applying Waveform Correlation to Mining Blasts Using a Global Sparse Network

Agencies that monitor for underground nuclear tests are interested in techniques that automatically characterize mining blasts to reduce the human analyst effort required to produce high-quality event bulletins. Waveform correlation is effective in finding similar waveforms from repeating seismic events, including mining blasts. We report the results of an experiment that uses waveform templates recorded by multiple International Monitoring System stations of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization for up to 10 years prior to the time period of interest to detect and identify mining blasts that occur during single weeks of study. We discuss approaches for template selection, threshold setting, and event detection that are specialized for mining blasts and a sparse, global network. We apply the approaches to two different weeks of study for each of two geographic regions, Wyoming and Scandinavia, to evaluate the potential for establishing a set of standards for waveform correlation processing of mining blasts that can be effective for operational monitoring systems with a sparse network. We compare candidate events detected with our processing methods to the Reviewed Event Bulletin of the International Data Centre to develop an intuition about potential reduction in analyst workload.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Evaluation of the Performance of the SAVY Container Subjected to Various Impact Events using Finite Element Methods

The SAVY container is a Safety Class Design Feature utilized both inside engineered features and outside engineered features (e.g. gloveboxes) at TA-55 Plutonium Facility Building 4. These containers were certified as low damage ratio containers by demonstrating their ability to retain material after exposure to impacts and elevated temperatures resulting from a design basis seismic event. Original testing of the SAVY did not evaluate the effects of various facility specific insults to the SAVY while within a DOT Type A Container, caused either by design basis accident or an operational mishap. These insults include: 1. Impact of a structural I-beam (drum upright & drum on side); 2. Impact of a section of Positive Pressure Chilled Water Pipe (PPCWS); 3. Forklift fork tine impact; 4. Fuel truck impact. Abaqus Explicit Dynamics Finite Element Analysis was performed on a nested SAVY/DOT Type 7A container configuration to assess the structural integrity of the SAVY under the accident conditions listed.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Scientific Justification for a U.S. Domestic High-Performance Reactor-Based Research Facility

The Basic Energy Science Advisory Committee (BESAC) was charged with forming a subcommittee to assess the scientific justification for a U.S. domestic high-performance reactor-based research facility in order to continue providing the U.S scientific community with leading neutron capabilities in support of DOE's missions in science, energy, environment, and national security. The assessment included consideration of current international plans and existing domestic facility infrastructure. The subcommittee held a series of meetings from August 19, 2019 to April 24, 2020 that included DOE senior officials, leaders of national and international neutron facilities (SNS, HFIR, NIST, ILL, FRM-II), chairs of the NAS and POPA HEU-LEU committees, and outside experts on important areas of science, technology, and industry where high flux nuclear reactor facilities make important contributions. Also included were tours of neutron facilities (SNS, HFIR, NIST, BR2 reactor, and the planned Jules Horowitz Reactor). This July 2020 (revised 10-28-2020) report describes scientific use cases, brief summaries of existing and planned neutron facilities in the US and Europe, a comprehensive review of HFIR, a comprehensive discussion of the current state of progress on HEU-LEU conversion, user information from NIST and ORNL, and three recommendations to DOE for moving forward.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

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↗
DOE OSTI2020

Thinking the Other Unthinkable: Disarmament in North Korea and Beyond

The P5 have defined nuclear disarmament as both a process and an end state. Differences of view about the latter are sharp, bitter, and abiding. This has stripped the discussion about the former of much of its potential content and value. Where might we get, practically and conceptually, if we were to set aside for now questions about the ultimate feasibility and desirability of the long-term goal and focus instead on the process? Further, what if we were also to posit that there will be no “fundamental transformation” of the international political system of a kind that would make the nuclear-armed states, and their unarmed neighbors, unconcerned about the effectiveness of mechanisms for peace and security in a disarmed and disarming world? In this context, might it be possible to give states the confidence they would require to take more ambitious incremental steps on the disarmament pathway? How could such steps contribute to the relaxation of international tensions that the NPT itself describes as a critical enabler of disarmament? These questions motivate this timely and innovative new work by Toby Dalton and George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Their core objective is to “infuse needed realism into disarmament discussions.” Using North Korean disarmament as a test case, they explore a series of practical challenges and associated conceptual issues to frame a discussion of the possible disarming nucleararmed states. They begin by rightly noting that neither the advocates of the Ban treaty nor the advocates of North Korean disarmament have set our practical agendas for achieving their aims. They conclude that without an infusion of realism the “two polarized blocks” will continue to “stonewall and repel each other” and thus that “the risks of global nuclear disorder will grow.” This is the latest in the series of Livermore Papers begun in 2017 to stimulate the development of new strategic thought on emerging nuclear challenges. Conceptually, it is a follow-on to the inaugural Livermore Paper by Lewis Dunn on disarmament pathways. The views expressed in these papers are those of the authors and should not be attributed to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or any of its sponsors.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Novel Perovskite Semiconductors for the Detection of Special Nuclear Material

Special nuclear material detection using portable, highly efficient detectors is of paramount importance to national security and environmental monitoring. Current neutron detectors, including gas proportional counters and scintillators, are not suitable for discrete or portable monitoring due to size, weight, and power limitations. For example, 3 He gas proportional detectors have significant drawbacks, including long absorption lengths, high voltage requirements, and dependence on the availability of 3 He. The goal of this project is to synthesize a novel, boron-based perovskite semiconductor crystals to create a more efficient and more portable neutron detector. This innovative material will lead to a significant decrease in power and size requirements with higher operating temperatures than other traditional solid-state detectors. Directly incorporating 10 B eliminates the need for a conversion layer and leads to high neutron absorption coefficients. In this seedling project, we used inverse temperature crystallization with boron precursors to create CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3-x (BF 4 ) x . The crystals were analyzed with X-ray diffraction, but the results were inconclusive. Future work will focus on tailoring the solution growth and selecting appropriate solvents and precursors.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2020

Comprehensive Chemical Fingerprinting by Multidimensional GC and Supervised Machine Learning

This project leverages advances in machine learning based data analysis techniques and untargeted omic analytical methods to progress nuclear nonproliferation technologies beyond current capabilities. The developed approaches can be used to identify and detect complex chemical fingerprints of facilities of interest. These techniques have been developed for fields such as metabolomics and genomics but have not been applied to nuclear nonproliferation applications. Adaptation of these techniques for volatile organic compound analysis has far reaching application within the scientific community including environmental chemistry, atmospheric physics, and climate sciences.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Potential Academic Research Topics of National Security Relevance

Since even before its establishment as an independent national security laboratory in 1949, Sandia has been devoted to an overarching mission of developing advanced technologies for global peace. These technologies have taken a variety of forms, and they exist in and must address an ever-changing global security environment. An understanding of that global security environment and its possible or likely evolution is therefore critical to ensuring that Sandia can maintain its focus on strategic technology investments that will benefit the nation in the next 20- 30 years. Sandia sustains multiple Systems Analysis organizations whose responsibility includes maintaining an understanding of the global security environment as it applies across multiple mission domains. The topics below include two from Sandia's emerging threats and biodefense mission, three with relevance to Sandia's cyber defense mission, and four of particular but not exclusive relevance to Sandia's nuclear deterrence mission. All are intended to spur independent academic thought that could assist Sandia as well as the broader national security community in anticipating and adapting to a continually changing world. Sandia anticipates periodic interactions between Sandia Systems Analysis staff and SciPol Scholars Program faculty and students who choose to expand upon these topics in order to provide opportunities for feedback and communication throughout 2020-2021.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

SWESST Jeopardy Game [Slides]

SWESST Jeopardy is a trivia game with topics like safety, security, the environment, and LOSA, with the goal of providing activity-based learning for students and staff alike.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Ultimate Safety Share [Slides]

The presentation discusses the history of safety at Los Alamos National Laboratory including fatal accidents that have occurred.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗