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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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At least 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1931

Strength of Welded Joints in Tubular Members for Aircraft

The object of this investigation is to make available to the aircraft industry authoritative information on the strength, weight, and cost of a number of types of welded joints. This information will, also, assist the aeronautics branch in its work of licensing planes by providing data from which the strength of a given joint may be estimated. As very little material on the strength of aircraft welds has been published, it is believed that such tests made by a disinterested governmental laboratory should be of considerable value to the aircraft industry. Forty joints were welded under procedure specifications and tested to determine their strengths. The weight and time required to fabricate were also measured for each joint.

Whittemore, H L↗
DOE OSTI2025

Criticality Safety SU based USL Calculation for UCl3-NaCl Fuel Salt Operations

The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) is a fast spectrum, molten salt fueled reactor that is planned to be constructed and operated in the Laboratory for Operation and Testing in the U.S. (LOTUS) testbed, formerly known as the ZPPR cell, at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). MCRE will provide valuable data to support design, licensing, and operation of full scale commercialized molten salt reactor designs.

99 - GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2026

AGR-5/6/7 Ceramography Report

The Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development and Qualification Program was established in 2002 to conduct research and development on tri-structural isotropic (TRISO)-coated particle fuel for High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs). All AGR irradiations have been completed: AGR-1 (Collin 2015), AGR-2 (Collin 2014), AGR-3/4 (Collin 2016) and AGR-5/6/7 (Pham 2021). The objectives of each program are presented in Figure 1.1. The purpose of the AGR-5/6/7 program was to provide a baseline fuel qualification data set to support licensing, deployment, and operation of HTGRs in the United States. To achieve these goals, the program includes fuel fabrication, irradiations of TRISO fuels and high-temperature materials, safety testing and post-irradiation examination (PIE), fuel performance modeling, and fission product (FP) transport (Sharp 2020). The AGR-5/6/7 work continues as a final irradiation program of the Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART) program, that began in February 2018 and ended in July 2020. The AGR-5/6/7 fuel compacts were irradiated for a total of approximately 360.9 effective full power days (EFPDs) (Stempien 2023), resulting in final burn-up values, on a per-compact basis, ranging from 5.66% to 15.26% fissions per initial heavy metal atom (FIMA), and fast fluence values ranging from 1.62×1025 n/m2 to 5.55×1025 n/m2 (E >0.18 MeV) (Stempien 2022)

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
NASA NTRS2015

The Open Data Repositorys Data Publisher

Data management and data publication are becoming increasingly important components of researcher's workflows. The complexity of managing data, publishing data online, and archiving data has not decreased significantly even as computing access and power has greatly increased. The Open Data Repository's Data Publisher software strives to make data archiving, management, and publication a standard part of a researcher's workflow using simple, web-based tools and commodity server hardware. The publication engine allows for uploading, searching, and display of data with graphing capabilities and downloadable files. Access is controlled through a robust permissions system that can control publication at the field level and can be granted to the general public or protected so that only registered users at various permission levels receive access. Data Publisher also allows researchers to subscribe to meta-data standards through a plugin system, embargo data publication at their discretion, and collaborate with other researchers through various levels of data sharing. As the software matures, semantic data standards will be implemented to facilitate machine reading of data and each database will provide a REST application programming interface for programmatic access. Additionally, a citation system will allow snapshots of any data set to be archived and cited for publication while the data itself can remain living and continuously evolve beyond the snapshot date. The software runs on a traditional LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server and is available on GitHub (http://github.com/opendatarepository) under a GPLv2 open source license. The goal of the Open Data Repository is to lower the cost and training barrier to entry so that any researcher can easily publish their data and ensure it is archived for posterity.

Astrobiology data↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program Enables Researchers to Take Advantage of This Rapidly Evolving Industry

The growth of commercial Earth Observation (EO) satellite industry is accelerating rapidly, bringing a diverse set of products to a wide range of EO research domains. NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program, established in 2017, identifies, evaluates, and acquires commercial data - products, including very high-resolution imagery spanning from visible to short-wave infrared wavelengths, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, as well as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data that support, augment, and complement NASA’s extensive catalog of Earth science data. The poster demonstrates how users can learn about the CSDA Program, access the data, and find results from publications and findings of NASA researchers. NASA-acquired commercial data are governed by an end user license agreement. This poster is intended as a practical guide to what the CSDA Program is, where to discover the data and types, and how to access and use the data for scientific purposes.

Stephan Klene↗
DOE OSTI2026

Field and Model Data Associated with the Manuscript “Drivers of Streamflow Intermittency in Humid Regions: 1. Evaluating Above- and Below-ground Controls of Flow Persistence in a Forested Catchment”

This package contains field data, modeling files, and scripts supporting the investigation of the drivers of streamflow intermittency in a forested catchment. It includes the field data collected from electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys, ground penetrating radar (GPR), continuous self-potential (SP) monitoring, electromagnetic (EM) imaging, groundwater and stilling well. In addition, it contains the data and results of the coupled water- and electrical-flow model developed using the COMSOL Multiphysics and Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS), as well as software files and Jupyter notebooks used to process the data and generate figures in the manuscript submitted for peer review. The data archive is organized in the following directories: 1) Climate Includes hourly precipitation and daily evapotranspiration time series (2024 – 2025) provided as CSV files, alongside a text file detailing dataset units. 2) Coupled_model Contains two subfolders: Synthetic and Field_Application subfolder. Synthetic subfolder contains the ATS XML input script (can be opened using any code editor) for the four synthetic hydrological cases tested (Connected and gaining, Connected and losing, Disconnected and losing, and dry stream). It also includes other experimental cases to test the influence of precipitation and concentration gradient. For each synthetic case, the flow model simulation is executed using the ATS XML scripts and the included Python script (generate_data_set.py) to convert ATS output to COMSOL-ready input. COMSOL Multiphysics template (.mph can be opened with the commercial software COMSOL and requires a license) is executed using the ATS output data to simulate the potential field. It also includes the Synthetic_model_plot.ipynb (can be opened using any code editor) to visualize the SP result and generate manuscript figures. The data subfolder contains mesh files to run both the ATS (.exo and .stl files can be viewed using Paraview; .h5 files can be opened using HDFView software and h5py Python package) and COMSOL models. Field_Application subfolder contains two subfolders: ES_MDA_inversion and Final_Model. ES_MDA_inversion contains the Python script (.py can be opened using any code editor) and SP observation data used to run the Ensemble Smoother with Multiple Data Assimilation (ES-MDA) inversion sequence to get the optimal model parameters. The Final_model subfolder contains the ATS XML input scripts, data files, output data for the two SP sites. The same workflow steps outlined for the Synthetic subfolder apply here. It also contains the Jupyter notebook (Plot_final_calib.ipynb) to visualize the results of the modeled SP, stream-groundwater exchange and moisture content. 3) Discharge Includes the electrical conductivity (EC) time series (provided as CSV files) from salt slug injections. It also includes the Jupyter notebook (Discharge_process.ipynyb) used to estimate discharge. All discharge measurements collated into rating_curve_processed.csv 4) EM Contains the CSV file of the EM data from the DUALEM-42, including spatial coordinates (x, y, z), apparent conductivity, and in-phase measurements at 2 m coil separations for horizontal coplanar (HCP) and perpendicular (PRP) geometries. 5) ERT Contains raw resistivity data (provided as CSV files), spatial location of each of the electrodes (provided as CSV files), and files used for the resistivity inversion (.resipy can be opened with the open-source ResIPy software). 6) GPR Includes GPR field datasets collected at 100 MHz and 250 MHz antenna frequencies, along with the processing/interpretation project file (GPR_process.gpz can be viewed using EKKO_Project 6, a commercial software by Sensors & Software that requires a license). 7) Slug_test Includes the slug test data at all the groundwater wells provided as CSV files, as well as the Jupyter notebook (Slug_test.ipynb) for calculating hydraulic conductivity. 8) SP Contains the SP data collected in field at the two SP sites (one in the perennial reach and the other in the intermittent reach), provided as DAT files. 9) Well_data Contains two subfolders: 1) Raw, which provides unprocessed pressure, electrical conductivity and temperature timeseries downloaded from the loggers in all the groundwater and stilling wells, and 2) Processed, which contains sorted, QA/QC timeseries data for each well. The data archive also contains data_process.ipynb, a Jupyter notebook used for field data analysis and generating figures (plotting well, SP, climate, and discharge data, as well as calculating head gradient at sites with nested groundwater wells). It also includes DTW.ipynb, a Jupyter notebook containing the code for the dynamic time warping (DTW) with sliding window to evaluate SP signal synchronicity.

ATS↗
NASA NTRS2018

OMI/TROPOMI Data Support from GES DISC

The NASA GES DISC has been the official archive center for data from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard NASA's Aura mission since 2004. In recent years, the GES DISC has been evolving and improving its data management and services in order to promote its data to be easily discovered and accessed, as well as to facilitate data "interoperability". This presentation will summarize metrics collected of OMI data usage and GES DISC data services. In order to support the recently released Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI data from ESA at the NASA GES DISC, a new End User License Agreement (EULA) has been implemented for users accessing these data from the GES DISC.

Johnson, J.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Qualification of Digitized Legacy Fast Reactor Data

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) fuel compatibility test program (1984-1994) included a variety of fuel pin examinations conducted at the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF) and the Alpha-Gamma Hot Cell Facility (AGHCF). Hard copy data records of these examinations have been recovered, scanned, and preserved in PDF format. Many hard copy records are now qualified in accordance with an NRC-approved Quality Assurance Program Plan (QAPP), and there is an ongoing effort to qualify additional legacy records. This legacy fuel performance data is vital to support design and licensing of fast reactors with validation of state-of-the-art codes and advanced methods for design and analysis. Stakeholders can most easily utilize this data when the PDF scans have been converted into digital data tables. However, qualification of the scanned hard copy data does not qualify the digital data file resulting from the digitization of the data contained in the record; the subject matter expert (SME) must make a review of the digitized data table as well before it can be designated as qualified. This report outlines a peer review process to qualify the digital data file(s), typically in CSV format, corresponding to hard copy records in accordance with the existing QAPP.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Preliminary Design of Engineering-Scale Salt Accident Analysis Facility to Support Molten Salt Reactor Licensing

Systems-level nuclear accident analysis codes for reactor licensing must be validated using experimental data that represent behaviors expected during actual full-scale accidents. Some behaviors may arise from coupled processes and only manifest at large scales. This report presents the preliminary design of the Salt Accident Analysis Facility (SAAF, pronounced “safe”), which is an experimental test facility to be constructed at Argonne that can be used to conduct integrated salt accident tests at an engineering scale. The measurement capabilities of the SAAF are based on previously developed methods and will provide the representative datasets that are needed to support molten salt reactor (MSR) licensing. Details of the design, the processes to be quantified, the measurement techniques for quantifying the processes, the variables that can be adjusted to simulate different accident scenarios, and operational considerations are presented herein. This report provides stakeholders the opportunity to give feedback on the test facility capabilities and planned analyses before it is constructed.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

HDG-1 Experiment Irradiation Monitoring Data Qualification Final Report

SUMMARY The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART) Graphite Research and Development (GRD) Program is conducting a series of six experiments to quantify the effects of irradiation on nuclear-grade graphite. This report documents the qualification of irradiation monitoring data for the fifth experiment, High Dose Graphite-1 (HDG-1). Qualified monitoring data are required by the ART program to support the design and licensing of the first high-temperature reactor (HTR) nuclear plant. Data are classified as Qualified if they meet the usage requirements described in the experiment planning and quality assurance (QA) documents, Failed if they do not meet those requirements and provide no usable information, or Trend if they do not fully meet all requirements but still provide useful information subject to an assessment of how any deficiencies may affect a particular use of the data. HDG-1 irradiation began with Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) Cycle 168B on August 24, 2020, and concluded after Cycle 173C on January 27, 2025. The HDG-1 capsule was removed from the reactor core twice—during core internal change (CIC) Cycle 170A and powered axial locator mechanism (PALM) Cycle 172A—to prevent overheating of the graphite specimens during high-power PALM cycles. The capsule was therefore irradiated during a total of seven normal ATR cycles: 168B, 169A, 171A, 171B, 173A, 173B, and 173C. Irradiation monitoring data evaluated in this report include thermocouple (TC) temperature, gas flow rate, gas moisture, gas pressure, specimen load, and graphite stack displacement. Temperature. A total of 14,508,065 TC temperature records were captured. Of these, 13,901,785 (95.8%) are Qualified and 606,280 (4.2%) are Failed. The principal source of failed temperature data was the instrument failure of TC-9 (Zone 2) on June 24, 2024, and TC-10 (Zone 1) on July 5, 2024, near the end of Cycle 173A, which resulted in 595,554 Failed readings. An additional 379 missing values and 10,347 slightly negative values from TC-13 during ATR outages are also Failed. Neither TC-9 nor TC-10 was used as a temperature-control TC, and their failures did not compromise capsule condition monitoring. Correlation analysis of all 13 TCs found no evidence of virtual junction formation. Control chart analysis revealed clear downward drift of approximately 80°C for TC-6 (Zone 3) relative to other stable TCs, and possible downward drift of approximately 60°C for TC-13 relative to the Zone 5 control TC (TC-1), though TC-13 remained consistent with the Zone 2 control TC (TC-12). Gas flow. A total of 20,088,090 gas flow rate records were captured. Of these, 19,941,463 (99.3%) are Qualified and 146,627 (0.7%) are Failed due to missing values. All argon, helium, and total gas flow data were within expected ranges throughout the irradiation. Gas moisture. A total of 1,116,005 outlet gas moisture values were captured. Of these, 1,101,421 (98.7%) are Qualified and 14,584 (1.3%) are Failed, comprising 14,556 out-of-range values and 28 missing values. The out-of-range moisture values exceeded 22,000 ppmv for approximately 1 week at the beginning of Cycle 173A, when accumulated moisture evaporated after the capsule was retrieved from water storage during PALM Cycle 172A and reinserted into the east flux trap. Moisture levels returned to below 25 ppmv for the remaining three cycles, and the transient high-moisture event did not affect the integrity of specimen irradiation. Gas pressure. A total of 7,812,035 gas pressure values were captured. Of these, 6,642,048 (85.0%) are Qualified and 1,169,987 (15.0%) outlet pressure values are Failed, comprising 718,537 zero outlet pressure values due to sensor failure from Cycle 168B through Cycle 171B, 54,550 missing values, and 396,900 too-low outlet pressure values, ranging from 1.1 to 1.6 psia after sensor replacement during Cycle 173A. Load. A total of 6,696,030 load values were captured. Of these, 6,694,580 (99.98%) are Qualified and 1,450 (0.02%) are Failed due to missing values. Applied loads to the six specimen stacks were stable throughout the irradiation. Stack displacement. A total of 6,696,030 displacement values were captured. Of these, 5,713,297 (85.32%) are Qualified and 3,781 (0.06%) are Failed due to missing values. Stack displacement increased consistently throughout the irradiation, reaching approximately 3.08 in. for Channels 5 and 6 by the end of irradiation. 978,952 (14.62%) substantially elevated displacements observed for Channel 6 beginning in Cycle 171A and for Channel 5 beginning in Cycle 173A are assigned Trend status. Raising pressure. A total of 1,115,999 raising pressure values were captured. Of these, 1,115,430 (99.95%) are Qualified and 569 (0.05%) are Failed due to missing values. Ram pressure. A total of 6,696,030 ram pressure values were captured. Of these, 6,692,249 (99.95%) are Qualified and 3,484 (0.05%) are Failed due to missing values. Stack raising was perf

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Nuclear Data Management and Analysis System Plan

The United States Department of Energy Advanced Reactor Technologies Program was formed in Fiscal Year 2015 and encompasses the Next Generation Nuclear Plant Project and Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) Program as they were known previously. The VHTR Program was created to support design and licensing of the first VHTR nuclear plant. Data created for and used by the program must be qualified for use, stored in a readily accessible electronic form, categorized to assure the correct data are used, and controlled to prevent data corruption or inadvertent changes. The Nuclear Data Management and Analysis System was designed to support the data needs of the VHTR Program, at the time and now the Advanced Reactor Technologies Program. Since its inception, use of the Nuclear Data Management and Analysis System has expanded to support additional projects and programs with similar requirements for control, analysis, and availability of large data sets.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Fuels Irradiation and Physics Database (FIPD) Development and Data Qualification FY24 Updates

The DOE-NE 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 Metallic Fuels Irradiation & Physics Database (FIPD) development, content updates, data qualification status, and user support in FY24. Future plans are also provided.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Demonstrating PyCalphad, ESPEI, and MSTDB-TC for MSR Applications

The utility of thermochemical modeling tools PyCalphad, ESPEI, and MSTDB-TC are demonstrated for applications relevant to molten salt reactor design, safety, and licensing. Given the availability of experimental data, the demonstration is predominantly focused on the use of MSTDB-TC v3.0 to model Li- and Be-bearing fluoride salt mixtures. Nonetheless, the methodology reported in using these tools for such applications can be applied to any salt system given requisite data availability.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

PNNL INFRARED REFRACTIVE INDEX (n/k) DATASET FOR SEVEN PAH SOLIDS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE

This dataset is an open-source repository of spectral data measured at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). This database provides quantitative values for the complex index of refraction for seven polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) solids. A list of the chemicals is available in the readme file. These spectra consist of the optical constants, i.e., the real, n(ν), and imaginary, k(ν), refractive indices, over the spectral range from 7,800 to 400 cm-1 (1.28 – 25 μm). The conditions under which the individual data were acquired are described in the associated metadata files, and the user is strongly encouraged to read and understand this information to ensure the data are used appropriately for your application. Recommended Citation for Dataset Jessica M Salcido, Jeremy D. Erickson, Ashley M. Bradley, Russell G. Tonkyn, Timothy J. Johnson and Tanya L. Myers. 2026. PNNL INFRARED REFRACTIVE INDEX (n/k) DATASET FOR SEVEN PAH SOLIDS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE. [Data Set] PNNL DataHub. INSERT DOI License Information This work is marked with CC0 1.0: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. The authors do request that you appropriately cite the dataset when referencing or using the dataset.

Salcido, Jessica Marie Ortola↗
NASA NTRS1996

DGPS with NASA's ACTS

The U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center, concerned about frequency license problems inherent with operating data-ready radios to support differential GPS (DGPS), learned of an experiment program the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was sponsoring with its prototype digital satellite - the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS). ACTS was designed to evaluate many new, untested technologies for eventual transfer to U.S. telecommunications and related industries. The new technologies promised greater data transmission rates and significantly reduced transmission latency. recognizing these benefits, the Topographic Engineering Center designed a DGPS experiment using an ACTS datalink with baselines of 200 kilometers and longer to learn what positional accuracy was possible with leading-edge satellite telecommunications technology.

Dendy, Roger↗
NASA NTRS2018

Smallholder Crop Area Mapped with Wall-To-Wall WorldView Sub-Meter Panchromatic Image Texture: A Test Case for Tigray, Ethiopia

Global food production in the developing world occurs within sub-hectare fields that are difficult to identify with moderate resolution satellite imagery. Knowledge about the distribution of these fields is critical in food security programs. We developed a semi-automated image segmentation approach using wall-to-wall sub-meter imagery with high-performance computing to map crop area (CA) throughout Tigray, Ethiopia that encompasses over 41,000 km (exp 2). Multiple processing streams were tested to minimize mapping error while applying five unique smoothing kernels to capture differences in land surface texture associated to CA. Typically, very-small fields (mean < 2 ha) have a smooth image roughness compared to natural scrub/shrub woody vegetation at the ~1m scale and these features can be segmented in panchromatic imagery with multi-level histogram thresholding. Multi-temporal very-high resolution (VHR) panchromatic imagery with multi-spectral VHR are sufficient in extracting critical CA information needed in food security programs. A 2011 to 2015 CA map was produced, using over 3000 WorldView-1 panchromatic images wall-to-wall in 1/2 deg mosaics for Tigray, Ethiopia. CA was evaluated with nearly 3000 WorldView-2 2m multispectral 250 X 250 m image subsets by seven expert interpretations, and with in-situ global positioning system photography. CA estimates ranged from 32 to 41% in sub regions of Tigray with median maximum per bin commission and omission errors of 11% and 1% respectively, with most of the error occurring in bins <15%. This empirical, simple, and low direct cost approach via U.S. government license agreement to access commercial VHR data, could be a viable big-data high-performance computing methodology to extract wall-to-wall CA for other regions of the world that have very-small agriculture fields with similar image texture."

Ethiopia↗
DOE OSTI2024

FUEL PERFORMANCE SIMULATION OF HIGH BURNUP FUELS IN PLANNED INTEGRAL DESIGN BASIS ACCIDENT EXPERIMENTS

High burnup (HBu) fuel rods from the Byron Nuclear Generating Station (BNGS) were recently received at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to support a variety of planned Nuclear Energy fuel cycle R&D objectives ranging from fuel performance, fuel recycle, and spent fuel research topics. Among these R&D activities, these fuel rods will be the subjects of multiple in-pile experiment programs at the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility as well as detailed characterization and testing in the hot cells at INL and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). TREAT RIA experiments are planned for the Nuclear Energy Agency Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES) Joint Experimental Program called High burnup Experiments in Reactivity Initiated Accident (HERA) program. TREAT and ORNL-furnace LOCA experiments are part of the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Fuels Campaign (AFC) program U.S. consensus LOCA test plan, and the in-pile experiments have also been proposed in a FIDES project called Loss of Coolant-High Burnup (LOC-HBu). The results of these test programs will provide crucial data about safety performance enabling extended licensable burnup limits for these fuels. The purpose of this paper is to document fuel performance computational simulations of the BNGS fuel using the Bison code. The detailed assessments include (1) the irradiation history of the fuel to provide prediction of as-run fuel conditions and (2) extending the irradiated fuel conditions into the as-designed experiment conditions for the HERA-HBu RIA experiments and for the LOC-HBu LOCA experiments. The results of these assessments will inform post-irradiation examinations (PIE) of the BNGS parent rods and detailed final design of the planned experiments.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2024

FUEL PERFORMANCE SIMULATION OF HIGH BURNUP FUELS IN PLANNED INTEGRAL DESIGN BASIS ACCIDENT EXPERIMENTS

High burnup (HBu) fuel rods from the Byron Nuclear Generating Station (BNGS) were recently received at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to support a variety of planned Nuclear Energy fuel cycle R&D objectives ranging from fuel performance, fuel recycle, and spent fuel research topics. Among these R&D activities, these fuel rods will be the subjects of multiple in-pile experiment programs at the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility as well as detailed characterization and testing in the hot cells at INL and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). TREAT RIA experiments are planned for the Nuclear Energy Agency Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES) Joint Experimental Program called High burnup Experiments in Reactivity Initiated Accident (HERA) program. TREAT and ORNL-furnace LOCA experiments are part of the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Fuels Campaign (AFC) program U.S. consensus LOCA test plan, and the in-pile experiments have also been proposed in a FIDES project called Loss of Coolant-High Burnup (LOC-HBu). The results of these test programs will provide crucial data about safety performance enabling extended licensable burnup limits for these fuels. The purpose of this paper is to document fuel performance computational simulations of the BNGS fuel using the Bison code. The detailed assessments include (1) the irradiation history of the fuel to provide prediction of as-run fuel conditions and (2) extending the irradiated fuel conditions into the as-designed experiment conditions for the HERA-HBu RIA experiments and for the LOC-HBu LOCA experiments. The results of these assessments will inform post-irradiation examinations (PIE) of the BNGS parent rods and detailed final design of the planned experiments.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗