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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 OSTI2022

Light Water Reactor Sustainability: Program Materials Research Pathway (FY22 Technical Program Plan)

The Materials Research (MR) Pathway within the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program is charged with performing R&D to develop the scientific basis for understanding and predicting the long-term environmental degradation behavior of materials in nuclear reactors. Furthermore, the mechanistic understanding of degradation phenomena in materials must be leveraged to develop mitigation and repair strategies and new material alternatives for existing components. This research will provide data and methods to assess the performance of systems, structures, and components essential to safe and sustained reactor operations. The R&D products developed from the LWRS program will be used by stakeholders—including utilities, industry groups, and regulators—to inform operational and regulatory requirements for materials in reactor systems, structures, and components subjected to long-term operation conditions, providing key inputs to regulators and industry. Therefore, the intent of this research is to provide options to reduce the operating costs, which may be in the form of offset maintenance costs due to better predictive models for component lifetimes, improved analyses of materials through nondestructive evaluation, reduced costs for repairs, or extended performance of plants through the selection of improved replacement materials. To provide the best options, industry experience and guidance are important because of their role in coordinated or collaborative research projects. The objectives of this report are to describe the motivation and organization of the MR Pathway within the LWRS program; provide details on the individual research tasks within the MR Pathway; describe the outcomes and deliverables of the MR Pathway, including recent technical highlights and progress; and describe the requirements for performing this critically important research.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Overview and Current Progress of the DOE/NNSA Nuclear Criticality Safety Program Training and Education Program [Slides]

This presentation covers the Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) training & education program. The presentation details the training courses offered by the NCSP and the NCSP training pipelines. Additionally, the presentation shows the Nuclear Criticality Safety (NCS) Education Training (NCSET) modules along with new capabilities and new courses. This lecture finishes up with some concluding remarks.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2019

India National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 02 Summary of Scientific Results: Numerical Simulation of Reservoir Response to Depressurization

The India National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 02 (NGHP-02) discovered gas hydrate at high saturation in sand reservoirs at several sites in the deepwater Bay of Bengal. To assess the potential response of those deposits to scientific depressurization experiments, comprehensive geologic models were constructed to enable numerical simulation for two sites. Both sites (NGHP-02-09 and NGHP-02-16) feature thick sequences of thinly-interbedded reservoir and non-reservoir facies at sub-seafloor depths less than 300m and sub-sea depths of 2400m or more. These settings pose significant challenges to current modeling capabilities. First, the thinly-interbedded reservoir architecture complicates the determination of basic reservoir parameters from both log and core data due to measurement resolution issues. Secondly, the fine scale variation in sediment properties imparts great contrasts in key parameters over very short distances, creating high gradients at multiple scales and varying orientations that necessitate careful design of high-definition simulation grids. Thirdly, the deposits include internal sources of water, as well as a range of complex boundary conditions, including variable permeability within the overlying mud-rich “seals,” that complicate reservoir depressurization. Lastly, because of the unique combination of great water depth and relatively shallow sub-seafloor depth: models designed to maximize the dissociation rate impose large pressure drawdowns on relatively low-strength sediments. This condition renders the proper evaluation and integration of the geomechanical response to hydrate dissociation critical. In this report, we review the history of gas hydrate reservoir simulation, discuss methods for creating geologic input models, and summarize the key findings and implications of the collaborative NGHP-02 numerical simulation effort. Together, the studies confirm the viability of the modeled accumulations for scientific testing and identify key challenges related to the selection of specific test sites and the design of test wells.

Boswell, Ray↗
DOE OSTI2022

The Lick Observatory Supernova Search follow-up program: photometry data release of 70 SESNe

We present BVRI and unfiltered (Clear) light curves of 70 stripped-envelope supernovae (SESNe), observed between 2003 and 2020, from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search follow-up program. Our SESN sample consists of 19 spectroscopically normal SNe Ib, 2 peculiar SNe Ib, six SNe Ibn, 14 normal SNe Ic, 1 peculiar SN Ic, 10 SNe Ic-BL, 15 SNe IIb, 1 ambiguous SN IIb/Ib/c, and 2 superluminous SNe. Our follow-up photometry has (on a per-SN basis) a mean coverage of 81 photometric points (median of 58 points) and a mean cadence of 3.6 d (median of 1.2 d). From our full sample, a subset of 38 SNe have pre-maximum coverage in at least one passband, allowing for the peak brightness of each SN in this subset to be quantitatively determined. We describe our data collection and processing techniques, with emphasis toward our automated photometry pipeline, from which we derive publicly available data products to enable and encourage further study by the community. Using these data products, we derive host-galaxy extinction values through the empirical colour evolution relationship and, for the first time, produce accurate rise-time measurements for a large sample of SESNe in both optical and infrared passbands. By modelling multiband light curves, we find that SNe Ic tend to have lower ejecta masses and lower ejecta velocities than SNe Ib and IIb, but higher 56Ni masses.

Lick Observatory↗
DOE OSTI2018

NCRP Program Area Committee 3: Nuclear and Radiological Security and Safety [Update on the Ncrp Program Area Committee 3 Activities: Nuclear And Radiological Security and Safety]

The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) Program Area Committee (PAC) 3 covers the broad subject of nuclear and radiological security and safety and provides guidance and recommendations for response to nuclear and radiological incidents of both an accidental and deliberate nature. In 2017, PAC 3 Scientific Committee 3-1 completed the development of Guidance for Emergency Responder Dosimetry, and began development of a companion commentary on operational aspects of that guidance. PAC 3 members also organized the technical program for the 2017 Annual Meeting of the NCRP on “Assessment of National Efforts in Emergency Preparedness for Nuclear Terrorism: Is There a Need for Realignment to Close Remaining Gaps.” Based on discussions and presentations at the annual meeting, PAC 3 is working to develop a commentary on the subject that could serve as a roadmap for focusing our national efforts on the most pressing needs for preparing the nation for nuclear and radiological emergencies. PAC 3 is also engaged in active discussions, exploring the landscape of priority issues for its future activities. Lastly, an important consideration in this discussion is the extent of NCRP’s present and potential future resources to support the work of its scientific committees.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2019

Approximate Mixed-Integer Programming Solution with Machine Learning Technique and Linear Programming Relaxation

Security constrained unit commitment (SCUC) is solved in the day-ahead electricity market to determine electricity generation schedule for the following date. The associated mixed integer programming (MIP) problem is known computationally hard. Heuristics like rounding can be computationally efficient for solving large MIP problems however often produces lower quality solutions due to discrepancy between MIP solution and linear programming relaxation (LPR) solution, i.e., variables taking different discrete values between MIP and LPR solutions. In this work, we applied the machine learning-based algorithms—Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model and random forest (RF) model—to obtain an LPR-based approximation that close to an MIP solution without actually solving the MIP problem. By computing feature importance derived from the CART and RF models, we assessed the link between coefficients in the MIP model, the LPR solution, and the optimal solution of the MIP problem. We applied the CART and RF approaches to solve SCUC problems using day-ahead energy market cases from Midcontinent Independent System Operator. The results show that our method is computationally efficient and could achieve an approximation sufficiently close to the SCUC solution with <0.15% error and ~78% reduction in the discrepancies between LPR and MIP solutions.

Lin, Xinming↗
DOE OSTI2022

Buggy-Program-Program

The purpose of this code is to automatically create random C programs that are guaranteed to have bugs of a particular "interestingness". We are using this to train learning machines to fuzz programs better. Other people might want to use it for training humans to examine software.

Ivans, RobertC.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Glass structure and crystallization in boro-alumino-silicate glasses containing rare earth and transition metal cations: a US-UK collaborative program

Nuclear wastes generated from reprocessing of used nuclear fuel tend to contain a large fraction of rare earth (RE, e.g., Nd3+), transition (TM, e.g., Mo6+, Zr4+), alkali (A, e.g., Cs+), and alkaline earth cations (AE, e.g., Ba2+, Sr2+). Various strategies have been considered for immobilizing such waste streams, varying from nominally crystal-free glass to glass-ceramic to multi-phase ceramic waste forms. For glass and glass-ceramic waste forms, the added glass-forming system is generally alkali-alkaline earth-aluminoborosilicate (i.e., Na-Ca-Al-B-Si oxide). In a US-UK collaborative project, summarized here, we investigated the glass structure and crystallization dependence on compositional changes in simulated nuclear waste glasses and glass-ceramics. Compositions ranged in complexity from five – to – eight oxides. Specifically, the roles of Mo and rare earths are investigated, since a proposed glass-ceramic waste form contains crystalline phases such as powellite [(AE,A,RE)MoO4] and oxyapatite [(RE,AE,A)10Si6O26], and the precipitation of molybdenum phases is known to be affected by the rare earth concentration in the glass. Additionally, the effects of other chemical additions have been systematically investigated, including Zr, Ru, P, and Ti. A series of studies were also undertaken to ascertain the effect of the RE size on glass structure and on partitioning to crystal phases, investigating similarities and differences in glasses containing single RE oxides of Sc, Y, La, Ce, Nd, Sm, Er, Yb, or Lu. Finally, the effect of charge compensation was investigated by considering not only the commonly assessed peralkaline glass but also metaluminous and peraluminous compositions. Glass structure and crystallization studies were conducted by spectroscopic methods (i.e., Raman, X-ray absorption, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), optical absorption, photoluminescence, photoluminescence excitation, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), microscopy (i.e., scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, electron probe microanalysis), scattering (i.e., X-ray and neutron diffraction, small angle measurements), and physical characterization (i.e., differential thermal analysis, liquidus, viscosity, density). This paper will give an overview of the research program and some example unpublished results on glass-ceramic crystallization kinetics, microstructure, and Raman spectra, as well as some examples of the effects of rare earths on the absorption, luminescence, and NMR spectra of starting glasses. The formal collaboration described here has resulted in the generation of a large number of results, some of which are still in the process of being published as separate studies.

McCloy, John S.↗
DOE OSTI2018

The Future of U.S. Electricity Efficiency Programs Funded by Utility Customers: Program Spending and Savings Projections to 2030

Electric utility customers spent about $5.8 billion on energy efficiency programs in 2016 to cost-effectively offset a portion of growth in U.S. power needs. That, in turn, affects the need for investment in new electricity infrastructure, across generation, transmission and distribution systems. A new study by Berkeley Lab provides a bottom-up assessment of the potential impact of existing and likely state policies and market conditions to promote or constrain future spending and savings for electricity efficiency programs funded by utility customers in all U.S. states.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Applying Non-Energy Impacts from Other Jurisdictions in Cost-Benefit Analyses of Energy Efficiency Programs: Resources for States for Utility Customer-Funded Programs

Avoided energy and capacity costs are the primary yardstick utilities use to determine which energy efficiency programs are cost-effective for their customers. But sometimes "non-energy impacts" — not commonly recognized as directly associated with energy generation, transmission and distribution — represent substantial benefits, such as improving comfort, air quality and public health. Considering whether and how to include non-energy impacts is an important part of cost-benefit analyses for these programs. This report offers practical considerations for deciding which non-energy impacts to include and how to apply values or methods from other jurisdictions. Researchers reviewed studies quantifying non-energy impacts used in 30 states and applied a five-point system to indicate transferability of a value or method from each study for 16 categories of non-energy impacts: Water resource costs and benefits; Other fuels costs and benefits; Avoided environmental compliance costs; Environmental impacts; Productivity; Health and safety; Asset value; Energy and/or capacity price suppression effects; Avoided costs of compliance with Renewable Portfolio Standard requirements; Avoided credit and collection costs; Avoided ancillary services; Comfort; Economic development and job impacts; Public health impacts; Energy security impacts; Increased reliability. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office supported this work.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Augmented Monitoring and Condition Assessment Program (AMCAP) Material Test Reactor (MTR) (Fuel Inspection Program Report)

The AMCAP MTR Fuel Inspection Program, a special inspection program comprised of four inspection campaigns, examined a total of ten (10) pre-selected aluminum-clad, aluminum-based fuel core spent nuclear fuel assemblies (ASNF) stored in the L Area Disassembly Basin (L Basin) at the Savannah River Site. A full description of the inspections and the results are reported. The fuel had been stored in bundled-tube storage (Vertical Tube Storage) for periods of 18 to 21 years. The prior service experience of the individual 10 assemblies varies, but all included irradiation followed by wet storage at international research reactor sites prior to shipment to the US and storage in L Basin. The 10 assemblies were expected to be among the “worst"’ in terms of prior corrosion damage of the entire inventory of the direct-bundle-stored ASNF in L Basin. The inventory of MTR ASNF in L Basin will continue to be stored in the bundled-tube configuration or in slug-storage buckets with inserts pending retrieval for ultimate disposition. The MTR fuel inspections focused on collecting information for characterization of the material condition of the ASNF considering various types of aluminum fuel corrosion degradation of its assembled materials in water storage. A custom-designed Fuel Inspection Table was used to stage the fuel for remote, enhanced visual examination (close-up video imaging & recording) with controlled lighting and positioning that enables reproducibility of imaging conditions. The inspections were conducted by fuel subject matter expert staff from Spent Fuel Project Engineering (SFPE) and the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). Stills captured from the video records were used to compare the corrosion evolution from previous records, as available. This evaluation of the inspection results including the comparison to the previous inspection results demonstrate that the water quality and the storage configuration of ASNF in L Basin do not cause aggressive corrosion degradation of the fuel; mitigation of the prior corrosion degradation of the fuel also appears to have been achieved with the good water quality conditions of L Basin. Recommendations are made for future inspection of the fuel to trend corrosion degradation and demonstrate continued safe wet storage of the ASNF in L Basin. The next fuel examination is recommended to be performed in 5 years.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2026

History of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program – Volume 1: Program Summary (Final Report 2026)

The History Project of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP or the CSEP Program) was initiated in 2010 to document CSEPP’s extraordinary efforts and achievements. CSEPP was implemented to enhance emergency preparedness at U.S. Army installations and their surrounding communities as the Army’s stockpile of chemical weapons was being destroyed.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2026

Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program (CHIRP) Handbook: CHIRP Program Document 2026

The Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program (CHIRP) handbook outlines a comprehensive framework designed to advance space cybersecurity education, workforce development, recruitment efforts for United States Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command (SSC) and the Department of the Airforce, and foster students’ professional growth. It provides an overview of CHIRP's objectives and strategic focus, establishing the foundation for participant engagement through a network of collaborations with academic institutions, contracted industry partners, training and certification organizations, federal agencies, and community organizations. It states a clear participation strategy for SSC and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for program execution and successful support for student transition to a career in space cybersecurity.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2026

Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program (CHIRP) Student Research Report: Program Analysis

The Cybersecurity and Space Systems Research Program (CHIRP) conducted multi-year, mission-focused research addressing emerging cybersecurity challenges affecting space and ground systems. Students from California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB), University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), and California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) conducted structured research, developed proof-of-concept demonstrations, participated in applied cybersecurity training, and collaborated with Space Systems Command (SSC), academic, and industry partners. This report documents the research questions, methodologies, findings, demonstrations, and student contributions associated with each cohort. It also summarizes the program’s workforce-development outcomes, including applied cybersecurity training, professional certifications, technical credentials, and partnerships with organizations such as CT Cubed, Inc. and ISC2. Collectively, CHIRP strengthened the space-cybersecurity workforce pipeline and produced research and prototype efforts that may inform future cybersecurity assessments, test and evaluation activities, cyber-range development, acquisition planning, operational training, and mission-assurance initiatives.

McKenzie, Penny L.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Estimation of the Fuel Efficiency Potential of Six Gasoline Blendstocks Identified by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines Program

Six blendstocks identified by the Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines Program were used to prepare fuel blends using a fixed blendstock for oxygenate blending and a target RON of 97. The blendstocks included ethanol, n-propanol, isopropanol, isobutanol, diisobutylene, and a bioreformate surrogate. The blends were analyzed and used to establish interaction factors for a non-linear molar blending model that was used to predict RON and MON of volumetric blends of the blendstocks up to 35 vol%. Projections of efficiency increase, volumetric fuel economy increase, and tailpipe CO2 emissions decrease were produced using two different estimation techniques to evaluate the potential benefits of the blendstocks. Ethanol was projected to provide the greatest benefits in efficiency and tailpipe CO2 emissions, but at intermediate levels of volumetric fuel economy increase over a smaller range of blends than other blendstocks. A bioreformate surrogate blendstock was projected to provide the greatest increase in volumetric fuel economy and the lowest increase in efficiency. Tailpipe CO2 emissions for blends of the bioreformate surrogate were higher at all blend levels compared to the baseline E10 fuel.

02 PETROLEUM↗