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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 775 records · Page 43
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

California GAMA Special Study. Development of a Capability for the Analysis of Krypton-85 in Groundwater Samples

A capability for the analysis of krypton-85 ( 85 Kr) in groundwater samples was developed at LLNL. Samples are collected by extracting gas from 2000-4000 L of groundwater at the well, yielding approximately 0.2 cm 3 STP krypton. Sample collection takes 1 to 4 hours. Krypton is purified in the laboratory using a combination of molecular sieve and activated charcoal traps, and transferred to a liquid scintillation vial. The 85 Kr activity is measured by liquid scintillation on a Quantulus 1220 liquid scintillation counter from PerkinElmer. The detection limit for a typical 0.2 cm 3 Kr sample size is 11% of the present day activity in air, corresponding to the decay corrected activity in air in 1987. The typical measurement uncertainty is below 10% for recently recharged samples. Six groundwater samples were collected, purified and counted. 85 Kr was not detected in any of the samples counted at LLNL. 85 Kr was detected by the low level counting laboratory of Bern University in all samples between 1.5 and 6.6 decays per minute per cm 3 krypton, corresponding to decay corrected activities in air between 1971 and 1985. The new capability is an excellent complement to tritium-helium, expanding the existing suite of age dating tools available to the GAMA program ( 35 S, 3 H/ 3 He, 14 C and radiogenic helium). 85 Kr can replace 3 H/ 3 He in settings where 3 H/ 3 He ages are impossible to determine (for example where terrigenic helium overwhelms tritiogenic helium) and provides additional insight into travel time distributions in complex mixed groundwater systems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Technique development for modulus, microcracking, hermeticity, and coating evaluation capability characterization of SiC/SiC tubes

Driven by the need to enlarge the safety margins of nuclear fission reactors in accident scenarios, research and development of accident-tolerant fuel has become an important topic in the nuclear engineering and materials community. A continuous-fiber SiC/SiC composite is under consideration as a replacement for traditional zirconium alloy cladding owing to its high-temperature stability, chemical inertness, and exceptional irradiation resistance. An important task is the development of characterization techniques for SiC/SiC cladding, since traditional work using rectangular bars or disks cannot directly provide useful information on the properties of SiC/SiC composite tubes for fuel cladding applications. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, experimental capabilities are under development to characterize the modulus, microcracking, and hermeticity of as-fabricated, as-irradiated SiC/SiC composite tubes. Resonant ultrasound spectroscopy has been validated as a promising technique to evaluate the elastic properties of SiC/SiC composite tubes and microcracking within the material. A similar technique, impulse excitation, is efficient in determining the basic mechanical properties of SiC bars prepared by chemical vapor deposition; it also has potential for application in studying the mechanical properties of SiC/SiC composite tubes. Complete evaluation of the quality of the developed coatings, a major mitigation strategy against gas permeation and hydrothermal corrosion, requires the deployment of various experimental techniques, such as scratch indentation, tensile pulling-off tests, and scanning electron microscopy. In addition, a comprehensive permeation test station is being established to assess the hermeticity of SiC/SiC composite tubes and to determine the H/D/He permeability of SiC/SiC composites. This report summarizes the current status of the development of these experimental capabilities.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Progress on FP13 Total Cross Section Measurements Capability

An accurate knowledge of the neutron capture cross section is important for many applications. Experimental measurements are important since theoretical calculations of capture have been notoriously difficult, with the ratio of measured to calculated cross sections often a factor of 2 or more in the 10 keV to 1 MeV region. However, a direct measurement of capture cannot be made on many interesting radioactive nuclides because of their short half-life or backgrounds caused by their nuclear decay. On the other hand, neutron transmission measurements of the total cross section are feasible for a wide range of radioactive nuclides since the detectors are far from the sample, and often are less sensitive to decay radiation. The parameters extracted from a total cross section measurement, which include the average resonance spacing, the neutron strength function, and the average total radiation width, (Γ γ ), provide tight constraints on the calculation of the capture cross section, and when applied produce much more accurate results. These measurements can be made using the intense epithermal neutron flux at the Lujan Center on relatively small quantities of target material. It was the purpose of this project to investigate and develop the capability to make these measurements. A great deal of progress was made towards establishing this capability during 2016, including setting up the flight path and obtaining preliminary results, but more work remains to be done.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2016

New Capabilities for Hostile Environments on Z Grand Challenge LDRD - Final Status

The purpose of this project was to develop new physical simulation capabilities in order to support the science-based qualification of nonnuclear weapon components in hostile radiation environments. The project contributes directly to the goals of maintaining a safe, secure, and effective US nuclear stockpile, maintaining strategic deterrence at lower nuclear force levels, extending the life of the nuclear deterrent capability, and to be ready for technological surprise.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2017

Current Capabilities at SNL for the Integration of Small Modular Reactors onto Smart Microgrids Using Sandia's Smart Microgrid Technology High Performance Computing and Advanced Manufacturing.

Smart grids are a crucial component for enabling the nation’s future energy needs, as part of a modernization effort led by the Department of Energy. Smart grids and smart microgrids are being considered in niche applications, and as part of a comprehensive energy strategy to help manage the nation’s growing energy demands, for critical infrastructures, military installations, small rural communities, and large populations with limited water supplies. As part of a far-reaching strategic initiative, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) presents herein a unique, three-pronged approach to integrate small modular reactors (SMRs) into microgrids, with the goal of providing economically-competitive, reliable, and secure energy to meet the nation’s needs. SNL’s triad methodology involves an innovative blend of smart microgrid technology, high performance computing (HPC), and advanced manufacturing (AM). In this report, Sandia’s current capabilities in those areas are summarized, as well as paths forward that will enable DOE to achieve its energy goals. In the area of smart grid/microgrid technology, Sandia’s current computational capabilities can model the entire grid, including temporal aspects and cyber security issues. Our tools include system development, integration, testing and evaluation, monitoring, and sustainment.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2017

Sandia QIS Capabilities.

Sandia National Laboratories has developed a broad set of capabilities in quantum information science (QIS), including elements of quantum computing, quantum communications, and quantum sensing. The Sandia QIS program is built atop unique DOE investments at the laboratories, including the MESA microelectronics fabrication facility, the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) facilities (joint with LANL), the Ion Beam Laboratory, and ASC High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities. Sandia has invested $75 M of LDRD funding over 12 years to develop unique, differentiating capabilities that leverage these DOE infrastructure investments.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

System Reliability Analysis Capability and Surrogate Model Application in RAVEN

This report collect the effort performed to improve the reliability analysis capabilities of the RAVEN code and explore new opportunity in the usage of surrogate model by extending the current RAVEN capabilities to multi physics surrogate models and construction of surrogate models for high dimensionality fields.

31274↗
DOE OSTI2017

Code Verification Capabilities and Assessments in Support of ASC V&V Level 2 Milestone #6035

This document provides a summary of the code verification activities supporting the FY17 Level 2 V&V milestone entitled “Deliver a Capability for V&V Assessments of Code Implementations of Physics Models and Numerical Algorithms in Support of Future Predictive Capability Framework Pegposts.” The physics validation activities supporting this milestone are documented separately. The objectives of this portion of the milestone are: 1) Develop software tools to support code verification analysis; 2) Document standard definitions of code verification test problems; and 3) Perform code verification assessments (focusing on error behavior of algorithms). This report and a set of additional standalone documents serve as the compilation of results demonstrating accomplishment of these objectives.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

CASL Dakota Capabilities Summary

The Dakota software project serves the mission of Sandia National Laboratories and supports a worldwide user community by delivering state-of-the-art research and robust, usable software for optimization and uncertainty quantification. These capabilities enable advanced exploration and riskinformed prediction with a wide range of computational science and engineering models. Dakota is the verification and validation (V&V) / uncertainty quantification (UQ) software delivery vehicle for CASL, allowing analysts across focus areas to apply these capabilities to myriad nuclear engineering analyses.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

NSR&D FY17 Report: CartaBlanca Capability Enhancements

Over the last several years, particle technology in the CartaBlanca code has been matured and has been successfully applied to a wide variety of physical problems. It has been shown that the particle methods, especially Los Alamos's dual domain material point method, is capable of computing many problems involves complex physics, chemistries accompanied by large material deformations, where the traditional finite element or Eulerian method encounter significant difficulties. In FY17, the CartaBlanca code has been enhanced with physical models and numerical algorithms. We started out to compute penetration and HE safety problems. Most of the year we focused on the TEPLA model improvement testing against the sweeping wave experiment by Gray et al., because it was found that pore growth and material failure are essentially important for our tasks and needed to be understood for modeling the penetration and the can experiments efficiently. We extended the TEPLA mode from the point view of ensemble phase average to include the effects of nite deformation. It is shown that the assumed pore growth model in TEPLA is actually an exact result from the theory. Alone this line, we then generalized the model to include finite deformations to consider nonlinear dynamics of large deformation. The interaction between the HE product gas and the solid metal is based on the multi-velocity formation. Our preliminary numerical results suggest good agreement between the experiment and the numerical results, pending further verification. To improve the parallel processing capabilities of the CartaBlanca code, we are actively working with the Next Generation Code (NGC) project to rewrite selected packages using C++. This work is expected to continue in the following years. This effort also makes the particle technology developed with CartaBlanca project available to other part of the laboratory. Working with the NGC project and rewriting some parts of the code also given us an opportunity to improve our numerical implementations of the method and to take advantage of recently advances in the numerical methods, such as multiscale algorithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

BISON FY17 Accident Capability Development

The CASL-funded development work accomplished for milestone L2:FMC.P15.04 and described herein includes important new capabilities necessary for LOCA analysis, specifically: 1) an empirical model for axial fuel relocation as a consequence of cladding ballooning, and 2) energy deposition in Zircaloy cladding due to the highly exothermic steam oxidation reaction at high cladding temperatures. A separate chapter documents each of these new capabilities, with further documentation included in the BISON user documentation.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Building a Predictive Capability for Decision-Making that Supports MultiPEM

Multi-phenomenological explosion monitoring (multiPEM) is a developing science that uses multiple geophysical signatures of explosions to better identify and characterize their sources. MultiPEM researchers seek to integrate explosion signatures together to provide stronger detection, parameter estimation, or screening capabilities between different sources or processes. This talk will address forming a predictive capability for screening waveform explosion signatures to support multiPEM.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2018

Deploy production sliding mesh capability with linear solver benchmarking.

Wind applications require the ability to simulate rotating blades. To support this use-case, a novel design-order sliding mesh algorithm has been developed and deployed. The hybrid method combines the control volume finite element methodology (CVFEM) with concepts found within a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method (FEM) to manage a sliding mesh. The method has been demonstrated to be design-order for the tested polynomial basis (P=1 and P=2) and has been deployed to provide production simulation capability for a Vestas V27 (225 kW) wind turbine. Other stationary and canonical rotating ow simulations are also presented. As the majority of wind-energy applications are driving extensive usage of hybrid meshes, a foundational study that outlines near-wall numerical behavior for a variety of element topologies is presented. Results indicate that the proposed nonlinear stabilization operator (NSO) is an effective stabilization methodology to control Gibbs phenomena at large cell Peclet numbers. The study also provides practical mesh resolution guidelines for future analysis efforts. Application-driven performance and algorithmic improvements have been carried out to increase robustness of the scheme on hybrid production wind energy meshes. Specifically, the Kokkos-based Nalu Kernel construct outlined in the FY17/Q4 ExaWind milestone has been transitioned to the hybrid mesh regime. This code base is exercised within a full V27 production run. Simulation timings for parallel search and custom ghosting are presented. As the low-Mach application space requires implicit matrix solves, the cost of matrix reinitialization has been evaluated on a variety of production meshes. Results indicate that at low element counts, i.e., fewer than 100 million elements, matrix graph initialization and preconditioner setup times are small. However, as mesh sizes increase, e.g., 500 million elements, simulation time associated with \setup-up" costs can increase to nearly 50% of overall simulation time when using the full Tpetra solver stack and nearly 35% when using a mixed Tpetra- Hypre-based solver stack. The report also highlights the project achievement of surpassing the 1 billion element mesh scale for a production V27 hybrid mesh. A detailed timing breakdown is presented that again suggests work to be done in the setup events associated with the linear system. In order to mitigate these initialization costs, several application paths have been explored, all of which are designed to reduce the frequency of matrix reinitialization. Methods such as removing Jacobian entries on the dynamic matrix columns (in concert with increased inner equation iterations), and lagging of Jacobian entries have reduced setup times at the cost of numerical stability. Artificially increasing, or bloating, the matrix stencil to ensure that full Jacobians are included is developed with results suggesting that this methodology is useful in decreasing reinitialization events without loss of matrix contributions. With the above foundational advances in computational capability, the project is well positioned to begin scientific inquiry on a variety of wind-farm physics such as turbine/turbine wake interactions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2018

New High-Resolution Electron Scattering Capability

This project explored a new capability for studying collisions of electrons and molecules with unprecedented accuracy by combining high electron-energy resolution with velocity mapped imaging of electrons. Low-energy electrons were produced within a supersonic beam by photoionization of metastable krypton using a dye laser to generate electrons with tunable kinetic energy and a narrow energy spread. A new configuration for electron imaging optics was developed to enable scattering of electrons in a zero-field environment with subsequent rapidly pulsed velocity mapped imaging of the electrons. Development of this new capability will significantly enhance DOE/NNSA's ability to perform basic research on processes relevant to plasmas in atmospheric re-entry and neutron generation for weapons systems and provide fundamental understanding of electron-driven chemistry important to solar energy conversion.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2018

Applications of SHARP Toolkit to SFR Challenging Problems: Evaluation of Hot Channel Factors and Demonstration of Zooming Capability

The Simulation-based High-efficiency Advanced Reactor Prototyping (SHARP) toolkit is under development by the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Campaign of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy. Beginning in FY17, the NEAMS Campaign initiated the “Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) Challenge Problems” task to apply its advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to important SFR applications. The scope of work includes two major items: the assessment of hot channel factors (HCFs) and the demonstration of a local refinement “zooming” capability, both using the SHARP toolkit. Resolving these challenge problems with the SHARP toolkit can significantly improve the economic competitiveness of an SFR as well as make the tools more accessible for full core confirmatory calculations.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Advanced Capabilities in GOMA 6.0 - Augmenting Conditions Automatic Continuation and Linear Stability Analysis

This document describes the form and use of three supplemental capabilities added to Goma during 1998 -- augmenting conditions, automatic continuation and linear stability analysis. Augmenting conditions allow the addition of constraints and auxiliary conditions which describe the relationship between unknowns, boundary conditions, material properties and post-processing extracted quantities. Automatic continuation refers to a family of algorithms (zeroth and first order here, single and multi-parameter) that allow tracking steady-state solution paths as material parameters or boundary conditions are varied. The stability analysis capability in Goma uses the method of small disturbances and superposition of normal modes to test the stability of a steady- state flow, i.e., it determines if the disturbance grows or decays in time.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Daily Market Analysis Capability and Results

Nuclear energy plays an important role in the U.S. energy mix that will likely need to be maintained or strengthened to achieve significant greenhouse gas reduction. However, maintaining the nuclear portfolio becomes increasingly challenging in the current U.S. energy market since the low price of natural gas and the penetration of subsidized and low-marginal cost variable renewable electricity (VRE) are affecting the profitability of nuclear units. In this context, building new nuclear power plants will require increased competitiveness with reduced capital and O&M costs and increased revenues enabled by changes in market policies or increased flexible operation. Within the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, the System Analysis and Integration Campaign has been acquiring the capability to model energy market economics in order to assist decision makers and nuclear utilities. The methods developed and codes acquired are displayed in Figure 1. The objective of this report is to describe the tools acquired for market analysis, and to illustrate their capabilities and complementarities with an example of analysis.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2019

(U) LNK3DNT Capability in SENSMG Extended

The SENSMG multigroup neutron sensitivity code can read materials and geometry from redoin and lnk3dnt files written by the PARTISN multigroup discrete ordinates code or the MCNP6 Monte Carlo code. This report describes the user interface for this capability and the code verification that was done. Reference 5 described an initial version of this capability. Two important extensions have been made: 1) Reaction-rate ratios are now allowed as responses with redoin/lnk3dnt inputs; and 2) Sensitivities of reaction-rate ratios to mass densities and interface locations are now calculated (for all problems, not just redoin/lnk3dnt problems).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗