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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 991 records · Page 55
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

TA-16-0303 Crystal Grow Lab Renovation

The LANL High Explosives (HE) Crystal Lab at TA-40 Building 12 is a unique, and nearly the sole, national resource for the growth and sample preparation of large HE single crystals and related materials. This work has outgrown is current facility and is in dire need of both additional space and modern lab technology. The goal of this project is to renovate the 1950’s era building TA-16-303 to accommodate these operations and successfully relocate them from TA-40-12. Phase 1 of this project, completed in May of 2018, was to de-energize the facility and perform cleanup / remediation activities. Phase 2, the actual renovation of the facility, is currently underway and scheduled to achieve Occupancy by September of 2020.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Guided Approach to Setting up Your Workstation at Home [Slides]

Due to COVID-19 LANL has moved to a reality where most people are telecommuting from their homes and social distancing measures require a new normal. This requires the challenge of setting up an at home workstation to be as ergonomically friendly as possible. Sometimes space within the home is limited and office space may double as a dining space, kitchen counter or general use area. Other times, a desk and chair are present, but may not have the adjustability needed to provide a suitable long-term work environment. When setting up the home work environment remember to implement ergonomics basics.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Getting things done onsite: Heat Source production never ramps down

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many norms in the world and at LANL. During the rapid transition of sending many to work from home in March, some programs were deemed mission critical, with the expectation to continue driving their missions forward. One of those essential programs is Heat Source Technologies, a group within the Actinide Material Power & Processing (AMPP) Division at TA-55. Within the Associate Laboratory Directorate of Weapons Production (ALDWP), the group responsible for the Pu-238 heat sources continued their work nearly uninterrupted as many others made the mandatory transition to work remotely. This group, known as AMPP-1, Heat Source Technologies, works on the production line producing heat sources from Plutonium (Pu)-238, which is an essential mission for National Security. This group is comprised of nearly 90 employees and operates out of the TA-55 Plutonium Facility (PF-4 and PF-5) producing heat sources. Heat source production includes the operations that purify, process, and weld Pu-238 oxide into encapsulated heat sources that are essential for space and defense missions.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2020

Otowi Well No. 4 Analytical Results

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Laboratory) collected soil samples near Otowi Well No. 4 on behalf of Los Alamos County (LAC) to address health and safety concerns related to potential radioactive contamination in Los Alamos canyon. Oil had spilled from Otowi Well No. 4 and sampling was to determine if radiological contamination in the soils to be excavated in response to that spill presented a health or safety risk to LAC personnel who would be involved in the cleanup. Results of the sampling event are attached to this memo.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Site-wide occupancy assessment using camera traps for seven mammalian species at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or Laboratory) is committed to solving national security challenges through scientific excellence and has been serving the nation and northern New Mexico for over 70 years. Being located on the Pajarito Plateau in the eastern flanks of the Jemez Mountains, the Laboratory is surrounded by a rich diversity of plants and animals. It is common to see many different species of wildlife on Laboratory property; however, sometimes interactions with wildlife can be negative. Vehicle accidents with wildlife have become a common occurrence. With the current and ongoing expansion of the Laboratory on the Pajarito Plateau, it has the potential to further impact wildlife movement including large game species. Local agencies and tribal Pueblos rely on large game species and do not want these species to be restricted from moving across property boundaries. Temporal and spatial aspects of where wildlife occur on the site is a phenomena that is either not well understood in uncommon species or needs periodic reevaluation for common species. Estimating the distribution of multiple species across the landscape provides wildlife biologists with crucial information for monitoring and conserving animal populations in a particular area. Utilizing motion activated wildlife cameras, also known as camera traps, to monitor wildlife populations has become an essential tool for biologists. Camera traps are non-invasive and cost-effective and can document multiple elusive or uncommon wildlife species, such as carnivores, simultaneously. Occupancy modeling provides a flexible framework for the analysis of the distribution for multiple wildlife species. It explicitly recognizes whether a species is spatially common or rare (occupancy = ψ) and if that species is easy or hard to detect (detection probability = p ). Multispecies and multi-season occupancy models can detect trends in species occupancy because individual species may vary in seasonal movements, detection probability, and transition rates between habitats. In this study, we assessed the site as a whole to ascertain when and where medium and large mammal species are present. Understanding wildlife patterns at the Laboratory will better inform future management decisions regarding land use and development strategies. We placed motion activated wildlife cameras in a random systematic sampling design and used these data to create occupancy models. We tested for differences in single-species occupancy and detection probability by season of mammal species captured on 20 camera traps placed across the Laboratory in a 40 mi² (103 km²) area. We focus the interpretation of our findings on seven mammal species found during this study. They are Rocky Mountain elk ( Cervus canadensis nelsoni ; hereafter “elk”), mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ; hereafter “deer”), mountain lion ( Puma concolor ; hereafter “lion”), American black bear ( Ursus americanus ; hereafter “bear”), coyote ( Canis latrans ), bobcat ( Lynx rufus ), and gray fox ( Urocyon cinereoargenteus ; hereafter “fox”).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

FY19 R&D University Subcontracts [Slides]

“University Subcontracts” are agreements between LANL and universities and other educational non-profits for unclassified research and development.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

AMPP Newsletter - May 2020

A message from Stacy McLaughlin, Division Leader: I am excited to introduce the second 2020 issue of Actinide Materials Processing and Power Division’s newsletter, with a focus on “excellence in Plutonium missions.” AMPP Division not only supports the 2020 Laboratory Agenda item 1, Excellence in Nuclear Security, but additionally directly supports Laboratory Agenda item 2, Excellence in Mission- Focused Science Technology & Engineering, focusing on sustaining and enhancing LANL’s science base. This issue highlights the diverse efforts of personnel in AMPP Division to enhance science, technology, and engineering (ST&E) at the Laboratory. As we reflect on work at the Laboratory, mostly from our homes due to COVID-19, it is gratifying to see the important, diverse contributions to ST&E across AMPP Division.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2020

Actinide Research Quarterly, First Quarter 2020: 25 Years, Commemorative Issue, 9 Articles from the Archive

This quarter we are celebrating the 25 th anniversary of Actinide Research Quarterly. The publication was established in 1995 by the former Nuclear Materials Technology Division of TA-55 at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), before later becoming part of the Glenn T. Seaborg Institute and the National Security Education Center. A total of 64 issues have been produced, covering the full spectrum of topics related to actinide science and research, including contributions from esteemed scientists such as Glenn Seaborg and Siegfried Hecker. This back catalog is available electronically at www.lanl.gov/arq.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Cylindrical Implosion Platform: Recent Results and Next Steps [Slides]

LANL has reinvested in a cylindrical implosion platform, enabling direct measurements of instability growth in convergent geometries. Scale-invariant hydrodynamic instability growth is observed in cylindrical implosions at OMEGA and NIF that varied in radial size and implosion time-scale by a factor of 3 (CR=2.25). Greatly improved NIF data at CR=5 are currently being analyzed. The cylindrical implosion platform is growing: Larger scale-4 cylinders will be fielded at the NIF; Point-projection sidelighters for the NIF implosions; Gas-filled designs should increase CR>10; Double cylinders are being pursued for FY22 and beyond; Results will aid in V&V efforts for 3D hydrodynamics in xRAGE.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Processing MCNP Elemental Edit Outputs

The Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) Monte Carlo N-Particle® (MCNP®) transport code version 6 has the capability for tracking particles on unstructured mesh (UM) geometry models. The MCNP UM feature was originally designed for the UM models created by the Abaqus/CAE software product. The MCNP version 6.2.0 and later recognizes the UM models read from Abaqus INP files or MCNPUM files converted from Abaqus INP files. Other finite element analysis software packages may generate UM models and then convert these models into Abaqus INP formats.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Fluids, instabilities and turbulence [Slides]

This is a presentation for LANL's Young Women's Summer Camp. After explaining what fluids are and the wide range of applications studying fluids has, properties, patterns, and instabilities are discussed followed by an explanation of turbulence and why it is important. This is placed in the context of what scientists and engineers try to do to unlock the physics of the study of fluids.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

ASCR@40: Highlights and Impacts of ASCR’s Programs

A report compiled by the ASCAC Subcommittee on the 40-year history of ASCR for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) sits within the Office of Science in the Department of Energy (DOE). Per their web pages, “the mission of the ASCR program is to discover, develop, and deploy computational and networking capabilities to analyze, model, simulate, and predict complex phenomena important to the DOE.” This succinct statement encompasses a wide range of responsibilities for computing and networking facilities; for procuring, deploying, and operating high performance computing, networking, and storage resources; for basic research in mathematics and computer science; for developing and sustaining a large body of software; and for partnering with organizations across the Office of Science and beyond. While its mission statement may seem very contemporary, the roots of ASCR are quite deep—long predating the creation of DOE. Applied mathematics and advanced computing were both elements of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project. In the early 1950s, the Manhattan Project scientist and mathematician John von Neumann, then a commissioner for the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), advocated for the creation of a Mathematics program to support the continued development and applications of digital computing. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) scientist John Pasta created such a program to fund researchers at universities and AEC laboratories. Under several organizational name changes, this program has persisted ever since, and would eventually grow to become ASCR.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Isotopic analysis of plutonium measured with very thick absorbers and high-granularity spectra

FRAM is LANL-designed software designed to extract plutonium and uranium isotopic information from gamma ray spectra. This is an important capability for NEST and STAB; however, FRAM performance has been poor when applied to field data collected in these programs. FRAM Version 5 (commercially available) was fine-tuned and validated for laboratory quality measurements but not for measurements of the high-mass and heavily shielded SNM items encountered in NEST. FRAM is untested for spectra collected with high-granularity lower resolution instruments such as the new 8-MeV Detective-X favored by STAB or the new custom electrocooled systems coming into use for NEST. FRAM Version 6.1 (unreleased) has improvements in physics capabilities, and parameter sets may be adapted that are more specific to NEST and STAB, which is what we have attempted for this assignment. Thick shielding attenuates gamma rays profoundly, especially those at low energy, making them too weak to be measured. The missing low-energy peaks force the analysis to employ only the highest-energy peaks. We adapted FRAM 6.1 for analysis of plutonium spectra obtained with very thick Pb filters (a surrogate for NEST-type configurations). New parameter sets employing only very high energy peaks were created for the analysis. High granularity and low resolution make deconvolution of the 600-keV region particularly challenging, and we have worked to optimally extract information from this region. The results shown in this paper give high confidence that we are on the right track. We used a combination of real and synthetically-modified data. Remaining work includes testing the new software and parameters against genuine data collected with Detective-X and new NEST systems, but such datasets at the moment are unavailable. It also remains to develop and test parameter sets specific to uranium and the new detectors.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

W & Q Divisions Summer Overview [Slides]

Topics covered in this presentation include welcome to students, introductions, thanks to our mentors, a brief overview of W/Q Divisions, safety and security, end-of-summer documentation and presentations, and a summary and opportunity for questions and answers. W and Q solve today’s national security challenges through innovative application of engineering principles, while stewarding and expanding LANL’s engineering capabilities to assure answers for tomorrow’s evolving threats.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Summary of the UCLA HANE-Laser Experiment: 2011-2020

In the early years of this century, there was renewed interest at DTRA in artificial radiation belts, the dynamics of high altitude nuclear explosions that produced them, the development of large-scale kinetic plasma computer models at LLNL and LANL (particularly in the form of “hybrid” {i.e., particle ions, massless fluid electrons} algorithms), and the building of a laser facility at UCLA, under the direction of Prof. Niemann, which was connected to the Large Plasma Device (LAPD), a DOE user facility. These advances sparked the idea for a new laser experimental program to examine early-time HANE issues, reviving the concept from a former program at NRL in the 90’s. The basic motivation for this new effort can be traced back to the first DTRA artificial radiation belt workshop at Stanford in 2009. Subsequent discussions then led to a formal proposal from UCLA that was submitted to DTRA (Grant Jones) in 2010, vigorously reviewed, and finally approved in 2011, with funding begun in 2012. An historical perspective of this development process was presented at a DTRA review last year. In this document we review and summarize the major achievements of the DTRA-sponsored UCLA HANE-laser experiment over the past eight years. Our purpose is to briefly describe the major achievements of this program, as documented in the included extensive list of journal publications [which does not include all the publications nor any of the many invited and contributed presentations of the UCLA group], the role of the national laboratories in this effort, and how this work has impacted (and will continue to improve) our understanding of high altitude nuclear events.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Evaluation of Engineered Barrier Systems (FY19 Report)

This report describes research and development (R&D) activities conducted during fiscal year 2019 (FY19) specifically related to the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) R&D Work Package in the Spent Fuel and Waste Science and Technology (SFWST) Campaign supported by the United States (U.S.) Department of Eneregy (DOE). The R&D activities focus on understanding EBS component evolution and interactions within the EBS, as well as interactions between the host media and the EBS. A primary goal is to advance the development of process models that can be implemented directly within the Genreric Disposal System Analysis (GDSA) platform or that can contribute to the safety case in some manner such as building confidence, providing further insight into the processes being modeled, establishing better constraints on barrier performance, etc.The FY19 EBS activities involved not only modeling and analysis work, but experimental work as well. The report documents the FY19 progress made in seven different research areas as follows: (1) thermal analysis for the disposal of dual purpose canisters (DPCs) in sedimentary host rock using the semianalytical method, (2) tetravalent uranium solubility and speciation, (3) modeling of high temperature, thermal-hydrologic-mechanical-chemical (THMC) coupled processes, (4) integration of coupled thermalhydrologic- chemical (THC) model with GDSA using a Reduced-Order Model, (5) studying chemical controls on montmorillonite structure and swelling pressure, (6) transmission x-ray microscope for in-situ nanotomography of bentonite and shale, and (7) in-situ electrochemical testing of uranium dioxide under anoxic conditions. The R&D team consisted of subject matter experts from Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM), the University of California Berkeley, and Mississippi State University. In addition, the EBS R&D work leverages international collaborations to ensure that the DOE program is active and abreast of the latest advances in nuclear waste disposal. For example, the FY19 work on modeling coupled THMC processes at high temperatures relied on the bentonite properties from the Full-scale Engineered Barrier EXperiment (FEBEX) Field Test conducted at the Grimsel Test Site in Switzerland. Overall, significant progress has been made in FY19 towards developing the modeling tools and experimental capabilities needed to investigate the performance of EBS materials and the associated interactions in the drift and the surrounding near-field environment under a variety of conditions including high temperature regimes.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2020

UNR ETI Computational Investigation (Year 2)

The LANL ASC Arbitrary Lagrange/Eulerian (ALE) code, FLAG, is being used to model experiments conducted under this grant in order to understand the physics limiting high-current conduction and thermal plasma production. This includes the effects of nonlinear magnetic diffusion (NLMD), the magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT) instability, and the electro-thermal instability (ETI). FLAG is a multi-dimensional, unstructured-grid, multi-material, multi-temperature, shockphysics code with a single-fluid, resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) package. Equations-ofstate (EOS), conductivity, material-strength, and melt can be treated with a variety of analytic or tabular models.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗