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At least 1,009 records · Page 56
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

NDA Tech: Multimodal Data Fusion with 3D Gamma-Ray Imaging for Safeguards

The ultimate project goal is to improve quantitative results obtained by the IAEA with the H420 gamma ray imager. Distribution to the IAEA will be through incorporation of project results into the software provided with the device by our commercial partner, H3D, Inc. Toward achieving that goal, we have started discussions with H3D to identify the requisite software components and how they will mesh with their own internally developed contextual data systems and other extant software components. We have identified the coded-aperture response data cube as a key structure. Discussions on contextual imaging were informative but somewhat inconclusive as the project lead on contextual data (LBNL) has not been available.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2012

Wire Scanner Beam Profile Measurements for the LANSCE Facility

The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) is replacing beam profile measurement systems, commonly known as Wire Scanners (WS). Using the principal of secondary electron emission, the WS measurement system moves a wire or fiber across an impinging particle beam, sampling a projected transverse-beam distribution. Because existing WS actuators and electronic components are either no longer manufactured or home-built with antiquated parts, a new WS beam profile measurement is being designed, fabricated, and tested. The goals for these new WS's include using off-the-shelf components while eliminating antiquated components, providing quick operation while allowing for easy maintainability, and tolerating external radioactivation. The WS measurement system consists of beam line actuators, a cable plant, an electronics processor chassis, and software located both in the electronics chassis (National Instruments LabVIEW) and in the Central Control Room (EPICS-based client software). This WS measurement system will measure Hand H{sup +} LANSCE-facility beams and will also measure less common beams. This paper describes these WS measurement systems.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Special Issue on Data-Intensive Scalable Computing Systems

Traditional high performance computing (HPC) systems were designed from a compute-centric perspective, with an emphasis on high floating point performance. As scientific and analytics applications become more data intensive, there is a need to rethink HPC system architectures, programming models, runtime systems, and tools with a focus on scalable data intensive computing. Industry approaches supporting data intensive applications have been highly successful, leading many in the HPC community to search for ways to adapt them to HPC hardware and software contexts. Conversely, industry looks to the HPC community for their expertise in designing, deploying, and using extremely large and high performance computing systems. This special issue contains seven articles, each of which is an extended version of a paper presented in the 2015 International Workshop on Data Intensive Scalable Computing Systems (DISCS-2015) held in Austin, Texas on November 15, 2015. The workshop program included papers that ranged from programming models to systems software to storage, each with a strong focus on data intensive computing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Integration and assessment of component health prognostics in supervisory control systems - 291

Enhanced risk monitors (ERMs) for active components in advanced reactor concepts use predictive estimates of component failure to update, in real time, predictive safety and economic risk metrics. These metrics have been shown to be capable of use in optimizing maintenance scheduling and managing plant maintenance costs. Integrating this information with plant supervisory control systems increases the potential for making control decisions that utilize realtime information on component conditions. Such decision making would limit the possibility of plant operations that increase the likelihood of degrading the functionality of one or more components while maintaining the overall functionality of the plant. ERM uses sensor data for providing real-time information about equipment condition for deriving risk monitors. This information is used to estimate the remaining useful life and probability of failure of these components. By combining this information with plant probabilistic risk assessment models, predictive estimates of risk posed by continued plant operation in the presence of detected degradation may be estimated. In this paper, we describe this methodology in greater detail, and discuss its integration with a prototypic software-based plant supervisory control platform. In order to integrate these two technologies and evaluate the integrated system, software to simulate the sensor data was developed, prognostic models for feedwater valves were developed, and several use cases defined. The full paper will describe these use cases, and the results of the initial evaluation. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2026

High-Voltage DC MULTI-terminal SIMulation (HVDC MULTISIM): Technical Program Summary

Expansion of the power grid in the USA is essential to fulfilling the rising energy demand of the country. In particular, the transmission grid, a network of electrical energy corridors that enable the flow of large amounts of energy from the point of generation to the point of consumption, needs significant expansion to cater to this growth of electrification. The current infrastructure is also dated, and any new transmission corridor should be based on a vision of building a modern infrastructure that is futureproof. High voltage DC (HVDC) transmission technology falls in this category: it is the most economical way to build large transmission lines and relies on sophisticated electronics and flexible controls, rather than just passive components like switchgear and transformers. This project is aimed at establishing the technical and economic feasibility of a network of HVDC lines that are interconnected to form a multi-terminal DC network. HVDC transmission is not a new technology and United States has a number of such lines; however, these are point to point transmissions and do not form a DC grid. Modeling and analyzing DC grids is challenging since there are no established modeling tools and the traditional ways of modeling AC grids fall short of providing the fidelity required the fast dynamics of the DC grid. This project aims to build a software-in-the-loop simulator for a multi-terminal HVDC grid, called MULTISIM and, establish new control and protection algorithms to operate such a connected DC system. NLR, a key partner, established the core framework of the MULTISIM simulator and validated its functionality. The GE Vernova team, created a full-scale model of a four-terminal HVDC network using PSCAD (Power Systems Computer Aided Design) software and established the baseline performance of the system during normal and fault operation. The project was started on 10/12024 with a kick-off meeting held on 12/11/2024 and ran through two quarters till termination. All the tasks, milestones and deliverables during this period were met. Several interim reports detailing the various tasks were submitted. The following sections provide details on the completed tasks till the project pause and termination after Q2.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2013

Validation of Non-Invasive Waste Assay System (Gamma Box Counter) Performance at AECL Whiteshell Laboratories - 13136

Low-level radioactive waste (LLW) in solid form, resulting from decommissioning and operations activities at AECL's Whiteshell Laboratories (WL), is packaged in B-25 and B-1000 standard waste containers and characterized before it is shipped to an on-site interim storage facility, pending AECL decisions on long term management of its LLW. Assay of the waste packages before shipment contributes to an inventory of the interim storage facility and provides data to support acceptance at a future repository. A key characterization step is a gamma spectrometric measurement carried out under standard conditions using an automated, multi-detector Waste Assay System (WAS), purchased from Antech Corporation. A combination of ORTEC gamma acquisition software and custom software is used in this system to incorporate multiple measurements from two collimated high-resolution detectors. The software corrects the intensities of the gamma spectral lines for geometry and attenuation, and generates a table of calculated activities or limits of detection for a user-defined list of radioisotopes that may potentially be present. Validation of WAS performance was a prerequisite to routine operation. Documentation of the validation process provides assurance of the quality of the results produced, which may be needed one or two decades after they were generated. Aspects of the validation included setting up a quality control routine, measurements of standard point sources in reproducible positions, study of the gamma background, optimization of user-selectable software parameters, investigation of the effect of non-uniform distribution of materials and radionuclides, and comparison of results with measurements made using other gamma detector systems designed to assay bulk materials. The following key components of the validation process have been established. A daily quality control routine has been instituted, to verify stability of the gamma detector operation and the background levels. A test box containing plywood (specific gravity 0.5) with holes for reproducible positioning of known point sources has been constructed and used in several configurations. Gamma spectra have been processed multiple times with user-adjustable parameters set to a variety of values to gain agreement on the most appropriate settings. A similar optimization process was followed with the custom software provided by the instrument manufacturer to reach agreement on the most stable settings for reliable results. Measurements made with the Canberra In-Situ Object Counting System (ISOCS) instrument were compared with the WAS results as part of an estimate of instrument precision and accuracy. The validation report will conclude with recommendations for the configuration, appropriate use and limitations of the Waste Assay System. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2025

Abbreviated Report for 25-FS-011: Switch and Stitch Similar Subgraph Synthesizer

Government institutions utilize software from a wide array of development sources, including those written by large software companies, government contractors, and open-source repositories. Avoiding installation of malicious software components is an important national security endeavor. Automated analysis of previously unseen software is an active research area, and there is much research in the design of systems that compare new software artifacts to a large set of previously seen software records organized by various behaviors they contain. One attractive approach is to turn each compiled software binary into a graph representation and apply a graph similarity model that scores pairs of binaries by their relative similarity. When a pair is deemed similar, it is useful to know why, in the sense of providing explanations to security analysts regarding which portions of the software they should look into further.

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

Integration and Assessment of Component Health Prognostics in Supervisory Control Systems

Enhanced risk monitors (ERMs) for active components in advanced reactor concepts use predictive estimates of component failure to update, in real time, predictive safety and economic risk metrics. These metrics have been shown to be capable of use in optimizing maintenance scheduling and managing plant maintenance costs. Integrating this information with plant supervisory control systems increases the potential for making control decisions that utilize real-time information on component conditions. Such decision making would limit the possibility of plant operations that increase the likelihood of degrading the functionality of one or more components while maintaining the overall functionality of the plant. ERM uses sensor data for providing real-time information about equipment condition for deriving risk monitors. This information is used to estimate the remaining useful life and probability of failure of these components. By combining this information with plant probabilistic risk assessment models, predictive estimates of risk posed by continued plant operation in the presence of detected degradation may be estimated. In this paper, we describe this methodology in greater detail, and discuss its integration with a prototypic software-based plant supervisory control platform. In order to integrate these two technologies and evaluate the integrated system, software to simulate the sensor data was developed, prognostic models for feedwater valves were developed, and several use cases defined. The full paper will describe these use cases, and the results of the initial evaluation.

Ramuhalli, Pradeep↗
DOE OSTI2018

HyRAM V1.1 User Guide

Hydrogen Risk Assessment Models (HyRAM) is a software toolkit that provides a basis for quantitative risk assessment and consequence modeling for hydrogen infrastructure and transportation systems. HyRAM integrates validated, analytical models of hydrogen behavior, statistics, and a standardized QRA approach to generate useful, repeatable data for the safety analysis of various hydrogen systems. HyRAM is a software developed by Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy. This document demonstrates how to use HyRAM to recreate a hydrogen system and obtain relevant data regarding potential risk. Specific examples are utilized throughout this document, providing detailed tutorials of HyRAM features with respect to hydrogen system safety analysis and risk assessment.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2019

HyRAM V2.0 User Guide

Hydrogen Risk Assessment Models (HyRAM) is a software toolkit that provides a basis for quantitative risk assessment and consequence modeling for hydrogen infrastructure and transportation systems. HyRAM integrates validated, analytical models of hydrogen behavior, statistics, and a standardized QRA approach to generate useful, repeatable data for the safety analysis of various hydrogen systems. HyRAM is a software developed by Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy. This document demonstrates how to use HyRAM to recreate a hydrogen system and obtain relevant data regarding potential risk. Specific examples are utilized throughout this document, providing detailed tutorials of HyRAM features with respect to hydrogen system safety analysis and risk assessment.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2011

Developing Guidelines for Assessing Visual Analytics Environments

Visual analytic systems can be evaluated from a user perspective with quantitative metrics (i.e., time to complete the analysis or the accuracy of the solution found). However, qualitative measures are also useful in a user assessment. These include such measures as the utility of the interactive visualizations in the analysis process and the user's assessment of the efficiency of the analytic process. Quantitative measures can be found if data sets with embedded ground truth are used for analysis. Qualitative measures are more elusive. In this paper we report on an experiment with professional analysts who ranked five of submissions to the VAST 2009 Challenge and provided the rationale for their rankings. Their comments were used in conjunction with a meta-analysis of the 2009 VAST Challenge reviews to produce a set of guidelines for visual analytic systems. As visual analytic software is expected to eventually help in all aspects of analysis, we expect to see future systems provide more help with generating the final report. Hence, researchers also need to have an understanding of what makes a good analytic product. Therefore we asked the analysts to rank the situational assessments of four grand challenge entries and to provide comments on those assessments. We used these comments to produce guidelines for researchers to use in evaluating their analytic reports.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Towards Vendor and Operating System Independence of USB-based portable multi-channel analyzers

The nuclear measurements group is called on to develop portable, user friendly systems that performs at, or near, laboratory standards. These systems typically consist of a detector and a USB-based multi-channel analyzer. An ORTEC digi-Base is an example of a USB-based portable multi-channel analyzer with 14-pin photomultiplier tube base for gamma-ray spectroscopy applications with NaI(Tl) and other scintillation detectors. Operating system independence - we want to be able to develop applications that are 'future-proof' and can run on the best hardware for the job: desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, or embedded device. To do that we need our software to be operating system independent. Hardware vendor independence - to use the most appropriate equipment for the job, while still maintaining our rapid method development, we would like our software that uses this equipment to be independent of the specific vendor or model of the hardware. To do that we need a common interface to each vendor's equipment (high voltage, gain, start, stop, clear, etc.) In prior work, we were able to use an existing library to communicate with an ORTEC digi-base via Linux and Android. However the application developed did not have a user friendly front-end. Part of this work was to develop a simple user interface to control the settings of the hardware from Android. While OS independence is the final goal, another goal is standardized software for user-application development. For current purposes those standard systems are Windows 7, Windows 10, and Python 3. Our next step was to develop a common software interface between a front-end user interface and back-end hardware communication software. This was done using Python's Ctypes library. Ctypes is a foreign function library for Python. It provides C compatible data types, and allows calling functions in DLLs or shared libraries. It can be used to wrap these libraries in pure Python. Ctypes exports the cdll, and Windows windll and oledll objects, for loading dynamic link libraries. You load libraries by accessing them as attributes of these objects. cdll loads libraries which export functions using the standard cdecl calling convention. The first steps of developing the common software interface have been done. Once the software interface has been developed the next goal will be to develop hardware specific back-end software that way rapid user facing software can be developed using equipment that is 'on-hand' and once finished prototyping, the 'best' hardware can be chosen for the specific implementation.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2022

Emulation Framework for Distributed Large-Scale Systems Integration

Recent trends in systems engineering include integration of very large-scale systems, which entails significant challenges when they are geographically dispersed. In these scenarios, intelligent integration of distributed large-scale systems requires significant coordination among hardware elements as well as all software components. The approach of integrated systems (both computing platform and experimental equipment) for end-to-end orchestration is called federation. Virtual frameworks can aid in the testing, assessment, and implementation of a functional system of interconnected resources. We present an emulation framework that replicates the software environments of multi-site federations of computing systems and instruments. Our emulation framework allows systems engineers to reduce developmentcost and avoid disruptions to production infrastructure. Our framework was effectively used to develop and test software modules for various tasks including container orchestration and instrument access. For performance assessment, however, the emulated framework is severely limited in providing accurate network and IO measurements at 10 Gbps and higher data rates. The data transfer performance profiles estimated using these emulated measurements are usually inaccurate for high bandwidth and high latency connections, since emulation does not accurately reflect the critical network transport dynamics.We utilize measurements from a physical testbed with hardware network emulators to obtain data transfer profiles that closely match the expected profiles for the emulated federations. We show the effectiveness of our approach by an illustrative example of integrated (federated) multi-site ultra large-scale systems that are connected via high speed wide area networks.

Imam, Neena↗
DOE OSTI2011

US-VISIT Independent Verification and Validation Project: Test Bed Establishment Report

This document describes the computational and data systems available at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for use on the US-VISIT Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) project. This system - composed of data, software and hardware - is designed to be as close as a representation of the operational ADIS system as is required to verify and validate US-VISIT methodologies. It is not required to reproduce the computational capabilities of the enterprise-class operational system. During FY10, the test bed was simplified from the FY09 version by reducing the number of database host computers from three to one, significantly reducing the maintenance and overhead while simultaneously increasing system throughput. During the current performance period, a database transfer was performed as a set of Data Pump Export files. The previous RMAN backup from 2007 required the availability of an AIX system which is not required when using data pump. Due to efficiencies in the new system and process, loading of the database refresh was able to be accomplished in a much shorter time frame than was previously required. The FY10 Oracle Test Bed now consists of a single Linux platform hosting two Oracle databases including the 2007 copy as well as the October 2010 refresh.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2011

Cost Effective Recovery of Low-TDS Frac Flowback Water for Re-use

The project goal was to develop a cost-effective water recovery process to reduce the costs and envi-ronmental impact of shale gas production. This effort sought to develop both a flowback water pre-treatment process and a membrane-based partial demineralization process for the treatment of the low-Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) portion of the flowback water produced during hydrofracturing operations. The TDS cutoff for consideration in this project is < 35,000 {approx} 45,000 ppm, which is the typical limit for economic water recovery employing reverse osmosis (RO) type membrane desalination processes. The ultimate objective is the production of clean, reclaimed water suitable for re-use in hydrofracturing operations. The team successfully compiled data on flowback composition and other attributes across multiple shale plays, identified the likely applicability of membrane treatment processes in those shales, and expanded the proposed product portfolio to include four options suitable for various reuse or discharge applications. Pretreatment technologies were evaluated at the lab scale and down-selected based upon their efficacy in removing key contaminants. The chosen technologies were further validated by performing membrane fouling studies with treated flowback water to demonstrate the technical feasibility of flowback treatment with RO membranes. Process flow schemes were constructed for each of the four product options based on experimental performance data from actual flowback water treatment studies. For the products requiring membrane treatment, membrane system model-ing software was used to create designs for enhanced water recovery beyond the typical seawater desalination benchmark. System costs based upon vendor and internal cost information for all process flow schemes were generated and are below target and in line with customer expectations. Finally, to account for temporal and geographic variability in flowback characteristics as well as local disposal costs and regulations, a parametric value assessment tool was created to assess the economic attractiveness of a given flowback recovery process relative to conventional disposal for any combination of anticipated flowback TDS and local disposal cost. It is concluded that membrane systems in combination with appropriate pretreatment technologies can provide cost-effective recovery of low-TDS flow-back water for either beneficial reuse or safe surface discharge.

03 NATURAL GAS↗