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At least 1,063 records · Page 59
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

ORNL Infrastructure: Status Update on BEA Research Reactor Cask Planning Activities Completed During FY 2025

This report documents Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) FY 2025 progress toward establishing readiness to use the Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA) Research Reactor (BRR) shipping cask in support of the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF). The BRR cask will provide a new shared infrastructure capability for transporting irradiated fuels and materials between ORNL and Idaho National Laboratory (INL), thereby supporting NSUF’s mission of enabling user access to advanced nuclear research facilities. In FY 2025, ORNL advanced the regulatory, contractual, safety review, and planning activities necessary to qualify its facilities and staff for BRR cask handling. Although loaded shipments were delayed due to fabrication lead times for Orano Federal Services LLC’s internal basket hardware, the program progressed to the point where an empty cask dry run is scheduled for October 2025. This dry run represents a critical step in demonstrating ORNL’s ability to receive, handle, and return the BRR cask.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Optimization of Marine Thrusters

Improving the maneuverability of ships by increasing the tractional force of the thrusters is considered. To minimize the losses associated with swirling liquid flow and the variable attack angles in reversing, the traditional configuration must be modified, and the inclination of the thruster blades must be optimized. To increase the efficiency, the rotors should have different speeds and blade inclinations.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

NSUF BRR Cask Shipment Summary Report

On September 16, 2021 the Idaho National Laboratory shipped a Battelle Research Reactor (BRR) cask loaded with five Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) experiments and one Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATF) experiment from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) to the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF) at the INL Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) for post-irradiation examination.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Results of Modeling and Simulation Support to Specia Nuclear Material Handling Facility Operations - 16053

Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) is the sole designer and provider of nuclear powered aircraft carriers and one of only two companies in the United States to build nuclear powered submarines. As part of the upkeep of aircraft carriers, the ships return to NNS once in their lifetime for a complex overhaul and to be refueled. In support of overhaul operations NNS maintains a state of the art Special Nuclear Material (SNM) handling facility. Due to the complex nature of the operations that occur within this facility, during the design and initial operation of the building NNS developed a facility simulation model to provide decision support during the project planning and operational phases. This tool allows users to experiment with process times, process order, equipment utilization, personnel utilization and spatial utilization. By capturing the planned operations, time distributions for operations, equipment sizes and uses and personnel requirements, the tool accurately reflects the planned use of the facility. This realism allows the user to experiment with any aspect of the facility, in a controlled and cost effective space, and determine how changes or potential delays may impact overall facility operations. Thus the model allows for rapid exploration of multiple scenarios to determine likely outcomes, allowing a user to identify risks well ahead of their realization and explore mitigation strategies in a controlled space, to determine the ideal path forward. The tool was successful during the initial operation of the facility in helping to identify and mitigate risks related to the complex operations occurring during SNM handling. The tool is now in use to support planning for the next series of operations that will occur within the facility. The initial operations the model supported occurred during the deactivation of the USS Enterprise, and future operation will focus on the overhaul of Nimitz class aircraft carriers. The NNS planning team is currently using the tool to assess potential risks and challenges that are identified as potentially impacting the schedule and timelines for these overhaul processes. In addition, the NNS development team is working to add new operational steps to the model, capturing work that is occurring near the facility, but which directly impacts the facilities operational abilities. In conjuncture with the engineering planning division, the NNS development team has run over 20 complex scenarios through the tool. The team has provided output from these scenarios to both NNS personnel and government representatives. To date the model has successfully supported the identification of several feasible paths to incorporate new processes, dictated by the work to support a overhaul vs a deactivation. The model also provides a spatial arrangement component that allows users to experiment with different equipment placement within the facility. Due to the fidelity of the model, arranging equipment with the spatial component allows a user to set up the facility in an experimental layout and run the processes inside the facility to determine if the layout will be feasible, or if it would impact operational capabilities. Additionally, the spatial component allows for visual collaboration between stakeholders to ensure all operational personnel are aware of the current and planned layout, and that they do not locate equipment or work stations in locations that would interfere with facility operations. The spatial component, in combination with the simulation component, has resulted in several documented improvements in process. These include: the identification of additional equipment which could be stored outside the facility, without impacting operations, to increase space; confirmation of the ideal placement of a large water tank; and identification of several risks related to planned equipment storage area, allowing the team to develop new plans and avoid realizing the risk. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2018

How to Handle the Conflict between Safety and Security - 18564

The purpose of safety and security for nuclear activities are the same. They are both necessary measures to protect people and the environment from radioactive material. There are many measures that enhance both the safety and the security but there are also measures serving one area that are in direct conflict with the other. How information is handled is maybe the best example to demonstrate this conflict between interests. In the security field, information is handled on a need-to-know basis, preventing valuable details to fall into hands of antagonists, terrorists etc. The safety culture, on the contrary, is based on knowledge and transparency and it encourages the sharing of information and experience to improve the safety. There is little guidance on how to manage the conflicts between safety and security for a transport system moving nuclear fuel and radioactive waste and especially when there are conflicts between different legislation areas, for example the Act on Nuclear Activities and Safety of Life at Sea. The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co, SKB, transports all Swedish spent fuel and operational waste from the Nuclear Power Plants to the central storage facilities in Sweden. To manage the transport system, SKB owns a fleet of packages, road vehicles and an INF 3 ship. For the shipments of nuclear material, the security focus has increased rapidly over the years after the 9/11 attack, followed by regulatory requirements on enhanced security. SKB is currently running a project to further strengthen the transport security, an activity that requires a careful balance between safety and security. This paper describes the methods used and the challenges experienced trying to manage the conflicts between safety and security for the Swedish nuclear transport system. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2024

Electrification Analysis: Container Ports' Cargo Handling Equipment

This one-page highlight details the key takeaways from a project that utilized NREL's Fleet Research, Energy Data, and Insights (FleetREDI) data analysis pipeline, the Electrification Analysis of Container Ports' Cargo Handling Equipment project. This project created a scalable solution to model energy demand per shipping container moved (kWh/TEU) for an all-electric cargo handling equipment fleet located at a maritime port. The model allows stakeholders to understand energy demand at each electric vehicle (EV) equipment level and is easily scalable to container demand and EV adoption rate projections.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Mechanisms of convective cloud organization by cold pools over tropical warm ocean during the AMIE/DYNAMO field campaign

Abstract This paper investigates the mechanisms of convective cloud organization by precipitation‐driven cold pools over the warm tropical Indian Ocean during the 2011 Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO) Investigation Experiment/Dynamics of the MJO (AMIE/DYNAMO) field campaign. A high‐resolution regional model simulation is performed using the Weather Research and Forecasting model during the transition from suppressed to active phases of the November 2011 MJO. The simulated cold pool lifetimes, spatial extent, and thermodynamic properties agree well with the radar and ship‐borne observations from the field campaign. The thermodynamic and dynamic structures of the outflow boundaries of isolated and intersecting cold pools in the simulation and the associated secondary cloud populations are examined. Intersecting cold pools last more than twice as long, are twice as large, 41% more intense (measured with buoyancy), and 62% deeper than isolated cold pools. Consequently, intersecting cold pools trigger 73% more convection than do isolated ones. This is due to stronger outflows that enhance secondary updraft velocities by up to 45%. However, cold pool‐triggered convective clouds grow into deep convection not because of the stronger secondary updrafts at cloud base, but rather due to closer spacing (aggregation) between clouds and larger cloud clusters that form along the cold pool boundaries when they intersect. The close spacing of large clouds moistens the local environment and reduces entrainment drying, increasing the probability that the clouds further develop into deep convection. Implications for the design of future convective parameterization with cold pool‐modulated entrainment rates are discussed.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Quantifying cloud base updraft speeds of marine stratocumulus from cloud top radiative cooling: QUANTIFYING CLOUD BASE UPDRAFTS OF MSC

Marine stratocumulus clouds play a significant role in the Earth's radiation budget. The updrafts at cloud base (Wb) govern the supersaturation and therefore the activation of cloud condensation nuclei, which modifies the cloud and precipitation properties. A statistically significant relationship between Wb and cloud top radiative cooling rate (CTRC) is found from the measurements of the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Mobile Facility on board a ship sailing between Honolulu and Los Angeles. A similar relation was found on Graciosa Island but with greater scatter and weaker correlation presumably due to the island effect. Based on the relation, we are able to estimate the cloud base updrafts using a simple formula: W b =-0.44 × CTRC + 22.30 ± 13, where the W b and CTRC have units of cm/s and W/m 2 , respectively. This quantification can be utilized in satellite remote sensing and parameterizations of W b in general circulation models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

Sea-ice thickness from field measurements in the northwestern Barents Sea: SEA-ICE THICKNESS, NW BARENTS SEA

The Barents Sea is one of the fastest changing regions of the Arctic, and has experienced the strongest decline in winter-time sea-ice area in the Arctic, at 22364% decade21. Sea-ice thickness in the Barents Sea is not well studied. We present two previously unpublished helicopter-borne electromagnetic(HEM) ice thickness measurements from the northwestern Barents Sea acquired in March 2003 and 2014.The HEM data are compared to ice thickness calculated from ice draft measured by ULS deployed between1994 and 1996. These data show that ice thickness varies greatly from year to year; influenced by the thermodynamic and dynamic processes that govern local formation vs long-range advection. In a year with a large inflow of sea-ice from the Arctic Basin, the Barents Sea ice cover is dominated by thick multiyear ice;as was the case in 2003 and 1995. In a year with an ice cover that was mainly grown in situ, the ice will be thin and mechanically unstable; as was the case in 2014. The HEM data allow us to explore the spatial and temporal variability in ice thickness. In 2003 the dominant ice class was more than 2 years old; and modal sea-ice thickness varied regionally from 0.6 to 1.4 m, with the thinner ice being either irst-year ice, or multiyear ice which had come into contact with warm Atlantic water. In 2014 the ice cover was predominantly locally grown ice less than 1 month old (regional modes of 0.5–0.8 m). These two situations represent two extremes of a range of possible ice thickness distributions that can present very different conditions for shipping traffic; or have a different impact on heat transport from ocean to atmosphere.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Evolution of Precipitation Structure During the November DYNAMO MJO Event: Cloud-Resolving Model Intercomparison and Cross Validation Using Radar Observations

Evolution of precipitation structures are simulated and compared with radar observations for the November Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) event during the DYNAmics of the MJO (DYNAMO) field campaign. Three ground-based, ship-borne, and spaceborne precipitation radars and three cloud-resolving models (CRMs) driven by observed large-scale forcing are used to study precipitation structures at different locations over the central equatorial Indian Ocean. Convective strength is represented by 0-dBZ echo-top heights, and convective organization by contiguous 17-dBZ areas. The multi-radar and multi-model framework allows for more stringent model validations. The emphasis is on testing models' ability to simulate subtle differences observed at different radar sites when the MJO event passed through. The results show that CRMs forced by site-specific large-scale forcing can reproduce not only common features in cloud populations but also subtle variations observed by different radars. The comparisons also revealed common deficiencies in CRM simulations where they underestimate radar echo-top heights for the strongest convection within large, organized precipitation features. Cross validations with multiple radars and models also enable quantitative comparisons in CRM sensitivity studies using different large-scale forcing, microphysical schemes and parameters, resolutions, and domain sizes. In terms of radar echo-top height temporal variations, many model sensitivity tests have better correlations than radar/model comparisons, indicating robustness in model performance on this aspect. It is further shown that well-validated model simulations could be used to constrain uncertainties in observed echo-top heights when the low-resolution surveillance scanning strategy is used.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Providing performance portable numerics for Intel GPUs

Summary With discrete Intel GPUs entering the high‐performance computing landscape, there is an urgent need for production‐ready software stacks for these platforms. In this article, we report how we enable the Ginkgo math library to execute on Intel GPUs by developing a kernel backed based on the DPC++ programming environment. We discuss conceptual differences between the CUDA and DPC++ programming models and describe workflows for simplified code conversion. We evaluate the performance of basic and advanced sparse linear algebra routines available in Ginkgo's DPC++ backend in the hardware‐specific performance bounds and compare against routines providing the same functionality that ship with Intel's oneMKL vendor library.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Climate and multiple dimensions of plant diversity regulate ecosystem carbon exchange along an elevational gradient

The impacts of warming on communities and ecosystems are predicted to be significant in mountain ecosystems because physiological processes, including rates of carbon (C) cycling, are often more temperature-sensitive in colder environments. Plant biodiversity can also influence C exchange, yet few studies integrate how biotic and abiotic factors may directly or interactively impact ecosystem Cflux. Here, we examine the link between simultaneous changes in multiple dimensions of plant diversity and peak growing season ecosystem C uptake across a climatic gradient in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, USA. We found that taxonomic diversity (species richness), functional diversity (functional evenness), and phylogenetic diversity (mean pairwise distance) were significantly and positively related to peak growing sea-son ecosystem C uptake (i.e., net ecosystem exchange) when considered independently. However, when abiotic and biotic factors were integrated in a structural equation model, only plant phylogenetic diversity was significantly related to C uptake. In addition, we found that actual evapotranspiration (AET - a measure that integrates precipitation and temperature) affected ecosystem C exchange indirectly via its impact on the three dimensions of plant diversity that we examined. These findings highlight complex relation-ships among key measures of biodiversity and ecosystem C uptake in a rapidly warming ecosystem, and the possible mechanisms that underlie relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. They also point to the need for integrating multiple dimensions of biodiversity into studies of community and ecosystem ecology.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Extension of lymphocyte viability for radiation biodosimetry: Potential implications for radiological/nuclear mass casualty incidents

Abstract Dicentric chromosome assay (DCA) is routinely used for estimating the absorbed radiation dose in exposed humans. Optimal lymphocyte viability is crucial for reliable dose estimation and most cytogenetic laboratories prefer the receipt of blood samples within 24 to 36 hours after collection. Delays in the shipment/receipt of samples can occur sometimes under certain unforeseen circumstances: (1) Adverse weather conditions, (2) distant location of blood collection sites, and (3) shipping and handling of a large number of samples after radiological/nuclear mass casualty incident(s). To circumvent some of these limitations, we evaluated the suitability of ex vivo irradiated blood samples stored in the presence of phytohemagglutinin (PHA) for 7 days at ambient temperature (22‐24°C) for radiation biodosimetry. Blood samples stored in the presence of PHA for up to 7 days showed a higher mitotic index than blood samples stored without PHA. To verify the use of stored blood samples for DCA, frequencies of X‐rays induced dicentric chromosomes were analyzed in the blood samples that were cultured either 24 hours after exposure or 7 days later after storage. Our results indicate that storage of ex vivo irradiated blood samples in the presence of PHA at ambient temperature was found optimal for DCA and that the radiation doses estimated by dicentric chromosome frequencies were grossly similar between the fresh and stored blood samples. Our study suggests that reliable and accurate biodosimetry results can be obtained for triage using blood samples stored for up to a week at ambient temperature in the presence of PHA.

Smith, Tammy↗
DOE OSTI2013

Global analysis of night marine air temperature and its uncertainty since 1880

An updated version of the Met Office Hadley Centre's monthly night marine air temperature data set is presented. It is available on a 5° latitude-longitude grid from 1880 as anomalies relative to 1961–1990 calendar-monthly climatological average night marine air temperature (NMAT). Adjustments are made for changes in observation height; these depend on estimates of the stability of the near surface atmospheric boundary layer. In previous versions of the data set, ad hoc adjustments were also made for three periods and regions where poor observational practice was prevalent. These adjustments are re-examined. Estimates of uncertainty are calculated for every grid box and result from measurement errors, uncertainty in adjustments applied to the observations, uncertainty in the measurement height, and under-sampling. The new data set is a clear improvement over previous versions in terms of coverage because of the recent digitization of historical observations from ships' logbooks. However, the periods prior to about 1890 and around World War II remain particularly uncertain, and sampling is still sparse in some regions in other periods. A further improvement is the availability of uncertainty estimates for every grid box and every month. Previous versions required adjustments that were dependent on contemporary measurements of sea surface temperature (SST); to avoid these, the new data set starts in 1880 rather than 1856. Overall agreement with variations of SST is better for the updated data set than for previous versions, supporting existing estimates of global warming and increasing confidence in the global record of temperature variability and change.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Velocity-amplified microbial respiration rates in the lower Amazon River: Amazon River respiration

Most measurements of respiration rates in large tropical rivers do not account for the influence of river flow conditions on microbial activity. We developed a ship-board spinning incubation system for measuring O2 drawdown under different rotation velocities and deployed the system along the lower Amazon River during four hydrologic periods. Average respiration rates in incubation chambers rotated at 0.22 and 0.66 m s-1 were 1.4 and 2.4 times higher than stationary chambers, respectively. On average, depth-integrated respiration rates in chambers spun at 0.22 and 0.66 m s-1 accounted for 64 ± 22% and 104 ± 36% of CO2 outgassing rates, respectively, in mainstem sites. Continuous measurements of in situ pCO2 were also made along with cross-channel profiles of river velocity. A positive correlation between river velocity and pCO2 was observed along the lower river (r2=0.67-0.96) and throughout a tidal cycle.

Amazon↗
DOE OSTI2017

Efficient collection and preparation of methane from low concentration waters for natural abundance radiocarbon analysis

Freshwater and marine environments constitute the largest global reservoirs of the greenhouse gas methane (CH 4 ) and natural abundance radiocarbon measurements ( 14 C-CH 4 ) can allow for high confidence interpretations about CH 4 dynamics operating in these environments. Collecting sufficient amounts of CH 4 sample for a standard, high precision 14 C-accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) analysis (~ 200 μg carbon (C)) was previously unfeasible when sampling from low CH 4 concentration waters, such as much of the surface ocean (~ 2 nM), which would require collecting the CH 4 from 8500 L of seawater. The method described here involves pumping 20,000–40,000 L of seawater up from depth through a dissolved gas extraction system, which enables the collection of a sample composed of 100s of L of gas in less than 4 h on station. The large volume extracted gas sample is compressed into a 1.7 L cylinder for transport from the ship to the home laboratory. The home laboratory preparation of each sample to a CH 4 -derived carbon dioxide aliquot for 14 C-AMS analysis is carried out in 3 h on a flow-through vacuum line that simultaneously prepares aliquots for stable isotope analyses (δ 13 C-CH 4 and δ 2 H-CH 4 ). The total process blank of the method is small (5.0 μg CH 4 -C) and composes 1.2% of the average collected and prepared sample (424 ± 163 μg, from a recent campaign; n = 16). Finally, the 14 C-CH 4 blanks prepared on the vacuum line have acceptably low 14 C content (0.23 ± 0.07 percent Modern Carbon (pMC); n = 7) relative to the 14 C-dead (0 pMC) CH 4 from which they are prepared.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗