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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 1,315 records · Page 73
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

QUIC-Fire: 3D Fire-Atmosphere Feedback Model for Wildland Fire Management

Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S. Forest Service, and Tall Timbers Research Station developed QUIC-Fire, the first laptop-capable, real-time wildland fire prediction software that captures the critical influences of 3D vegetation structure, interactions between multiple fires, variable winds, and complex topography at meter-scale resolutions. Prescribed burns are needed to prevent catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. QUIC-Fire transforms a prescribed fire manager’s ability to assess risk, optimize fuel treatments, and plan prescribed burns. Los Alamos, U.S. Forest Service, Tall Timbers Research Station, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Spatial Information Group, and Applied Interagency Prescribed Training Center have used QUIC-Fire.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Design of the Next Generation Target at the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center, LANSCE

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supports scientific research in many diverse fields such as biology, chemistry, and nuclear science. The Laboratory was established in 1943 during the Second World War to develop nuclear weapons. Today, LANL is one of the largest laboratories dedicated to nuclear defense and operates an 800 MeV proton linear accelerator for basic and applied research including: production of high- and low-energy neutrons beams, isotope production for medical applications and proton radiography. This accelerator is located at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE). The work performed involved the redesign of the target for the low-energy neutron source at the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center, which is one of the facilities built around the accelerator. The redesign of the target involves modeling various arrangements of the moderator-reflector-shield for the next generation neutron production target. This is done using Monte Carlo N-Particle eXtended (MCNPX), and ROOT analysis framework, a C++ based-software, to analyze the results.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2020

Hydrogen Contamination Detector: Protecting the future of zero-emission fuel cell energy [Brief]

Los Alamos National Laboratory developed an electrochemical detector to protect zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells from contaminated fuels. Fuel cells power environmentally clean vehicles, fork lifts, drones, and provide auxiliary power. High-purity hydrogen is essential to avoid poisoning fuel cells. Current analysis methods are costly and cannot detect impurities in realtime. The Hydrogen Contamination Detector measures the two highest impact Department of Energy-identified impurities with a simple, low-cost unit that provides 24/7, point-of-service analysis. Los Alamos partnered with H2Frontiers to conduct field trials at hydrogen refueling stations and with Skyre LLC for commercialization through a DOE Technology Commercialization Fund project.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2012

Payment Of the New Mexico Environment Department- Hazardous Waste Bureau Annual Business and Generation Fees Calendar Year 2011

The purpose of this letter is to transmit to the New Mexico Environment Department-Hazardous Waste Bureau (NMED-HWB), the Los alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Annual Business and Generation Fees for calendar year 2011. These fees are required pursuant to the provisions of New Mexico Hazardous Waste Act, Chapter 74, Article 4, NMSA (as amended). The Laboratory's Fenton Hill Facility did not generate any hazardous waste during the entire year, and is not required to pay a fee for calendar year 2011. The enclosed fee represents the amount for a single facility owned by the Department of Energy and co-operated by the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS).

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Photographs Related to the Burning Ground Accident in 1959

Early in the afternoon of October 14, 1959, routine operations at the S-Site Burning Ground of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory were interrupted by the unanticipated explosion of approximately 300 pounds of high explosives. Tragically, the four men preparing the area for the burn operation were killed instantly: Jose Cordova, Sevedeo Lujan, Escolastico Martinez, and Leopoldo Pacheco. Significant effort was exerted to gather the debris and reconstruct the conditions at the time of the accident. Photographs were included in the official accident report with explanatory captions. A few of these photographs were shown on February 12, 2013 in a public lecture for the Los Alamos Historical Society. Afterwards, children of the deceased expressed an interest in having clear copies of the photographs. This document serves as an official mechanism for their release.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG)

The Los Alamos QRNG is a hardware-based high-performance Random Number Generator capable of generating 200 Mbit/s or more of true random numbers. The device harvests entropy from fluctuations in an optical source that arise from quantum mechanical properties of light. These quantum effects are irreducibly random; the resulting numbers are unpredictable and beyond the influence of any adversary. Qrypt, Inc., launched in 2017, has amassed multiple quantum entropy sources to create high-quality random keys at scale. The company is engaging with Los Alamos through license and a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to facilitate the transition of QRNG technology and deploy the technology into the marketplace.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2015

LANL Experience Rolling Zr-Clad LEU-10Mo Foils for AFIP-7

The cleaning, canning, rolling and final trimming of Low Enriched Uranium-10 wt. pct. Molybdenum (LEU-10Mo) foils for ATR (Advanced Test Reactor) fuel plates to be used in the AFIP-7 (ATR Full Size Plate In Center Flux Trap Position) experiments are summarized. Six Zr-clad foils were produced from two LEU-10Mo castings supplied to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) by Y-12 National Security Complex. Details of cleaning and canning procedures are provided. Hot- and cold-rolling results are presented, including rolling schedules, images of foils in-process, metallography and local compositions of regions of interest, and details of final foil dimensions and process yield. This report was compiled from the slides for the presentation of the same name given by Duncan Hammon on May 12, 2011 at the AFIP-7 Lessons Learned meeting in Salt Lake City, UT, with Los Alamos National Laboratory document number LA-UR 11-02898.

Materials Science(36)↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Vault National Security Then & Now (2021 Annual)

Looking back, I can say with certainty that we rose to the challenge. Like other entities all around the globe, the National Security Research Center was tested by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a young organization (we celebrated our second anniversary in June 2021) and one that is critical to Los Alamos National Laboratory’s national security charge, we faced the difficult task of continuing our mission-essential work while keeping our staff safe. The NSRC is one of the largest libraries in the United States, and it houses the country’s most-comprehensive collections of nuclear weapons-related national security material. The NSRC contains millions of documents, films, photos, and other materials on the development, testing, and production of nuclear weapons. These are accessed on a daily basis by scientists, engineers, and researchers at Los Alamos and other National Nuclear Security Administration’s labs and sites, as well as partners in the Department of Defense. It was not an option for us to close our doors - our nation’s security depended on us not to. Not only did we continue operating under new safety protocols, we successfully accomplished many pre-pandemic goals. Thanks to the NSRC’s dedicated staff, our accomplishments during our second year are too numerous to list, though two in particular come to mind.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2015

Stand-Alone Dynamic System Simulation of a Fissile Solution System

Dynamic system simulations (DSS) of fissile solution systems (FSS) have been performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for several years. DSS have been designed and executed using the DESIRE (Direct Executing Simulation in Real Time) system, a platform ideal for expert system modelers, as it allows for direct mathematical specification of a model, and facilities for performing experiments and analyses with the model. Models built in DESIRE have been compared to historical data from several historic aqueous homogeneous reactors (AHR) showing close agreement between experimental data and model estimates. Historical systems modeled include: SUPO (Super Power), an AHR that operated at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1951 to 1974; SILENE, which was operated by CEA at Valduc, France until 2011; KEWB (Kinetics Experiment Water Boiler) A-2 and B-5 cores, operated by North American Atomics during the 1960’s and 1970’s. SUPO is considered a benchmark for steady-state operations, SILENE for pulse, and KEWB as confirmatory for both modes. However, there are some simulation tasks that are not well-suited to DESIRE model implementation. These tasks include engineering design and analysis and providing a hardware simulator backend. It has been determined that executable simulation models would better suit these purposes, hence a process for converting DESIRE simulation models to executable simulation models was designed and implemented, and several models have been converted. DESIRE simulation models are converted to C++ executable models by an automated process. The conversion process is quick, accurate and repeatable, giving confidence that converted models will perform as well as the original DESIRE models. Extensive testing on the SUPO and accelerator driven subcritical system models has shown that the executable models perform almost identically to the DESIRE models. All major trends and events are simulated with excellent agreement and the steady-state results typically agree within a small fraction of a percent (always better than 0.1% and generally better than 0.01% agreement).

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Quality New Mexico Performance Excellence Award Roadrunner Application 2016

The Human Resources (HR) Division is a critical part of Los Alamos National Laboratory, an internationally recognized science and R&D facility with a specialized workforce of more than 10,000. The Laboratory’s mission is to solve national security challenges through scientific excellence. The HR Division partners with employees and managers to support the Laboratory in hiring, retaining, and motivating an exceptional workforce. The Laboratory is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), with oversight by the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). In 2006, NNSA awarded the contract for managing and operating the Laboratory to Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), and a for-profit consortium. This report expounds on performance excellence efforts, presenting a strategic plan and operations.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

This St. Patrick’s Day, take a look at “lucky” Lab artifacts from the Manhattan Project

What luck! Tucked inside J. Robert Oppenheimer’s book Bhagavad-Gita is a four-leaf clover. The famed physicist and first Lab director regularly quoted the Hindu scripture, most notably upon witnessing the Trinity test, which was the successful detonation of the first-ever Los Alamos created atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was said to have recalled the line, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” (The quote, though, has been widely misinterpreted.) The clover is taped to what appears to be a calling card from his spouse Kitty and was found inside his copy of the Bhagavad Gita, which was donated to the Lab’s Bradbury Science Museum by private donors Ben and Sara Beck Svetitsky in early 2020. Kitty Oppenheimer was educated as a botanist and biologist, and accompanied her husband to Los Alamos, along with their two children. The family was here in 1943 through the end of World War II in 1945. The book, with the card found inside, makes up one of two of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s personal effects within the Lab’s collections.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2019

A New Organometallic Americium Complex

Scientists from Los Alamos, Prof. W. J. Evans at UC-Irvine, and their collaborators, have synthesized and gathered the first structural data on an organometallic cyclopentadienyl (Cp) complex of americium (Am). Americium is an important element that is of interest for reasons such as nuclear energy research and waste disposal, however it is challenging to work with because it is both scarce and highly radioactive. Historically, americium was viewed as sitting at an intersection in actinide chemistry where the elements begin to behave more “lanthanidelike”. Thanks in part to recent work at Los Alamos and others, this simplistic picture is being reimaged with a more nuanced and detailed comprehension of how americium subtly differs from other actinides and lanthanides. The research was published in the international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.

Gaunt, Andrew James↗
DOE OSTI2020

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Area’s earliest inhabitants become valuable part of Lab workforce

By the time the then-secret laboratory was established in Los Alamos in 1943, the nearby pueblos we know today were well-established communities. To complete its wartime mission to build the world’s first nuclear weapons, the Laboratory needed many workers for all aspects of the project. As such, many Native Americans were hired to work at the Lab in various roles, such as technicians, researchers, machinists, and support staff. By the end of the Manhattan Project in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, many friendships had been forged between employees from the pueblos and other workers at Los Alamos. This was evidenced by gatherings, such as a post-war celebration at the San Ildefonso Pueblo, as well as individual relationships between Lab staff and pueblo residents. Meanwhile, pueblo residents remained on as valuable members of the post-war Lab staff with additional workers hired as well. In honor of November’s Native American Heritage Month, staff at the National Security Research Center are taking a look back to LANL’s early workforce and the contributions -- both to our mission and our cultural enrichment -- made by Native Americans.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2015

Uncertainty Quantification in Fission Cross Section Measurements at LANSCE

Neutron-induced fission cross sections have been measured for several isotopes of uranium and plutonium at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) over a wide range of incident neutron energies. The total uncertainties in these measurements are in the range 3–5% above 100 keV of incident neutron energy, which results from uncertainties in the target, neutron source, and detector system. The individual sources of uncertainties are assumed to be uncorrelated, however correlation in the cross section across neutron energy bins are considered. The quantification of the uncertainty contributions will be described here.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Verification of the CP2020 Library

For many years, “pencil beam” (aka “broomstick”) problems have been used in Monte Carlo neutronic code verification studies . At Los Alamos, they were used to verify the changes associated with the upgrade of NJOY / MCNP to allow continuous angular distributions (instead of discrete angular distributions) from S(α,β) scattering. Recently, “pencil beam” problems have been applied to the verification of charged particle data for MCNP. Another verification test for CP2020 was to compare the continuous energy reaction cross sections generated by ACER with multigroup reaction cross sections generated by GROUPR from the same evaluation file. This method was also used in the verification of the most recent S(α,β) neutron libraries at Los Alamos .

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Reevaluation of the Jezebel Benchmark

Every nuclear engineering student is familiar with Jezebel, the homogeneous bare sphere of plutonium first assembled at Los Alamos in 1954-1955. The actual Jezebel assembly was neither homogeneous, nor bare, nor spherical; nor was it singular – there were hundreds of Jezebel configurations assembled. The Jezebel benchmark has been reevaluated for the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook. Logbooks, original drawings, mass accountability statements, internal reports, and published reports have been used to model four actual three-dimensional Jezebel assemblies with high fidelity. Because the documentation available today is often inconsistent, three major assumptions were made regarding plutonium part masses and dimensions. The first was that the assembly masses given in Los Alamos report LA-4208 (1969) were correct, and the second was that the original drawing dimension for the polar height of a certain major part was correct. The third assumption was that a change notice indicated on the original drawing was not actually implemented. This talk will describe these assumptions, the alternatives, and the implications. Since the publication of the 2013 ICSBEP Handbook, the actual masses of the major components have turned up. Our assumption regarding the assembly masses was proven correct, but we had the mass distribution incorrect. Work to incorporate the new information is ongoing, and this talk will describe the latest assessment.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Development of a Nitrogen and Magnesium Oxide based Class A, B & D Suffocating Fire System (SFSS) for Gloveboxes

Testing related to the development and performance of a “Proof of Concept” Nitrogen/Magnesium Oxide Suffocating Fire System (SFSS) was conducted at Fire and Pump Service Group (FPSG) located in Rancho Dominguez, California. The SFSS Engineering Team (SFSSET), consisting of FPSG and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) personnel researched, developed a prototype, and conducted testing to determine effective means to deliver magnesium oxide (MgO) sand into a glovebox (GB) in a class D fire event. The prototypes development also established the effective coverage area of a magnesium oxide suppression system as well as demonstrated that the GB inert atmosphere could be maintained during and after the release of the MgO sand to control Class A, B and D fires. Previous testing conducted on nitrogen based SFSS provided evidence that the nitrogen based SFSS controlled Class A and B fires (Ralph Clayton, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Brandon Troc and Frank Broidy, Fire and Pump Service Group 2020).Final testing was conducted within a mock GB capable of simulating an inert glovebox atmosphere. Testing demonstrated that the inert atmosphere can be maintained during and after discharge of the MgO sand over a coverage area.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗