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At least 1,387 records · Page 77

Comparison of Results between the Legacy and Refined RELAP5-3D Models of the High Temperature Test Facility in Exercises 1 and 2 of the HTTF Benchmark

Work conducted in FY23 identified that RELAP5-3D was capable of reproducing trends in HTTF data during experiment PG-27 but was incapable of reproducing measured values. The primary cause of this discrepancy between RELAP5-3D results and experimental data was hypothesized to be a distortion in power density that was introduced by the radial nodalization of the model. We further hypothesized that a new model would provide better results when compared to the experiments PG-27 and PG-29. Work this FY developed a new model that is better capable of capturing local heat generation rates and contains a representation of each 1/6 azimuthal sector of the core. We used this model to develop a new set of solutions to Exercises 1 and 2 of Problems 2 and 3 in the benchmark. In this report, we present the first comprehensive comparison of the results between the two models. We see that in Exercise 1A, which is common between problems 2 and 3, the results are similar, though the results from the new model show greater detail than those from the legacy model. In Problem 2 Exercise 1B and Problem 3 Exercise 1B, we see that heat removal is slower in the new model than the legacy model. Problem 3 Exercise 1C shows temperatures that are lower in most places in the new model than the legacy model, but the area with active heat generation has higher block temperatures in the new model than the legacy model. Problem 3 Exercise 1D further shows that long-term heat removal is lower in the new model. Problem 2 Exercise 1C demonstrated that the new model observes higher temperatures in the core regions than the legacy model, justifying the need to preserve the power density in HTTF. The validation of PG-27 and PG-29 also demonstrated the improved temperature agreement in the core regions, particularly with a calibrated model that implements an effective thermal conductivity for the core material. Overall, PG-27 models show reasonable to excellent agreement for steady-state temperatures and minimal to reasonable agreement for transients. PG-29 models showed minimal to insufficient agreement with the data.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Benchmark results with a new evaluation of 155 Gd and 157 Gd

Evaluations of gadolinium isotopes 155 Gd and 157 Gd in the resolved resonance region were performed with the code SAMMY. The main objective for revising the resonance evaluations of these isotopes was to address issues related to critical benchmark results.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

Practical Scalability of LuGo: Benchmarking the HHL Algorithm Using an Enhanced QPE Algorithm

The HHL algorithm is a prominent quantum algorithm that offers exponential speedup over its classical counterparts for solving a system of linear equations. However, synthesizing and executing HHL circuits demand significant computational resources from both classical and quantum systems. In this paper, we benchmark the HHL algorithm using the optimized Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE) generation algorithm, LuGo \cite{lu2025lugo}, to enhance its scalability and efficiency. We leverage the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center's (NERSC) Perlmutter supercomputer to evaluate the scalability of generating HHL circuits and to measure the time to simulate the generated circuits. Additionally, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the algorithm's performance on various state-of-the-art superconducting and trapped-ion quantum devices, including studies on qubit connectivity, fidelity comparisons, and hardware compatibility and robustness. Our results offer preliminary insights into potential practical applications of the HHL algorithm enabled by LuGo and the performance of various types of quantum hardware.

Lu, Chao [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000179346933)↗

TRISO-form HALEU-fueled Experiment for Transport Applications (THETA) Serpent 2 Benchmarking

A number of new advanced reactor designs use TRI-structural ISO-topic (TRISO) fuel. The uranium enrichment for the TRISO fuel is in the 5- to 19.75-weight percent range, which is considered High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and vendors both have a strong interest in benchmarking these advanced reactor designs and having confidence in the predictive capabilities of the computer codes used to model them. In the recent years, Serpent 2 gained several capabilities focused on the reactor applications making it attractive for many reactor vendors.

Critical Experiment↗

QCalEval: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Quantum Calibration Plot Understanding

Quantum computing calibration depends on interpreting experimental data, and calibration plots provide the most universal human-readable representation for this task, yet no systematic evaluation exists of how well vision-language models (VLMs) interpret them. We introduce QCalEval, the first VLM benchmark for quantum calibration plots: 243 samples across 87 scenario types from 22 experiment families, spanning superconducting qubits and neutral atoms, evaluated on six question types in both zero-shot and in-context learning settings. The best general-purpose zero-shot model reaches a mean score of 72.3, and many open-weight models degrade under multi-image in-context learning, whereas frontier closed models improve substantially. A supervised fine-tuning ablation at the 9-billion-parameter scale shows that SFT improves zero-shot performance but cannot close the multimodal in-context learning gap. As a reference case study, we release NVIDIA Ising Calibration 1, an open-weight model based on Qwen3.5-35B-A3B that reaches 74.7 zero-shot average score.

Cao, Shuxiang↗

SABATH: Surrogate AI Benchmarking Applications' Testing Harness

SABATH provides benchmarking infrastructure for evaluating scientific ML/AI models. It contains support for scientific machine learning surrogates from external repositories. The software dependences are explicitly exposed in the surrogate model definition, which allows the use of advanced optimization, communication, and hardware features.

Luszczek, Piotr [Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN↗

Advances in benchmarking and round robin testing for PEM water electrolysis: Reference protocol and hardware

While the number of publications in the PEM water electrolysis community increases each year, no common ground concerning reference hardware (test cells and test bench) and testing protocols has been yet established. This would, however, be necessary for the comparability of experimental results. First attempts for such reference hardware and procedures have been made in the framework of the Task 30 Electrolysis within the Technology Collaboration Programme on Advanced Fuel Cells (AFC TCP) of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Since then, improvements of both the test hardware (test cell and components) as well as the measurement protocol were identified, and a revised methodology and key results based on a comprehensive measurement series have been obtained. A detailed protocol for testing commercial reference components with a reference laboratory test cell developed in-house by Fraunhofer ISE is presented. For evaluation of the protocol and the hardware, it was tested at three different institutions at the same time. Impedance spectroscopic and polarization data was acquired and analyzed. The obtained differences in performance were calculated to give the community an expectation window to compare own data to. Finally, the importance of a thorough temperature control and the conditioning phase are demonstrated.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Initial approaches in benchmarking and round robin testing for proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers

As ever increasing amounts of renewable electricity enter the energy supply mix on a regional, national and international basis, greater emphasis is being placed on energy conversion and storage technologies to deal with the oscillations, excess and lack of electricity. Hydrogen generation via proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) is one technology that offers a pathway to store large amounts of electricity in the form of hydrogen. The challenges to widespread adoption of PEMWE lie in their high capital and operating costs which both need to be reduced through R&D. An evaluation of reported performance data in literature for PEMWE reveals that there are excessive variations of in situ performance results that make it difficult to draw conclusions on the pathway forward to performance optimization and future R&D directions. In order to enable the meaningful comparison of in-situ performance evaluation across laboratories there is an obvious need for standardization of materials and testing protocols. Herein, we address this need by reporting the results of a round robin test effort conducted at the laboratories of five contributors to the IEA electrolysis annex 30. The effort utilized common sets of test articles, materials, test cells, and employed a set of shared test protocols. The maximum observed deviation between laboratories at 1 A cm-2 at cell temperatures of 60 and 80 degrees C, was 27 and 20 mV, respectively. The deviation of the results from laboratory to laboratory was a factor of 2-3 higher than the lowest deviation observed at one single lab and test station. However, the highest deviations observed were 1/10th of those extracted by a literature survey on similar material sets. The biggest takeaways are that cell temperature control appears to be the most significant source of deviation between results, while care must be taken with respect to break in conditions and cell electrical connections for meaningful performance data.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Beyond Benchmarking : Unlocking the Value for Utilities

This document provides guidance to help utilities identify new, untapped datasets related to the energy performance of buildings, and how this information can be applied to expand market intelligence and create business value.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Reactive transport benchmarks for subsurface environmental simulation

Over the last 20 years, we have seen firsthand the evolution of multicomponent reactive transport modeling and the expanding range and increasing complexity of subsurface applications it is being used to address. There is a growing reliance on reactive transport modeling (RTM) to address some of the most compelling issues facing our planet: climate change, nuclear waste management, contaminant remediation, and pollution prevention. While these issues are motivating the development of new and improved capabilities for subsurface environmental modeling using RTM (e.g., biogeochemistry from cell-scale physiology to continental-scale terrestrial ecosystems, nonisothermal multiphase conditions, coupled geomechanics), there remain longstanding challenges in characterizing the natural variability of hydrological, biological, and geochemical properties in subsurface environments and limited success in transferring models between sites and across scales. An equally important trend over the last 20 years is the evolution of modeling from a service sought out after data has been collected to a multifaceted research approach that provides (1) an organizing principle for characterization and monitoring activities; (2) a systematic framework for identifying knowledge gaps, developing and integrating new knowledge; and (3) a mechanistic understanding that represents the collective wisdom of the participating scientists and engineers. There are now large multidisciplinary projects where the research approach is model-driven, and the principal product is a holistic predictive simulation capability that can be used as a test bed for alternative conceptualizations of processes, properties, and conditions. Much of the future growth and expanded role for RTM will depend on its continued ability to exploit technological advancements in the earth and environmental sciences. Advances in measurement technology, particularly in molecular biology (genomics), isotope fractionation, and high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy, have created new lines of research that can be used to inform the conceptualization of reactions and rate laws and validate mechanistic models. For example, spectroscopy has identified the oxidation states of key components and elemental distributions at increasingly smaller scales and lower concentrations; molecular biology has progressed from identifying the presence of microbes to characterization of which microbial communities are active and what they are doing (i.e., microbial function), which has led in turn to the identification of active processes under conditions beyond what analytical chemistry can discern; isotope ratios in pore water and solid phases that can be used to distinguish between biotic from abiotic processes, sorption from precipitation, and origin and age of groundwater. The other noteworthy development that is expanding the role of RTM in subsurface environmental modeling is he advance in computational technology that is enabling the simulation of more coupled processes with increasing mechanistic detail. In some cases, this involves the inclusion of more reactive species and/or microbial populations in the simulations; in other cases, the impact is through the ability to achieve high resolution of property distributions over longer simulated times. To achieve these ambitious objectives for subsurface reactive transport simulation, the subsurface science and engineering community is being driven to provide accurate assessments of engineering performance and risk for important issues with far-reaching consequences. As a result, the complexity and detail of subsurface processes, properties, and conditions that can be simulated have significantly expanded. This expansion was enabled, in part, by advances in measurement technology, computing technology, and numerical techniques.

benchmarking↗

Lattice physics calculations using the embedded self-shielding method in polaris, Part II: Benchmark assessment

Polaris is a 2D multigroup lattice physics capability in the SCALE code system used for the analysis of light water reactor fuel designs. In this work, verification and validation results of Polaris in SCALE 6.2 are presented. The SCALE/KENO continuous-energy Monte Carlo code is used as a reference to compare the results of more than 2,000 combinations of pressurized water reactor and boiling water reactor lattice designs and state points. Radiochemical assay measurements were also used to assess the accuracy of depletion calculations. Results show that Polaris, with ENDF/B-VII.1 cross section library, produces accurate lattice physics data for core simulators.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗