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New In-pile Instrumentation to Support Fuel Cycle Research and Development

New and enhanced nuclear fuels are a key enabler for new and improved reactor technologies. For example, the goals of the next generation nuclear plant (NGNP) will not be met without irradiations successfully demonstrating the safety and reliability of new fuels. Likewise, fuel reliability has become paramount in ensuring the competitiveness of nuclear power plants. Recently, the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Department of Energy (DOE-NE) launched a new direction in fuel research and development that emphasizes an approach relying on first principle models to develop optimized fuel designs that offer significant improvements over current fuels. To facilitate this approach, high fidelity, real-time, data are essential for characterizing the performance of new fuels during irradiation testing. A three-year strategic research program is proposed for developing the required test vehicles with sensors of unprecedented accuracy and resolution for obtaining the data needed to characterize three-dimensional changes in fuel microstructure during irradiation testing. When implemented, this strategy will yield test capsule designs that are instrumented with new sensor technologies for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) and other irradiation locations for the Fuel Cycle Research and Development (FC R&D) program. Prior laboratory testing, and as needed, irradiation testing, of these sensors will have been completed to give sufficient confidence that the irradiation tests will yield the required data. Obtaining these sensors must draw upon the expertise of a wide-range of organizations not currently supporting nuclear fuels research. This document defines this strategic program and provides the necessary background information related to fuel irradiation testing, desired parameters for detection, and an overview of currently available in-pile instrumentation. In addition, candidate sensor technologies are identified in this document, and a list of proposed criteria for ranking these technologies. A preliminary ranking of candidate technologies is performed to illustrate the path forward for developing real-time instrumentation that could provide the required data for the FC R&D program. This draft document is a starting point for discussion with instrumentation experts and organizations. It is anticipated that the document will be used to stimulate discussions on a wide-range of sensor technologies and to gain consensus with respect to the path forward for accomplishing the goals of this research program.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Deep Vadose Zone-Applied Field Research Initiative Fiscal Year 2011 Annual Report

This annual report describes the background of the Deep Vadose Zone-Applied Field Research Initiative, and some of the programmatic approaches and transformational technologies in groundwater and deep vadose zone remediation developed during fiscal year 2011. The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Technology Innovation and Development's (OTID) mission is to transform science into viable solutions for environmental cleanup. In 2010, OTID developed the Impact Plan, Science and Technology to Reduce the Life Cycle Cost of Closure to outline the benefits of research and development of the lifecycle cost of cleanup across the DOE complex. This plan outlines OTID's ability to reduce by $50 billion, the $200 billion life-cycle cost in waste processing, groundwater and soil, nuclear materials, and deactivation and decommissioning. The projected life-cycle costs and return on investment are based on actual savings realized from technology innovation, development, and insertion into remedial strategies and schedules at the Fernald, Mound, and Ashtabula sites. To achieve our goals, OTID developed Applied Field Research Initiatives to facilitate and accelerate collaborative development and implementation of new tools and approaches that reduce risk, cost and time for site closure. The primary mission of the Deep Vadose Zone-Applied Field Research Initiative (DVZ-AFRI) is to protect our nation's water resources, keeping them clean and safe for future generations. The DVZ-AFRI was established for the DOE to develop effective, science-based solutions for remediating, characterizing, monitoring, and predicting the behavior and fate of deep vadose zone contamination. Subsurface contaminants include radionuclides, metals, organics, and liquid waste that originated from various sources, including legacy waste from the nation's nuclear weapons complexes. The DVZ-AFRI project team is translating strategy into action by working to solve these complex challenges in a collaborative environment that leverages technology and scientific expertise from DOE, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company, and the broad scientific research community. As project manager for the DVZ-AFRI, I have had the privilege this past year to team with creative, talented members of the scientific community nationwide to develop effective long-term solutions to address deep vadose zone contamination. This report highlights how the DVZ-AFRI project team is delivering results by achieving significant programmatic accomplishments, and developing and field-testing transformational technologies to address the nation's most pressing groundwater and vadose zone contamination problems.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Equipment Request for the Belleville Agricultural Research and Education Center

The funding provided by the DOE for this project was used exclusively to purchase research equipment involved with the field development and evaluation of crop production technologies and practices for energy crop production. The new equipment has been placed into service on the SIU farms and has significantly enhanced our research capacity and scope for agronomy and precision ag research to support novel seed traits or crop management strategies for improving the efficiency and productivity of corn and soybeans. More specifically, the precision ag capability of the equipment that was purchased has heightened interest by faculty and associated industry partners to develop collaborative projects. In addition, this equipment has provided SIU with a foundation to be more successful at securing competitive grants in energy crop production and precision ag data management. Furthermore, the enhanced capacity for agronomy research in the southern Illinois region has been realized and will benefit crop producers in this region by learning to improve their operations from our research outcomes.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Midwestern Regional Center of the Doe National Institute for Climatic Change Research

The goal of NICCR (National Institute for Climatic Change Research) was to mobilize university researchers, from all regions of the country, in support of the climatic change research objectives of DOE/BER. The NICCR Midwestern Regional Center (MRC) supported work in the following states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The MRC of NICCR was able to support nearly $\$ $8 million in climatic change research, including $\$ $6,671,303 for twenty projects solicited and selected by the MRC over five requests for proposals (RFPs) and $\$ $1,051,666 for the final year of ten projects from the discontinued DOE NIGEC (National Institute for Global Environmental Change) program. The projects selected and funded by the MRC resulted in 135 peer-reviewed publications and supported the training of 25 PhD students and 23 Masters students. Another 36 publications were generated by the final year of continuing NIGEC projects supported by the MRC. The projects funded by the MRC used a variety of approaches to answer questions relevant to the DOE’s climate change research program. These included experiments that manipulated temperature, moisture and other global change factors; studies that sought to understand how the distribution of species and ecosystems might change under future climates; studies that used measurements and modeling to examine current ecosystem fluxes of energy and mass and those that would exist under future conditions; and studies that synthesized existing data sets to improve our understanding of the effects of climatic change on terrestrial ecosystems. In all of these efforts, the MRC specifically sought to identify and quantify responses of terrestrial ecosystems that were not well understood or not well modeled by current efforts. The MRC also sought to better understand and model important feedbacks between terrestrial ecosystems, atmospheric chemistry, and regional and global climate systems. The broad variety of projects the MRC has supported gave us a unique opportunity to greatly improve our ability to predict the future health, composition and function of important agricultural and natural terrestrial ecosystems within the Midwestern Region.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program: FY 2025 Completed Projects

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) largest multiprogram science, technology, and energy laboratory. It possesses distinctive capabilities in a variety of fields, such as neutron science, computing, advanced materials, and nuclear science and technology. Using these capabilities, ORNL conducts basic and applied research and development (R&D) to support DOE’s overarching mission “to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.” As a national resource, ORNL also applies its capabilities and skills to the specific needs of other federal agencies and customers through the DOE Strategic Partnership Projects (SPP) Program. Information about the laboratory and its programs is available on the ORNL website. The Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at ORNL operates under the authority of DOE Order 413.2C, Laboratory Directed Research and Development, which establishes DOE’s requirements for the program while providing the laboratory director broad flexibility for program implementation. The LDRD Program funds are obtained through a charge to all laboratory programs. Although it represents a relatively small portion of the overall research budget, the LDRD Program plays an essential role in maintaining the laboratory’s ability to respond to national needs. The program allows ORNL to improve its distinctive capabilities and enhance its ability to conduct cutting-edge R&D. In accordance with the DOE order, R&D projects funded through the LDRD Program at ORNL support the goals of • maintaining the scientific and technical vitality of the laboratory, • enhancing the laboratory’s ability to address future DOE missions, • fostering creativity and stimulating exploration of forefront areas of science and technology, • serving as a proving ground for new concepts in R&D, and • supporting high-risk, potentially high-value R&D. This report provides an overview of the LDRD Program at ORNL in FY 2025 and contains summaries of all the LDRD research projects that concluded between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Using Change Models to Envision Better Applications of Animal Behavior Research in Conservation Management and Beyond

While most animal behavior researchers have mastered the process of knowledge creation, generating knowledge that can readily be applied requires a different set of skills. The process and timeframe of fundamental scientific knowledge production is often not relevant to those who might apply it, such as conservation or wildlife managers. Additionally, the complex challenges that policy makers, managers and practitioners face are often not adequately communicated to and among scientists. This mutual disconnect in discourse, relationships, common terms, and practices is especially apparent when animal behavior researchers seek to have applied impact. We argue that bridging the complex implementation gap in animal behavior requires a formalized vision for change. We turn to change model theory, a tool commonly used in other fields for identifying the links between actions and outcomes necessary for enacting large-scale change. We focus on the subfield of conservation behavior with a change model that outlines specific ways to improve collaboration and coordination between animal behavior science and conservation practice. We present this targeted change model, review each strategy the model outlines, and highlight pressing actions that people from various career stages and backgrounds can take. We encourage researchers to further the alignment of science with management needs by developing the proper communication mechanisms for improved cultural exchange and plan future change model efforts directly targeting managers. Beyond the conservation behavior change model we present, we also discuss the broad applicability of change models to enhance the application of academic research to other fields. Fundamental science researchers are increasingly required to show impact of their work on society; the change model process we describe here can enable further impact.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Cooperative Research and Infectious Disease Surveillance: A 2021 Epilogue

As the world looks forward to turning a corner in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes increasingly evident that international research cooperation and dialogue is necessary to end this global catastrophe. Last year, we initiated a research topic: “Infectious Disease Surveillance: Cooperative Research in Response to Recent Outbreaks, Including COVID-19,” which aimed at featuring manuscripts focused on the essential link between surveillance and cooperative research for emerging and endemic diseases, and highlighting scientific partnerships in countries under-represented in the scientific literature. Here we recognize the body of work published from our manuscript call that resulted in over 50 published papers. This current analysis describes articles and authors from a variety of funded and unfunded international sources. The work exemplifies successful research and publications which are frequently cooperative, and may serve as a basis to model further global scientific engagements.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Multidimensional perspectives of geo-epidemiology: from interdisciplinary learning and research to cost–benefit oriented decision-making

Research typically promotes two types of outcomes (inventions and discoveries), which induce a virtuous cycle: something suspected or desired (not previously demonstrated) may become known or feasible once a new tool or procedure is invented and, later, the use of this invention may discover new knowledge. Research also promotes the opposite sequence—from new knowledge to new inventions. This bidirectional process is observed in geo-referenced epidemiology—a field that relates to but may also differ from spatial epidemiology. Geo-epidemiology encompasses several theories and technologies that promote inter/transdisciplinary knowledge integration, education, and research in population health. Based on visual examples derived from geo-referenced studies on epidemics and epizootics, this report demonstrates that this field may extract more (geographically related) information than simple spatial analyses, which then supports more effective and/or less costly interventions. Actual (not simulated) bio-geo-temporal interactions (never captured before the emergence of technologies that analyze geo-referenced data, such as geographical information systems) can now address research questions that relate to several fields, such as Network Theory. Thus, a new opportunity arises before us, which exceeds research: it also demands knowledge integration across disciplines as well as novel educational programs which, to be biomedically and socially justified, should demonstrate cost-effectiveness. Grounded on many bio-temporal-georeferenced examples, this report reviews the literature that supports this hypothesis: novel educational programs that focus on geo-referenced epidemic data may help generate cost-effective policies that prevent or control disease dissemination.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

1995 NASA High-Speed Research Program Sonic Boom Workshop: Configuration Design, Analysis, and Testing - Volume 2

The High-Speed Research Program and NASA Langley Research Center sponsored the NASA High-Speed Research Program Sonic Boom Workshop on September 12-13, 1995. The workshop was designed to bring together NASAs scientists and engineers and their counterparts in industry, other Government agencies, and academia working together in the sonic boom element of NASAs High-Speed Research Program. Specific objectives of this workshop were to: (1) report the progress and status of research in sonic boom propagation, acceptability, and design; (2) promote and disseminate this technology within the appropriate technical communities; (3) help promote synergy among the scientists working in the Program; and (4) identify technology pacing, the development C, of viable reduced-boom High-Speed Civil Transport concepts. The Workshop was organized in four sessions: Sessions 1 Sonic Boom Propagation (Theoretical); Session 2 Sonic Boom Propagation (Experimental); Session 3 Acceptability Studies-Human and Animal; and Session 4 - Configuration Design, Analysis, and Testing.

High-speed research↗

Space flight nutrition research: platforms and analogs

Conducting research during actual or simulated weightlessness is a challenging endeavor, where even the simplest activities may present significant challenges. This article reviews some of the potential obstacles associated with performing research during space flight and offers brief descriptions of current and previous space research platforms and ground-based analogs, including those for human, animal, and cell-based research. This review is intended to highlight the main issues of space flight research analogs and leave the specifics for each physiologic system for the other papers in this section.

NASA Discipline Regulatory Physiology↗

Future human bone research in space

Skylab crewmembers demonstrated negative calcium (Ca) balance reaching about -300 mg/day by flight day 84. Limited bone density (BMD) measurements documented that bone was not lost equally from all parts of the skeleton. Subsequent BMD studies during long duration Russian flights documented the regional extent of bone loss. These studies demonstrated mean losses in the spine, femur neck, trochanter, and pelvis of about 1%-1.6% with large differences between individuals as well as between bone sites in a given individual. Limited available data indicate postflight bone recovery occurred in some individuals, but may require several years for complete restoration. Long duration bedrest studies showed a similar pattern of bone loss and calcium balance (-180 mg/day) as spaceflight. During long duration bedrest, resorption markers were elevated, formation markers were unchanged, 1,25 vitamin D (VitD) and calcium absorption were decreased, and serum ionized Ca was increased. Although this information is a good beginning, additional spaceflight research is needed to assess architectural and subregional bone changes, elucidate mechanisms, and develop efficient as well as effective countermeasures. Space research poses a number of unique problems not encountered in ground-based laboratory research. Therefore, researchers contemplating human spaceflight research need to consider a number of unique problems related to spaceflight in their experimental design.

NASA Center JSC↗

Report of the Interagency Optical Network Testbeds Workshop 2, NASA Ames Research Center, September 12-14, 2005

The Optical Network Testbeds Workshop 2 (ONT2), held on September 12-14, 2005, was cosponsored by the Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE/SC) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in cooperation with the Joint Engineering Team (JET) of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program's Large Scale Networking (LSN) Coordinating Group. The ONT2 workshop was a follow-on to an August 2004 Workshop on Optical Network Testbeds (ONT1). ONT1 recommended actions by the Federal agencies to assure timely development and implementation of optical networking technologies and infrastructure. Hosted by the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, the ONT2 workshop brought together representatives of the U.S. advanced research and education (R&E) networks, regional optical networks (RONs), service providers, international networking organizations, and senior engineering and R&D managers from Federal agencies and national research laboratories. Its purpose was to develop a common vision of the optical network technologies, services, infrastructure, and organizations needed to enable widespread use of optical networks; recommend activities for transitioning the optical networking research community and its current infrastructure to leading-edge optical networks over the next three to five years; and present information enabling commercial network infrastructure providers to plan for and use leading-edge optical network services in that time frame.

OEP(Open Exchange Points)↗

Guidance and Lessons Learned from COVID-19 for Human-Subjects Research

The goal of this effort was to identify innovative strategies, approaches, and methods that have enabled researchers to continue doing meaningful human subjects research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many organizations and recent literature primarily focus on efforts for future research in a post-COVID environment. Additionally, there have been no systematic efforts across the agency or broader human factors community to coordinate or share strategies. Therefore, the focus was on acquiring knowledge gained by researchers from experiences during COVID that could be valuable to continue human-subjects research under existing restrictions.

Coronavirus Disease 2019↗

Biomedical Research for Human Spaceflight

This invited presentation will offer an overview of the biomedical research – both from a biomedical sciences and engineering perspective – of human physiology and performance during spaceflight. Focused on the unique expertise within the Biomedical Sciences Branch, NASA Johnson Space Center, the talk will elucidate the critical role of biomedical laboratories in synergistic activities in clinical sciences, space physiology, applied research, technology development, and operational support for human space exploration. Together, the efforts within this branch play a crucial role in supporting astronauts' health, performance, and safety. The branch Scientists, Researchers, and Engineers conduct biomedical research in flight on board the International Space Station and on-earth space environment analogs. This dual approach allows for a nuanced understanding of the effects of micro- and planetary gravitation fields on human physiology and the assessment of potential clinical and biomedical interventions (countermeasures) to mitigate astronaut clinical and performance decrements. The talk aims to underscore the synergistic collaborative efforts of biomedical engineers, physiologists, clinicians, and computational researchers, emphasizing these experts' pivotal role in advancing human spaceflight's frontiers.

Biomedical Research↗

NASA's Human Research Program: Evolving Collaborations to Enable the Future of Human Spaceflight

Since its formation in 2007, the NASA Human Research Program’s (HRP) mission has been to protect the health and performance of astronauts as they explore beyond low Earth orbit. The HRP helps enable exploration spaceflight through a focused program of research that leads to the development and delivery of solutions to protect human health and performance during and after these missions. This research is conducted primarily in ground analogs of the spaceflight environment and on the International Space Station (ISS). Over the last 3 years, NASA has undergone transformative changes with the flight of Artemis I, the formation of the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations Program, commercial flights to the ISS, and collaboration with new international partners participating in human spaceflight. The HRP has embraced these new opportunities and is collaborating on all these fronts to collect biomedical research data. Artemis I marked the arrival of NASA’s new human spaceflight exploration missions. NASA established the Moon to Mars Program Office to design a roadmap for the exploration of the lunar surface and the journey beyond to Mars. The HRP has a critical role in conducting research and delivering technologies that will lead to solutions that protect human health and performance, and is working closely with the Moon to Mars Office to ensure these deliverables are ready in time to support their strategy. The HRP is also developing the partnership strategies required to support these deliverables. Commercial space flights, both free flyer and suborbital missions and private astronaut missions to the ISS, are providing broader opportunities and more subjects to characterize spaceflight-induced changes to the human system and to test countermeasures. To better use these opportunities to achieve its mission, the HRP has been working to understand the commercial spaceflight companies’ needs and then partnering with them on aspects of mutual interest. In addition, the HRP continues to engage in long-standing relationships with its international partners through the International Space Life Sciences Working Group and other joint international groups. The HRP is interested in sharing its knowledge and collaborating on projects of mutual interest with new countries that are developing capabilities for human spaceflight. The next 10 years will shape how humanity partners on exploration missions to Mars, and the HRP is committed to enabling and developing collaborative strategies with commercial and international partners to keep humans safe and productive as they explore longer and further into space.

Human research↗

Design and Validation of Control Room Upgrades Using a Research Simulator Facility

Since 1981, the United States (U.S.) Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) [1] requires a plant- specific simulator facility for use in training at U.S. nuclear power plants (NPPs). These training simulators are in near constant use for training and qualification of licensed NPP operators. In the early 1980s, the Halden Man-Machine Laboratory (HAMMLab) at the Halden Reactor Project (HRP) in Norway first built perhaps the most well known set of research simulators. The HRP offered a high- fidelity simulator facility in which the simulator is functionally linked to a specific plant but in which the human-machine interface (HMI) may differ from that found in the plant. As such, HAMMLab incorporated more advanced digital instrumentation and controls (I&C) than the plant, thereby giving it considerable interface flexibility that researchers took full advantage of when designing and validating different ways to upgrade NPP control rooms. Several U.S. partners—the U.S. NRC, the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), Sandia National Laboratories, and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) – as well as international members of the HRP, have been working with HRP to run control room simulator studies. These studies, which use crews from Scandinavian plants, are used to determine crew behavior in a variety of normal and off-normal plant operations. The findings have ultimately been used to guide safety considerations at plants and to inform advanced HMI design—both for the regulator and in industry. Given the desire to use U.S. crews of licensed operators on a simulator of a U.S. NPP, there is a clear need for a research simulator facility in the U.S. There is no general-purpose reconfigurable research oriented control room simulator facility in the U.S. that can be used for a variety of studies, including the design and validation of control room upgrades.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

THE IMPACT OF THERMAL ENGINEERING RESEARCH ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

Global climate change is recognized by many people around the world as being one of the most pressing issues facing our society today. The thermal engineering research community clearly plays an important role in addressing this critical issue, but what kind of thermal engineering research is, or will be, most impactful? In other words, in what directions should thermal engineering research be targeted in order to derive the greatest benefit with respect to global climate change? To answer this question we consider the potential reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, coupled with potential economic impacts, resulting from thermal engineering research. Here a new model framework is introduced that allows a technological, sector-by-sector analysis of GHG emissions avoidance. For each sector, we consider the maximum reduction in CO2 emissions due to such research, and the cost effectiveness of the new efficient technologies. The results are normalized on a country-by-country basis, where we consider the USA, the European Union, China, India, and Australia as representative countries or regions. Among energy supply-side technologies, improvements in coal-burning power generation are seen as having the most beneficial CO2 and economic impacts. The one demand-side technology considered, residential space cooling, offers positive but limited impacts. The proposed framework can be extended to include additional technologies and impacts, such as water consumption.

Carbon emission mitigation↗

Energy Frontier Research Centers: Impact Report, January 2017

Since its inception in 2009, the U. S. Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program has become an important research modality in the Department’s portfolio, enabling high impact research that addresses key scientific challenges for energy technologies. Funded by the Office of Science’s Basic Energy Sciences program, the EFRCs are located across the United States and are led by universities, national laboratories, and private research institutions. These multi-investigator, multidisciplinary centers bring together world-class teams of researchers, often from multiple institutions, to tackle the toughest scientific challenges preventing advances in energy technologies. The EFRCs’ fundamental scientific advances are having a significant impact that is being translated to industry. In 2009 five-year awards were made to 46 EFRCs, including 16 that were fully funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). An open recompetition of the program in 2014 resulted in fouryear awards to 32 centers, 22 of which are renewals of existing EFRCs and 10 of which are new EFRCs. In 2016, DOE added four new centers to accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to support the Department’s environmental management and nuclear cleanup mission, bringing the total number of active EFRCs to 36. The impact reports in this document describe some of the many scientific accomplishments and greater impacts of the class of 2009 – 2018 EFRCs and early outcomes from a few of the class of 2014 – 2018 EFRCs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗