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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Analysis Facilities for the HL-LHC White Paper

This white paper presents the current status of the R&D for Analysis Facilities (AFs) and attempts to summarize the views on the future direction of these facilities. These views have been collected through the High Energy Physics (HEP) Software Foundation’s (HSF) Analysis Facilities forum (HSF Analysis Facilities Forum), established in March 2022, the Analysis Ecosystems II workshop (Analysis Ecosystems Workshop II), that took place in May 2022, and the WLCG/HSF pre-CHEP workshop (WLCG–HSF pre-CHEP Workshop), that took place in May 2023. The paper attempts to cover all the aspects of an analysis facility.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Geochemical and microbial characteristics of seepage water and mineral precipitates in a radwaste disposal facility impacted by seawater intrusion and high alkalinity

The construction of an underground facility can dramatically change the quality, flow direction, and level of groundwater. It may also impact subsurface microbial composition and activity. Groundwater quality was monitored over eight years in two observational wells near an underground disposal facility on the east coast of South Korea. The results showed dramatic increases in dissolved ions such as O 2 , Na, Ca, Mg, and SO 4 during facility construction. Seepage water samples downgradient from the silos and tunnels, and precipitates deposited along the seepage water flow path were collected to determine the impact inside the disposal facility. X-ray analysis (powder X-ray diffraction (pXRD) and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS)) were used to characterize the mineral precipitates. Microbial community composition was determined by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The seepage water composition was of two types: Ca-Cl and Ca-Na-HCO 3 . The ratio of Cl and δ 18 O showed that the Ca-Cl type seepage water was influenced by groundwater mixed with seawater ranging from 2.7% to 15.1%. Various sulfate-reducing bacteria were identified in the Ca-Cl type seepage water, exhibiting relatively high sulfate content from seawater intrusion. Samples from the Ca-Na-HCO 3 type seepage water had an extremely high pH (>10) and abundance of Hydrogenophaga. The precipitates observed along the flow path of the seepage water included calcite, ferrihydrite, green rust, and siderite, depending on seepage water chemistry and microbial activity. This study suggests that the construction of underground structures creates distinct, localized geochemical conditions (e.g., high alkalinity, high salinity, and oxic conditions), which may impact microbial communities. These biogeochemical changes may have undesirable large-scale impacts such as water pump clogging. Overall, an understanding of the process and long-term monitoring are essential to assess the safety of underground facilities.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Design and Construction of a High Field Cable Test Facility at Fermilab

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, together with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is building a new High Field Vertical Magnet Test Facility (HFVMTF) to be situated in the Magnet Test Facility at Fermilab. The HFVMTF is jointly funded by the US DOE Offices of Science, High Energy Physics, and Fusion Energy Sciences, and will serve as a superconducting cable test facility for both communities. The background magnetic field for test samples is 15 T and will be produced by a magnet provided by LBNL operating at 1.9 K in superfluid helium. The samples will be placed in the background magnetic field, cooled to between 4.5 K and a user-specified upper limit, and will be powered with a super-conducting transformer at up to 100 kA. Additionally, this facility will be used to test high-field superconducting magnet models and demonstrators, including hybrid magnets, produced by the US Magnet Development Program. Presently, the various tasks of the project are at different stages of execution, from conceptual to ready-for-construction designs. Here, this paper describes the parameters and design status of the pit construction, cryostat, heat exchanger, lambda plate, power system, and quench protection and monitoring systems of the facility.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Experimental Validation of a High-Temperature Test Facility for Future Additive Manufactured Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Turbine Testing

For next-generation power plants to achieve high cycle efficiencies consistent with the Department of Energy's 65% efficiency target, turbomachinery capable of operating within high-temperature power cycles must be demonstrated. Pairing additively manufactured superalloy turbines with the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO 2 ) power cycle could enable turbine inlet temperatures approaching 1300 °C while providing flexibility in turbine cooling strategies. Development of test facilities to characterize and validate such systems is crucial. In this study, a turbine test facility capable of achieving inlet conditions of 800 °C, 11 MPa, and 0.43 kg/s while accommodating complex auxiliary cooling flow requirements has been designed and constructed to support future testing of a Haynes 282 additively manufactured 30 kW turbine-generator system with advanced cooling channels. This facility enables characterization of aerodynamic performance, leakage, and windage losses. Details of the facility's construction and operation are presented, along with experimental validation tests using an orifice as an expansion device in place of the turbine. These tests confirm that the facility can reach the required conditions, distinguish regions of achievable steady and pseudo-steady conditions, and identify the heater power required for each point in the upcoming turbine campaign. The campaign confirmed that ISO 5167-2 can reliably predict orifice mass flow rates in extreme supercritical carbon dioxide conditions with deviations of 0.5–7.5%.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Data Fusion for the Development of a Multimodal Freight Transload Facilities Dataset in the U.S.

To withstand the growing demand of commodity volume and its strain on the transportation infrastructure, it is necessary to identify the flow of commodities by route and mode. However, a national multimodal freight routing model does not exist for the U.S. The development of such model requires multiple building blocks, such as virtual representations of roadway, railway, and waterway networks, transload facilities (TFs), and access/egress links. Most of these blocks have a robust database in the U.S., except for the TFs. Here, this paper presents the fusion of dispersed and heterogeneous representations of multimodal TFs into a single, comprehensive, geospatial freight TF dataset. The TF dataset is derived from several sources, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Master Docks Plus, the National Transportation Atlas Database, the Intermodal Association of North America, industry publications, and other public information. First, individual datasets were queried and reconciled. A geocoding/reverse geocoding process was applied to get the best street address and latitude/longitude location for each terminal. Then, duplicate terminals were identified by a fuzzy match algorithm based on terminal name and location, and removed. Validation was performed by visual inspection of random facilities. The main contributions of this work are: a publicly available version of the TF dataset, including facility location and multimodal transfer capability of 9,003 facilities, and an enterprise-version with the same facilities but including commodity handling capabilities. The main purpose of developing the TF dataset is to inform multimodal routing algorithms. The proposed TF dataset allows for credibly modeling the multimodal transfer of commodities within shipment routes.

Commodity Routing↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hazards and Probabilistic Risk Assessments of a Light-Water Reactor Coupled with Industrial Facilities

This report provides a roadmap and toolkit for site-specific risk assessments across a broad range of industrial customers co-located with nuclear power plants (NPPs). This report builds upon the body of work sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) Light-Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Flexible Plant Operation and Generation Pathway that presented hazards assessment and generic probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs) for the addition of a heat extraction system (HES) to light-water reactors co-located with hydrogen production facilities. The report expands the hazards assessments to include other industrial facilities: an oil refinery, a methanol plant, a synthetic fuel (synfuel) plant, the production of synthetic gas (syngas) as part of the methanol and synfuel plants, and wood pulp and paper mills. All these facilities are specified through industrial process and requirements research performed by national laboratories, universities, and interaction with industry. Many of the processes used in this report are pre-conceptual designs to use for decarbonization of the current technology facilities. A process of failure modes and effects analysis (what can go wrong) and accidentology (what has historically gone wrong) was used to determine the hazards presented to the NPP by the addition of the HES and the industrial customer. Chemical properties of feedstocks and products are summarized as part of the hazards assessment. Example analysis procedures are provided for each of the hazard types identified. These deterministic analyses can be used to assess adherence to licensing criteria. They can also be used to meet other safety goals like protection of the public, workers, or industrial facility equipment. The probabilistic analysis consisted of three sizes of HESs modeled in a PRA to assess the impact on the initiating events (IE) and results of the PRA. The PRA results conclude that the resulting increases in IE frequencies are below the limits required for small changes to existing NPPs under 10 CFR 50.59.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Annual Status Report (FY 2024): Performance Assessment for the Integrated Disposal Facility

The purpose of this Annual Summary Report (ASR) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 is to evaluate the continued adequacy of the Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF) Performance Assessment (PA) and Disposal Authorization Statement (DAS). This report consolidates relevant monitoring data, modeling analyses, and regulatory reviews to demonstrate a reasonable expectation that the PA objectives and performance measures will be met, as required under DOE O 435.1. The ASR follows the guidance in DOE-STD-5002-2017, which provides a framework for maintaining the validity of the DAS through periodic assessment of facility performance and compliance with waste disposal requirements. The IDF is a near-surface disposal facility designed to receive and permanently dispose of low-level waste (LLW) and mixed low-level waste (MLLW) generated from Hanford Site operations. The facility consists of two double-lined disposal cells equipped with leak detection and leachates recovery systems to ensure environmental protection. Waste planned for disposal includes vitrified low-activity waste (LAW) and solid secondary waste (SSW) from the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). At the end of FY 2024, the IDF had not yet received any waste, as it remains in a pre-operational state. Disposal activities will begin with the hot commissioning of the WTP LAW Vitrification Facility using the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) approach in Calendar Year (CY) 2025. This ASR justifies the continued adequacy of the PA and DAS by reviewing key documents and data sources. these sources are listed in Table A-2 in Appendix A.4): The Operating Disposal Authorization Statement (ODAS) for the IDF (DOE-EM, 2021) remains in effect, with no outstanding conditions or key issues affecting its implementation. Based on the comprehensive review of PA analyses, monitoring data, and regulatory compliance activities, this ASR concludes that the IDF remains in compliance with DOE O 435.1, and there is reasonable assurance that the PA performance objectives will be met once disposal operations commence in CY 2025.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2026

NLR CSP Optical Facilities: Illuminating the Path Forward Through Innovation and Impact: Agreement 38490

This initiative is a multi-faceted project at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) aimed at strengthening its Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) Optical Facilities to advance the development of low-cost, high-performance materials for solar and other applications. The project's strategy is built on three pillars: strategic stakeholder engagement, diligent facility maintenance and utilization, and the development of new research capabilities. The overarching goal is to ensure the facilities remain state-of-the-art resources for industry and academia, thereby accelerating the conversion of concentrated sunlight into energy. A key driver of the project is an international Advisory Board, which provides critical guidance on research priorities and industry needs, leading to new collaborations and secured funding. This external engagement, combined with proactive outreach to industry partners, ensures the lab's work remains aligned with real-world challenges, including materials durability and performance certification. Significant efforts in facility maintenance have addressed challenges with aging infrastructure. Notable achievements include the complete refurbishment of the hail-damaged Ultra-Accelerated Weathering System (UAWS) and the successful replacement of a failing 15-year-old Lambda 1050 spectrophotometer with a new-generation model, substantially upgrading material characterization capabilities. These maintenance activities were complemented by achieving a prestigious ISO 9001:2015 certification for the Advanced Optical Materials Labs, formally recognizing the quality and reliability of NLR's measurement capabilities. Despite these successes, challenges remain, including high demand for the High Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) and intermittent failures of other key instruments. The project has delivered major advancements in research techniques and capabilities. At the Flatirons campus, a new indoor laboratory, was established to house advanced deflectometry and photogrammetry systems for heliostat characterization. For on-sun testing, a novel, actively cooled turning mirror was developed for the HFSF, enabling more realistic testing of particle receivers and components. A collaboration with Virginia Tech successfully demonstrated the high-temperature durability of a new solar absorber coating through extensive cyclic testing. Concurrently, new modeling took place to better predict material degradation on rough, fractal surfaces. In summary, this project has systematically enhanced NLR's CSP Optical Facilities through strategic upgrades, rigorous maintenance, and stakeholder-guided research. By overcoming equipment failures, budgetary constraints, and logistical hurdles, the project has reinforced NLR's role as a central hub for CSP innovation and materials testing. Future work will focus on securing diverse funding, expanding collaborations, and continuing to provide the critical infrastructure needed to accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation technologies.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Current Status of the Synroc Waste Treatment Facility - 20263

Construction of the Synroc Waste Treatment Facility is well underway at ANSTO. This plant has been designed to treat intermediate level liquid waste arising from the production of Mo-99 within the newly constructed ANSTO Nuclear Medicine (ANM) precinct [1]. The facility utilises ANSTO Synroc technology that has been tailored to the chemical, physical, and radiological properties of the waste. The result is a highly durable wasteform with a significant reduction in the final volume of the treated waste. This paper presents the construction status of the Synroc Waste Treatment Facility and the status of the associated technology maturation plan. Construction of the building is scheduled for completion in late 2020 followed by process installation and commissioning. A key component of the technology maturation plan has been the construction of an Inactive Engineering Demonstrator [2]. This has aided in the mitigation of risks with respect to technology selection, process integration, and process nuclearisation. Furthermore, the demonstration facility has provided an environment for the design and development of the instrumentation and control philosophy resulting in a seamlessly integrated plant control system. Successful demonstration of the technology by the inactive engineering demonstrator has significantly reduced the associated risks. Details of the Synroc Waste Treatment Facility project progress will also be presented. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Port Hope Areas Initiative's Port Granby Project: The Decontamination of Site Equipment from a Low Level Waste Facility - 20330

The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) is the Government of Canada's response to the community recommended solutions for the remediation and safe, long-term management of historic low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) that was the result of uranium and radium processing operations in the Municipality of Port Hope, Ontario from the 1930's to the 1980's. The Eldorado refinery, on the shores of Lake Ontario, began refining radium-226 from pitchblende ore, later transitioning to the refining of uranium ore. Process residues were deposited at the Welcome Waste Management Facility in Port Hope until the mid-1950's switching to the Port Granby Waste Management Facility (PGWMF), which continued to accept waste until the late 1980's. The Port Granby Project involves the construction of a new, secure long-term waste management facility (LTWMF) and supporting infrastructure, and the excavation and relocation of approximately 1,200,000 m{sup 3} of historic low-level radioactive waste and marginally contaminated soil from the PGWMF to the newly constructed LTWMF. Since the project's inception in 2016, the bulk of the material has since been moved to the final long term storage cell. This has taken over 500,000 person-hours and a large amount of one site heavy equipment to accomplish including excavators, bulldozers, rock trucks, baker tanks and vacuum trucks. While many of the pieces of heavy equipment and water management equipment has further work to do on site, several of the sites larger items have already undergone the decontamination process prior to release from the site. This process has posed a serious challenge as the waste has a caustic nature to it and over the last few years it has had time to work its way into the metallic structures and framework of the equipment. Coupled with the tight work spaces and in some cases confined work areas there have been many issues that needed to be addressed to successfully reach a state where items can be free released to the unrestricted limits of the sites license. This ongoing process has led to a more refined decontamination program at the Port Granby Facility and has had a rather high success rate considering the length of time the equipment has been exposed to the waste materials on site. This paper discusses the varied challenges of decontamination faced at a low-level radioactive waste facility with a focus on the following aspects: - Challenges faced regarding different equipment types and the solutions implemented by Wood to address these challenges; - An examination of various decontamination methods employed throughout the project; and - Lessons learned over three years of remediation work and how they impact the decontamination process. (authors)

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

Equity Considerations in Siting Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities for Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel

Questions of equity and fairness are often raised by representatives from State, Tribal and local governments and members of the public when resolving conflicts over siting of nuclear facilities. However, the two terms are not synonymous: equity can be quantified while fairness is much more subjective. The Department of Energy's (DOE) December 2021 Request for Information sought input on how to site federal facilities for the temporary, consolidated storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) using a consent-based approach. It is anticipated that just such questions about equity and fairness associated with the potential emergence of more than one host site may be raised by the twelve groups of university, nonprofit and private sector partners (Consortia) working to support community engagement, inclusively involve stakeholders, build relationships, and develop innovative forms of mutual learning and public capacity to participate in the consent-based siting process for a federal consolidated interim storage facility during the current Planning & Capacity Building stage of the consent-based siting process. In terms of DOE's Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS), sociopolitical equity concepts are a factor in all aspects of IWMS development and operations and will be particularly applicable should two or more host sites become a possibility, either by the emergence of multiple volunteer hosts or by pursuit as a IWMS program strategy. This paper summarizes recent analyses that explore how four equity metrics - number of states, division of the projected SNF total by the year 2083, current population and land area - might be perceived by host communities, states and regions if two, three or four sites for hosting federal consolidated interim storage facilities were to be contemporaneously realized. Existing institutional arrangements, including Nuclear Regulatory Commission regions, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regions and Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compacts, were selected to create hypothetically merged two, three and four-region scenarios to calculate how the four metrics balance out. Projected SNF burden was prioritized with regional contiguity of the consolidated regions a requirement for a functional scenario. The intent was not to promote or suggest any construct as a program objective; the configurations are geopolitical abstractions only to explore potential perceptions of equity. Understanding the possible issues of equity that could arise may benefit program efforts toward achieving a cooperative federalism wherein both the federal and multiple State governments share the goal of manifesting more than one federal consolidated interim storage facility. The main finding is that it is not possible to optimize for all four metrics simultaneously. The analyses demonstrate that trying to create a sense of equity by backfitting a solution to a random population and land distribution will always contain a degree of artificiality.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2020

Environmentally improved CdTe photovoltaic recycling through novel technologies and facility location strategies

Abstract Photovoltaic waste is projected to reach up to 78 million tons across globally dispersed locations through 2050. Current recycling infrastructure is inadequate to process these waste volumes responsibly. This necessitates commercializing novel, environmentally advantageous photovoltaic recycling technologies that improve upon incumbent industrial operations. CdTe photovoltaic recycling is a promising candidate for improvements as 25,000 tons of spent modules are recycled worldwide annually. This paper evaluates the operational performance and compares six novel technologies, the incumbent technology used in industry and one technology which extends the incumbent process across ten environmental impact categories. The tradeoff between incurring a transportation burden (ship or road) to recycle in a large‐scale centralized facility with a higher operational efficiency and avoiding transportation by recycling in a small‐scale decentralized facility with a lower operational efficiency is evaluated. Thermal delamination to eliminate the ethylene vinyl acetate and separate the photovoltaic glass panels is preferable to the incumbent mechanical process across nine environmental impact categories and decreases the climate‐change impact of CdTe photovoltaic recycling by 23%. Bath and probe sonication are ineffective for delamination, and the use of organic solvents is more environmentally burdensome than the incumbent mechanical process. Centralized recycling with shipping is environmentally preferable than with road‐based transportation. For every 100‐km increase in road transportation from the decentralized to the centralized facility, the inventory requirement in the centralized facility should be 6% lower than the decentralized facility for centralized recycling to have a lower climate‐change impact than decentralized recycling. The corresponding value for shipping is 0.4%.

Ravikumar, Dwarakanath↗
DOE OSTI2025

60 years of science in ICF: from conception to scientific breakeven on the National Ignition Facility

The recent achievements of a burning plasma, fusion ignition, and scientific energy gain with deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) represents a major milestone in the development of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and all of fusion research. In these experiments, fuel pressures well in excess of hundreds of GBars were achieved in the compressed fuel, and robust alpha heating of the fuel, far in excess of the energy provided by the implosion, were demonstrated for the first time. These achievements occurred 60 years after the inception of ICF and the first laser demonstration, and were made possible by more than five decades of research at laser facilities around the world. Advances in laser technology both in wavelength and precision, motivated by improved understanding of laser-plasma interaction physics and the demands of targets; improvements in target fabrication inspired by the need to control and minimize hydrodynamic instabilities in the implosion; and multi-dimensional simulations and diagnostics have been critical to this achievement. This paper will summarize the scientific and technical advances, the surprises, and the challenges that had to be overcome to achieve these goals.

fusion↗
DOE OSTI2024

Optimizing High-Throughput Inference on Graph Neural Networks at Shared Computing Facilities with the NVIDIA Triton Inference Server

Abstract With machine learning applications now spanning a variety of computational tasks, multi-user shared computing facilities are devoting a rapidly increasing proportion of their resources to such algorithms. Graph neural networks (GNNs), for example, have provided astounding improvements in extracting complex signatures from data and are now widely used in a variety of applications, such as particle jet classification in high energy physics (HEP). However, GNNs also come with an enormous computational penalty that requires the use of GPUs to maintain reasonable throughput. At shared computing facilities, such as those used by physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), methodical resource allocation and high throughput at the many-user scale are key to ensuring that resources are being used as efficiently as possible. These facilities, however, primarily provide CPU-only nodes, which proves detrimental to time-to-insight and computational throughput for workflows that include machine learning inference. In this work, we describe how a shared computing facility can use the NVIDIA Triton Inference Server to optimize its resource allocation and computing structure, recovering high throughput while scaling out to multiple users by massively parallelizing their machine learning inference. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this system in a realistic multi-user environment, we use the Fermilab Elastic Analysis Facility augmented with the Triton Inference Server to provide scalable and high-throughput access to a HEP-specific GNN and report on the outcome.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Representativity error scaling of models of the high temperature test facility

Error scaling is a critical step toward the validation of modeling capabilities for high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). Extensive effort is being made to bring HTGRs into the validation basis of numerous thermal-hydraulics codes. Here, this paper demonstrates how systems-level codes can be leveraged to perform error scaling analyses between an experimental facility and a plant-to-be facility. Specifically, we focus on two conduction cooldown experiments from the High Temperature Test Facility (HTTF) and the General Atomics 350 MW th modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR-350). The error scaling methodology employed in this study is representativity, which in the context of this work was used to quantify how well experiments captured the physics of the plant facility by comparing sensitivity vectors between the two facilities. In addition, two different RELAP5–3D models of the HTTF were included in the comparison to determine if modeling methodologies notably impact the representativity results. The key figures of merit are the maximum block temperature and the coolant outlet temperature. The time-dependent maximum block temperature had a low representativity of below 0.1 for both models across both transients. The coolant outlet temperature had a higher representativity of around 0.6 for both models during the pressurized conduction cooldown, but it was below 0.2 for the depressurized conduction cooldown. Overall, the HTTF experiments were not representative of the transients in the MHTGR-350. However, these results can play a significant role in informing future potential experiments for HTGR systems that iterate on what the HTTF accomplished.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Scaling methodologies and similarity analysis for thermal hydraulics test facility development for water-cooled small modular reactor

Small modular reactors (SMRs) represent a promising option for providing clean and sustainable energy due to their potential for enhanced safety, reduced capital costs, and increased siting flexibility. However, new reactor systems require the development and operation of representative scaled-down test facilities to support the verification and validation of system computer codes and models. Here this study reviews the research on scaling methodologies and similarity principles pivotal in developing non-nuclear integral effects test and separate effects test facilities for water-cooled SMRs. The study focuses on a review of the scaling methods, similarity approaches, and possible challenges posed by the unique and compact design features of integral-pressurized water reactor-type SMRs, and their representative test facilities. This study also reviews previous research related to scaling and similarity methodologies and provides insights into design considerations for achieving prototypic conditions in test facilities. The findings and recommendations emphasize the broader impact of appropriate scaling and similarity principles to ensure meaningful and transferable results from non-nuclear test facilities to accelerate the safe and efficient deployment of next-generation water-cooled SMRs.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Opportunities for retrieval and tool augmented large language models in scientific facilities

Upgrades to advanced scientific user facilities such as next-generation x-ray light sources, nanoscience centers, and neutron facilities are revolutionizing our understanding of materials across the spectrum of the physical sciences, from life sciences to microelectronics. However, these facility and instrument upgrades come with a significant increase in complexity. Driven by more exacting scientific needs, instruments and experiments become more intricate each year. This increased operational complexity makes it ever more challenging for domain scientists to design experiments that effectively leverage the capabilities of and operate on these advanced instruments. Large language models (LLMs) can perform complex information retrieval, assist in knowledge-intensive tasks across applications, and provide guidance on tool usage. Using x-ray light sources, leadership computing, and nanoscience centers as representative examples, we describe preliminary experiments with a Context-Aware Language Model for Science (CALMS) to assist scientists with instrument operations and complex experimentation. With the ability to retrieve relevant information from facility documentation, CALMS can answer simple questions on scientific capabilities and other operational procedures. With the ability to interface with software tools and experimental hardware, CALMS can conversationally operate scientific instruments. By making information more accessible and acting on user needs, LLMs could expand and diversify scientific facilities’ users and accelerate scientific output.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Characterization of a new ultra-high pressure shock tube facility for combustion and propulsion studies

A new shock tube facility has been designed, constructed, and characterized at the University of Central Florida. This facility is capable of withstanding pressures of up to 1000 atm, allowing for combustion diagnostics of extreme conditions, such as in rocket combustion chambers or in novel power conversion cycles. For studies with toxic gas impurities, the high initial pressures required the development of a gas delivery system to ensure the longevity of the facility and the safety of the personnel. Data acquisition and experimental propagation were implemented with remote access to ensure safety, paired with a LabVIEW- and Python-based user interface. Thus far, test pressures of 270 atm, blast pressures of 730 atm, and temperatures approaching 10 000 K have been achieved. The extreme limitations of this facility allow for emission spectroscopy to be performed during the oxidation of fuel mixtures, e.g., alkanes diluted in argon and carbon dioxide. Ignition delay times were determined and compared to simulations using chemical kinetic mechanisms. The design, experimental procedures, processes of analysis, and uncertainty determination are outlined, and typical pressure profiles are compared with a new gas dynamics solver and empirical correlations developed across multiple shock tube facilities. Preliminary reactive mixture analyses are included with further investigation of the mixtures outlined.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗