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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 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Decomposition of methane diluted with inert gas in an RF discharge cell

Decomposition of methane using non-thermal plasmas is an attractive route for producing hydrogen-rich gases and valuable carbon nanomaterials. Understanding how plasma discharge modes influence methane decomposition in optimizing plasma-assisted chemical conversion remains unexplored. This study explores the coupling between the discharge structure and product selectivity in RF capacitively coupled discharges operating in methane/inert gas mixtures in the pressure range of 2–3 torr. Under our experimental conditions the discharge exhibits mode transitions from uniform to striated in Ar and Kr and from diffuse to contracted in Ar and Kr with <5% CH 4 . The discharges in He and Ne remained uniform under our operating conditions, and their mixtures with CH 4 remained diffuse. A 0-d model for Ar/CH 4 discharge established a threshold for contraction while also asserting the importance of Ar$^{*}_{\textrm{m}}$ in the dissociation and ionization processes. The highest degree of methane decomposition, >99.7% with the main products of acetylene and graphitized solid carbon was achieved in the contracted discharge mode for both Kr or Ar with ⩽5% CH 4 . We demonstrate that contraction can play a crucial role in the effective decomposition of methane with value-added products and that both the electronic and thermal properties of plasma gas are responsible for this effect.

RF plasma↗
DOE OSTI2020

Tunable Electromechanical Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) are soft materials which anisotropically shape morph in response to external stimuli. Herein, a method to produce large‐area carbon nanotube–LCE nanocomposite films with exceptional electrostrictive properties is examined. A methodology to produce telechelic precursor oligomeric composites at scale (>100 g) is presented along with the continuous casting and photocuring process. The carbon nanotubes are well‐aligned and well‐dispersed in the films, which exhibit exceptional anisotropic thermomechanical, optical, and thermal shape change characteristics. When an electric field is applied through the film thickness, the material quickly and reversibly contracts along the alignment direction. As an example, a compliant carbon nanotube–LCE film contracts >4% against a 140 kPa load, roughly comparable to the blocking force of many natural muscular tissues. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that this tunable contraction is dependent upon the electric field strength, and that the contraction mimics the form function of the input electric field (e.g., a sine wave). These compliant actuators are excellent candidates for incorporation into soft and/or biological systems.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

How hydrophobicity, side chains, and salt affect the dimensions of disordered proteins

Abstract Despite the generally accepted role of the hydrophobic effect as the driving force for folding, many intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), including those with hydrophobic content typical of foldable proteins, behave nearly as self‐avoiding random walks (SARWs) under physiological conditions. Here, we tested how temperature and ionic conditions influence the dimensions of the N‐terminal domain of pertactin (PNt), an IDP with an amino acid composition typical of folded proteins. While PNt contracts somewhat with temperature, it nevertheless remains expanded over 10–58°C, with a Flory exponent, ν , >0.50. Both low and high ionic strength also produce contraction in PNt, but this contraction is mitigated by reducing charge segregation. With 46% glycine and low hydrophobicity, the reduced form of snow flea anti‐freeze protein (red‐sfAFP) is unaffected by temperature and ionic strength and persists as a near‐SARW, ν ~ 0.54, arguing that the thermal contraction of PNt is due to stronger interactions between hydrophobic side chains. Additionally, red‐sfAFP is a proxy for the polypeptide backbone, which has been thought to collapse in water. Increasing the glycine segregation in red‐sfAFP had minimal effect on ν . Water remained a good solvent even with 21 consecutive glycine residues ( ν > 0.5), and red‐sfAFP variants lacked stable backbone hydrogen bonds according to hydrogen exchange. Similarly, changing glycine segregation has little impact on ν in other glycine‐rich proteins. These findings underscore the generality that many disordered states can be expanded and unstructured, and that the hydrophobic effect alone is insufficient to drive significant chain collapse for typical protein sequences.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Loop series expansions for tensor networks

Belief propagation (BP) can be a useful tool to approximately contract a tensor network, provided that the contributions from any closed loops in the network are sufficiently weak. In this article, we describe how a loop series expansion can be applied to systematically improve the accuracy of a BP approximation to a tensor network contraction, in principle converging arbitrarily close to the exact result. More generally, our result provides a framework for expanding a tensor network as a sum of component networks in a hierarchy of increasing complexity. We benchmark this proposal for the contraction of infinite projected entangled pair states, either representing the ground state of an Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) model or with randomly defined tensors, where it is shown to improve in accuracy over standard BP by several orders of magnitude while incurring only a minor increase in computational cost. These results indicate that the proposed series expansions could be a useful tool to accurately evaluate tensor networks in cases that otherwise exceed the limits of established contraction routines.

Evenbly, Glen [AWS Center for Quantum Computing, P↗
DOE OSTI2022

MemHC: An Optimized GPU Memory Management Framework for Accelerating Many-body Correlation

The many-body correlation function is a fundamental computation kernel in modern physics computing applications, e.g., Hadron Contractions in Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This kernel is both computation and memory intensive, involving a series of tensor contractions, and thus usually runs on accelerators like GPUs. Existing optimizations on many-body correlation mainly focus on individual tensor contractions (e.g., cuBLAS libraries and others). In contrast, this work discovers a new optimization dimension for many-body correlation by exploring the optimization opportunities among tensor contractions. More specifically, it targets general GPU architectures (both NVIDIA and AMD) and optimizes many-body correlation’s memory management by exploiting a set of memory allocation and communication redundancy elimination opportunities: first, GPU memory allocation redundancy: the intermediate output frequently occurs as input in the subsequent calculations; second, CPU-GPU communication redundancy: although all tensors are allocated on both CPU and GPU, many of them are used (and reused) on the GPU side only, and thus, many CPU/GPU communications (like that in existing Unified Memory designs) are unnecessary; third, GPU oversubscription: limited GPU memory size causes oversubscription issues, and existing memory management usually results in near-reuse data eviction, thus incurring extra CPU/GPU memory communications.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Distribution Network Capacity Market Design: Marginal Distribution Capacity Pricing Mechanism for Efficient Investment and Cost Allocation

As electricity markets begin to shift from reliance on large, centralized power plants and towards distributed energy resources (DERs), there is a growing acknowledgement that more efficient planning, operations, and oversight is needed in the distribution system. This paper addresses one step in that direction by proposing an auction mechanism that uses a detailed distribution system planning model that allocates permits to end-used customers who request capacity to install new devices at their location and network upgrade contracts to utilities or 3rd-party companies who offer to upgrade system components. The resulting plan maximizes market surplus, that is, maximizes the total benefit to consumers minus the cost of network upgrades. We apply a marginal pricing scheme to the auction’s results such that the cost of each permits or contracts is differentiated by time and location, based on the Lagrangian multipliers of binding network constraints. These prices are shown to be no greater than the bid price of any awarded contract and no less than the offered cost of any awarded upgrade contract. Furthermore, the nonlinearity of power flows in the planning model result in an additional surplus that would be collected by the entity that hosts the auction, which could then be refunded to market participants or used to cover overhead costs of running the market. We provide four example auction results in a simple three-node distribution feeder to demonstrate the properties of the design. Results suggest that larger or more realistic case studies could be a promising next step.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Predictive performance of multi-model ensemble forecasts of COVID-19 across European nations

Background: Short-term forecasts of infectious disease burden can contribute to situational awareness and aid capacity planning. Based on best practice in other fields and recent insights in infectious disease epidemiology, one can maximise the predictive performance of such forecasts if multiple models are combined into an ensemble. Here, we report on the performance of ensembles in predicting COVID-19 cases and deaths across Europe between 08 March 2021 and 07 March 2022. Methods: We used open-source tools to develop a public European COVID-19 Forecast Hub. We invited groups globally to contribute weekly forecasts for COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by a standardised source for 32 countries over the next 1–4 weeks. Teams submitted forecasts from March 2021 using standardised quantiles of the predictive distribution. Each week we created an ensemble forecast, where each predictive quantile was calculated as the equally-weighted average (initially the mean and then from 26th July the median) of all individual models’ predictive quantiles. We measured the performance of each model using the relative Weighted Interval Score (WIS), comparing models’ forecast accuracy relative to all other models. We retrospectively explored alternative methods for ensemble forecasts, including weighted averages based on models’ past predictive performance. Results: Over 52 weeks, we collected forecasts from 48 unique models. We evaluated 29 models’ forecast scores in comparison to the ensemble model. We found a weekly ensemble had a consistently strong performance across countries over time. Across all horizons and locations, the ensemble performed better on relative WIS than 83% of participating models’ forecasts of incident cases (with a total N=886 predictions from 23 unique models), and 91% of participating models’ forecasts of deaths (N=763 predictions from 20 models). Across a 1–4 week time horizon, ensemble performance declined with longer forecast periods when forecasting cases, but remained stable over 4 weeks for incident death forecasts. In every forecast across 32 countries, the ensemble outperformed most contributing models when forecasting either cases or deaths, frequently outperforming all of its individual component models. Among several choices of ensemble methods we found that the most influential and best choice was to use a median average of models instead of using the mean, regardless of methods of weighting component forecast models. Conclusions: Our results support the use of combining forecasts from individual models into an ensemble in order to improve predictive performance across epidemiological targets and populations during infectious disease epidemics. Our findings further suggest that median ensemble methods yield better predictive performance more than ones based on means. Our findings also highlight that forecast consumers should place more weight on incident death forecasts than incident case forecasts at forecast horizons greater than 2 weeks. Funding: AA, BH, BL, LWa, MMa, PP, SV funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant 1R01GM109718, NSF BIG DATA Grant IIS-1633028, NSF Grant No.: OAC-1916805, NSF Expeditions in Computing Grant CCF-1918656, CCF-1917819, NSF RAPID CNS-2028004, NSF RAPID OAC-2027541, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 75D30119C05935, a grant from Google, University of Virginia Strategic Investment Fund award number SIF160, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under Contract No. HDTRA1-19-D-0007, and respectively Virginia Dept of Health Grant VDH-21-501-0141, VDH-21-501-0143, VDH-21-501-0147, VDH-21-501-0145, VDH-21-501-0146, VDH-21-501-0142, VDH-21-501-0148. AF, AMa, GL funded by SMIGE - Modelli statistici inferenziali per governare l'epidemia, FISR 2020-Covid-19 I Fase, FISR2020IP-00156, Codice Progetto: PRJ-0695. AM, BK, FD, FR, JK, JN, JZ, KN, MG, MR, MS, RB funded by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland with grant 28/WFSN/2021 to the University of Warsaw. BRe, CPe, JLAz funded by Ministerio de Sanidad/ISCIII. BT, PG funded by PERISCOPE European H2020 project, contract number 101016233. CP, DL, EA, MC, SA funded by European Commission - Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology through the contract LC-01485746, and Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and FEDER, with the project PGC2018-095456-B-I00. DE., MGu funded by Spanish Ministry of Health / REACT-UE (FEDER). DO, GF, IMi, LC funded by Laboratory Directed Research and Development program of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) under project number 20200700ER. DS, ELR, GG, NGR, NW, YW funded by National Institutes of General Medical Sciences (R35GM119582; the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NIGMS or the National Institutes of Health). FB, FP funded by InPresa, Lombardy Region, Italy. HG, KS funded by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. IV funded by Agencia de Qualitat i Avaluacio Sanitaries de Catalunya (AQuAS) through contract 2021-021OE. JDe, SMo, VP funded by Netzwerk Universitatsmedizin (NUM) project egePan (01KX2021). JPB, SH, TH funded by Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; grant 05M18SIA). KH, MSc, YKh funded by Project SaxoCOV, funded by the German Free State of Saxony. Presentation of data, model results and simulations also funded by the NFDI4Health Task Force COVID-19 ( https://www.nfdi4health.de/task-force-covid-19-2 ) within the framework of a DFG-project (LO-342/17-1). LP, VE funded by Mathematical and Statistical modelling project (MUNI/A/1615/2020), Online platform for real-time monitoring, analysis and management of epidemic situations (MUNI/11/02202001/2020); VE also supported by RECETOX research infrastructure (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic: LM2018121), the CETOCOEN EXCELLENCE (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/17-043/0009632), RECETOX RI project (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16-013/0001761). NIB funded by Health Protection Research Unit (grant code NIHR200908). SAb, SF funded by Wellcome Trust (210758/Z/18/Z).

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Algae cultivation systems and methods with reduced energy loss

An open raceway algae cultivation system includes a channel configured to contain an algae cultivation fluid. The channel includes a contraction zone having a width and a depth. A pump is configured to circulate the algae cultivation fluid in the channel. A width of the contraction zone decreases leading into the entrance of the pump and a depth of the contraction zone is greater than a depth of at least a portion of the channel located outside of the contraction zone.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Recommended vs. Actual Escalation Rates For ESPCs: Is the Guidance Good?

Escalation rates applied to the savings from energy savings performance contracts (ESPCs) and related financed energy projects play a large role in their scope and costs. The U.S. Department of Energy’sFederal Energy Management Program (FEMP) employs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to package projections of real (uninflated) energy prices and general inflation forecasts developed by two other federal government entities. The main output from this exercise is NIST’s Energy Escalation Rate Calculator (EERC), which is strongly recommended by FEMP for use in performance contracts and relied on by federal agencies and others conducting performance contracts as an objective source for their projects’ escalation rates. This study investigated whether the rates prescribed by EERC (and a coarser NIST tool that preceded it) have provided users with estimates that approximate actual changes in energy prices over the years. The results are encouraging: the NIST tools slightly under-estimated actual electricity prices and somewhat over-estimated those for natural gas. Concern regarding the latter is mitigated, however, because a) it is seen as due primarily to the increasing surplus of natural gas from the “fracking revolution” in the 2010s, and b) natural gas savings were found to account for only 14.4% of the total savings from the largest population of federal ESPCs (FEMP’s indefinite quantity ESPC contract, representing roughly 430 projects), compared to almost four times that (56.8%) for electricity savings. Consequently, reliance on EERC appears to be a sound policy.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Test for Reconditioning RA Waste with Simulated Bitumen and Concrete in a 1,2 MW Plasma Test Facility - 20092

The operation and maintenance of nuclear power plants, the non nuclear fuel cycle, etc generate low-level radioactive waste which, along with the historical radioactive waste from past nuclear activities, needs to be treated and stored, awaiting final disposal. Plasma technology offers a very effective way of treating this waste with a high volume reduction factor (VRF), free from organics, liquids and moisture, and meets without a doubt the acceptance criteria for safe storage and disposal. By means of a plasma beam of approximately 5000 deg. C, the inorganic materials are melted into a glassy slag, containing most of the radioactive isotopes while the organic material is gasified, oxidized and purified in an off-gas cleaning system. First the paper describes the new full-scale Plasma Melting Facility (PMF) at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant in Bulgaria which was taken in nuclear operation In May 2018. The plant has a capacity of 250 tons per year and the maximum contact dose rates of the incoming waste is 2 mSv/h. Different mixtures of radioactive waste packed in 200 l drums were successfully treated resulting in a glassy slag free from liquids and organic material with an important volume reduction factor (VRF). The Project was co-financed through a grant by Kozloduy International Decommissioning fund (KIDSF) administrated by the EBRD through Bulgarian national funding. Plasma is a suitable technology for treatment of problematic waste or even reconditioning waste so Belgoprocess was contracted to do plasma tests with simulated conditioned waste types. One can do tests on a laboratory scale on smaller samples and torch capacities of e.g. 50 kW but Belgoprocess wanted to do more realistic and reliable tests. So Belgoprocess contracted Phoenix Solutions Co who has a full-scope test facility equipped with a 1200 kW plasma torch for full-scope treatment of simulated conditioned waste. For a first confidential contract simulated 200 l (55 gallon) bitumen drums were treated. The drums contained different pucks of compacted waste such as rags, used filters, granulates, etc. The pucks were stacked in the 200 l drums and subsequently embedded with bitumen. A total of 6 drums were treated in the plasma facility. For a second contract simulated homogeneous 200 l (55 gallon) concrete drums with on the one hand concentrates and on the other hand spent resins were selected. A total of 6 drums with concrete and spent resins were treated and melted in the plasma testing facility. The paper describe the test facility, volume reduction factor (VRF) of different waste streams and most important parameters. (authors)

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

Advanced Retrieval and Disposition Techniques for Remote Handled Mixed Low-Level Waste - 20319

Legacy waste generated by the sodium-cooled fast reactor, EBR-II, program at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) (owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed and operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC) is challenging to treat and disposition using conventional methods. As a result, Veolia Nuclear Solutions is under contract with the Idaho National Laboratory to demonstrate an integrated retrieval and disposition solution for Remote-Handled Mixed Low-Level Waste currently stored in underground liners at INL. Delivery of the integrated solution builds on the expertise and successes of Veolia Nuclear Solutions under its Problematic Waste Treatment Initiative with INL. This initiative focuses solely on the treatment of problematic (reactive metal containing) waste streams using the Veolia Nuclear Solutions GeoMelt{sup R} In-Container Vitrification (ICV{sup TM}) technology. Under the contract, Veolia Nuclear Solutions will provide a fully commissioned prototype remote retrieval system to semi-remotely retrieve and size-reduce problematic waste liners into a safe and consolidated package for transport. The consolidated package will be shipped to Richland, Washington for demonstration treatment using the robust GeoMelt Richland system at Perma-Fix Northwest. The treated waste will ultimately be disposed of as a vitrified Low-Level Waste glass monolith. Veolia Nuclear Solutions has delivered countless remotely operated systems globally to solve some of the industry's most challenging problems. To ensure risk is mitigated in the best possible manner, a methodical phased approach is being utilized to validate the integrated solution. This contract focuses on the delivery and deployment of the prototype retrieval system onsite and the treatment of a single liner. Following successful demonstration treatment using GeoMelt ICV, the project is planning to make prototype enhancements before retrieving and treating another liner. Establishing a new integrated approach for retrieval and disposition of waste offers many benefits to INL and the U.S. Department of Energy. It is anticipated that the integrated solution will provide significant cost and schedule savings by increasing the number of liners dispositioned per year. In addition, the complexity of the overall waste disposition process will be reduced. Remotely retrieving and size-reducing waste in the field will provide additional safety to operational personnel and allow critical resources, such as hot cells, to focus on the primary missions at hand. Vitrification (using the GeoMelt ICV technology) allows for the direct processing of metal clad waste thereby significantly reducing pretreatment steps while providing a robust waste form for long-term disposal. The results from this ongoing contract are presented in this paper. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2022

System Analysis Modeling and Intermodal Transportation for Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel

This is a technical presentation that does not take into account contractual limitations or obligations under the Standard Contract for Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and/or High-Level Radioactive Waste (Standard Contract) (10 CFR Part 961). For example, under the provisions of the Standard Contract, spent nuclear fuel in multi-assembly canisters is not an acceptable waste form, absent a mutually agreed to contract amendment.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Using Cosmic Ray Muons to Assess Geological Characteristics in the Subsurface

This is a technical presentation that does not take into account contractual limitations or obligations under the Standard Contract for Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and/or High-Level Radioactive Waste (Standard Contract) (10 CFR Part 961). For example, under the provisions of the Standard Contract, spent nuclear fuel in multi-assembly canisters is not an acceptable waste form, absent a mutually agreed to contract amendment.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2022

Verification and Validation of START: A Spent Nuclear Fuel Routing and Decision Support Tool

This is a technical presentation that does not take into account contractual limitations or obligations under the Standard Contract for Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and/or High-Level Radioactive Waste (Standard Contract) (10 CFR Part 961). For example, under the provisions of the Standard Contract, spent nuclear fuel in multi-assembly canisters is not an acceptable waste form, absent a mutually agreed to contract amendment.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Reported Energy and Cost Savings from the DOE ESPC IDIQ Program: FY 2024

Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs)are a contractual mechanism that allow a federal agency to procure energy savings and facility improvements without upfront capital costs to reduce costs and resiliency. ESPCs are covered under FAR Part 23.2, and 42 USC § 8287. Section 8287(a)(2)(A) of Title 42 of the U.S. Code requires that each energy savings performance contract (ESPC) undergo an annual energy audit, resulting in a separate audit report for every project. The objective of the present report is to compile and analyze all annual ESPC audit reports issued between October 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024, for projects awarded under Generations 1, 2, and 3 of DOE’s ESPC IDIQ contracts. During this period, 205 measurement and verification (M&V) reports were produced for 200 projects; the total number of reports exceeds the number of projects because some projects generated more than one report(for example, a few projects measure savings twice per year and produce two audit reports annually, each covering a different six-month period). By aggregating the results from these individual audits, the report determines the portfolio-wide realization rate of energy and cost savings for all active ESPC projects awarded under DOE’s IDIQ program. For all 205audit reports, sufficient information was available to compare project-level estimated, reported, and guaranteed cost savings. Reported cost savings accounted for ESCO verified savings per each project’s M&V plan. The total reported cost savings for the period addressed were $\$$647.8million,compared with the total guaranteed cost savings of $\$$601.6million. On average across the reported projects: •ESPC contractors guaranteed 92.8% of the estimated cost savings• projects reported achieving 100.0% of the estimated cost savings• projects reported achieving 107.7% of the guaranteed cost savings. The M&V performed for the period indicated adjustments for government operations and maintenance impacts to savings amount to$\$$43.9millionandcould be restored with the original operational parameters for impacted projects. Accounting for this potential cost savings impact, these projects still realized 100.4% of the guaranteed cost savings. The information on estimated and reported energy savings was collected and compared for all 205of the reports examined. Based on site energy, estimated savings totaled 14.88million MMBtu, and reported savings were 15.33million MMBtu; 3.1% greater than the estimated energy savings. All of the reports examined contained sufficient information to calculate source energy savings. Based on site-adjusted source energy, total estimated energy savings were 20.90 million MMBtu, and reported savings were 21.22million MMBtu, 101.5% of the estimated energy savings. For water savings, the estimated savings were 11,539,055 kGal and the reported savings were 13,315,930 kGal. This means 1,776,875 kGal more water was saved than estimated, which is about 15% higher than the estimate. These results indicate that, overall, the reported energy savings slightly exceeded the estimated values, while estimated water savings significantly exceeded estimated values, suggesting that the projects achieved greater cost savings than originally projected. The total annual expense for the ESCOs to perform annual M&V audits and reporting was $\$$10.02million. Through this effort, $\$$647.8 million in annual cost savings was verified. The M&V results indicated that $\$$43.9 million of these verified savings reflected adjustments due to government operations A-6and maintenance impacts, which could be restored under the original operational parameters for the affected projects. These findings show the value of M&V that only costs 1.7%of the guaranteed cost savings to ensure guarantees are met.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

COMET: A Domain-Specific Compilation of High-Performance Computational Chemistry

The computational power increases over the past decades have greatly enhanced the ability to simulate chemical reactions and understand ever more complex transformations. Tensor contractions are the fundamental computational building block of these simulations. These simulations have often been tied to one platform and restricted in generality by the interface provided to the user. The expanding prevalence of accelerators and researcher demands necessitate a more general approach which is not tied to specific hardware or requires contortion of algorithms to specific hardware platforms. In this paper we present COMET, a domain-specific programming language and compiler infrastructure for tensor contractions targeting heterogeneous accelerators. We present a system of progressive lowering through multiple layers of abstraction and optimization that achieves up to 1.98×speedup for 30 tensor contractions commonly used in computational chemistry and beyond.

Mutlu, Erdal↗
DOE OSTI2024

Radiation damage study of POCO ZXF-5Q graphite for neutrino production targets using 4.5 MeV helium ions

To address the challenges of increased beam power and target survivability associated with next-generation particle production beam lines, high dose, high-energy proton beam conditions are simulated using irradiation from low-energy ion beams. A low-energy ion irradiation study of POCO ZXF-5Q graphite under conditions similar to those of the NuMI NT-02 neutrino production target at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is reported. Helium ion irradiation was performed at 100 ∘ C to a maximum damage level of 0.9 displacements per atom (DPA). Irradiation induced hardening, swelling of the irradiated region, inter-plane lattice expansion, and intraplane lattice contraction with increasing ion fluence was observed using micromechanical (nanoindentation, atomic force microscopy) and electron microscopy (high-resolution imaging, selected area diffraction) characterization. Similar changes were also observed in post irradiation examination of the NT-02 target indicating that ion irradiation can be a valuable tool for estimating radiation damage in proton beam targets. Caution must be exercised though, because the hardening, lattice alteration, and swelling occur to different magnitudes for a given damage level. The observed hardening and embrittlement were greater for ion irradiated graphite. For He ion irradiated samples the lattice spacing changes were smaller at low damage levels (78% less expansion and 71% less contraction at 0.1 DPA) and larger at high damage levels (38% more expansion and 5% more contraction at 0.9 DPA) relative to that observed in the NT-02 target. The magnitude of swelling was 8.5× greater under ion irradiation which is influenced by the differing damage gradients and inclusion of implanted He ions in the region of interest.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗