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The annual String Data conferences have become the flagship annual meeting for the subfield at the interface of formal high energy theory, pure mathematics, and machine learning. String Data 2023 featured invited plenary talks by leading researchers in addition to a parallel session. The funds helped mitigate conference planning and provided support to young researchers.
This is the four-page proceedings paper for the ANS IHLRWM conference planned in Nov. 2025.
2024 AIChE Annual Meeting conference presentation detailing the planned Advanced Scale Up Reactor Experiment (ASURE) facility planned for construction on the NETL site in Morgantown, WV.
Photosynthesis has shaped global biochemistry and geochemistry in its production of almost all atmospheric oxygen, and almost every electron that supports the processes of life on Earth was extracted from water by the light-dependent reactions, many of which were then used to fix carbon in the dark reactions. To humans, that fixed carbon is the originator of all fossil fuels and a critical step in conversion of solar photons to human-usable energy. The Eastern Regional Photosynthesis Conference (ERPC) serves as a forum for advancement of science in this field. As a regional-level conference, it specializes in providing developmental opportunities for early-career researchers from undergraduates to pre-tenure professors, as well as broadening the field in terms of participating scholars and research approaches to produce new interdisciplinary collaborations. Funding from the Department of Energy is used to mitigate registration and attendance costs for junior (non-PI) researchers. The ERPC is one of the three regional conferences in the field of photosynthesis research in the United States, alongside the Western Photosynthesis Conference (currently in California) and the Midwestern Photosynthesis Conference (Turkey Run, Indiana). A longstanding incubator for scientific discourse, discovery, and collaborations, this conference has spawned many collaborations which led to Department of Energy-funded projects and brought two full generations of scientists into the field. In 2023 the landmark 40th such conference was held at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts. The conference was held April 14th-16th, 2023. The majority of the total attendees are traditionally undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers, whose scientific development greatly benefits from conferences like these. Almost all talks besides the ones given by invited speakers were given by young scientists who benefited from this award. Many posters presented at this conference were also the work of junior scientists. This conference is many young scientists' first exposure to the photosynthesis research community and its primary goal is to provide a positive atmosphere for those attendees, as exemplified by the three poster sessions and dedicated interactions between senior and junior scientists. Additionally, this was the first year of a successful equitable outreach and speaker recruitment plan to provide fair representation at the conference in line with Department of Energy policies and mission. The central focus of the ERPC is the understanding of energy flow from photons to usable chemical products in both natural and artificial photosynthesis. We support the DOE-BES aim of understanding of the biochemical/biophysical processes of photosynthesis to inform new technology development and field applications. This year’s theme, “Photosynthesis Across Scales,” reflected the scope of work being done from the individual exciton to the crop scale. This research encompasses applied biology, chemistry, physics, and materials engineering. The aim of this conference is to present new discoveries, techniques, and questions which can be sourced from any of these disciplines and provide an audience which is broadly qualified to use or respond to these developments.
This is a planned lightning talk at the NLIT Summit 2025 conference. This would serve as somewhat of a progress update to the presentation I gave at re:Invent 2024 back in November which can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2133&v=NMq3kL9qObU&feature=youtu.be (my section begins at the included timestamp value). This presentation discusses our usage of Cloud-hosted HPC systems, and in what circumstances they benefit our researchers strategically. We have been making incremental progress in this area since that recording, so for this presentation I would include our latest experiences and observations as we are beginning to implement a hybrid HPC solution. We're in the midst of a cross-team effort of implementing a prototype hybridization solution which would allow users to strategically burst jobs to the cloud. In this talk for NLIT, I would detail lessons-learned, non-starters, architecture diagrams, and other implementation details that may benefit those interested as we continue our experimentation. Our prototype may not be complete by the time of this presentation, but even in the discovery phase of our anticipated design we've discovered a lot of information from others who have worked on hybrid solutions that are worth sharing.
Distributed energy resources (DERs) offer flexibility and community benefits in both blue- and black-sky conditions. Outside of a power disruption, they can provide significant cost savings and reduce grid stress during times of high demand. During a disruption to the central grid, these technologies can meet critical energy needs through the use of battery storage. However, communities must consider many planning and design dimensions and tradeoffs to integrate energy systems that meet financial and resilience goals. This presentation, given at the 2026 State Energy Conference of North Carolina, defines resilience in an energy context, discusses strategies and best practices for planning resilient energy systems and sites, including resilience hubs and microgrids, highlights NLR tools and capabilities for helping communities in this space, and features successful case studies in North Carolina related to energy resilience.
Presentation provided during the DOE Panel at the 2024 International Pipeline Conference. Presentation centers on the Smart CO2 Transport-Route Planning Tool, which is currently available for download on EDX.
The NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is scheduled for launch early in 2024 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), at Sriharikota, near Chennai, India. This mission is the result of a collaboration between NASA and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), where NASA has contributed elements of the mission such as an L-band SAR, and ISRO has contributed other elements, such as an S-band SAR. After successful launch, the NISAR mission will collect left-looking L-band SAR data over most of the Earth’s land areas twice during every 12-day exact repeat orbit. (once while in an ascending orbit direction and once while in a descending orbit direction). NASA and ISRO have individual and joint requirements on the mission that include the performance of the imaging radars onboard the spacecraft. For example, NASA must demonstrate that this L-band SAR will achieve a set of identified science measurement accuracy requirements that span Ecosystem science, Solid Earth science, and Cryosphere science disciplines. Likewise, ISRO has several applications objectives on both the L-band and S-band data from NISAR that the ISRO science team and project will be developing and testing. Pre-launch and post-launch activities have been planned to validate that these requirements are met. Here, we will discuss how the NASA plans are being executed and will present any initial results at the conference.
In December 2023, the United States pledged at a United Nations conference to triple nuclear energy by 2050. In May of 2025 a new administration announced plans to quadruple nuclear energy by 2025, setting a new target that requires understanding the key infrastructure and resources needed to achieve large-scale deployment. This study attempts to quantify “what it takes” to deploy an additional 200 GWe of nuclear capacity. It projects demand levels for workforce, fuel, uranium mining and enrichment, waste management, supply chain, land, licensing, and water. Demand growth is also contextualized. For example, the peak number of construction workers required is approximately 215,000, a 37 % increase in the current US utility construction workforce. Up to 80,000 MT/year of mined uranium will be needed, necessitating a 60-fold increase in US mining production or a doubling of global mining if sourced externally. Advanced reactor fuels, uranium mining, and nuclear-grade equipment production would need substantial expansion. Operational workforce, enrichment needs, and licensing submissions also face significant increases. Although water consumption may see relatively lower increases, securing water rights poses unique challenges. This study consolidates various demand metrics in a broad context, highlighting the necessity of early preparations, such as workforce training, to support a tripling of nuclear energy. While it outlines the demand-side requirements, it does not assess the difficulties of ramping up or other supply-side issues. The findings also shed light on the impact of reactor size and reactor technology on various demand metrics.
Presentation given at the August 2024 Western Planner WyoPASS conference on the evolution of energy development in the state of Wyoming and opportunity for planning professionals to be aware of their role in development.
Background In 2022, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memo that significantly reshaped the landscape of access to federally funded research. The memo mandated that all taxpayer-funded research be made available to the public without delay upon publication, without an embargo period, superseding the 2013 OSTP public access policy. This public access policy promotes transparency and the democratization of knowledge, ensuring that the fruits of scientific endeavors funded by federal agencies could be immediately accessed and built upon by scientists, educators, students, and the public at large. To implement the requirements of the OSTP guidance and DOE Public Access Plan, the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) has implemented public access plan guidance and has identified several areas where better data management practices would further expand public access to important nuclear energy related scientific data, reports, and other technical products. Significant NE supported efforts are already underway for data management and public access to important nuclear energy related data.1 2 To address gaps in data management practices, and improve retention and accessibility of data, NE is actively exploring enhanced data management options utilizing its high-performance computing resources administered by its Nuclear Scientific User Facility Program. A newly piloted system, the Nuclear Research Data System (NRDS) acts as a portal for data collection and dissemination. Nuclear Energy University Program Research and Development Portfolio According to Web of Science, NEUP has produced 2,345 journal publication that have been cited more than 61,000 times3 and countless conference proceedings. These publications are publicly available through OSTI.gov and in the open literature. Additional scientific and technical products including project milestones that are not publications and NEUP project final reports are vetted through OSTI.gov and released once reviewed and approved by DOE. Since 2009, NEUP has awarded close to 1,000 different R&D projects in technical areas across the NE research programs. As of June 2023, 512 NEUP reports are publicly available on OSTI. The underlying data for projects is still held at universities, and data transfer, co-location, and dissemination has not occurred in a systematic way. NEUP data is currently accessible through myriad university-based data repositories, or through direct requests to PIs. The program identified this patchwork of repositories, or often lack of publicly available data, as a significant barrier to an organized, accessible, and comprehensive solution to sharing data with the larger nuclear energy community. Approach The goal of this pilot project is to establish a pathway to a consolidated long-term repository for NEUP project data. To accomplish this goal, the pilot strives to accomplish the following objectives: Establish data collection standards, including a standard set of required supplementary information to contextualize and support raw data files. Work with the HPC group collect and upload information and to modify the NRDS system, as needed, to support a standardized approach. Resolve potential barriers to successful roll out of an expanded data collection strategy, including modifying data management plan guidelines and establishing a document and data release process that accounts for potential intellectual property and/or export control concerns. Results Overall, the pilot was successful in collecting 8,982 raw and processes data files, 220 reports, 56 calibration files, and 5,931 other supplementary documents. Supplementary documents included experimental plans, methods, journal publications and conference proceedings, milestone reports, and final reports. Figure 2 shows the number of data sets and supplementary project information provided by each project. Projects has significantly different input, depending on experimental data produced and completeness of the datasets provided.
This progress report (Level 3 Milestone Number M3SF-24LL010302062) summarizes research conducted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) within the Crystalline International Collaborations Work Package Number SF-24LL01030206. The activity is focused on our long-term commitment to engaging our partners in international nuclear waste repository research. This includes participation in the Nuclear Energy Agency Thermochemical Database (NEA-TDB) Project and development of methodologies for integrating US and international thermodynamic databases for use in SFWST Generic Disposal System Assessment (GDSA) efforts. A continuing focus for FY24 efforts is to support the US participation in the NEA-TDB effort. The focus of FY24 activities was the development of an agreement for a Phase 7 activity that will start in Q1 of 2025. Mavrik Zavarin is now the US representative on both the Management Board and the Executive group to the NEA-TDB. He is also the POC for the Cements State of the Art Report that is undergoing peer review in FY24. In FY24, we used our position on the NEA-TDB MB and EG to facilitate the integration of NEA-TDB thermochemical data with LLNL’s SUPCRTNE thermodynamic database that supports the SFWST GDSA activities. This effort is coordinated with the Argillite work package SUPCRTNE database development efforts (Wolery, 2024). The goal is to provide a downloadable database that will be hosted on LLNL’s thermodynamics website which incorporates NEA-TDB data into the LLNL database where appropriate. We also began engagement with the EURAD2 program that was initiated in FY24 by our European collaborators at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. The primary focus of the engagement is with WP20: DITUSC Thermodynamic database evaluation program. A kickoff meeting for this activity is planned for early FY25. Finally, we have been selected to co-host (with Clemson University) the International Conference on Chemistry and Migration Behaviour of Actinides and Fission Products in the Geosphere in 2025 (Migration2025). The meeting will be held September 21-26, 2025, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and will focus on international efforts to understand the risks of radionuclide releases into the environment. This central focus of this conference is on international efforts to develop safe disposal options for nuclear wastes. As such, we are developing a theme focused on US underground nuclear waste repository science.
The 2025 Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) hypothetical asteroid impact threat exercise is being conducted in coordination with the United Nations-endorsed Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), exercising SMPAG's processes for assessing space mission options and communicating to decision makers. Here, in this paper, we describe the work performed by our NASA-led team and present the results we contributed to the SMPAG effort for the exercise. Our NASA-led team assessed mission options for asteroid reconnaissance (flyby and rendezvous), deflection, and robust disruption using several viable techniques: kinetic impactors, ion beam deflection, and nuclear explosive devices. Our simulations and analyses considered how much change-in-velocity an asteroid can tolerate before fragmentation onset, and we worked towards establishing requirements for robustly disrupting an asteroid. Heuristics informed by the simulation results are incorporated into optimization of deflection and disruption mission campaign options. Finally, we make some observations about useful generalizations from these results with potential applicability to any planetary defense scenario.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in conjunction with the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO), proposes to demolish six buildings and three storage areas located at the U12g Tunnel portal area in Area 12 of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The buildings are 12-358 (Signal Vault); 12-201800 (Storage Quonset Hut); 12-202555 (Walker Shack); 12-868 (Pipe Assembly); 12-B100933 (Electrical Shop); 12-B100944 (Conference Room); and Storage Area 1; Storage Area 2; and Storage Area 3. The buildings and storage areas were selected for demolition as part of the DOE’s Real Property Efficiency Plan to reduce the footprint of unused and non-operational facilities on the NNSS. They are all vacant and have no proposed uses for current or upcoming NNSS missions. Demolition activities constitute an undertaking subject to review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) (54 United States Code [USC] § 306101) and its implementing regulations, 36 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 800. Identification efforts began with resources proposed for demolition in federal Fiscal Year (FY) 23. Four buildings were proposed to be demolished in FY23 (12-358, 12-868, 12-201800, and 12-202555). These buildings and the U12g Tunnel Historic District (SHPO No. D444) were recorded in Identification, Evaluation, and Finding of Adverse Effect for the Proposed Demolition of Five Buildings in Area 12, Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada (Menocal et al. 2023). Identification efforts indicated three buildings (12-358, 12-201800, and 12-868) supported nuclear testing in the U12g Tunnel. The fourth building post-dated the use of U12g Tunnel for nuclear testing activities. The report recommended that three of the four buildings (12-358, 12-201800, 12-868) and the U12g Tunnel Historic District may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The report also found that the undertaking would have an adverse effect on the three buildings and on the historic district. The Nevada State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) concurred with the report’s findings (Reed 2023). The U12g Tunnel was determined eligible as a historic district under the Secretary of the Interior’s (SOI) Significance Criterion A, at the local level, in the context of the Cold War as an underground testing environment for the development of nuclear weapons and to assess the effects of a nuclear explosion on materials and equipment with a period of significance from 1959 to 1971. It was also determined eligible under Significance Criterion C for embodying the distinctive characters of a horizontal tunnel complex used for nuclear testing and as a significant and distinguishable entity. The three buildings were determined to be contributing elements of the district. The undertaking was expanded with the addition of two buildings and three storage areas proposed to be demolished and located within U12g Tunnel Historic District in FY24. These five resources (12-B100933, 12-B100944, and Storage Areas 1, 2, and 3) were recorded in Supplemental Identification, Evaluation, and Finding of Effect for Additional Proposed Demolition at U12g Tunnel, Area 12, Nevada national Security Site, Nye County, Nevada (Brannan et al. 2024). Identification efforts indicated that the two buildings and Storage Area 1 supported nuclear testing in the U12g Tunnel. Storage Area 1 and Storage Area 2 post-dated the nuclear testing activities at U12g Tunnel and were not recommended as contributing elements to the district. The report also found that the undertaking would have an adverse effect on the newly identified buildings and one storage area and on the historic district. The SHPO concurred that the expanded undertaking would result in adverse effects to historic properties (Reed 2025). To resolve these adverse effects, NNSA/NFO, in consultation with the SHPO, is following standard mitigation as stipulated in the 2024 Programmatic Agreement DE-GM58-22NA25554 Among the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Concerning the Protection of Historic Properties on the Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada (hereafter referred to as the NNSS PA). The standard mitigation measures are outlined in Appendix D of the NNSS PA. As such, this architectural survey has been prepared in accordance with Appendix D of the NNSS PA and follows the report format outlined in Appendix F. It includes a historic context that describes the district’s origin, history, and support functions, its significance in the context of nuclear testing on the NNSS, and identifies contributing and non-contributing elements within the district. The report is accompanied by Architectural Resource Assessment (ARA) forms for individual resources and a Historic District Resource Assessment (HDRA) for the U12g Tunnel Historic District. In total, this architectural report identified 32 primary resources within the district boundary. Six of the primary resources were previously identified as contributing elements. An additional 17 resources are recommended as contributing elements to the district for a total of 23 contributing elements. The other nine resources identified are recommended as non-contributing elements to the district.
Emerging professionals are crucial in advancing ecological restoration by connecting newcomers with established leaders and blending new ideas with traditional practices. This paper highlights the vital role emerging scientists play in restoration ecology and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). A survey conducted during the SER2023 conference workshop, organized by the Students and Emerging Professionals committee, showed that emerging professionals contribute significantly to every stage of scientific work, from planning to publication. However, participants emphasized the scarcity of funding opportunities for non‐senior scientists, which limits academic growth. The workshop underscored the importance of nurturing emerging professionals to develop future leaders for SER and ensure continuity. Fostering non‐hierarchical and inclusive networking is key to engaging and empowering these professionals, ultimately contributing to the long‐term success of ecological restoration efforts.
The materials science challenge of providing a suite of suitable materials to satisfy the technology to achieve fusion energy is addressed in this ORNL program. The inability of currently available materials and components to withstand the harsh fusion nuclear environment requires development of new materials, and an understanding of their response to the fusion environment. The overarching goal of the ORNL Fusion Materials program is to provide the applied materials science support and materials understanding to underpin the ongoing DOE Office of Science—Fusion Energy Sciences program, in parallel with developing the materials for fusion power systems. In this effort the program continues to be integrated both with the larger U.S. and international fusion materials communities and with the U.S. and international fusion design and technology communities. The excitement of this program comes from the priorities given to this subject in the two recent fusion reviews, by the FESAC and NAS committees. An important element of those recommendations is the support for pivoting the national R&D emphasis to the Fusion Materials and Technologies (FM&T), the long-advocated Fusion Prototypic Neutron Source, and for the Fusion Pilot Plant study that will help focus program direction and efforts. Furthermore, the surge of venture capital investment into the private fusion industry start-ups over the last few years is anticipated to help accelerate all aspects of the fusion energy development. This twelfth annual report of the ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Fusion Reactor Materials Program summarizes the accomplishments in Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023). The year was the first to return to full post-COVID-restriction operations, with students and international assignees no longer impacted by COVID restrictions, as in FY20-21-22. Following the pattern of planning used in this program, work for the year FY2023 focused on having the data and productivity to support a strong presence at the International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials (ICFRM) 21, organized by Spain and occurred in October 2023. Twenty-nine ORNL-led abstracts were submitted, with all accepted. Four were invited presentations, nine contributed oral, fourteen posters, and two withdrawn due to unforeseen circumstances. Additionally, nine external abstracts with ORNL contributing authors were presented. These will be reported in the FY24 report next year.
These slides are for the Voluntary Renewable Energy Markets 101 Workshop at the annual Renewable Energy Markets Conference.
Urban areas, including Detroit and Pittsburgh, have suffered significant dual outages of the electrical and water infrastructure in the past decade due, in part, to the increasing number of extreme weather events. With increasing temperatures and rainfall intensity, these regions need to prepare for increasing extreme events through community-based energy and water resilience analysis, planning, and enhancement. This project developed a suite of open-source, open-access, community-centered, data-driven assessment and distributed energy resource (DER) and planning tools for energy and water resilience enhancement in urban areas. Through establishing a multi-level community awareness and engagement mechanism and a comprehensive collection of power outage and flooding data, an innovative group of community energy and water resilience assessment and planning tools have been developed for a wide range of users with differing and variable sets of data available to them. The developed tools include (1) DOE EAGLE-I data-driven, deep-learning assisted resilience assessment and DER planning tools at the county level with socioeconomic factors incorporated; (2) Utility annual power outage data-driven tools for long term resilience assessment and DER planning and 15-min power outage data-driven tools for short term resilience assessment and planning; (3) Detailed engineering tools for energy and water systems resilience assessment and planning when the system topology and component fragility curves are available; (4) Alternative Resiliency Metric Calculation that extracts and separates outage and restoration processes; and (5) Co-optimization tools that evaluate the resilience of the power and sewage system and allow users to conduct joint planning with energy and wastewater systems. The developed tools provide planners, decision-makers, and stakeholders with powerful capabilities to systematically evaluate system/community resilience and optimal and actionable guidance for enhancing resilience while prioritizing DER investments. The tools have been used and validated in Detroit and Pittsburgh and can be used in other areas of the nation. In addition, this project will (1) advance the knowledge and applications of machine-learning methods in analyzing and fusing different layers of information and generating meaningful data points such as generating rare weather events; (2) significantly improve the energy and water resilience of the identified communities in Detroit and Pittsburgh and prepare for more frequent and severe weather conditions; (3) help communities assess extreme weather event impacts and address short-term and long-term resilience-related issues The developed tools have been made public via GitHub and demonstrated to community stakeholders and utility companies via the two annual workshops and numerous community engagement meetings. The project outcomes are also disseminated through publications in various journals and conference proceedings, and presentations at top conferences.