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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 217 records · Page 12

Global Security & Strategic Partnerships Programs

Serving the Nation: Our Missions include Providing the Nuclear Deterrent for our Nation and Allies; Leading Nuclear Nonproliferation and Counterterrorism / Counterproliferation efforts to make the world a safer place; Supplying Enriched Uranium Material for Reactors – Naval Propulsion, Army, NASA, Universities, Isotope Production Reactors; Providing High Explosives for the Stockpile and Strategic Partners; Delivering Solutions – Solve emerging national security challenges

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Physical Sciences Vistas: Perspectives on Excellence in Community Relations (Issue 1, 2022)

This is the first 2022 issue of Physical Sciences Vistas, with a focus on “excellence in community relations.” The achievements in this area help LANL realize the goal of being "recognized as a force for good" and promotes the lab's "strategic objectives of nuclear deterrence, threat reduction, technical leadership, and trustworthy operations." Some of the highlights in this issue include LANL's new outreach program, featuring interactive travel labs, outstanding achievements in pollution prevention and how LANL is "supporting opportunities for Indigenous women in physics."

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Request for Information on Establishing a New Manufacturing Institute (DE-FOA-0002564)

Deep decarbonization of major industries such as metals manufacturing requires extensive process integration and controls to manage feedstocks, side reactions, heat, water, and waste streams. The scale of the energy and capital investment requires that process integration be validated to a high level of confidence with no bias. Industries such as steel production have very thin profit margins. Therefore, lack of confidence in process integration, product quality, and economics is a major deterrence to changes in manufacturing capital investment. Public sector investment in reconfigurable pilot testbeds and a first-of-a-kind plant would be necessary to de-risk technical and financial barriers prior to industry-wide buildout. DOE should consider a National Lab-led hub for the testbeds. Lab testbeds could be utilized in campaigns and allow multiple industrial partners to evaluate and validate technologies prior to making major capital investments.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Complex Functional Materials

The Complex Functional Materials (CFM) area of leadership focuses on the identification and development of materials comprised of multiple components or building blocks that are integrated or chemically bound together to achieve a desired function or response. Soft materials, such as polymers, as well as structural properties at the meso- and micro-scale that control materials function are particularly emphasized in this leadership area. Further, complex functional materials are generally developed to satisfy multiple materials design criteria all of which are essential to the overall application. CFM supports applications that are aligned with all three Los Alamos National Laboratory mission areas. These mission areas are: materials for nuclear deterrence, materials for energy security, and materials for global security

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

The Flavius Factor

The Flavius Factor is documentary made in the mid-1980's that examines some of the theories of deterrence for that time period. Narrated by Charlton Heston. DC reviewed by Darrin Wallace (3/22/22) and confirmed unclassified to move from the red network to the yellow, but still requires LA-UR to be assigned. 27:25 in length.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Breakdown of Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Installation Costs

The plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) market is receiving help from the current political climate, incentives at the federal and state levels, excessive cost of petroleum fuel, growing focus on climate solutions, increasing investment and direction by automobile manufacturers and increased awareness through media reports and advertising. Increasingly, the transportation industry, in both the United States and many other countries, is aimed at electric motive energy where practical. Increased investment in research and development have led to increasing vehicle range and lower battery costs; both of which have been deterrents in the past. The increasing demand for PEVs (consisting of the battery electric vehicle [BEV] and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle [PHEV], is challenged by the need for charging infrastructure to support these vehicles. The BEV relies totally on the on-board battery to supply the motive energy while the PHEV utilizes its battery and an installed internal combustion engine (ICE). The maximum benefit is achieved by using the battery power as much as possible. This arrangement requires the use of battery charging equipment, known as electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE).

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

ASC FY2023 Implementation Plan Revision 0

The DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) is an integrated technical program for maintaining the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The SSP incorporates nuclear test data, computational modeling and simulation, and experimental facilities to advance understanding of nuclear weapons. The suite of data analyzed comes from activities including previous nuclear tests, stockpile surveillance, experimental research, and development and engineering programs. This integrated national program requires the continued use of experimental facilities and the computational capabilities to support the SSP missions. These component parts, in addition to an appropriately scaled production capability, enable NNSA to support stockpile requirements. The ultimate goal of the SSP, and thus of the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program, is to ensure that the U.S. maintains a safe, secure, and effective strategic deterrent.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Costs of symmetric strategic games with defenses

A companion note discusses the crisis stability of symmetric offensive missile forces. This note extends the analysis to include symmetric defensive forces. It derives Nash equilibrium optimal missile defenses, which are used to study the impact of varying defenses on strike costs and stability. It treats the option to strike first as a random decision by nature, which is consistent with previous experience and provides a rational basis for interaction and deterrence without which the study of stability is vacuous.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Quantifying Thermal Output of Energetic Materials (LDRD Final Report)

We present the results of an LDRD project, funded by the Nuclear Deterrence IA, to develop capabilities for quantitative assessment of pyrotechnic thermal output. The thermal battery igniter is used as an exemplar system. Experimental methodologies for thermal output evaluation are demonstrated here, which can help designers and engineers better specify pyrotechnic components , provide thermal output guidelines for new formulations, and generate new metrics for assessing component performance and margin given a known failure condition. A heat-transfer analysis confirms that the dominant mode of energy transfer from the pyrotechnic output plume to the heat pellet is conduction via deposition of hot titanium particles. A simple lumped-parameter model of titanium particle heat transfer and a detailed multi-phase model of deposition heat transfer are discussed. Pyrotechnic function, as defined by "go/no-go" standoff testing of a heat pellet, is correlated with experimentally measured igniter plume temperature, titanium metal particle temperature, and energy deposition. Three high-speed thermal diagnostics were developed for this task. A three-color imaging pyrometer, acquiring 100k images per second on three color channels, is deployed for measurement of titanium particle temperatures. Complimentary measurements of the overall igniter plume emission ("color") temperature were conducted using a transmission-grating spectrograph in line-imaging mode. Heat flux and energy deposition to a cold wall at the heat-pellet location were estimated using an eroding thermocouple probe, with a frequency response of ~5 kHz. Ultimate "go/no-go" function in the igniter/heat-pellet system was correlated with quantitative thermal metrics, in particular surface energy deposition and plume color temperature. Titanium metal-particle and plume color temperatures both experience an upper bound approximated by the 3245-K boiling point of TiO 2 . Average metal-particle temperatures remained nearly constant for all standoff distances at T = 2850 K, ± 300 K, while plume color temperature and heat flux decay with standoff—suggesting that heat-pellet failure results from a drop in metal-particle flux and not particle temperature. At 50% likelihood of heat-pellet failure, peak time-resolved plume color temperatures drop well below TiO 2 boiling to ~2000 - 2200 K, near the TiO 2 melting point. Estimates of peak heat flux decline from up to 1 GW/m 2 for near-field standoffs to below 320 MW/m 2 at 50% failure likelihood.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Nuclear Weapons Theater Experience_V1

The theater experience is driven by the big message of nuclear deterrence through successful stockpile stewardship. This job enables other national and global security work with roots going back to the capabilities developed during the Manhattan Project and honed through the history of this successor scientific laboratory. The story that unfolds uses a narrative (traditional film-type approach), although the theater setup would offer immersion and decision-making (audience participation). The idea is to demonstrate how and why the Laboratory continues its mission in maintaining the nation’s stockpile while concurrently enabling the ever-evolving multi-disciplinary science and technology innovations developed for that purpose to take other scientists along vibrant paths.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Briefing Book: Office of Experimental Sciences

Key to OES science is the advancement of experimental capabilities and vibrant partnerships with other elements of NNSA’s Defense Programs. OES fosters an experimental portfolio that spans the space from small scale studies utilizing tabletop instruments through complex and dynamic high energy density; hydrodynamic; and subcritical experiments on flagship national facilities like Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), National Ignition Facility (NIF), Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories, Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT), and the U1a Complex in Nevada. Essential to meeting the deterrence challenges that drive OES is a functional strategy for integration of OES with Defense Programs pursuits in modeling and simulation, engineering and technology maturation, and stockpile and production modernization.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Nevada National Security Site [Slides]

Since 1951, the Nevada National Security Site has ensured the security of the US and its allies by supporting the stewardship of the nuclear deterrent, providing emergency response capability and training, and contributing key nonproliferation and arms control initiatives.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

The National Nuclear Security Administration

The mission of NNSA, as designated by Congress, is to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent; to provide naval nuclear propulsion; and to prevent, counter, and respond to threats of nuclear proliferation and terrorism worldwide.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Public Town Hall (2/27/2023) [Slides]

With geopolitical tensions high around the globe (Ukraine, Russia, China…), our mission is more important now than at any point since the Cold War – Our people help ensure the reliability of the deterrent, detect weapons of mass destruction, and advance the frontiers of science, engineering and computing.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Pits 101: The four types of nuclear weapons modernization activities

We learned why we don’t need plutonium to make new pits in an earlier edition of Pits 101, but why do we need new pits from a national security standpoint? A plutonium pit, or the core of a nuclear weapon, is like a weapon’s battery. The pits that Los Alamos will make in coming years will be like new batteries for nuclear weapons in the existing stockpile. Pit production is mandated in order to meet Department of Defense (DOD) requirements by our primary customer, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. NNSA’s mission is to “deliver safe, secure, reliable warheads for an effective nuclear deterrent.” As Marv Adams, head of NNSA Defense Programs, describes, it’s a mission that is simple to state, but challenging to deliver.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Solving National Security Challenges [Slides]

In 1943, Los Alamos National Laboratory was founded with a single, urgent purpose: to build an atomic bomb. Today, LANL focuses on maintaining a strategic nuclear deterrent, developing technology, and using science and engineering to protect the nation's security. Our workers, facilities, and instruments detect nuclear weapons, facilities, and instruments; promote cooperation and diplomacy; and limit nuclear arms and the spread of nuclear materials, technology, and expertise.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗