SEARCH · Search NASA
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Final report produced as part of grant awarded to National Grid. The final report is a roadmap of 39 prioritized sites. These sites would create a minimum viable network of charging infrastructure, enabling the electrification of trucks across the Northeast
Radiotracer release experiments were performed at the Nevada National Security Site in October 2022. The overall experiment was called the RElease ACTivity (REACT) experiment. Twenty-two real-time xenon sensors were deployed for each of four releases. Initial, quick-look analysis results were reported in December 2022. This report reviews the more comprehensive offline analysis effort that was conducted during the remainder of fiscal year 2023 by the Dynamic Networks venture. Improved energy stabilization routines were implemented along with an improved background subtraction routine compared to the original quicklook calculations. The relative detection efficiencies of all real-time sensors were examined. Finally, simulated detector response functions were coupled to two different meteorological models using the measured conditions for the final release (REACT-04) to compare simulated detections with measurements. While there is some agreement between the models and measured data on the detection locations and timing, there is less agreement on the magnitude of those detections. Future sensor and meteorological modeling work will be needed to improve the agreement and to examine the additional releases (REACT-01 through REACT-03).
This report documents the software testing which has been performed for the PARET/ANL version 7.7 software. The software testing is based on code capabilities identified by research reactor analysts as frequently used in their safety analyses. The verification and validation procedures have been performed and documented to address the steady-state capabilities of the software, as described in Chapter 2, and the transient capabilities, as described in Chapter 3. Testing based on the comparison between PARET/ANL calculations and analytical solutions, hand calculations, or other code calculations of the test cases confirms that all the identified capabilities of the software were implemented correctly. In addition, results from code comparisons against SPERT-I and SPERT-IV experiments for various flow rates are reported for the peak power, energy release and cladding surface temperature. The comparisons showed overall good agreement for the peak power and conservative predictions of the cladding surface temperature.
Over the course of this project, we have successfully carried out proposed studies and reported our findings in leading peer-reviewed journals and national/international conferences. So far, we have published 7 peer-reviewed articles reporting these findings and contributed to 1 additional peer-reviewed article. One additional manuscript resulting from this project is currently under review. We have made 22 presentations at national and international conferences about the results from this project. We have also given 3 presentations at the E3SM all-hands or PI meetings to update the E3SM community on our results.
This is the final technical report for the activities acrried out in support of the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization (USBPO). The report contains an overview of the administrative and organisational tasks that were conducted in the role of the Deputy Director of the USBPO.
AS4A/SASSYS-1 (SAS) is a simulation tool used to perform deterministic analyses of anticipated events as well as design basis and beyond design basis accidents for advanced liquid-metal-cooled nuclear reactors. With its origin as SAS1A in the late 1960s, the SAS series of codes has been under continuous use and development for over sixty years and represents a critical investment in safety analysis capabilities for the U.S. Department of Energy. To support the dedication effort, this report has been generated to provide a detailed description of the available verification testing. The verification testing presented in this report captures functionality testing, focusing mainly on the testing of specific functions and algorithms for accuracy and precision of output, and interface testing, focusing mainly on the testing of critical input parameters and their valid ranges. Although SAS was developed to support the analysis of any liquid-metal-cooled nuclear reactor, the testing described in this document primarily focuses on the verification of SAS capabilities as they relate to a generic pool-type Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR).
The Final Technical Report: Field Test Design and Pressure Management Strategies for Phase II Field Demonstration of Optimal Pressure Control, Plume Management, and Produced Water Strategies presents the culmination of multi-year efforts under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brine Extraction and Storage Test (BEST) program, led by EPRI in partnership with Gulf Power at the Plant Smith site near Panama City, Florida. The project was designed to evaluate and demonstrate the technical feasibility of managing subsurface pressures and fluid movement associated with large-scale CO₂ injection, using low-salinity water as a proxy fluid. Through a combination of field injection testing, reservoir modeling, and optimization studies, the research team developed and refined active and passive brine extraction strategies aimed at controlling injection-induced pressure buildup, mitigating risks of fault activation, and managing plume migration. The field demonstration incorporated a new injection well (TIW-2), a new monitoring/extraction well (TEMW-A), and an existing well (TIW-1) repurposed for passive pressure relief. Complementary geophysical monitoring was designed to track plume development and evaluate the effectiveness of pressure management strategies. The report details the integrated workflow encompassing wellfield development, regulatory permitting, model calibration, and survey design. It includes a comprehensive electromagnetic (EM) modeling and inversion study used to develop a cost-effective, time-lapse geophysical monitoring plan capable of imaging the evolving low-salinity plume within the highly saline Lower Tuscaloosa formation. Reservoir simulation results guided the design of the 17-month injection program and the timing of active extraction to maintain formation pressures below a hypothetical fault reactivation threshold. Supporting analyses evaluated potential injectivity risks related to clay fines migration and geochemical incompatibility, identifying practical mitigation measures such as salinity and pH control. The final design recommends a series of crosswell EM surveys—conducted before, during, and after injection—as the most effective and economical approach for plume imaging, supplemented by continuous downhole pressure and flow monitoring. Collectively, the study provides a field-ready framework for cost-effective pressure management and monitoring in support of future CO₂ storage projects.
Nuclear fuel encounters severe thermomechanical environments in which its mechanical response is determined by its microstructure, temperature and stress level histories. Simulating the response of such microstructures is crucial for predicting both performance and transient fuel mechanical responses and experimental verification of such predictions is therefore of great interest. While most of the deformation in a nuclear fuel rod occurs in the cladding, deformation of the fuel itself is still of interest with deformation mechanisms at operating temperature and above including creep, swelling, cracking as well as pellet-clad interaction. Characterization of these properties and understanding of the underlying deformation phenomena at operating or excursion temperatures is therefore of great importance for development and ultimately licensing of improved and novel nuclear fuel forms. Diffraction techniques offer unique insight on the atomistic (e.g. crystal structure) and microstructure (e.g. phase transformations, texture, defects) length scales and have a long history of providing unique data to inform relevant deformation models that enable the required predictive capabilities. For example, dislocations lead to diffraction peak broadening that can be characterized to estimate the dislocation density and study the role of dislocations on the deformation while measuring lattice strains allows to studie load sharing in two phase materials. In this report the requirements for a sample environment for high temperature deformation of nuclear fuels are defined. The HIPPO neutron time-of-flight diffractometer at LANSCE will host this sample environment and is also described. This instrument covers diffraction angles from 140° to 40° and is also equipped with an event-mode neutron imaging detector system, enabling energy-resolved neutron imaging in parallel with the diffraction that could measure sample temperature from Doppler broadening of neutron absorption resonances or measure pore densities from changes in the attenuation. Designs of devices to characterize thermomechanical properties of nuclear fuel without diffraction are also considered to guide the design. While this report is focused on applications for nuclear fuels, the device can also characterize cladding, moderator or structural materials and therefore contribute to other fields of research and development for advanced reactors. The temperatures planned to be reached are above 2000℃, thus enabling characterization of LWR reactor fuels under accident scenarios but also reaching temperatures of fuels developed for nuclear thermal propulsion and providing opportunities to characterize those. In conjunction with the energy-resolved neutron imaging detector, this setup would allow to measure neutron cross-sections at high temperatures, filling a gap towards development of reactors operating at high temperatures.
This report focuses on summarizing mechanical behavior of 316H stainless steel (SS) printed using laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). 316H SS is one of the six alloys that has been qualified for use in nuclear reactors. The Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies (AMMT) program has identified the use of the additive manufacturing (AM) process of LPBF as one of the manufacturing modalities to fabricate components for nuclear applications. Unlike wrought material, AM material displays significant heterogeneity in properties, resulting from changes in process parameters, machine-to-machine variability, and minor changes in feedstock chemistry from one batch to another. Although significant work has been done on 316L SS in the literature and has been summarized in several review papers, very limited data exist on 316H SS. Therefore, this report aims to provide a concise summary of the properties of 316H SS printed using different machines and at different locations as a part of the AMMT program.
Most nuclear fuels irradiations at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) over the past decade have been conducted using MiniFuel—a static capsule design employing subscale fuel specimens to collect separate-effects irradiated fuel performance data. Irradiation conditions for MiniFuel experiments are predicted pre-test using reactor physics, and thermal models are verified post-irradiation via SiC dilatometry and various spectrometry methods. Relevant fuel performance parameters are also observed post-irradiation in a hot cell, thereby providing a single data point for each parameter representing the cumulative effects of the irradiation conditions. Substantially more data can be harvested from a single test and within a shorter duration by instrumenting irradiation vehicles and measuring desired quantities in situ. This report presents the design and analysis of the MiniFuel INstrumented Irradiation Test Apparatus for Understanding Radiation Effects (MINITAURE)—an instrumented test rig based on the separate-effects MiniFuel concept that aims to capture fission gas release (FGR) and thermal conductivity degradation of fuel specimens during irradiation in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). MINITAURE will be integrated with the Materials Irradiation Facility (MIF) located in the HFIR building outside the reactor containment. The MIF will act as the instrumentation and control center for the experiment, enabling real-time feedback from in situ sensors and control of irradiation temperatures via a gas delivery system. Two unique capsule designs were developed to capture each phenomenon: the thermal conductivity capsule, which uses a thermopile method to estimate fuel specimen thermal conductivity, and the fission gas release capsule, which will have continuous flowing gas communication to high-purity germanium detectors that are housed in the MIF for monitoring FGR. This report details the reactor physics and heat transfer modeling activities that were used to inform the experiment design and predict capsule performance. It also describes out-of-pile activities conducted to stand up this new capability and verify the measurement techniques. Modeling efforts to date have demonstrated the feasibility of the in situ measurement techniques and supported the development of the MINITAURE assembly configuration. Out-of-pile testing of the thermal conductivity measurement shows promise in capturing relative changes in thermal conductivity. However, significant errors exist in the measured absolute value, posing a need for further refinement.
Two prototypes the welded ISOTEK-SFC-W-3 special form capsules (SFCs) of the same design were evaluated to determine if the requirements of Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 173.469, Tests for Special Form Class 7 (Radioactive) Materials, were met. The results of the special form tests are documented in this test report. This report describes the special form testing activities performed on the two welded ISOTEK-SFC-W-3 capsules. The test units were designated as TU-1 and TU-2. TU-1 was subjected to leak testing, percussion testing, and impact testing. TU-1 was leak tested using the leak rate test specified in 49 CFR 173.469(a)(4)(i). The impact test on TU-1 was conducted according to the requirements in 49 CFR 173.469 (b)(1). The percussion test that was carried out on TU-1 was conducted in accordance with 49 CFR 173.469 (b)(2). TU-2 was subjected to a leak rate test as specified in 173.469(a)(4)(i) and a heat test as specified in 49 CFR 173.469(b)(4). Each test unit was leak tested before and after these respective tests. The leak rate tests performed were helium back-pressure tests and bubble tests, as specified in American National Standards Institute (ANSI) N14.5-2014. The measured leak rates were converted to standard condition leak rates as specified in American Society for Testing and Measurement (ASTM) E 493. The determined standardized leak rates obtained from the test and the calculations for all the test units met the requirements for special form certification. The testing was performed under the direction of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Package Testing Program (PTP).
Radioactive/nuclear (R/N) materials are integral parts of many business sectors such as medicine, industry, and research. In the United States alone, approximately 3 million packages containing R/N materials are shipped annually via highways, rail, air, and water. These materials are utilized in medical diagnostics and treatments, industrial radiography, and scientific research. The secure and efficient transportation of R/N materials is paramount to public safety and national security. Recent incidents involving the loss of R/N materials during transportation highlight significant security and safety concerns. For instance, in December 2024, a package containing four encapsulated Selenium-75 sources was reported lost in transit from the Czech Republic to Madrid, raising alarms about the security of such shipments. Similarly, a Germanium-68 pin source was reported lost in transit in New Jersey in December 2024, underscoring the risks associated with transporting radioactive materials.
Annual Report for Office of Naval Research (ONR) program office. Highlights the synthetic and corresponding computational efforts surrounding the synthesis and processing of chemical precursors and their subsequent processing for formation of metal carbide products. Focus of this annual report is largely directed toward the computational effort as that manuscript is being finalized for submission.
This technical report describes the Continuous Baseline Microphysical Retrieval (MICROBASE) Value-Added Product (VAP) produced operationally by the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. MICROBASE provides a continuous estimate of cloud microphysical properties at ARM fixed observatories and ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) sites. It is designed to run operationally and provide data to the ARM Data Center for scientific distribution. This technical report presents an overview of the VAP as a resource for data users and ongoing records for major updates to these products.
The Infrared Cloud Imager Instrument Intercomparison was a guest instrument deployment by NWB Sensors to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility observatory on the Southern Great Plains (SGP) between May 18 and December 12, 2023. NWB Sensors is a company that has developed a commercially available infrared cloud imager (ICI). The ICI provides radiometrically calibrated, full-sky images of the downwelling infrared radiance in the 7.3-14 µm band. In addition, it provides cloud radiance as the residual between the observed radiance and the modeled cloud-free radiance as well as derived cloud products. The instrument is used in applications that require consistent detection of clouds across day and night. For more information, consult the instrument's webpage. The primary goal of the deployment was to validate the radiometric accuracy of the ICI. The ICI uses a proprietary calibration method to convert the raw data from its infrared camera into downwelling radiance. Unlike similar instruments, the system does not have an onboard blackbody calibration standard. Instead, NWB Sensors characterizes each ICI camera individually in an environmental chamber while looking at a blackbody standard. The resulting (proprietary) calibration is used operationally in the instrument and has been demonstrated to be stable over long periods. To validate the radiometric products from the ICI, an intercomparison between the ICI data products and those from ARM’s atmospheric emitted radiance interferometer (AERI) was made. The AERI is a best-in-class instrument for measuring downwelling infrared radiance (Gero et al. 2025). A weighted integration of the AERI’s spectral radiances across the ICI’s camera response was performed. The resulting radiance (herein called the AERI radiance) was directly compared to the zenith radiance concurrently observed by the ICI. The results of these comparisons are reported in the next section of this report.
The One Earth Energy #1 (OEE1, API 1211325373) well was drilled to a depth of 7,099 feet from the Pennsylvanian bedrock to the Precambrian granite. In total, 99 thin sections were taken from Rotary Sidewall Core (RSWC) from 2,275 feet to 6,903 feet; 59 thin sections were taken from Whole Core (WC) from 4,311.5 to 6,519.2 feet for this report. This report details specifically thin section point-counting analysis that includes mineralogical and pore space analysis, including grain size analysis annotated thin section photomicrographs, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and statistics of grain size analysis on Mount Simon thin sections from OEE1. Characterized units include the St. Peter Sandstone, Eminence Formation, Potosi Dolomite, Franconia Formation, Davis Member, Ironton Sandstone, Galesville Sandstone, Eau Claire Formation, Elmhurst Sandstone, Mt. Simon Sandstone, and Argenta Formation.
Lively Grove #1 (LG1 API number 1218924947) well was drilled to a depth of 5,758 feet, from the Glen Dean Limestone to the top of the Precambrian unit. In total, 49 thin sections were taken from Rotary Sidewall Core (RSWC), and one thin section was taken from Whole Core (2,918 feet, New Albany Shale) from 1,700 to 5,872 feet for this report. This report details specifically thin section point-counting analysis that includes mineralogical and pore space analysis, including grain size analysis annotated thin section photomicrographs, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with Energy Dispersive x-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), statistics of grain size analysis on St. Peter Sandstone thin sections, and Argon-Argon (Ar-Ar) dating on Precambrian samples from LG1. Characterized units include the Salem Limestone, New Albany Shale, Trenton Group, Joachim Dolomite, St. Peter Sandstone, Everton Formation, Eminence Formation, Davis Member, Eau Claire Formation, and Precambrian Basement.
This report provides the results of the CY 2024 sampling of East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC) as part of the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12) Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program (BMAP). The results are presented in the context of historical trends. The Y-12 BMAP was developed in 1985 to demonstrate that the effluent limits established for Y-12 protected the classified uses of the receiving stream, particularly the growth and propagation of aquatic life (Loar et al. 1989). Over the years, the BMAP has become an important and valuable long-term measure of stream conditions resulting from actions and activities at the Y-12 Complex. The BMAP currently consists of three tasks: (1) bioaccumulation monitoring, (2) benthic macroinvertebrate community monitoring, and (3) fish community monitoring. The benthic macroinvertebrate community monitoring task includes studies to evaluate the receiving stream’s biological integrity annually in comparison with Tennessee Water Quality Criteria following Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) protocols. In addition to presenting the EFPC biological monitoring results, this report includes results from Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act–funded BMAP programs in Bear Creek and McCoy Branch (presented in Appendixes A and B, respectively), as required in the Y-12 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Additional biological testing at the Y-12 Complex includes toxicity testing of select storm drains as required in the NPDES permit. Although toxicity testing is not formally part of the BMAP, toxicity testing results from 2024 are provided in Appendix C.