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This presentation deck provides an overview of emerging community solar markets. The presentation covers specific states with emerging community solar markets who have new programs or policies without many currently interconnected projects, as well as states that have recently updated their community solar policies or programs.
The new DOE-NE Center of Excellence for Thermal-fluids applications in Nuclear Energy inaugurated in April 2018 considers and researches novel new solution strategies for historically challenging flow issues that still plague the current fleet of deployed Light Water nuclear Reactors (LWRs) as well as predicting various fluid flow and fluid related issues with advanced reactor technologies. Our advanced thermal-fluids research and development approach synergistically combines three natural, though overlapping, length and time scales in a hierarchal multi-scale approach to avoid the temptation and pitfalls of attempting to develop a single solve-all algorithm for physical fluid flow problems that will span nine orders of magnitude in spatial and temporal scales. To demonstrate the multi-scale philosophy of the center we focus on Fluoride Cooled High Temperature Reactors (FHRs), and in particular on the Berkley’s PB-FHR Mark-I design. The Fluoride salt cooled High temperature Reactor (FHR) is a class of advanced nuclear reactors that combine the robust coated particle fuel form from high temperature gas cooled reactors, direct reactor auxiliary cooling system (DRACS) passive decay removal of liquid metal fast reactors, and the transparent, high volumetric heat capacitance liquid Fluoride salt working fluids - such as Flibe - from molten salt reactors. This combination of fuel and coolant enables FHRs to operate in a high-temperature low-pressure design space that has beneficial safety and economic implications. The PB-FHR reactor relies on a pebble bed approach and pebble bed reactors are in a sense the poster child for multi-scale analysis. The lower length-scale simulator for pebble reactor cores comprises three physics: neutronics (OpenMC), thermal-fluids (Nek5000/NekRS) and fuel performance (BISON). As part of Center of Excellence ongoing research efforts we have developed Cardinal, a new tool platform for lower length-scale simulation. Cardinal tightly couples all three physics and leverages advances in MOOSE such as the MultiApp system and the concept of MOOSE-wrapped Apps. The present report provides an update on the development of Cardinal with an extension of Cardinal to GPUs. We also perform a first-of-a-kind demonstration simulation on Summit representing a 10x capability increase in terms of pebble count for Cardinal.
The First Research Coordination Meeting of the CRP on “Updating Fission Yield Data for Applications” was held by video conference from 31 August to 4 September 2020 with more than 50 international experts from 16 countries attending the meeting. The CRP is devoted to evaluation efforts of cumulative and independent fission yields for incident energies from the thermal point up to 14 MeV on actinide targets. Produced fission yield evaluations should include full uncertainty quantification and are expected to combine available experimental data and state-of-art model information. Four working groups were created within the collaboration: 1) Availability of experimental fission product yield data for evaluations; 2) New fission product yield experimental data; 3) Fission product yield evaluation; and 4) Fission product yield validation. Technical discussions and the resulting work plan of the Coordinated Research Programme are summarized in this report.
This report updates the high-level test plan for evaluating surface deposition on three commercial 32PTH2 spent nuclear fuel (SNF) canisters inside NUTECH Horizontal Modular Storage (NUHOMS) Advanced Horizontal Storage Modules (AHSM) from Orano (formerly Transnuclear Inc.) and provides a description of the surface characterization activities that have been conducted to date. The details contained in this report represent the best designs and approaches explored for testing as of this publication. Given the rapidly developing nature of this test program, some of these plans may change to accommodate new objectives or requirements. The goal of the testing is to collect highly defensible and detailed surface deposition measurements from the surface of dry storage canisters in a marine coastal environment to guide chloride-induced stress corrosion crack (CISCC) research. To facilitate surface sampling, the otherwise highly prototypic dry storage systems will not contain SNF but rather will be electrically heated to mimic the thermal-hydraulic-environment. Instrumentation throughout the canister, storage module, and environment will provide an extensive amount of information for the use of model validation. Manual sampling over a comprehensive portion of the canister surface at regular time intervals will offer a high-fidelity quantification of the conditions experienced in a harsh yet realistic environment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) is a publicly available tool used by researchers and policymakers to help understand motor vehicle emission sources at a national, county, and project level. Estimates of heavy-duty activity in the most recent version of the model at the time this work was conducted, MOVES2014, was identified as an area in need of improvement. The start activity in MOVES2014 is based on a limited and dated data set. In addition, MOVES2014 relies on drive cycles that represent on-network activity but do not account for idling activity that occurs on off-network roads, such as at a distribution center, while the truck is queuing or during loading and unloading. As a result, MOVES2014 may currently underestimate the number of starts and idle and soak time for heavy-duty trucks in real-world operation. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has previously leveraged its expansive Fleet DNA database of heavy-duty vehicles to idle and start activity for six of the nine heavy-duty vehicle source types of classes in the MOVES model. The data available in Fleet DNA from 416 conventional, diesel-powered vehicles provided activity estimates from more than 120,000 hours of operation throughout 14,682 vehicle days between October 2006 and January 2016. NREL calculated start fraction, starts per day, soak fraction, and idle fraction by hour of the day for each vehicle type, state, and vocation, and provided results in .CSV files that can be translated to MOVES table inputs. The idle and start activity from this initial analysis of Fleet DNA data was used to develop default idle and start data for heavy-duty vehicles in MOVES3. Satisfied with the results from the Fleet DNA data used for MOVES3, the EPA asked NREL to extend this start/soak/idle analysis using additional data from a larger number of vehicles for a potential future update to the MOVES model. Such a data set was achieved from a project led by the University of California at Riverside, College of Engineering, Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT) and funded by California Air Resources Board. Specifically, this data set consists of 90 heavy-duty vehicles operated mainly in California, which can be separated into five of the nine heavy-duty vehicle classes in the MOVES model. In addition, the heavy-duty activity database collected by CE-CERT provided activity estimates from more than 44,000 hours of operation throughout 4,724 vehicle days between November 2014 and September 2016. This report details the analysis of the heavy-duty activity database collected from the University of California at Riverside by providing graphical analysis and context for the start, soak, and idle distributions. The comparison of the related results from both the Fleet DNA and CE-CERT data sets are documented as well.
Following the 1986 disastrous accident at Chernobyl, gaining independence following the fall of the former Soviet Union, two revolutions, and on-going Russian intervention, Ukrainea is seeking to expand its use of commercial nuclear energy and to further reduce its dependence on Russia for energy. Nuclear energy in Ukraine has made a significant contribution toward achieving sustainable development and social goals. Ukraine is very vulnerable to the effects of climate change and nuclear is a cornerstone of the country’s effort to combat the effects. With broad support from the U.S. government, Ukraine is cooperating with the U.S. on fresh nuclear fuel supply, civilian nuclear security, outage optimization, spent fuel storage, and future nuclear technology. And is looking to tap U.S. expertise on plant management, and electric grid operations and expansion. NEIc hosted this virtual event to provide an update on nuclear energy projects and plans in Ukraine. Featured speakers included Yaroslav Demchenkov, Deputy Minister of Energy, Taras Kachka, Deputy Minister – Trade Representative, Petro Kotin, CEO, Energoatom,d and Ann K. Ganzer, Senior Bureau Official, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, U.S. Dept. of State. Maria Korsnick, NEI CEO, moderated the discussion. About forty individuals attended representing the Ukraine and U.S. governments, and U.S. suppliers.
The First Research Coordination Meeting of the CRP on “Updating Fission Yield Data for Applications” was held by video conference from 31 August to 4 September 2020 with more than 50 international experts from 16 countries attending the meeting. The CRP is devoted to evaluation efforts of cumulative and independent fission yields for incident energies from the thermal point up to 14 MeV on actinide targets. Produced fission yield evaluations should include full uncertainty quantification and are expected to combine available experimental data and state-of-art model information. Four working groups were created within the collaboration: 1) Availability of experimental fission product yield data for evaluations; 2) New fission product yield experimental data; 3) Fission product yield evaluation; and 4) Fission product yield validation. Technical discussions and the resulting work plan of the Coordinated Research Programme are summarized in this report.
Consistent cost and performance data for various electricity generation technologies can be difficult to find and may change frequently for certain technologies. With the Annual Technology Baseline (ATB), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory annually provides an organized and centralized set of such cost and performance data. The ATB uses the best information from the Department of Energy national laboratories' renewable energy analysts. The ATB has been reviewed by experts and it includes the following electricity generation technologies: land-based wind, offshore wind, utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV), commercial-scale solar PV, PV plus storage, residential-scale solar PV, concentrating solar power, geothermal power, hydropower, utility-scale battery storage, coal, and natural gas. EIA data for nuclear and conventional biopower are included for reference. This webinar presentation introduces the 2021 update to the ATB Electricity data and documentation.
During 2020, SSEB worked with its SECARB partners to develop an update for the sixth version of the Atlas to be published as a virtual-only edition by NETL. The following report provides content that was sent to NETL for the SECARB portions of Atlas VI. This report satisfies the requirements for Work Product 1.9.a.
The Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Workbench is a graphical user interface (GUI) that provides a common analysis environment for the accelerated use of the NEAMS toolkit. To improve design and analysis of current and future nuclear energy systems, the NEAMS Workbench provides an integrated development environment for model creation, review, execution, output review, and visualization for integrated tools. In addition to a GUI, the NEAMS Workbench provides the Workbench Analysis Sequence Processor, an open-source tool set that facilitates input-content assistance for supported domain-specific input languages and user-friendly syntaxes. These supported syntaxes enable accelerated development and deployment of enhanced user inputs and workflows. The Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) has been supported in the NEAMS Workbench since 2016 and receives continuous updates. Efforts to improve MOOSE-based tool integration in the NEAMS Workbench are ongoing. This document details the current and planned enhancements of the NEAMS Workbench and the MOOSE framework to improve integration and usability of MOOSE-based applications within the NEAMS Workbench.
This report provides an update on the current design, implementation, and usage of bueno, a Python framework enabled by container technology that supports gradations of reproducibility for wellprovenanced benchmarking of sequential and parallel programs. The ultimate goal of the bueno project is to provide convenient access to mechanisms that aid in the automated generation, collection, and dissemination of data relevant for experimental reproducibility in computer system benchmarking.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Laboratory) operates a Meteorological Monitoring (Met) Program to support LANL emergency response, engineering designs, environmental compliance, environmental assessments, safety evaluations, weather forecasting, environmental monitoring, research programs, and environmental restoration. Weather data has been collected in Los Alamos since 1910. A 30-year averaging period is termed by the National Weather Service (NWS) as a climatic normal, and these statistics are updated every 10 years to represent the current climatic normal conditions. Previous climate statistics are provided in Bowen (1990) for the 1961–1990 averaging period and Dewart et al. (2017) for the 1981–2010 averaging period. No climate statistics were developed for the 1971-2000 averaging period. This report provides climate statistics for the current 30-year 1991–2020 averaging period.
The GREET® (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies) model has been developed by Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). GREET is a life-cycle analysis (LCA) tool, structured to systematically examine the energy and environmental effects of a wide variety of transportation fuels and vehicle technologies in major transportation sectors (i.e., road, air, marine, and rail) and other end-use sectors, and energy systems. Within the transportation sector, GREET covers road, air, water, and rail transportation sub-sectors. Recently, GREET was expanded to cover the building sector. Historically, GREET includes LCA of various materials such as steel, aluminum, cement, and different plastic types. Argonne has expanded and updated the model in various sectors in GREET 2021, and this report provides a summary of the release.
Y-12's primary responsibility is to establish a reliable fabrication process of low-enriched uranium-molybdenum feedstock for United States High Performance Research Reactors. This update compares feedstock fabrication efforts over the past several casting campaigns.
The report describes income, demographic, and other socio-economic trends among U.S. residential rooftop solar adopters. The report is based on data for roughly 1.9 million residential rooftop solar systems installed through 2019, representing 82% of all U.S. systems. With its unique size, geographic scope, and level of detail, this report is intended to serve as a foundational reference document for policy-makers, industry stakeholders, and researchers. Key findings include the following: Solar adopters generally skew towards higher incomes, though that trend continues to diminish over time. Solar adopter incomes vary considerably and encompass many low-to-moderate income (LMI) households. Solar-adopter incomes are consistently higher for systems paired with battery storage, for host-owned systems, and for systems installed on single-family homes. Solar adopters differ from the broader U.S. population in terms of a variety of other demographic and socioeconomic measures. State-level comparisons indicate that solar-adopters tend to live in neighborhoods with relatively high non-Hispanic White and Asian populations, and with relatively low Hispanic and Black populations. In conjunction with the report, Berkeley Lab has published an updated accompanying set of online data visualizations that allow users to further explore the underlying data. Berkeley Lab is also offering related analytical support to states, local agencies, and other organizations on issues related to solar adoption among low-to-moderate income households.
This Summary Analysis has three primary purposes: (1) Define the overall technical scope and approach for conducting the Hanford Site CA update; (2) Define the approach for complying with modeling requirements in the Williams (2012) memorandum; and (3) Serve as the mechanism for the Groundwater Vadose Zone Executive Council to review and approve the overall modeling approach for the Hanford Site CA.
An updated implementation of the Local Wavenumber Model (LWN) is discussed, primarily differing from recent versions by placing a greater focus on capturing a wide variety of turbulent flows including compressible flows. New models are introduced for spectral backscatter effects, the effect of bulk compression on the spectra, and incorporating the multispecies variables tracked in BHR4. Methods for reducing the compurational expense of tracking spectra for turbulent quantites are also investigated. Like recent versions of BHR, we test LWN in a number of canonical flows using a single set of coefficients, but additional coefficient tuning is likely to be required to improve the agreement with some of these flows.