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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Radar Wind Profiler (RWP) and Radio Acoustic Sounding System (RASS) Instrument Handbook

The radar wind profiler (RWP) is an active remote-sensing instrument that can routinely, and virtually unattended, observe wind and turbulence in the troposphere through scattering from clear-air irregularities of the atmospheric refractive index (Gage and Balsley 1978). The principle of Doppler radars in general is based on sending electromagnetic pulses in the vertical and several tilted directions (vertical and oblique beams) and measuring the signal that is scattered back by atmospheric turbulence at all heights and received at the antenna. The RWPs provides measurements of backscattered signal strength and wind profiles nominally between 0.1 km and 6 km. The RWP operation assumes that the wind field is homogeneous over the spatial separation of the antenna beams, which is a safe assumption under stable atmospheric conditions. However, the wind may be different between the beams due to significant changes in the wind field, resulting in erroneous wind calculations. Therefore, the radial measurements are averaged over a sufficient time period to validate the assumption of homogeneity.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Stellar Activity F-statistic for Exoplanet Surveys (SAFE)

In the search for planets orbiting distant stars, the presence of stellar activity in the atmospheres of observed stars can obscure the radial velocity signal used to detect such planets. Furthermore, this stellar activity contamination is set by the star itself and cannot simply be avoided with better instrumentation. Various stellar activity indicators have been developed that may correlate with this contamination. We introduce a new stellar activity indicator called the Stellar Activity F-statistic for Exoplanet surveys (SAFE) that has higher statistical power (i.e., probability of detecting a true stellar activity signal) than many traditional stellar activity indicators in a simulation study of an active region on a Sun-like star with a moderate-to-high signal-to-noise ratio. Also through simulation, the SAFE is demonstrated to be associated with the projected area on the visible side of the star covered by active regions. We also demonstrate that the SAFE detects statistically significant stellar activity in most of the spectra for HD 22049, a star known to have high stellar variability. Additionally, the SAFE is calculated for recent observations of the three low-variability stars HD 34411, HD 10700, and HD 3651, the latter of which is known to have a planetary companion. As expected, the SAFE for these three only occasionally detects activity. Furthermore, initial exploration appears to indicate that the SAFE may be useful for disentangling stellar activity signals from planet-induced Doppler shifts.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2025

A new active base of photomultiplier R4125 designed for the PbWO4 calorimeter

This paper presents the design, performance, and results of the radiation tests of an active base for Hamamatsu R4125 photomultiplier tube. The active base was designed at Jefferson Lab and comprises of a high voltage divider and an on-board amplifier. The photomultiplier with the active base is used to detect light from lead tungstate scintillating crystals of the forward electromagnetic calorimeter of the GlueX detector. The active base amplifier allows to operate the tube at lower high voltage and thus to limit the photomultiplier anode current to a few micro ampereres at the maximum counter rate of 1 MHz counter, while retaining the dynamic range of output signals. The performance of calorimeter modules instrumented with the active base was studied using detector prototypes positioned into the beam of photons. The key performance parameters such as the linearity, high-rate capability, and the energy resolution verified that the active base design meets the detector specifications

Somov, Alexander [Thomas Jefferson National Accele↗
DOE OSTI2020

Delivering Contextual Knowledge and Critical Skills of Disruptive Technologies through Problem-Based Learning in Research Experiences for Undergraduates Setting

The recent development in transportation, such as energy-efficient and autonomous vehicles, defines a condition for the students in transportation engineering. Students in the field of transportation engineering should be ready upon their graduation with new knowledge and skills that are compatible with the need of the industry and sustainable engineering practices.During summers of 2018 and 2019, we developed and implemented an eight-week program to increase the knowledge and skills of students coming from multidisciplinary fields related to autonomous vehicles. Problem of “How much will platooning reduce fuel consumption and emissions per vehicle mile traveled?” was instrumentalized in subsequent activities to introduce the comprehensive knowledge structure of autonomous vehicles.The engineering concept of reducing the cost and sustainability was embedded in the leading research question that helped us to develop and implement activities on an overall knowledge structure in autonomous vehicles. The goal of using problem-based learning activities was not to encourage the students to focus on reaching the solution merely. We aimed to introduce the multidisciplinary knowledge and critical skills aspects of learning about disruptive technologies.In this paper, we will discuss how a multidisciplinary research approach was incorporated into a problem-based learning activity. The students were introduced the subjects related to math, physics, computer science, and biology as the integration of the knowledge structure of autonomous vehicles. We will also present the results on students’ use of critical skills such as machine learning and computer programming.

Comert, Gurcan↗
DOE OSTI2025

NANT Site - NOAA Radar Wind Profiler / Raw Data

This dataset contains data from a NOAA Radar Wind Profiler located on Nantucket island. Data can be found at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/obs/datadisplay/ with the following filters: Active Sites: nte Instrument: 915 MHz Wind Profiler Product: Radar 915MHz Sub-Hourly Weber Wuertz Wind

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Radar Wind Profiler / Raw Data

This dataset contains data from a NOAA Radar Wind Profiler located on Block island. Data can be found at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/obs/datadisplay/ with the following filters: Active Sites: bid Instrument: 915 MHz Wind Profiler Product: Radar 915MHz Sub-Hourly Weber Wuertz Wind

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Science of the Van Allen Probes Science Operations Centers

The Van Allen Probes mission operations materialized through a distributed model in which operational responsibility was divided between the Mission Operations Center (MOC) and separate instrument specific SOCs. The sole MOC handled all aspects of telemetering and receiving tasks as well as certain scientifically relevant ancillary tasks. Each instrument science team developed individual instrument specific SOCs proficient in unique capabilities in support of science data acquisition, data processing, instrument performance, and tools for the instrument team scientists. In parallel activities, project scientists took on the task of providing a significant modeling tool base usable by the instrument science teams and the larger scientific community. With a mission as complex as Van Allen Probes, scientific inquiry occurred due to constant and significant collaboration between the SOCs and in concert with the project science team. Planned cross-instrument coordinated observations resulted in critical discoveries during the seven-year mission. Instrument cross-calibration activities elucidated a more seamless set of data products. Specific topics include post-launch changes and enhancements to the SOCs, discussion of coordination activities between the SOCs, SOC specific analysis software, modeling software provided by the Van Allen Probes project, and a section on lessons learned. One of the most significant lessons learned was the importance of the original decision to implement individual team SOCs providing timely and well-documented instrument data for the NASA Van Allen Probes Mission scientists and the larger magnetospheric and radiation belt scientific community.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Second Target Station Instrument Systems Research and Development Plan

This document describes the research and development (R&D) plan for Second Target Station (STS) instruments and bunker. The R&D program at STS seeks to mitigate risk and develop new technologies that will enhance performance for deployment on the eight instruments that are part of the STS project. Currently, STS is actively developing six of the eight instruments. This document is expected to be revised as the R&D program progresses and activities begin on the remaining two instruments (VERDI and EXPANSE).

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Instrumentation for the In-Core Real-Time Mechanical Testing of Structural Materials (INCREASE) Project

Idaho National Laboratory (INL), in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the French Atomic and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA), the Joint Research Center (JRC), the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG), and the Research Center Rez (CVR), started a Joint Experimental Program (JEEP) project that operates within the Nuclear Energy Agency’s Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES II) program in order to develop capabilities for the in-core real-time mechanical testing of structural materials. This effort will focus on designing a shared capsule capable of housing a variety of in-core mechanical testing instrumentation allowing enhanced experiments for the material science community. The outcome of the project would be high-priority, stress relaxation data for stainless-steel-based materials provided by EPRI and CEA. Stress relaxation is a major phenomenon that contributes to material degradation in nuclear reactor components. Currently, nuclear material stress relaxation is assessed both before and after irradiation, using complex and costly post-irradiation examination (PIE) activities. In-situ data would support the development of precision modeling and simulation of this degradation phenomena and would provide validation and benchmarking for existing models using the PIE data. As part of the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Sensor and Instrumentation (ASI) program, INL has fabricated and tested out-of-core mechanical test instrumentation. This instrumentation was designed for easy adaptation to the irradiation capsule proposed under this JEEP, and can be deployed to measure real-time stress relaxation under pressurized-water reactor (PWR) conditions. This initial effort will partially serve to replace the testing capabilities lost because of shutting down the Halden Boiling Water Reactor (HBWR). The project would provide these capabilities to the international community via a shared capsule design that is easily adaptable to additional material test reactors. The design features will incorporate expansion to PWR and non-light-water reactor (LWR) environments that will be developed in future work. The capsule and instrumentation will be demonstrated in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reactor (MITR) for phase I and the Petten High Flux Reactor (HFR) for phase II irradiations to deliver real-time stress relaxation data on high priority stainless steel structural materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

FY25 Mid-Year Report: FNCL Enhancements Implementation

During the first half of FY25 the FNCL team has made consistent progress toward the completion of our project goals. The FNCL prototype panel design has been successfully applied to a fully instrumented 3-panel system which is actively under construction. The FNCL Demonstrator System contains solid scintillators instrumented with SiPMs, which operate on an updated CAEN digitizer, requires no high-voltage, and has a smaller overall footprint. The onboard software will include the LLNL-developed GMM-PSD signal processing. Later this year the system will be experimentally tested alongside the baseline FNCL instrument at LLNLs ISSA facility. In addition to a full systems test, the performance of a DD generator for active interrogation measurements compared to the standard AmLi source will be established for both systems. The data collected at the ISSA facility will be used to experimentally validate the FNCL-Fast Isotopic Fuel Assay’s (FIFA) capability to measure U-235 loading and to predict gadolinium poison content with passive interrogation. The FNCL-FIFA modal was benchmarked with simulation-based data and a user-friendly GUI was added earlier this year. Three separate codes have been submitted to the LLNL ESW system for review prior to their transfers. These include the Predictive Modeling Response toolkit, GMM-PSD firmware beta version, and the FNCL-FIFA analysis package with GUI and user documentation.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Molten Salt Reactor Signatures and Modeling Study

Molten salt reactor (MSR) technologies, either liquid fueled and cooled or only liquid cooled, pose specific, unique challenges for safeguards of the special nuclear material during the operation, fueling, and maintenance of the reactor. MSRs are one type of Generation IV technologies being invested in and considered for U.S. domestic fabrication primarily for electricity and process heat production. These designs have generated growing commercial interest for several reasons, including high (≈40%) thermal efficiency, ease of fueling, improved use of uranium fuel, potential utilization of thorium fuel, and proposed inherent safety features. U.S. companies have several planned designs that differ in fuel, cooling, and neutron energy spectrum. Driven by commercial interest and the intent of licensing MSRs, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has developed a vision and strategy to accommodate non-light water reactors (LWR), which include MSRs (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 2019). In addition, the Department of Energy (DOE) through the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) Office of Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART), …sponsors research, development and deployment (RD&D) activities through its Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), Advanced Reactor Concepts (ARC), and Advanced Small Modular Reactor (aSMR) programs to promote safety, technical, economical, and environmental advancements of innovative Generation IV nuclear energy technologies. Reactor types considering the use of salts, liquid metals, or gases for coolant fall under both ARC and aSMR. Therefore, Research Design & Development is being pursued by DOE-NE through national laboratories, universities, and international and industrial collaborations. Additionally, the U.S. is a member of the Gen IV International Forum (GIF). The GIF is a cooperative, multinational organization to guide and carry out research and development needed for the GEN IV reactor systems (Forum 2018). GIF evaluated numerous reactor concepts and down-selected to the six most feasible advanced reactor technologies: gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR), lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR), MSR, supercritical watercooled reactor (SCWR), sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), and very high temperature reactor (VHTR). In support of the growing interest domestically and internationally, the Materials Protection, Accounting, and Control Technologies (MPACT) campaign, under the DOE-NE Fuel Cycle Technologies (FCT) program, engages in R&D activities by developing advanced instrumentation and analysis for safeguards and security of modern, advanced nuclear fuel cycle (non-LWR) facilities. Because of the historic experience in the operation of the Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) and the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) (Robertson, MSRE Design and Operations Report Part I 1965), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is heavily engaged in the various R&D activities through the DOE complex related to MSRs including national technical leadership of the DOE-NE MSR campaign. This report discusses and presents the outcomes of the FY19 MPACT MSR Safeguards task. The challenges presented by MSRs for nuclear material accountancy and control (NMAC) and associated safeguards will be investigated. The objective of this research is to explore and compile the safeguards requirements and identify measurement signatures through an initial high-level MSR design and develop complementary advanced simulation and modeling capabilities. A high-level ORNL-developed MSR design called the Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor (MSDR) (Bettis, Alexander and Watts 1972) was used as the target reactor design for this research. The MSDR model incorporates technology from the MSRE and the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (Robertson, Conceptual Design of a Single-Fluid Molten-Salt Breeder Reactor 1971). But the MSDR is a 750 MWth graphite moderated liquid fueled (low-enriched uranium) MSR compared to the MSRE’s of 7.5 MWth. The focus of this report is to discuss the evaluation of novel signatures, correlations, and indicators to understand the applicability of current safeguards instrumentation to MSRs using the modeling results from the MSDR.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Utah FORGE Project 3-2417: Meteorological Data During 2023 Completion/Circulation

This preliminary data archive includes meteorological data recorded at the Utah FORGE facility over the period of time including the completion/cementing of well 78-16B and the initial 2023 circulation test, largely occurring in June/July/August of 2023. This information may prove useful for understanding seismic and other instrumentation responses during these activities. The meteorological station was installed June 23rd, 2023 during drilling; the circulation test occurred in mid July of 2023 (July 4-19). The included files span this period. All sensors were installed at the 16 pad and hence reflect weather state at the site. This dataset was acquired by the FOGMORE R&D project (Fiber Optic MOnitoring for Reservoir Evolution), Utah FORGE R&D Project 3-2417.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Rain on snow (ROS) understudied in sea ice remote sensing: a multi-sensor analysis of ROS during MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate)

Abstract. Arctic rain on snow (ROS) deposits liquid water onto existing snowpacks. Upon refreezing, this can form icy crusts at the surface or within the snowpack. By altering radar backscatter and microwave emissivity, ROS over sea ice can influence the accuracy of sea ice variables retrieved from satellite radar altimetry, scatterometers, and passive microwave radiometers. During the Arctic Ocean MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition, there was an unprecedented opportunity to observe a ROS event using in situ active and passive microwave instruments similar to those deployed on satellite platforms. During liquid water accumulation in the snowpack from rain and increased melt, there was a 4-fold decrease in radar energy returned at Ku- and Ka-bands. After the snowpack refroze and ice layers formed, this decrease was followed by a 6-fold increase in returned energy. Besides altering the radar backscatter, analysis of the returned waveforms shows the waveform shape changed in response to rain and refreezing. Microwave emissivity at 19 and 89 GHz increased with increasing liquid water content and decreased as the snowpack refroze, yet subsequent ice layers altered the polarization difference. Corresponding analysis of the CryoSat-2 waveform shape and backscatter as well as AMSR2 brightness temperatures further shows that the rain and refreeze were significant enough to impact satellite returns. Our analysis provides the first detailed in situ analysis of the impacts of ROS and subsequent refreezing on both active and passive microwave observations, providing important baseline knowledge for detecting ROS over sea ice and assessing their impacts on satellite-derived sea ice variables.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Low power on-chip data transmission for wafer-scale monolithic active pixel sensors

Here, this paper details the implementation of the digital pulse shaping subsystem within the Backbone Transmission Line Encoding (BTLE) driver, a low-power, long-distance on-chip data transmission solution designed in a 65 nm CMOS process. Digital pulse shaping is critical for minimizing inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by bandwidth limitations of on-chip interconnects, especially in wafer-scale monolithic active pixel sensors (MAPS). A duobinary encoder coupled with a parallelized polyphase finite impulse response (FIR) filter is used for efficient shaping of the transmitted signal spectrum. This reconfigurable architecture achieves reliable 160 Mb/s data transfer over a 10 cm on-chip link, as validated by simulations demonstrating low power consumption (FoM 37.3 fJ/bit/mm of transmission line length) and effective ISI mitigation.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Probe microscopy is all you need *

We pose that microscopy offers an ideal real-world experimental environment for the development and deployment of active Bayesian and reinforcement learning methods. Indeed, the tremendous progress achieved by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence over the last decade has been largely achieved via the utilization of static data sets, from the paradigmatic MNIST to the bespoke corpora of text and image data used to train large models such as GPT3, DALL·E and others. However, it is now recognized that continuous, minute improvements to state-of-the-art do not necessarily translate to advances in real-world applications. We argue that a promising pathway for the development of ML methods is via the route of domain-specific deployable algorithms in areas such as electron and scanning probe microscopy and chemical imaging. This will benefit both fundamental physical studies and serve as a test bed for more complex autonomous systems such as robotics and manufacturing. Favorable environment characteristics of scanning and electron microscopy include low risk, extensive availability of domain-specific priors and rewards, relatively small effects of exogenous variables, and often the presence of both upstream first principles as well as downstream learnable physical models for both statics and dynamics. Recent developments in programmable interfaces, edge computing, and access to application programming interfaces (APIs) facilitating microscope control, all render the deployment of ML codes on operational microscopes straightforward. We discuss these considerations and hope that these arguments will lead to create novel set of development targets for the ML community by accelerating both real world ML applications and scientific progress.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

GADRAS Batch Inject Tool User Guide

Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) is used by the radiation detection and emergency response community to perform modeling and spectral analysis for gamma detector systems. Built into GADRAS is the ability to define a detector, geometry, background characteristics and source composition to generate synthetic spectra for drills and exercises (injects). Consequence Management is currently in development of a sample result data simulator tool in which a deposition model is probed for source conditions at moments in time and locations in space. These values are used to generate realistic sample results for use in drills and exercises. In addition to sample results, there is a need to simulate the actual spectra that would be observed in the field by downlooking HPGe instruments given a deposition activity. This way, the FRMAC Gamma Spectroscopist can practice their process of generating quantified results from spectra on realistic data as well. Recognizing the decades of work done in GADRAS to accurately generate synthetic spectra, this team decided to build a link between the new simulator and GADRAS to generate these spectra quickly and easily. The simulator tool will generate a file that specifies the name of the spectra, its location, date/time of measurement, duration of measurement, height off the ground, and the deposition activity and age for every radionuclide in the simulation. Then, a new tool within the Inject Tab of GADRAS was developed to read in this file given a detector selection and generate In-Situ spectra for each row in the file in any file format the user chooses. This way, simulation cell staff can take these files and then upload them to the appropriate data system (RAMS or RadResponder) for use during drills and exercises. An advanced feature of this tool allows for generating any spectra given an appropriate model and mapping of source to model layer in the batch inject tool. This way, spectra from field sample counts, mobile laboratories, or even fixed laboratories can be generated in bulk given an estimate of the radioactivity concentration or total radioactivity in an import file. This expands the capabilities of this tool a great deal and will make it a more useful tool for CM and others to help estimate detector response for nearly any situation. This user guide will explain the steps needed to perform a batch inject file generation.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Measuring aerosol collection efficiency for the Bladewerx “New Speclon TM 5” and the older “Speclon TM 5” filter

Bladewerx TM LLC (Rio Rancho, NM) manufactures instrumentation, neutron shielding and activation foils for the radiation protection industry. Specializing in portable alpha/beta air monitors and sample counters, Bladewerx is the source of Speclon TM PTFE filter media that they recommend for high-resolution alpha spectroscopy. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) utilizes Speclon TM filter material in CAM (Continuous Air Monitor) samplers for workplace air monitoring. The LANL Aerosol Engineering Facility received air filter material from Bladewerx, referred to as “New Speclon 5” in this document, in order to distinguish from filter material that was previously received (referred to as “Speclon 5” in this document). In this document, the aerosol collection efficiency and airflow resistance (pressure drop) were measured for the New Speclon 5 filter material.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2022

A summary of air sampler filter performance data: Bladewerx Speclon 5(TM) and Millipore FMLW047 5um

Bladewerx™ LLC (Rio Rancho, NM) manufactures instrumentation, neutron shielding and activation foils for the radiation protection industry. Specializing in portable alpha/beta air monitors and sample counters, Bladewerx is the source of Speclon 5™ PTFE filter media that they recommend for high-resolution alpha spectroscopy. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) utilizes Speclon™ filter material in CAM (Continuous Air Monitor) samplers for workplace air monitoring. Millipore FMLW (5μm) filters are also used at Los Alamos, and a comparison of the two filter types has been requested. For filter face air velocities from 0.066 m/s to 1.5 m/s, the aerosol collection efficiency (for 0.3 μm particle diameters) and the filter pressure drops were measured. The FWHM (full width half maximum) of alpha spectroscopy peaks was also determined, using naturally occurring radon progeny at an alpha energy of 6 MeV.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗