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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 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

An overview of the evolving jurisdictional scope of the U.S. Clean Water Act for hydrologists

Abstract The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal mechanism by which the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of streams, lakes, and wetlands are protected in the United States. The CWA has evolved considerably since its initial passage in 1948, including explicit expansions and contractions of jurisdictional scope through a series of legislative actions, court decisions, and agency rules. Here, we provide a practical summary of the CWA's evolution, detailing the major updates or revisions and their circumstances. Additionally, we identify the jurisdictional scope of the law for rivers and streams, lakes, and wetlands based on the language used and implementation by the agencies during the same time period. While the rulemaking process commonly uses language that will be abstract to many hydrologists, understanding the on‐the‐ground implications, quantifying regulatory (un)certainties, and assessing the magnitude of changes through time is important to understanding the implications of environmental regulation development, litigation, and enforcement. Thus, we translate the enforcement norms and definitions into quantitative estimates for Clean Water Act scope in the Wabash River Basin (Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, USA) as a demonstration of the spatial consequences of changing regulatory language. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water Governance Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

A coupled hydrologic-agroeconomic modeling framework to evaluate adaptive irrigation strategies under groundwater withdrawal restrictions

Growing groundwater scarcity requires integrated tools to capture interactions among hydrology, agricultural production, markets, and land use. This study presents an iterative modeling framework that couples hydrologic, crop-yield, and economic models to capture two-way feedback among water availability, agricultural production, and market responses under groundwater constraints. The primary goal of this paper is to describe the methodological development of the coupled framework and demonstrate the significance of iterative model interaction. Applied to the western United States, we evaluated adaptive responses to restricting groundwater use beyond recharge levels, represented through changes in irrigation management and expansion or shrinkage of crop markets through land reallocation. Results demonstrate that the iterative coupling converges to stable equilibrium responses within 10 iterations. At equilibrium, deficit irrigation emerges as the dominant adaptation strategy in California, with irrigation levels stabilizing at approximately 70% of full irrigation demand, while Arizona and New Mexico experience stronger yield sensitivities. Early iterations produce commodity price increases of up to 10% for fruit and vegetable crops; however, these responses moderate as land allocation and production patterns adjust across regions. Deficit irrigation and spatial reallocation of irrigated land partially offset production losses, with variability observed across different states: California maintains yields primarily via deficit irrigation, whereas Arizona and New Mexico will rely mainly on reducing irrigated area to absorb the shock. By capturing feedback between biophysical and economic processes, this approach highlights how irrigation strategies and land-use decisions evolve under water stress and provides a transferable platform for evaluating water management policies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Developing a Decision Support Engine to Enable Irrigation Modernization - Poster

Irrigation systems in the United States are some of the oldest continually utilized infrastructure in existence today, with some systems exceeding 100 years in age. They are operated to meet farming demands but are managed through a balance of varying influence: policies limiting water usage, stakeholder interests, and environmental impacts. Irrigation modernization is defined as a set of activities that update and improve existing irrigation systems, including, but not limited to improving water quantity, development of distributed energy resources for surrounding communities, ecosystem services, and improved agricultural yields. Modernizing an existing irrigation system can enable stakeholders to combat changing environmental and population demands but is difficult because the complexity involved in determining the potential benefits and consequences of irrigation modernization is high. We are combining a large amount of various geospatial, tabular, and temporal data with subject matter expertise into a decision support engine that will enable stakeholders to determine the benefits and consequences of irrigation modernization in their irrigation systems. A web-based GIS will allow the user to construct the modifications out of a palette of modernization options, which will be sent to the analytics engine for computations, and back to the web client for a graphical display and comparison of relevant metrics. Our development process involves four phases: 1) identify mechanisms of modernization, 2) identify data requirements, data streams, first principles and applicable algorithms necessary to quantify modernization mechanisms, 3) create ‘modules’ for each modernization mechanism, these modules will form the decision support engine, each capable of performing independently but can also inform other modules when needed, 4) Merge the decision support engine with a user interface, capable of ingesting user inputs and returning insights into the impacts of a modernization project as they relate to economic, environmental, monetary, and energy generation. Once complete, it is our intention that this tool will be fundamental in irrigation modernization projects, providing a strong analytical basis from which stakeholders can quickly make informed decisions regarding project development.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Editorial: Achieving Water-Energy-Food Nexus Sustainability: A Science and Data Need or a Need for Integrated Public Policy?

The benefits of addressing the water, energy, and food sectors in an integrated manner is gaining significant recognition. An integrated approach can provide improved resource use efficiencies, more coherent environmental policies, and an overall strategy for achieving sustainability in the three sectors, as outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2 (Food), 6 (Water), and 7 (Energy). Societies are concerned with ensuring food security, avoiding wars over water, and creating opportunity by ensuring access to energy. To be effective, however, this approach needs to be adopted at all levels of societies including government, private and civil society and reinforced by management and planning methods. This special issue identifies different approaches that are either being conceptualized or tested to support the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus approach. The articles contribute to answering the question, “Is achieving Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus Sustainability a science and data need or an integrated public policy need?” In either case, both natural and social sciences will need to combine to support science issues or integrated policy issues. The papers explore the ways in which science, data, and policy development could help to define integrative principles and policies for the three sectors. This approach could expand beyond the water, energy, and food sectors to include health, environment, trade, commerce, and international assistance thereby providing broad support to the SDGs. Moreover, this issue demonstrates that data combined with new technologies (tools and models) can support better decision-making when adopted by governments and the sectors.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Integrated energy-water-land nexus planning to guide national policy: an example from Uruguay

Despite broad consensus on the benefits of a nexus approach to multi-sector planning, actual implementation in government and other decision-making institutions is still rare. This study presents an approach to conducting integrated energy-water-land (EWL) planning, using Uruguay as an example. This stakeholder-driven study focuses on assessing the EWL nexus implications of actual planned policies aimed at strengthening three of Uruguay's key exports (beef, soy, and rice), which account for more than 40% of total national export revenue. Five scenarios are analyzed in the study: a reference scenario, a climate impacts scenario, and three policy scenarios. The three policy scenarios include measures such as increasing the intensity of beef production while simultaneously decreasing emissions, increasing irrigated soybean production, and improving rice yields. This study supplements previous sector-specific planning efforts in Uruguay by conducting the first stakeholder-driven integrated multi-sector assessment of planned policies in Uruguay using a suite of integrated modeling tools. Key insights from the study are: as compared to a reference scenario, improving beef productivity could lead to cropland expansion (+30%) and significant indirect increases in water requirements (+20%); improving rice yields could lead to increases in total emissions (+3%), which may partially offset emissions reductions from other policies; expanding irrigated soy could have the least EWL impacts amongst the policies studied; and climate-driven changes could have significantly less impact on EWL systems as compared to human actions. The generalizable insights derived from this analysis are readily applicable to other countries facing similar multi-sector planning challenges. In particular, the study's results reinforce the fact that policies often have multi-sector consequences, and thus policies can impact one another's efficacy. Thus, policy design and implementation can benefit from coordination across sectors and decision-making institutions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Technical-Economic Assessment of Brackish Water Treatment for Fossil Power Plant Cooling with Reduced Environmental Impact

The power sector accounts for approximately 40% of freshwater use in the U.S. Reusing non-traditional water resources is critical for alleviating water stress in the western United States. The purpose of this study is to conduct a techno-economic system analysis to evaluate the potential of brackish water treatment for wet cooling towers at existing thermo-electric generating units (EGUs). It aims to address current knowledge gaps in support of non-traditional water resources planning and the electric power industry's water decision- and policy making. An engineering-economic model was developed and combined with DuPont's water application value engine (WAVE) v1.82 to evaluate the viability of retrofitting reverse osmosis-based brackish water treatment systems to individual existing EGUs and then aggregating the unit-level results to the fleet level. In the base case, brackish water treatment can reduce freshwater consumption of electric generation units by 94–100% while increasing the cost of electric generation by approximately 10% and have marginal impacts on the units' parasitic loads. When zero liquid discharge systems are applied to brackish water brine treatment, the cost of electric generation and freshwater consumption savings and energy penalty to the power plant significantly increase. These costs are even higher than dry cooling deployment in lieu of wet cooling towers. The choice of freshwater savings between brackish water desalination and dry cooling deployment depends greatly on how the concentrated brines are managed. Multiple factors must be considered when supporting decision-making in water management and planning in power sectors, which include non-traditional water quantity and quality as well as trade-offs among technical performance, economics, and environmental impacts.

Wu, Zitao↗
DOE OSTI2023

Hydropower representation in water and energy system models: a review of divergences and call for reconciliation

Abstract Reservoir-based hydropower systems represent key interactions between water and energy systems and are being transformed under policy initiatives driven by increasing water and energy demand, the desire to reduce environmental impacts, and interacting effects of climate change. Such policies are often guided by complex system models, whereby divergence in system representations can potentially translate to incompatible planning outcomes, thereby undermining any planning that may rely on them. We review different approaches and assumptions in hydropower representation in water and energy systems. While the models and issues are relevant globally, the review focuses on applications in California given its extensive development of energy and water models for policy planning, but discusses the extent to which these observations apply to other regions. Structurally, both water-driven and energy-driven management models are similar. However, in energy models, hydropower is often represented as a single-priority output. Water management models typically allocate water for competing priorities, which are generally uninformed by dynamic electricity load demand, and often result in a lower priority for hydropower. In water models, constraints are increasingly resolved for non-energy components (e.g. inflow hydrology and non-energy water demand); few analogues exist for energy models. These limitations may result in inadequate representations of each respective sector, and vastly different planning outcomes for the same facilities between the two different sectors. These divergent modeling approaches manifest themselves in California where poorly reconciled outcomes may affect decisions in hydropower licensing, electricity grid flexibility and decarbonization, and planning for environmental water. Fully integrated water-energy models are computationally intensive and specific to certain regions, but better representation of each domain in respective efforts would help reconcile divergences in planning and management efforts related to hydropower across energy and water systems.

Rheinheimer, David E. (ORCID:0000000315259069)↗
DOE OSTI2020

Policy-Driven Sustainable Saline Drainage Disposal and Forage Production in the Western San Joaquin Valley of California

Environmental policies to address water quality impairments in the San Joaquin River of California have focused on the reduction of salinity and selenium-contaminated subsurface agricultural drainage loads from westside sources. On 31 December 2019, all of the agricultural drainage from a 44,000 ha subarea on the western side of the San Joaquin River basin was curtailed. This policy requires the on-site disposal of all of the agricultural drainage water in perpetuity, except during flooding events, when emergency drainage to the River is sanctioned. The reuse of this saline agricultural drainage water to irrigate forage crops, such as ‘Jose’ tall wheatgrass and alfalfa, in a 2428 ha reuse facility provides an economic return on this pollutant disposal option. Irrigation with brackish water requires careful management to prevent salt accumulation in the crop root zone, which can impact forage yields. The objective of this study was to optimize the sustainability of this reuse facility by maximizing the evaporation potential while achieving cost recovery. This was achieved by assessing the spatial and temporal distribution of the root zone salinity in selected fields of ‘Jose’ tall wheatgrass and alfalfa in the drainage reuse facility, some of which have been irrigated with brackish subsurface drainage water for over fifteen years. Electromagnetic soil surveys using an EM-38 instrument were used to measure the spatial variability of the salinity in the soil profile. The tall wheatgrass fields were irrigated with higher salinity water (1.2–9.3 dS m -1 ) compared to the fields of alfalfa (0.5–6.5 dS m -1 ). Correspondingly, the soil salinity in the tall wheatgrass fields was higher (12.5 dS m -1 –19.3 dS m -1 ) compared to the alfalfa fields (8.97 dS mm -1 –14.4 dS mm -1 ) for the years 2016 and 2017. Better leaching of salts was observed in the fields with a subsurface drainage system installed (13–1 and 13–2). The depth-averaged root zone salinity data sets are being used for the calibration of the transient hydro-salinity computer model CSUID-ID (a one-dimensional version of the Colorado State University Irrigation Drainage Model). This user-friendly decision support tool currently provides a useful framework for the data collection needed to make credible, field-scale salinity budgets. In time, it will provide guidance for appropriate leaching requirements and potential blending decisions for sustainable forage production. This paper shows the tie between environmental drainage policy and the role of local governance in the development of sustainable irrigation practices, and how well-directed collaborative field research can guide future resource management.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Conus-Wide Mapping of Water Availability and Cost

Background: New demands for water can be satisfied through a variety of source options. In some basins surface and/or groundwater may be available through permitting with the state water management agency (termed unappropriated water), alternatively water might be purchased and transferred out of its current use to another (termed appropriated water), or non-traditional water sources can be captured and treated (e.g., wastewater). The relative availability and cost of each source are key factors in the development decision. Unfortunately, these measures are location dependent with no consistent or comparable set of data available for evaluating competing water sources. With the help of water managers, water availability was mapped for over 2500 watersheds throughout CONUS. These values are unique in that they account for institutional factors (i.e., water rights, compacts, treaties, instream flows) that locally limit water use. Five water sources were individually examined, including unappropriated surface water, unappropriated groundwater, appropriated water, municipal wastewater and brackish groundwater. Associated costs to acquire, convey and treat the water, as necessary, for each of the five sources were estimated. These metrics were developed to support regional water planning and policy analysis with initial application to electric transmission planning in the western US. Problem: These data were originally developed in 20141 and updated in 20182. New datasets on which these data depend have been published. As such, there is need to update the water availability and cost data. There is also need to map this same data to a county resolution and to publish the data in a more accessible place. Organization of the dataset: Data are organized according to five primary water sources: • Unappropriated fresh surface water • Unappropriated fresh groundwater • Appropriated water • Recycled wastewater, and • Brackish water

Tidwell, Vincent [Pacific Northwest National Labor↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hub and Spoke Modeling to support Agile Combat Employment

Here, the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) shifts focus primarily to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the pacing challenge, with acknowledgement of the other threats. President Joe Biden introduced the updated version by stating the U.S. is living in a decisive decade. While the country does not know when the next conflict will happen, leadership believes it will happen soon and the DoD is preparing for this eventuality in the Indo-Pacific region by rethinking operations and concepts. Traditionally, large, fixed installations have been the primary means of operating and generating airpower for the United States Air Force (USAF). Additionally, the service has the capabilities to establish contingency locations based on two primary criteria: a runway and a water source. However, policies and strategy must be updated to create a more agile and dispersed force.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2024

A Framework Using Applied Process Analysis Methods to Assess Water Security in the Vu Gia–Thu Bon River Basin, Vietnam

The Vu Gia–Thu Bon (VG–TB) river basin is facing numerous challenges to water security, particularly in light of the increasing impacts of climate change. These challenges, including salinity intrusion, shifts in rainfall patterns, and reduced water supply in downstream areas, are of great concern. This study comprehensively assessed the current state of water security in the basin using robust statistical analysis methods such as the Process Analysis Method (PAM), SMART principle, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). This resulted in the development of a comprehensive assessment framework for water security in the VG–TB river basin. This framework identified five key dimensions, with basin development activities (0.32), the ability to meet water needs (0.24), and natural disaster resilience (0.19) being the most crucial and water resource potential being the least crucial (0.11) according to the AHP methodology. The latter also highlighted 15 indicators, four of which are particularly influential, including waste resources (0.54), flood (0.53), water storage capacity (0.45), and basin governance (0.42). Furthermore, 28 variables with high weight factors were identified. This framework aligns with the UN-Water water security definition and addresses the global water sustainability criteria outlined in Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6). It enables the computation of a comprehensive Water Security Index (WSI) for specific regions, providing a strong foundation for decision-making and policy formulation. It aims to enhance water security in the context of climate change and support sustainable basin development, thereby guiding future research and policy decisions in water resource management.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Artificial Intelligence for Accelerating Nuclear Applications, Science, and Technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods have had significant impacts in science and technology in recent years. These methods for generating models from datasets or logic-based algorithms that emulate aspects of human performance can similarly accelerate the fields of nuclear applications, science, and technology toward the IAEA goals of contributing to peace, health, and prosperity. In order to accomplish advances with AI in general and ML in particular across these fields, IAEA can play a significant role by establishing, hosting and curating centralised resources, including databases, adhering to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles and Open Science best practices, providing stewardship of data sharing, supporting training efforts and development of relevant workforces, as well as enabling connections among the scientific, technology, mathematics, AI and ethics communities. Many areas can benefit from the use of AI in the realm of nuclear applications. In human health, these areas include clinical research, epidemiology, nutrition, medical imaging, radiotherapy and education of health professionals. AI-based tools are also being used to facilitate different clinical tasks in imaging, computer-assisted diagnosis in mammography and lung cancer screening programmes, and dose prediction in nuclear medicine procedures. ML methods in particular may also increase the efficiency and accuracy of the analysis of computerised tomography and dual-energy absorptiometry scans for body composition and bone analysis. The application of AI methods to nuclear and related technologies in food and agriculture can lead to significant advances and improved efficiency in the optimisation of agricultural production, food product development, management of supply chains, food safety and food authenticity control. In the water and environmental sector, AI can help inform policies to mitigate the world’s water problems. The application of AI techniques to hydrology and environmental sciences is expected to improve patterns identification and enable model predictions under a changing climate.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Aggregation in bottom-up vulnerability assessments and equity implications: The case of Jordanian households’ water supply

Bottom-up methods for water resources modeling rely on acceptability thresholds to find, through a response surface, which deeply uncertain futures lead to system failure. They commonly treat water users as aggregate actors, which may preclude analysis of the equity impacts of interventions. This paper explores how aggregation choices for large groups of water users lead to different policy recommendations in response surface assessments. Herein, two aggregation methods with varying parameters are considered: percentile satisfaction targets and generalized mean. A 2-dimensional stress-test assessment across groundwater availability and population is applied to household water supply in Jordan. The study compares six different policies covering supply enhancement and rebalancing, using a country-wide multi-agent model that characterizes households across socioeconomic strata. For different aggregation levels, policies are ordered by their associated robustness index. Results show that aggregation choices may modify response surfaces as much as policy changes and strongly determine policy preference. Modifying allocation rules can substantially reduce the disparity in household vulnerability. Preferences defined by aggregation intervals provide a finer understanding of trade-offs among water users and may improve deliberation over equity under deep uncertainty.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Creating a Research Enterprise Framework for Transdisciplinary Networking to Address the Food–Energy–Water Nexus

Urbanization, population growth, and the accelerating consumption of food, energy, and water (FEW) resources bring unprecedented challenges for economic, environmental, and social (EES) sustainability. It is imperative to understand the potential impacts of FEW systems on the realization of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the world transitions from natural ecosystems to managed ecosystems at an accelerating rate. A major obstacle is the complexity and emergent behavior of FEW systems and associated networks, for which no single discipline can generate a holistic understanding or meaningful projections. We propose a research enterprise framework for promoting transdisciplinarity and top-down quantification of the interrelationships between FEW and EES systems. Relevant enterprise efforts would emphasize increasing FEW resource accessibility by improving coordinated interplays across sectors and scales, expanding and diversifying supply-chain networks, and innovating technologies for efficient resource utilization. This framework can guide the development of strategic solutions for diminishing the competition among FEW-consuming sectors in a region or country, and for minimizing existing inequalities in FEW availability when a sustainable development agenda is implemented.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Water Resource Assessment In The New Mexico Permian Basin: BLM 2023 Assessment Report

The Permian Basin is the highest producing oil field in the United States and is comprised of three component basins including; the Midland Basin, Delaware Basin and the Marfa Basin. This report describes the work conducted by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to investigate the occurrence of usable water (quality, and depth to water) in the Delaware Sub-basin of the Permian Basin. High Production Areas (HPAs) were identified for the region based on Reasonable Foreseeable Development Scenario (RFD) published by New Mexico Tech University. HPAs were established based on potential for future development of oil reserves. The study was initiated by the BLM-Carlsbad Field Office (CFO) based on concerns that special protections for groundwater in these HPAs may be warranted. A combination of analysis of existing data and field work to collect new data for analysis were used to complete the investigation objectives. This study summarizes the most recent analyses in an ongoing project and builds on previously completed work as listed in Table 1. Advancements in directional drilling and well completion technologies have resulted in an exponential growth in the use of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin. Within the New Mexico portion of the Delaware Sub-basin, water demand to complete each hydraulically fractured well is estimated to average 7.3 acre-feet (2.4 million gallons), resulting in 30 billion barrels of water over the life of the plan or 1.5 billion barrels per year. This rising demand is creating concern for the regions ability to provide the necessary water in a manner that fulfills BLM’s role of protecting human health and the environment while sustainably meeting the needs of various water users in the region. This report documents water-level and water chemistry baselines to aid the BLM in understanding the regional water supply dynamics under various management, policy, and growth scenarios and to pre-emptively identify risks to water sustainability.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗