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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

A Performant, Scalable Processing Pipeline for High‐Quality and FAIR Environmental Sensor Data

High-resolution environmental monitoring is necessary to record, understand, and predict biogeochemical and ecological changes particularly in coastal systems but brings significant challenges in processing and making rapidly available the resulting data. The COMPASS-FME project established a network of coastal observational sites across the Chesapeake Bay and western Lake Erie regions extensively instrumented with soil, vegetation, and weather sensors logging data every 15 min. Our data processing framework, written in R and completely open source, prioritizes rapid model-experiment iteration and makes biogeochemical data rapidly available for quality assurance/quality control, analysis, and model ingestion. This pipeline is distinguished by a standardized and modular approach to data curation, extensive metadata and documentation, and its high performance. These attributes combine to make biogeochemical data rapidly accessible across COMPASS-FME and the broader community. Flexible, powerful, and reproducible approaches to handling high-volume environmental data are crucial for accelerating biogeosciences research.

Pennington, Stephanie C. [Pacific Northwest Nation↗
DOE OSTI2020

Role of diversity-generating retroelements for regulatory pathway tuning in cyanobacteria

Abstract Background Cyanobacteria maintain extensive repertoires of regulatory genes that are vital for adaptation to environmental stress. Some cyanobacterial genomes have been noted to encode diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs), which promote protein hypervariation through localized retrohoming and codon rewriting in target genes. Past research has shown DGRs to mainly diversify proteins involved in cell-cell attachment or viral-host attachment within viral, bacterial, and archaeal lineages. However, these elements may be critical in driving variation for proteins involved in other core cellular processes. Results Members of 31 cyanobacterial genera encode at least one DGR, and together, their retroelements form a monophyletic clade of closely-related reverse transcriptases. This class of retroelements diversifies target proteins with unique domain architectures: modular ligand-binding domains often paired with a second domain that is linked to signal response or regulation. Comparative analysis indicates recent intragenomic duplication of DGR targets as paralogs, but also apparent intergenomic exchange of DGR components. The prevalence of DGRs and the paralogs of their targets is disproportionately high among colonial and filamentous strains of cyanobacteria. Conclusion We find that colonial and filamentous cyanobacteria have recruited DGRs to optimize a ligand-binding module for apparent function in signal response or regulation. These represent a unique class of hypervariable proteins, which might offer cyanobacteria a form of plasticity to adapt to environmental stress. This analysis supports the hypothesis that DGR-driven mutation modulates signaling and regulatory networks in cyanobacteria, suggestive of a new framework for the utility of localized genetic hypervariation.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hydrogen production from high-volume organic construction and demolition wastes

The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) has partnered with Simonpietri Enterprises, LLC (SEL) with the objective of developing an integrated waste preparation, gasification, and syngas cleanup process capable of using a high-volume, negative-value, highly contaminated feedstock consisting of construction and demolition (C&D) waste to economically produce 99+% pure hydrogen. The target is to achieve $\$$1/kg H2 at a modular scale ranging from 5- to 50-MWe-equivalent size by testing the gasification of organic C&D debris containing treated waste lumber and construction materials, permanently sequestering contaminants into the ash. C&D debris waste is one the largest-volume waste streams in the United States; is already aggregated and available across the country, lending itself to hub operations; and has fewer alternatives for energy conversion than are available for coal, biomass, and municipal solid waste because of contamination from treated lumber and other construction materials.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2026

Autonomous Coupler Alignment Using Position-Based Visual Servoing in a ROS 2 Framework

As robotic arms are becoming increasingly common alongside humans as collaborative robots, their high precision in motion enables tasks to be performed at significantly higher speeds with reduced disruption in the environment. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is exploring this application by incorporating a UR16e from Universal Robots in a cleanroom setting during assembly of couplers to superconducting radio frequency cavities as part of the PIP-II project. The goal of the robotic assembly process is to precisely position the UR16e robot so that the coupler flange, mounted on the robot’s end-effector, is accurately aligned with and pressed against the cavity flange, requiring only final fastening by a lab technician. This thesis builds upon an initial system in which the robotic process was limited to the alignment phase using position-based visual servoing with an eye-in-hand camera to only align the coupler to the cavity with an offset distance. The objective of this thesis is to further advance autonomous robotic assembly by extending the process. To this end, the entire software framework was reconstructed, as the previous development environment posed significant challenges in modifying the software and adapting to hardware changes. The main contributions of this thesis are as follows: (i) a modular and scalable software framework based on ROS~2 was developed to facilitate performance expansion and interchangeability of software and hardware components; (ii) the desired alignment position for position-based visual servoing was parameterized to enable flexible configuration; and (iii) a methodology was developed to close the offset distance between the coupler and cavity utilizing the internal force-torque sensing capability of the UR16e, as visual feedback is not available during the offset-closing phase. The proposed autonomous robotic assembly reduces assembly time and technician involvement, thereby minimizing the risk of airborne particulate contamination, which is essential in the cleanroom setting. Moreover, the ROS~2-based framework provides a foundation for further expansion and continued advancement of robotic automation in Fermilab.

Giffen, Nickolas [Northern Illinois U.]↗
DOE OSTI2022

CRADA Number NFE-19-07851 with Electro-Active Technologies Inc. (CRADA Final Report)

Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) NFE-19-07851 between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Electro-Active Technologies Inc. focused on developing a modular stack system to produce renewable hydrogen from food waste and renewable electricity. Developing technologies that can produce renewable, affordable hydrogen is key to enabling wider adoption of fuel cell technologies. Electro-Active has developed a microbial electrolysis process that leverages microbes growing on an anode to convert waste into electrons and protons, which are recombined and reacted with the help of an additional applied voltage to generate pure hydrogen at a cathode. The work done under the CRADA focused on developing a deeper understanding of the microbial community biocatalyst and how feedstock and process conditions affect structure and function in a prototype system in order to increase and sustain performance. Analysis indicates that developing a robust microbial community for conversion of food waste feedstocks at high rates within a microbial electrolysis system is possible, as well as maintaining this optimal microbial biocatalyst in larger systems. However, further work is needed to maintain performance in the system as it is scaled up to enable commercial deployment of the technology.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2021

Deployment of salt sample extraction system at an engineering-scale electrorefiner

The goal of the salt sampling program at Argonne is to develop and deploy automated molten salt sampling approaches for interfacing relevant unit operations with salt analysis to improve the timeliness of sampling-based accountancy measurements. Two technologies under development in support of this goal are a vacuum sampling loop module and a high-throughput pneumatic sample generator module. Compared to traditional point sampling approaches (i.e., dip probes), the vacuum sampling loop facilitates the collection of a larger cross-section of the bulk salt in order to collect more representative samples. The vacuum sampling approach also eliminates the risk of dross contamination of samples and avoids the use of moving parts in the salt. The pneumatic sample generator module is used to facilitate high-throughput sample analysis to improve the measurement precision of any given analytical technique by averaging out random sampling and measurement errors. In FY21, two methods for integrating these two modules were tested including direct fluidic coupling and coupling using a solid salt transfer mechanism. Solid salt transfer was ultimately selected over fluidic coupling, primarily to enable the transport of samples over longer distances to support automated at-line integration with high-precision techniques (such as microcalorimetry) that cannot withstand the conditions near an electrorefining process. To facilitate rapid solid salt coupling, new mechanisms were developed for rapidly charging and discharging salt sample tubes at the vacuum sampling loop and pneumatic sample generator modules, respectively. While the charging mechanism will be deployed in FY22, the discharge mechanism was tested in FY21 and is described here. The solid salt tube transfer method was deployed at one of Argonne’s engineering-scale electrorefiners to implement at-line high-throughput pneumatic micro-sample generation capabilities. The approach was used to generate precise uranium- and lanthanide-bearing electrorefiner micro-samples with the specific dimensions requested by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory for use in testing their novel microcalorimeter x-ray techniques. The solid salt transfer mechanism proved not only to be an effective means of integrating the precision sample generator with vacuum sampling, but also improved the performance of the sampler generator. To discharge salt from the sample tubes at the sampler generator, tube segments were inserted directly into the sample generator’s Helmholtz chamber and pressure pulse actuations were used to generate precision molten salt samples directly from the tube segments. The direct insertion of sample tubes into the sample generator enabled rapid loading of the salt and prevented salt from contacting most of the interior surfaces of the sample generator, which eliminated cross-contamination between runs. The vacuum sampling-loop tube charging mechanism will support high-throughput tube sampling operations by employing a dynamic vacuum filling process to fill short charge tubes that are configured to be rapidly connected and disconnected from the loop. The dynamic vacuum sampling operation will be automated, and sample tube handling can be executed with simple overhead actuation. Because the modular sampling approach described here eliminates the need for new high-radiation sample handling capabilities, salt-wetted seals, salt-wetted moving parts, and heated transfer lines outside the electrorefiner, it will address most of the remaining technical challenges for the at-line deployment of high-precision analytical techniques which will enable significant reductions in the time delay for sampling-based high-precision accountancy measurements.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Biomimetic Rebuilding of Multifunctional Red Blood Cells: Modular Design Using Functional Components

The design and synthesis of artificial materials that mimic the structures, mechanical properties, and ultimately functionalities of biological cells remains a current holy grail of materials science. Here based on a silica cell bio-replication approach, we report the design and construction of synthetic rebuilt red blood cells (RRBCs) that fully mimic the broad properties of native RBCs: size, biconcave shape, deformability, oxygen carrying capacity, long circulation time. Four successive nano-scale processing steps: RBC bioreplication, layer-by-layer polymer deposition, and precision silica etching, followed by RBC ghost membrane vesicles fusion are employed for RRBC construction. A panel of physicochemical analyses including zeta potential measurement, fluorescence microscopy, and antibody-mediated agglutination assay proved the recapitulation of RBC shape, size, and membrane structure. Flow-based deformation studies carried out in a microfluidic blood capillary model confirrned the ability of RRBCs to deform and pass through small slits and reconstitute themselves in a manner comparable to native RBCs. Circulation studies of RRBCs conducted ex-ovo in a chick embryo and in vivo in a mouse model demonstrated the requirement of both deformability and native cell membrane surface to achieve long-term circulation. To confer additional non-native functionalities to RRBCs, we developed modular procedures in which to load functional cargos such as hemoglobin, drugs, magnetic nanoparticles, and ATP biosensors within the RRBC interior to enable various functions, including oxygen delivery, therapeutic drug delivery, magnetic manipulation, and toxin biosensing and detection. Taken together, RRBCs represent a class of long circulating RBC-inspired artificial hybrid materials with a broad range of potential applications.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Demonstrating Advanced Nuclear Energy Solutions for Net Zero

Background/Objectives. The aggressive goals being set by nation states, communities, and private industry for decarbonization of grid electricity, industrial heat sources, and transportation around the world are imperative to mitigating the devastating effects that we are seeing from climate change. Although many of these goals focus on accomplishments by 2035 or 2050, the decisions that we make today won’t just impact the landscape of energy systems for the next 20 or 30 years—they will shape the world’s environment for centuries to come. That means that we can’t just focus on technologies that will get us to 2050, but technologies that will withstand our energy demands over that long-ranging future. Success will require us to utilize all of the clean energy resources that we have available to meet demands for electricity, heat, and steam, and we will need energy carriers such as hydrogen that do not emit additional greenhouse gases at the point of use. Nuclear energy, ranging from technologies in service today to advanced, higher temperature and modular systems that will be in service this decade, will provide a robust complement to renewable energy resources that operate variably. Researchers across the U.S. Department of Energy laboratory complex are working to advance multiple aspects of these clean energy solutions, with many focusing on integrated energy system solutions that leverage all available clean energy assets to meet wide-ranging energy demands. Approach/Activities. Nuclear energy is a proven, zero-emission option during operation that can provide consistent, dispatchable power to meet electricity demands while also providing high-quality heat that can meet energy demands beyond the electricity sector. Energy system design should seek to maximize these assets. As a dispatchable energy source with a small land utilization footprint, nuclear energy can be collocated with renewable resources, and the smaller systems that will be deployed this decade (ranging from a few megawatts to hundreds of megawatts) can be installed right where that energy is needed. Integrated nuclear and renewable systems will enhance power grid reliability and resilience, and they will help stabilize the grid through their increasingly flexible operation. Licensing, installation, and broad adoption of these advanced nuclear energy systems are expected to progress significantly in the 2020s, but this may be longer than desired by some stakeholders wishing to implement impactful clean energy decisions today. However, one must recall that nuclear energy systems will operate for 80 or more years, as is being demonstrated by current fleet nuclear systems. The nuclear community is extremely thorough in reviewing these systems with regard to safety and security; these efforts ensure that the deployed systems will continue to provide reliable, resilient energy over that operational lifetime. That investment of time up front will ensure that we can support energy demands over the centuries to come. While advanced nuclear technologies move through this process, communities and private industry may choose to install renewable generation systems that can later be coupled to the complementary nuclear systems as they become available—thus moving closer to the net zero goals in the near term. Choosing technologies and deployment configurations that allow small modular nuclear powerhouses to be added to these “energy parks” as they become available will ensure that advanced technologies can be readily adopted to support growing demands for clean energy. Results/Lessons Learned. The primary focus of integrated energy systems (IES) research is to assess the technical and economic potential of novel multi-input, multioutput solutions that are expected to enhance energy system flexibility, reliability, and resilience as we pursue a clean energy transition. Various energy applications and product streams beyond electricity are being evaluated, ranging from generation of potable water to production of hydrogen, fertilizers, synthetic fuels, and various chemicals. In early FY23 Idaho National Laboratory (INL) will commission thermal energy generation systems that emulate nuclear fission energy input using electric heating and will allow for integrated system testing with thermal energy storage, hydrogen production via high temperature electrolysis (HTE), and power systems hardware to demonstrate operation of a clean energy park within a microgrid or larger grid infrastructure, supporting up to 450 kW of heat input via electric heating and demonstrating operation of HTE systems at the multi-hundred kW scale. This presentation will highlight the wide array of RD&D being conducted at INL and partner laboratories to develop and deploy nuclear and renewable-based IES that will be key to achieving our net zero goals, including both computational and experimental demonstrations. By working with key collaborators in industry, analytical st

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2020

Application of a Heat Integrated Post-combustion CO 2 Capture System with Hitachi Advanced Solvent into Existing Coal-Fired Power Plant (Final Technical Report)

The goal of this final project report is to comprehensively summarize the work conducted on project DE-FE0007395. In accordance with the Project Management Plan (PMP), Revision F dated 5/10/2019, and Statement of Project Objectives (SOPO) within, the University of Kentucky (UK) Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) (Recipient) has successfully demonstrated a unique, versatile CO 2 capture system (CCS) using a heat integrated process combined with two-stage stripping for process intensification, heat recovery and demineralized (DM) water generation. This project involved the design, fabrication, installation, testing of and data analysis from the UK CAER 0.7 MWe small pilot scale CO2 capture process installed at Kentucky Utilities (KU) E.W. Brown Generating Station in Harrodsburg, KY. During each of the four project Budget Periods (BPs), UK CAER met all project deliverables, all project milestones, with National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) approved adjustments made to the campaign long-term hours during BP4. The CCS was constructed in modular skids. Two solvent campaigns were initially conducted; the first with a 30 wt% monoethanolamine (MEA) as a baseline, and the second with the Hitachi H3-1 advanced solvent. Additional tests were performed with two advanced solvents including CAER and Proprietary Solvent C. Short-period testing with a higher concentration of 40 wt% MEA was conducted to evaluate the potential saving with high alkalinity. From the various solvent campaigns, unique aspects of the UK CAER CCS technology, as well as its flexibility and versatility were experimentally validated and demonstrated. With respect to solvent evaluation efforts in identifying candidates with significant operational and capital cost savings potential, performance of solvents were evaluated to determine the energy requirements for regeneration; environmental impacts from secondary emissions and degradation products; degradation rates, solvent make-up rates and stability. The assessments were done from parametric tests that determined optimum operating conditions for the individual solvents to maximize process efficiency and minimize the parasitic load of the power plant, and from long term campaigns (1000 hours for 30 wt% MEA and 1000 hours for H3-1) which collectively informed the techno-economic analyses (TEA) of the process. The long term campaigns included corrosion studies which used three types of metal coupons in different sections of the process: (absorber, primary stripper, lean carbon-loaded and rich carbon loaded flow streams in process) to mimic heat and flow dynamics process equipment were exposed to. The estimated corrosion rates were used to elucidate corrosion mechanisms and to further guide process material selection for potential capital cost savings.

gas separation↗
DOE OSTI2020

Toward controlled functional sequencing and hierarchical structuring in imidazolium ionenes

This focused mini-review highlights recent advances related to the design and applications of imidazolium ionenes and forward-looking perspectives. Creative strategies which employ established synthetic approaches and utilize the modularity of the imidazole moiety unlock great potential for tailoring both functional and structural features arising from precise spacing of ionic groups within the polymer backbone. Here, as imidazolium ionenes draw more interest, increased sophistication of chemical modifications and material processing is occurring, with a corresponding shift toward more demanding applications. Synthetic routes for placement and sequencing of ionic content are discussed, in addition to recent approaches to control structure and self-assembly or tune behaviors of imidazolium ionenes and composites.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Book Chapter: Small Modular Reactors

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) have been a very promising development in nuclear power over the last two decades. SMRs are defined as nuclear reactors with a power output of less than 300 MWe. This is in comparison to gigawatt-size reactors, which can have electrical output of 1000–1500 MWe or more. This chapter will consist of two major sections. The first will be a detailed summary of the small modular reactor designs being proposed around the world. This section will focus on those that are the furthest along in their development, but will also include some information about the wide variety of proposed designs that require significant research and development. The second part will be a discussion of the remaining challenges to the adoption of SMRs as a major energy source. SMRs are not a new concept, but they do represent a new vision for an older concept. These reactors have the potential to become a major source of energy in the near future. The development of small, modular designs can help promote the adoption of nuclear energy by reducing upfront costs, reducing the financial risk associated with nuclear power, and the barriers to entry. However, the adoption of SMRs is not without challenges. Regulatory and licensing changes to address the unique benefits and concerns associated with SMRs will continue to be a challenge as regulators adapt to the unique features emerging from the design process. The development of new instrumentation and control systems is an ongoing issue. And economics is possibly the most significant challenge, with high construction costs, cheap natural gas, and government subsidies, combining to result in significant financial risk associated with adopting nuclear generation.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Accelerated Fuel Qualification of Fast Modular Reactor Fuel in a Thermal Reactor: Modeling and Simulation Paired with Irradiation Testing

The accelerated fuel qualification (AFQ) methodology is applied by simulating accelerated fuel tests of the General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems’ fuel system for its 44-MW(electric) gas-cooled, fast-spectrum fast modular reactor (FMR). This fuel is comprised of UO 2 pellets in SiGA® cladding, a silicon carbide ceramic matrix composite. Fast reactors, like the FMR, offer many benefits, including high fuel utilization and flexibility, but may require a lengthy material design process if tests are performed using fast neutron irradiation alone. A thermal neutron irradiation can instead be used to rapidly test how well key components of the current material models extend to high burnup. Thermal neutrons produce a different radial power distribution within the pin than fast neutrons. However, the temperature and burnup values for the two neutron types are comparable, and the differences between the simulated fuel responses are relatively small, demonstrating the weak sensitivity of the physics-based fuel model calculations on the neutron type and the irradiation rate. Furthermore, the deformation of the SiGA cladding saturates after about 1 displacement per atom for both neutron spectra. In an accelerated fuel test, the irradiation time required to reach the target fuel burnup can be reduced by a factor of 3 by using a small rodlet with a 45% smaller pellet diameter while maintaining the same linear power. Therefore, the time for data collection up to high burnup can be significantly reduced while maintaining the same temperature profile, which largely determines the material response. Tests of fuel rodlets of standard and compact size will be carried out in the Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), including full size and compact rodlets with varying gap sizes. By applying physics-based mechanistic modeling and simulation in accordance with the AFQ methodology, this type of compact rodlet testing in a thermal test reactor captures the necessary phenomena to test fuel material models up to high burnup and to simulate the expected impact of fast neutron radiation on the fuel in FMR operations. Finally, this approach to testing fast reactor fuels in existing thermal test reactors, paired with advanced physics-based mechanistic modeling and simulation, is expected to be applicable to a range of advanced fuels and will decrease the overall fuel qualification timeframe from decades to years.

Advanced test reactor (ATR)↗
DOE OSTI2023

Alerga: Alert Aggregation and Reasoning in GOOSE Simulation Pipeline

IEC 61850 specifies the Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) protocol as one option for low latency communication of substation-related events. Due to its strict timing requirements, GOOSE lacks any form of encryption or authentication and has only minimal integrity guarantees. These absences render the protocol vulnerable to a variety of communication anomalies, including adversarial action. In particular, an adversary with access to the substation network can launch man in the middle (MITM) attacks. We propose Alerga, a set of tools to allow operators to mitigate some of the risks of the protocol while retaining its strengths. To that end, we have developed first a GOOSE simulation pipeline including data generation, anomaly detection, alert handling, causal reasoning and data visualization components. The simulator is designed to be modular, allowing operators to swap components to better fit their network capabilities. The volume of alert traffic on a substation network threatens operators with alert fatigue. In order to combat this, we secondly present a novel form of alert aggregation and processing, offering operators a condensed view of any threats to the system. Thirdly, to facilitate the handling of these threats, our causal reasoning system traces the alerts back to their most likely cause, generating an initial hypothesis for operators to investigate.

alert aggregation↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Scalable Method for Decarbonizing Modular Building Solutions: Preprint

The decarbonization movement emphasizes the shift in focus from energy efficiency to directly reducing global-warming impact. Blokable, LLC, a vertically integrated modular builder with an all-electric portfolio, worked with NREL on a roadmap to decarbonize its high-performance building product at a relative cost advantage by utilizing the learning curves of mass production. Previous decarbonization literature focused on either i) lifecycle assessments, or ii) efficiency measures. These decarbonization exercises were bespoke to individual building projects and did not consider positive feedback loops of builder experience or process repetition. Vertically integrated, prefab builders possess the unique ability to leverage learning and repetition to decarbonize their design-build-operate process. This collaboration between Blokable and NREL resulted in a decarbonization strategy utilizing the company's scaling and production efficiencies, on-site renewable energy and storage, and the projected evolution of building components over time based on trends and emerging legislation. The method developed here encompasses a growing business model, lifecycle carbon assessment, and projected changes in product and grid emissions over time due to existing trends and emerging legislation. This methodology incorporates learning-curve efficiencies gleaned from scaled manufacturing, as well as open-source tools integration for energy and carbon accounting. The output projects and compares cost and carbon savings per modular unit as production increases to 10,000 dwelling units annually over 15 years. The resulting roadmap illustrates a path to roughly 60% carbon savings and beyond-net-zero-energy performance at no incremental cost by 2030. The methodology can be mapped to other integrated or productized builders for methodical decarbonization.

affordable housing↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Scalable Method for Decarbonizing Modular Building Solutions

The decarbonization movement emphasizes the shift in focus from energy efficiency to directly reducing global-warming impact. Blokable, LLC, a vertically integrated modular builder with an all-electric portfolio, worked with NREL on a roadmap to decarbonize its high-performance building product at a relative cost advantage by utilizing the learning curves of mass production. Previous decarbonization literature focused on either i) lifecycle assessments, or ii) efficiency measures. These decarbonization exercises were bespoke to individual building projects and did not consider positive feedback loops of builder experience or process repetition. Vertically integrated, prefab builders possess the unique ability to leverage learning and repetition to decarbonize their design-build-operate process. This collaboration between Blokable and NREL resulted in a decarbonization strategy utilizing the company's scaling and production efficiencies, on-site renewable energy and storage, and the projected evolution of building components over time based on trends and emerging legislation. The method developed here encompasses a growing business model, lifecycle carbon assessment, and projected changes in product and grid emissions over time due to existing trends and emerging legislation. This methodology incorporates learning-curve efficiencies gleaned from scaled manufacturing, as well as open-source tools integration for energy and carbon accounting. The output projects and compares cost and carbon savings per modular unit as production increases to 10,000 dwelling units annually over 15 years. The resulting roadmap illustrates a path to roughly 60% carbon savings and beyond-net-zero-energy performance at no incremental cost by 2030. The methodology can be mapped to other integrated or productized builders for methodical decarbonization.

affordable housing↗
DOE OSTI2022

Condition assessment of cable insulation materials in advanced reactor environments

While existing cable insulation materials are sufficient for use in the current reactor fleet, environmental conditions inside some advanced reactors, such as small modular reactors, will be substantially harsher. The work herein was conducted to assess the performance and overall survivability of several high-temperature, radiation resistant insulation polymers in a simulated small modular reactor environment. The materials evaluated under this research include polyether ether ketone, polyimide, and silicone rubber. These polymers were subjected to 1000 h of environmental stress exposure under two different conditions: 1) high temperature (i.e., 250 °C) in atmospheric pressure and 2) high temperature in a low-pressure vacuum (i.e., less than 2 psia). During the environmental exposure process, each insulation was periodically tested using several materials characterization techniques including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, oxidation induction time, and oxidation induction temperature. The objective of this testing was to assess and monitor changes that occurred in the thermal and chemical properties of the materials during the environmental exposures. The overall survivability of each insulation was assessed based on these property changes. The results of this research revealed that the polyimide and polyether ether ketone insulations had significantly better thermal and chemical stability than the silicone rubber during both the high-temperature atmospheric and vacuum exposures. Both polyimide and polyether ether ketone experienced minimal reductions in their chemical and thermal properties over the course of 1000 h in the simulated environments. Finally, based on this research, polyimide and polyether ether ketone show promise as potential base materials for small modular reactor cable insulation.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

ClusterCAD 2.0: an updated computational platform for chimeric type I polyketide synthase and nonribosomal peptide synthetase design

Abstract Megasynthase enzymes such as type I modular polyketide synthases (PKSs) and nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) play a central role in microbial chemical warfare because they can evolve rapidly by shuffling parts (catalytic domains) to produce novel chemicals. If we can understand the design rules to reshuffle these parts, PKSs and NRPSs will provide a systematic and modular way to synthesize millions of molecules including pharmaceuticals, biomaterials, and biofuels. However, PKS and NRPS engineering remains difficult due to a limited understanding of the determinants of PKS and NRPS fold and function. We developed ClusterCAD to streamline and simplify the process of designing and testing engineered PKS variants. Here, we present the highly improved ClusterCAD 2.0 release, available at https://clustercad.jbei.org. ClusterCAD 2.0 boasts support for PKS-NRPS hybrid and NRPS clusters in addition to PKS clusters; a vastly enlarged database of curated PKS, PKS-NRPS hybrid, and NRPS clusters; a diverse set of chemical ‘starters’ and loading modules; the new Domain Architecture Cluster Search Tool; and an offline Jupyter Notebook workspace, among other improvements. Together these features massively expand the chemical space that can be accessed by enzymes engineered with ClusterCAD.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗