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At least 649 records · Page 36

Ad-Mat: Adaptations of Mature Manufacturing Strategies for Accelerated Redox Flow Battery Deployment

The concept of the Ad-Mat approach is to leverage existing adjacent markets across a broad scope of technologies in order to reduce the manufacturing learning curve and ultimately accelerate redox flow battery (RFB) deployment at scale. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are currently the dominant energy storage technology, and they came to technological maturity under unique market conditions when there was no meaningful competition in the consumer electronic and electric vehicle (EV) space. Today, alternative chemistries that may be technologically better-suited for long-duration storage applications are experiencing a high barrier to entry. This is in large part due to the substantial bias towards the scaled-up production and supply chain that now exists for LIBs. In the case of RFBs in particular, numerous analyses have suggested that RFBs should theoretically have a much lower system cost than LIBs - however, this relies on a mature and competitive manufacturing landscape, which has been extremely challenging to achieve for both flow batteries and other LIB competitors. At the moment, LIB alternatives tend to have isolated small-scale manufacturing pathways, which preclude the economies of scale that would be required to compete with the mature LIB industry. In the present state of the industry, niche manufacturing tools and approaches have evolved to support each alternative technology, such that there is substantial replication and duplication in effort. Continuing to pursue a strategy of isolated manufacturing processes/approaches for each LIB-alternative may never allow for at-scale deployment. In order for RFBs to meaningfully compete with LIBs in the realm of LDES, a new disruptive approach based on cross-industry learning and coordination is needed - and this is exactly what our Ad-Mat concept aims to tackle. In this re-envisioned manufacturing landscape, tools and processes from mature industries can be adapted and deployed across the range of alternative energy storage technologies. Adapting tools, equipment, processes, and industrial learning from mature industries to meet the technological requirements of RFBs would open new markets for existing OEMs in adjacent industries, would prevent unnecessary duplication and re-development, would improve efficiency across the manufacturing chain, and would ultimately support reduced costs and accelerated deployment of RFBs at scale.

adaptive manufacturing↗

Accelerated Materials Deployment in Advanced Nuclear Power Plants

The purpose of this report is to begin the development of a maximally efficient process for licensing and deploying new materials in Advanced Non-Light-Water Reactors (ANLWRs). Some new materials that are to be used in some new plants are seen as possibly introducing risks, because our understanding of those new materials’ behavior in the conditions generated by some novel plant designs is less complete than our understanding of the behavior of materials with long use histories in existing designs. In these cases, an approved code/standard or a code case to support the use of these materials in the novel design’s safety case may not exist for the regulator to utilize as part of the licensing determination. This circumstance creates the potential for an extremely long licensing process for new designs using new materials. The present strategy is to show how to manage these risks proactively, in such a way as to permit licensing decisions to be made in a timely manner, based on this risk management process. The present report outlines the gaps in the current codes to support deployment and use of novel materials and begins the development of the necessary risk management framework that is focused on the subject materials issues; it is based on risk-informed in-service surveillance practices, carried out in such a way as to compensate for current limitations in our state of knowledge. This development will enable licensing and deployment of the subject materials, conditional on the proactive surveillance process to be established. While this report is occasioned by limitations in our knowledge of certain materials issues that may arise in advanced designs, in-service surveillance is always done in order to compensate for a lack of knowledge: if we knew that components were not already failed and not trending toward failure, we would not perform surveillance, even in current-generation plants (except that prescriptive requirements would force us to do so). What is different about the surveillance program discussed here is that the issues are newer and the relevant experience base is less complete, so the surveillance presently contemplated may need to measure new things and/or measure them more often than has been traditional for surveillance coupons. The present report is devoted to the risk management framework and applies American Society of Mechanical Engineers Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section XI, Division [1] to establish the structure of a protocol for carrying out the necessary surveillance. These documents are generic: they do not tell us how often to surveille, or what to surveille, or what to measure, but rather how to determine those things, given certain technical inputs. The Regulatory Development R&D Program [2] is currently developing the companion supporting technical basis for the materials surveillance technology that, when completed and validated, can be used by owner/operator and NRC to implement a materials degradation management program for ANLWRs. This report also outlines salient points of discussion, positive potential outcomes, and potential concerns from industry and the USNRC. These aspects of the report intend to inform future work to develop a proposed technical process for adoption by the industry and endorsement by the USNRC to allow developers to propose a risk informed and conservative approach for the use of materials where operating experience/data and codes and standards may not exist for use of a novel material in an operating reactor environment. Additionally, such a technology could be leveraged to potentially reduce part of the upfront materials data requirements from ongoing long-term materials testing so that early action on license application could be undertaken by NRC, in parallel with the continuation of long-term data collection. This could accelerate the schedule for a first-of-a-kind ANLWR deployment or a nth-of-a-kind new materials insertion for established ANLWR designs.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Evolving Energy Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks

As deep neural networks have been deployed in more and more applications over the past half decade and are finding their way into an ever increasing number of operational systems, their energy consumption becomes a concern whether running in the datacenter or on edge devices. Hyperparameter optimization and automated network design for deep learning is a quickly growing field, but much of the focus has remained only on optimizing for the performance of the machine learning task. In this work, we demonstrate that the best performing networks created through this automated network design process have radically different computational characteristics (e.g. energy usage, model size, inference time), presenting the opportunity to utilize this optimization process to make deep learning networks more energy efficient and deployable to smaller devices. Optimizing for these computational characteristics is critical as the number of applications of deep learning continues to expand.

Young, Steven↗

The Cost of Decarbonization and Energy Upgrade Retrofits for US Homes

Cost is a major barrier when upgrading homes to reduce carbon emissions required to meet DOE’s climate-related goals. This report summarizes a nationwide effort to gather home energy upgrade project cost data along with household energy performance data. The goal was to develop cost benchmarks and to guide future R&D efforts aimed at cost compression and scaling of the residential upgrade market. The cost data were compiled for both total project costs and costs of individual measures. The majority of energy savings were modeled, with some models using measured site data for calibration. The database was analyzed using clustering techniques to find common energy and CO2 reduction approaches. The individual measures were combined into archetypal solutions to determine least-cost approaches to maximizing energy and carbon savings. Several financial analyses were preformed to examine other cost metrics beyond first cost. Project data was obtained for 1,739 projects, from 15 states and 12 energy programs, with a total of 10,512 individual measures. The database includes a wide-array of projects, ranging from single-measure HVAC upgrades to net-zero energy whole home remodels. Projects were predominantly single-family detached dwellings with wood frame construction. Most of the data was obtained from energy programs because they had recorded the necessary information and were willing to share with this study. This sample of convenience can provide broad guidance and national cost benchmarks, but lacks sufficient detail to draw more disaggregated conclusions, such as geographical trends. The majority of data contributions were obtained without compensation from sources where the required data was already in some sort of structured format. We compensated sources to enter data from individual projects into a structured data format for about 500 projects, with an average cost of about $40 per project. The database was highly skewed to lower cost, lower impact projects due to the nature of the sample of convenience. Less than 10% of projects had savings greater than 50%. The cost data for individual measures in the database are being used in other DOE efforts on residential energy use/decarbonization. This data collection effort should continue in order to provide the best-informed guidance for DOE and industry R&D, as well as deployment efforts (including policy and program planning).

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Langston University - High Energy Physics (LU-HEP)

This final report is presented by Langston University (LU) for the project entitled "Langston University High Energy Physics" (LUHEP) under the direction of principal investigator (PI) and project director Professor Joel Snow. The project encompassed high energy physics research performed at hadron colliders. The PI is a collaborator on the DZero experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL, USA and the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and was during the entire project period from April 1, 1999 until May 14, 2012. Both experiments seek to understand the fundamental constituents of the physical universe and the forces that govern their interactions. In 1999 as member of the Online Systems group for Run 2 the PI developed a cross-platform Python-based, Graphical User Interface (GUI) application for monitoring and control of EPICS based devices for control room use. This served as a model for other developers to enhance and build on for further monitoring and control tasks written in Python. Subsequently the PI created and developed a cross-platform C++ GUI utilizing a networked client-server paradigm and based on ROOT, the object oriented analysis framework from CERN. The GUI served as a user interface to the Examine tasks running in the D\O\ control room which monitored the status and integrity of data taking for Run 2. The PI developed the histogram server/control interface to the GUI client for the EXAMINE processes. The histogram server was built from the ROOT framework and was integrated into the D\O\ framework used for online monitoring programs and offline analysis. The PI developed the first implementation of displaying histograms dynamically generated by ROOT in a Web Browser. The PI's work resulted in several talks and papers at international conferences and workshops. The PI established computing software infrastructure at LU and U. Oklahoma (OU) to do analysis of DZero production data and produce simulation data for the experiment. Eventually this included the FNAL SAM data grid system, the SAMGrid (SG) infrastructure, and the Open Science Grid software stacks for computing and storage elements. At the end of 2003 Snow took on the role of global Monte Carlo production coordinator for the DØ experiment. A role which continues til this day. In January of 2004 Snow started working with the SAMGrid development team to help debug, deploy, and integrate SAMGrid with DØ Monte Carlo production. Snow installed and configured SG execution and client sites at LUHEP and OUHEP, and a SG scheduler site at LUHEP. The PI developed a python based GUI (DAJ) that acts as a front end for job submission to SAMGrid. The GUI interfaces to the DZero Mone Carlo (MC) request system that uses SAM to manage MC requests by the physics analysis groups. DAJ significantly simplified SG job submission and was deployed in DZero in an effort to increase the user base of SG. The following year was the advent of SAMGrid job submission to the Open Science Grid (OSG) and LHC Computing Grid (LCG) through a forwarding mechanism. The PI oversaw the integration of these grids into the existing production infrastructure. The PI developed an automatic MC (Automc) request processing system capable of operating without user intervention (other than getting grid credentials), and able to submit to any number of sites on various grids. The system manages production at all but 2 sites. The system was deployed at Fermilab and remains operating there today. The PI's work in distributed computing resulted in several talks at international conferences. UTA, OU, and LU were chosen as the collaborating institutions that form the Southwest Tier 2 Center (SWT2) for ATLAS. During the project period the PI contributed to the online and offline software infrastructure through his work with the Run 2 online group, and played a major role in Monte Carlo production for DZero. During the part of the project period in which the PI served as MC production coordinator MC production increased very significantly. In the first year of the PI's tenure as production coordinator production was 159M events and 6.7~TB of data. During the last year of the project period production was 2,342~M events and 262~TB of data. That is a factor of 15 increase in events and 39 in data volume. The increase occurred with improvements in computer hardware and networks, through the use of grid technology on diverse resources, and through increased automation and efficiency of the production process. LU HEP developed and deployed the automatic MC request processing system in use at FNAL. The complementary strategies of automation and grid production served DZero well. Fermilab has recognized LU HEP's contribution to DZero by allowing the PI to devote full time to research activities by appointing him a guest scientist for the last six years of the project period.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Republic of the Marshall Islands. Energy Project Development Options and Technical Assessment (2013)

The advancement of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies continues to be fluid. There are many technical opportunities and strategies that can be utilized to guide communities to deploy cost-effective commercial alternative energy options; however, to achieve aggressive economic, environmental, and security goals, it requires a comprehensive, integrated approach. This document reports on the initial findings of an energy assessment that was conducted for the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Incentive-Based Control and Coordination of Distributed Energy Resources. Final Report

The rapid growth of low-inertia renewable energy resources represents an immense opportunity for the U.S. to minimize its carbon footprint, while presenting a challenge for system operators as traditional “spinning” generation resources are displaced. This transformation requires solutions to robustly and cost-effectively manage dynamic changes on the grid while ensuring quality of service. There is growing recognition that distributed energy resources (DERs – loads, distributed generation, storage, electric vehicles, etc.) represent a great potential to perform this function. This report details a scalable hierarchical control strategy for coordinating thousands of heterogeneous DERs in order to provide three ancillary gird services: 1) frequency response, a rapid (within 2 seconds) service used to maintain the grid at 60 Hz; 2) regulation response, a larger response used to balance on-going differences in supply and demand on the grid; and, 3) ramping reserve, used to bring on capacity to replace lost generation. The developed control architecture consists of 1) a Distribution Reliability Coordinator (DRC), 2) aggregator controllers, and finally, 3) DER controllers. The DRC coordinates all the flexible loads and distributed energy resources on the distribution system and bids the aggregate flexibility into the wholesale market. The DRC also performs resource allocation (deciding how the flexible devices on the distribution system will be dispatched) to meet the requirements for each of the three ancillary services. The aggregators control a collection of devices that are geographically co-located and provide a platform to aggregate their flexibility and mitigate uncertainty associated with a single flexible load by managing a large aggregation of similar loads (so that any stochastic effects average out). Finally, DER controllers (for example, thermostats for air conditioners, chargers for electric vehicles) adjust the power consumption of individual devices to ensure accurate and reliable delivery of the requested grid services. Evaluation and validation of this approach was conducted with a mixture of simulation and hardware testing for a range of DERs in residential (air conditioners and water heaters), commercial HVAC (ventilation fans and central chiller plants), and micro-grids (battery energy storage, solar PV etc.). This culminated in DER hardware and simulation models operating in conjunction with grid simulations as part of a large scale federated test-bed demonstration. Simulations of over 10,000 controllable residential devices (a combination of air conditioners, water heaters, batteries, and electric vehicles) demonstrated that this advanced control approach could simultaneously meet all three grid services. Furthermore, hardware-in-the-loop testing was performed with operational micro-grid and commercial building HVAC equipment. The micro-grid equipment (representing PV, battery storage, and back-up generators) demonstrated the ability to meet all frequency response requirements (except ramping time). The commercial building HVAC ventilation equipment successfully provided the regulating response service. An Industry Advisory Board (IAB) was formed and engaged throughout the project to get feed-back on project risks and potential commercialization barriers. Their input was invaluable in identify key risks stemming from regulatory and market access challenges, financial risks from under-performance, and competitive threats from utility-scale solutions such as integrated storage. A phased commercialization plan was developed that addresses continued risk reduction (value proposition refinement and performance uncertainty assessments), piloting through field demonstrations with key stakeholders, and finally, deployment as an emerging standard for DER control.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Kivalina Biomass Reactor

This report summarizes work performed under DOE Award DE-EE00010149 to support the reliable operation of a community-scale biochar reactor system in Kivalina, Alaska. The project focused on improving sanitation and waste management in a remote community by assessing the installed system, identifying spare parts, defining key performance indicators (KPIs), preparing operator and maintenance manuals, and developing mobile reporting tools for operational data and KPI tracking. The team also produced training materials and recorded videos to support operator onboarding and continuity. The project demonstrated progress in system readiness, documentation, and digital reporting, while also identifying challenges common to remote deployments, including travel constraints, upstream system failures, and local resource limitations. This work provides a practical framework for improving the operation, monitoring, and future replication of biomass reactor systems in remote communities.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Applications Technology Satellite program

The Applications Technology Satellite (ATS) program has involved geosynchronous spacecraft technology made possible by the increased capability of the Atlas-Agena launch vehicle. The ATS-1-5 program developed spin stabilized and gravity gradient stabilized spacecraft for geosynchronous orbit, earth-oriented antennae for increased antenna gain, earth-scanning meteorological experiments for continuous weather monitoring, and made possible satellite communications to mobile terminals. The ATS-6 program developed a space-deployed, high-gain antenna for color television broadcast to low-cost ground terminals and precise spacecraft attitude control for pointing, slewing, and tracking applications. All of the ATS program objectives were successfully met, except for the gravity gradient experiments. ATS-1, -3, -5, and -6 are in orbit and operational.

Mcceney, P. J.↗

Coherent Cerenkov radiation from the Spacelab 2 electron beam

The plasma environment of the Spacelab 2 mission was investigated through the deployment of the Plasma Diagnostics Package (PDP) by the Space Shuttle Orbiter and the Orbiter's ejection of a continuous 1-keV/50-mA electron beam along a field line. As the PDP flew by the beam, its plasma-wave instrument detected intense whistler-mode radiation originating from the beam. A detailed model has been developed of the coherent Cerenkov emission process, using a one-dimensional computer simulation of the beam to model the expected phase space structure of the electrons. The power calculated for the modeled 200-m beam segment can easily account for the measured whistler mode wave power.

Farrell, W. M.↗

Automated Operations for Galileo Communications

Following the deployment failure of Galileo's high gain antenna, the downlink had to be redesigned so as to effectively use the low gain antenna. The downlink was redesigned to maximize the data return and increase the reliability which required the reconfiguration of the onboard software and the deep space network. The revised downlink features: data compression; antenna arraying; the recoding and reprocessing of telemetry; suppressed carrier tracking, and error-correction coding. The deep space network Galileo telemetry (DGT) subsystem was developed and deployed at three sites in Australia, Spain and the U.S. The DGT was designed as an automated system that continuously monitors and adjusts its parameters and environment in response to either pre-loaded sequences or changes in the internal status.

Statman, Joseph I.↗

Innovative Approaches to Space-Based Manufacturing and Rapid Prototyping of Composite Materials

The ability to deploy large habitable structures, construct, and service exploration vehicles in low earth orbit will be an enabling capability for continued human exploration of the solar system. It is evident that advanced manufacturing methods to fabricate replacement parts and re-utilize launch vehicle structural mass by converting it to different uses will be necessary to minimize costs and allow flexibility to remote crews engaged in space travel. Recent conceptual developments and the combination of inter-related approaches to low-cost manufacturing of composite materials and structures are described in context leading to the possibility of on-orbit and space-based manufacturing.

Hill, Charles S.↗

FY 2019 INL SITE SUSTAINABILITY PLAN

The mission of the Department of Energy (DOE) is to ensure the security and prosperity of the United States by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. This FY 2019 Idaho National Laboratory Site Sustainability Plan (SSP) was developed to enable and sustain Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) core capabilities, including advancing nuclear energy, enabling clean energy deployment, and securing and modernizing critical infrastructure. In 2018, transitions with respect to the purpose and application of sustainability continued. On May 17, 2018, Executive Order (EO) 13834, “Efficient Federal Operations,” was issued, which directs agencies to focus priorities on statutory sustainability requirements. The new order requires further guidance and implementation instructions, both of which are forthcoming. Fiscal year (FY) 2019 is expected to be a year of transition due to the new implementing instructions and other changes in guidance. The evolving priorities for sustainability are being incorporated into planning for FY 2019 and beyond as noted in this SSP. EO 13834 changes were considered in completing planned sustainability work at the end of FY 2018. INL remains responsible for existing directives, instructions, and requirements. From energy reduction to ensuring a reliable power supply, all sustainable activities support energy resiliency and by default, make INL a more resilient institution. The intent of this SSP is to provide the overall sustainability strategy for INL during FY 2019 and provide a status of FY 2018 performance to the DOE goals. The FY 2018 performance status is derived from data input to the DOE Sustainability Dashboard (Dashboard).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Lifecycle Management of Nuclear Security Radiation Detection Systems: Testing and Evaluation

The lifecycle of radiation detection systems functioning within a State’s Nuclear Security Detection Architecture encompasses all activities associated with acquisition, deployment, and eventual disposal. Throughout a system’s lifecycle, testing and evaluation activities are needed to ensure requirements are continually met, as underscored by recent experiences.This paper provides:1.A discussion of reasons why testing should be part of the radiation detection equipment lifecycle before, during, and after acquisition.2.A general process for determining applicable evaluation methods.3.A discussion of issues related to integrating testing and evaluation into procurement and operational processes and mitigation strategies.

Harris, Tyrone↗

Persistent Acoustic Sensing for Monitoring A Reactor Facility - Oral Presentation

Measurements over the past few years, taking place within the Multi-Informatics for Nuclear Operations Scenarios (MINOS) project, show that infrasound and low-frequency acoustic monitoring can detect, and often quantify, activities that occur on-site at a large research reactor. Observable activities include: crane translation, lifting, and lowering; differentiation between loaded and unloaded crane operations; access door opening and closing; vehicle operations; and cooling tower fan operation. Advanced data analytic and spectral feature extraction methods can be used to interpret selected signatures to reach a deeper understanding of different reactor activities. These measurements are being conducted using a network of smartphones that continuously operate in conjunction with cloud-based architectures. A recent addition to the system is the development and deployment of a real-time, cloud-based analytic framework that supports near-real-time alarming which can facilitate tip-and-cue protocols. This paper will present recent research advances in this area including studies to explore the transferability of learned parameters from one smartphone to another, the detectability of events from multiple sensors at different locations simultaneously, and the feasibility of porting analytical tools directly to the smartphones to allow edge computing with optimized configurations.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Persistent Acoustic Sensing for Monitoring A Reactor Facility

Measurements over the past few years, taking place within the Multi-Informatics for Nuclear Operations Scenarios project, show that infrasound and low-frequency acoustic monitoring can detect, and often quantify, activities that occur on-site at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. Observable activities include: crane translation, lifting, and lowering; differentiation between loaded and unloaded crane operations; access door opening and closing; vehicle operations; and cooling tower fan operations. Advanced data analytic and spectral feature extraction methods can be used to interpret selected signatures to reach a deeper understanding of different reactor activities. These measurements are being conducted using a network of smartphones that continuously operate in conjunction with cloud-based architectures. A recent addition to the system is the development and deployment of a real-time, cloud-based analytic framework that supports near-real-time alarming which can facilitate tip-and-cue protocols. This paper presents recent research in this area including the use of low-frequency acoustics to tip-off transfer operations and cue a more comprehensive analysis by other sensor networks.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Continual Learning for Particle Accelerators

Particle accelerators operate under dynamically changing conditions, which often lead to data distribution drifts. These drifts pose significant challenges for Machine Learning (ML) models, which typically fail to maintain performance when faced with such non-stationary data. In particle accelerators, the primary sources of these data drifts include changes in accelerator settings and non-measured parameters such as machine degradation and environmental factors. Previous research has proposed conditional models to handle multiple beam configurations effectively; however, it is challenging to train the ML models on all possible configuration settings. Additionally, conditional models alone can not address performance degradation caused by drifts due to non-measured factors. These limitations contribute to a significant gap between ML development and its deployment in real-world operational settings. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we identify some of the key areas within particle accelerators where continual learning can help mitigate drift-induced performance degradation. In addition, we present a practical use case where a conditional Auto-Encoder model coupled with memory-based continual learning has been employed to demonstrate stable performance even when underlying data drifts.

Schram, Malachi [Thomas Jefferson National Acceler↗

Continual Learning for Particle Accelerators

Particle accelerators operate under dynamically changing conditions, which often lead to data distribution drifts. These drifts pose significant challenges for Machine Learning (ML) models, which typically fail to maintain performance when faced with such non-stationary data. In particle accelerators, the primary sources of these data drifts include changes in accelerator settings and non-measured parameters such as machine degradation and environmental factors. Previous research has proposed conditional models to handle multiple beam configurations effectively; however, it is challenging to train the ML models on all possible configuration settings. Additionally, conditional models alone can not address performance degradation caused by drifts due to non-measured factors. These limitations contribute to a significant gap between ML development and its deployment in real-world operational settings. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we identify some of the key areas within particle accelerators where continual learning can help mitigate drift-induced performance degradation. In addition, we present a practical use case where a conditional Auto-Encoder model coupled with memory-based continual learning has been employed to demonstrate stable performance even when underlying data drifts

Rajput, Kishansingh [Thomas Jefferson National Acc↗