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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 73 records · Page 4

Survey on Efficient and Productive Use of Electricity In Women-Run Small Businesses in Uganda

In Uganda, women make up a large portion of the service sector, notably in informal small and micro businesses such as retail shops, food preparation, tailoring, sewing, beer brewing, basket weaving, healthcare, and hairdressing. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and USAID, in partnership with the Clean Energy Enthusiasts (CEE), a local implementer in Uganda, designed and conducted a participatory survey to collect baseline data and information on the current state of benefits to energy access. The study included data on the uptake of efficient and productive electric (EPUE) equipment, business skills, and financial needs among small and mid-size women-led businesses in Uganda. The objective of the survey was to build evidence and identify economic activities where access to electricity has a positive impact on women’s empowerment by helping them develop new and existing businesses, improve productivity, and increase their income. The survey included questions about the type of electric equipment used and needed, electric consumption patterns, alternative sources to electricity, and business and capital barriers related to increased access. The survey results provided the basis for designing a training program tailored to the need of women entrepreneurs in the region.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Incorporating energy justice and equity objectives in power system models

Ensuring an equitable energy transition requires models and tools that can account for equity and energy justice goals. Power system models (PSMs) are widely used throughout industry, government, and academia to simulate or optimize the operations and planning of current and future electricity systems under different scenarios, parameter assumptions and policy frameworks. These models are important tools that allow users to understand how the power system may evolve under different future conditions, but importantly, they are also used to inform policy implementation and investment decisions across all aspects of the power system. However, existing models seldom include energy justice considerations and therefore energy justice priorities are not reflected in the policies and other decision-making processes that are informed by these models. The purpose of this review is to provide a framework that energy modelers can draw upon to integrate energy justice and equity goals into PSMs. To this end, 99 papers that examine the intersection of energy justice and power system models are summarized and ten core aspects of the power system that can impact energy justice outcomes, and therefore require new modeling approaches, are identified. This review then establishes key current practices, challenges, and opportunities associated with capturing energy justice considerations in power system models across these ten aspects. This review concludes by proposing four key research directions that should be pursued to improve the representation of energy justice and equity in power system modeling. Finally, this review also addresses challenges raised by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7, which aims to ensure affordable energy access to everyone and Sustainable Development Goal 13, which aims to take urgent action to address climate change.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Perform Design Support with MCNP for New Measurements

This report incorporates our work carried out during our 5-month internship at LANL under an internship agreement with EAMEA (École des Applications Militaires de l’Énergie Atomique). After outlining the context in which we worked, we present our work as aid to modeling and predicting the neutronic behavior of nuclear systems, with a view to carrying out criticality experiments qualifying the MCNP code as part of innovative projects. Fourth generation reactors will enable to tackle a lot of issues such as environmental crisis, affordable energy access, and nuclear waste management. They seem to be one of the keys for a sustainable future. Most of the projects that emerge nowadays include the use of HALEU (high assay low enriched uranium) or MOX recycled fuels. Our projects are part of this dynamic and addresses concrete scientific research issues in the nuclear field. Studies of HALEU package are essential to anticipate the need, therefore the Optimus L (OPTImal Modular Universal Shipping cask technology) designed by NAC (Nuclear Assurance Corporation) international but filled with 20 % enriched uranium dioxide (UO 2 ) will be studied to support safe transportation. However, it seems there is no benchmark with a high correlation with the combination of this fuel and this package to validate MCNP simulations. As such, the study will focus on the development of new criticality safety benchmarks for this case. On the other hand, there is a great need for critical benchmarks in the intermediate energy range with MOX fuel. An IER (Integral Experiment Request) has then be requested to answer it through a partnership between French institution IRSN and U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP). This experience planned for 2025 requires to gather calculated data through a MCNP model to be realized safely. Finally, a presentation of our one-week experience at the DAF as part of our discovery of criticality experiments will be introduced in Appendix 1: Week at the DAF (Device Assembly Facility)

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Enhancing integrated analysis of national and global goal pursuit by endogenizing economic productivity

Analysis with integrated assessment models (IAMs) and multisector dynamics models (MSDs) of global and national challenges and opportunities, including pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires projections of economic growth. In turn, the pursuit of multiple interacting goals affects economic productivity and growth, generating complex feedback loops among actions and objectives. Yet, most analysis uses either exogenous projections of productivity and growth or specifications endogenously enriched with a very small set of drivers. Extending endogenous treatment of productivity to represent two-way interactions with a significant set of goal-related variables can considerably enhance analysis. Among such variables incorporated in this project are aspects of human development (e.g., education, health, poverty reduction), socio-political change (e.g., governance capacity and quality), and infrastructure (e.g. water and sanitation and modern energy access), all in conditional interaction with underlying technological advance and economic convergence among countries. Using extensive datasets across countries and time, this project broadly endogenizes total factor productivity (TFP) within a large-scale, multi-issue IAM, the International Futures (IFs) model system. We demonstrate the utility of the resultant open system via comparison of new TFP projections with those produced for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios, via integrated analysis of economic growth potential, and via multi-scenario analysis of progress toward the SDGs. We find that the integrated system can reproduce existing SSP projections, help anticipate differential economic progress across countries, and facilitate extended, integrated analysis of trade-offs and synergies in pursuit of the SDGs.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Observation of quantum entanglement with top quarks at the ATLAS detector

Abstract Entanglement is a key feature of quantum mechanics 1–3 , with applications in fields such as metrology, cryptography, quantum information and quantum computation 4–8 . It has been observed in a wide variety of systems and length scales, ranging from the microscopic 9–13 to the macroscopic 14–16 . However, entanglement remains largely unexplored at the highest accessible energy scales. Here we report the highest-energy observation of entanglement, in top–antitop quark events produced at the Large Hadron Collider, using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 inverse femtobarns (fb) −1 recorded with the ATLAS experiment. Spin entanglement is detected from the measurement of a single observableD, inferred from the angle between the charged leptons in their parent top- and antitop-quark rest frames. The observable is measured in a narrow interval around the top–antitop quark production threshold, at which the entanglement detection is expected to be significant. It is reported in a fiducial phase space defined with stable particles to minimize the uncertainties that stem from the limitations of the Monte Carlo event generators and the parton shower model in modelling top-quark pair production. The entanglement marker is measured to beD = −0.537 ± 0.002 (stat.) ± 0.019 (syst.) for$$340\,{\rm{GeV}} < {m}_{t\bar{t}} < 380\,{\rm{GeV}}$$ 340 GeV < m t t ¯ < 380 GeV . The observed result is more than five standard deviations from a scenario without entanglement and hence constitutes the first observation of entanglement in a pair of quarks and the highest-energy observation of entanglement so far.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗

Harmonized geospatial data to support infrastructure siting feasibility planning for energy system transitions

Climate change, energy system transitions, and socioeconomic change are compounding influences affecting the growth of electricity demand. While energy efficiency initiatives and distributed resources can address a significant amount of this demand, the United States will likely still need new utility-scale generation resources. The energy sector uses capacity expansion planning models to determine the aggregate need for new generation, but these models are typically at the state or regional scale and are not equipped to address the wide range of location- and technology-specific issues that are increasingly a factor in power plant siting. To help address these challenges, we have developed the Geospatial Raster Input Data for Capacity Expansion Regional Feasibility (GRIDCERF) data package, a high-resolution product to evaluate siting suitability for renewable and non-renewable power plants in the conterminous United States. GRIDCERF offers 264 suitability layers for use with 56 power plant technologies in a harmonized format that can be easily ingested by geospatially-enabled modeling software allowing for customization to robustly address science objectives when evaluating varying future conditions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

A dataset of recorded electricity outages by United States county 2014–2022

In this Data Descriptor, we present county-level electricity outage estimates at 15-minute intervals from 2014 to 2022. By 2022 92% of customers in the 50 US States, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico are represented. These data have been produced by the Environment for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information (EAGLE-I TM ), a geographic information system and data visualization platform created at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to map the population experiencing electricity outages every 15 minutes at the county level. Although these data do not cover every US customer, they represent the most comprehensive outage information ever compiled for the United States. The rate of coverage increases through time between 2014 and 2022. We present a quantitative Data Quality Index for these data for the years 2018–2022 to demonstrate temporal changes in customer coverage rates by FEMA region and indicators of data collection gaps or other errors.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Beyond the four core effects: revisiting thermoelectrics with a high-entropy design

Low-exergy waste heat, which constitutes the majority of industrial-scale thermal losses, remains largely unrecoverable with conventional technologies. Thermoelectrics offer a solid-state solution for converting this hard-to-access energy into electricity, making them attractive for decentralized power generation and sensor applications. High-entropy materials (HEMs) have gained traction as a strategy for better-performing thermoelectrics, but the mechanisms driving their benefits require further exploration. This article highlights key insights for heat and electronic transport in HEMs. For heat transport, we argue that reduced, and often ultralow, lattice thermal conductivity in HEMs—with respect to ordered counterparts—can be taken for granted, emerging naturally as a fifth core effect of high-entropy systems. While band convergence is often considered beneficial for electronic transport, its impact depends strongly on the electronic structure. We summarize the scenarios where it can be detrimental to thermoelectric performance. These insights motivate strategies that align seamlessly with advancements in artificial intelligence and data-driven approaches, helping accelerate the discovery of next-generation thermoelectric materials.

Oses, Corey [Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (U↗

Observed metallization of hydrogen interpreted as a band structure effect

A recent experimental study of the metallization of hydrogen tracked the direct band gap and vibron frequency via infrared measurements up to ~425 GPa (Loubeyre et al (2020 Nature 577 631). Above this pressure, the direct gap has a discontinuous drop to below the minimum experimentally accessible energy (~0.1 eV). The authors suggested that this observation is caused by a structural phase transition between the C2/c-24 molecular phase to another molecular phase such as Cmca-12. Here, through ab initio calculations of pressure dependent vibron frequency and direct band gap, we find that the experimental data is consistent with the C2/c-24 phase up to 425 GPa, and suggest that this consistency extends beyond that pressure. Specifically, we find that qualitative changes in the band structure of the C2/c-24 phase lead to a discontinuous drop of the direct band gap, which can explain the observed drop without a structural transition. In conclusion, this alternative scenario, which naturally explains the absence of hysteresis in the measurements, will hopefully motivate further experimental studies to ascertain the structure of the phase above the high pressure 'phase transition'.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Identifying heavy-flavor jets using vectors of locally aggregated descriptors

Abstract Jets of collimated particles serve a multitude of purposes in high energy collisions. Recently, studies of jet interaction with the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in high energy heavy ion collisions are of growing interest, particularly towards understanding partonic energy loss in the QGP medium and its related modifications of the jet shower and fragmentation. Since the QGP is a colored medium, the extent of jet quenching and consequently, the transport properties of the medium are expected to be sensitive to fundamental properties of the jets such as the flavor of the parton that initiates the jet. Identifying the jet flavor enables an extraction of the mass dependence in jet-QGP interactions. We present a novel approach to tagging heavy-flavor jets at collider experiments utilizing the information contained within jet constituents via the model architecture. We show the performance of this model in proton-proton collisions at center of mass energy √(s) = 200 GeV as characterized by common metrics and showcase its ability to extract high purity heavy-flavor jet sample at various jet momenta and realistic production cross-sections including a brief discussion on the impact of out-of-time pile-up. Such studies open new opportunities for future high purity heavy-flavor measurements at jet energies accessible at current and future collider experiments.

Instruments & Instrumentation↗

Near-threshold resonances in C 11 and the B 10 ( p , α ) Be 7 aneutronic reaction

The nucleus 11 C plays an important role in the boron-proton fusion reactor environment as a catalyzer of the 10 B(p,α) 7 Be reaction which, by producing a long-lived isotope of 7 Be, poisons the aneutronic fusion process 11 B(p,2α) 4 He. The low-energy cross section of 10 B(p,α) 7 Be depends on the near-threshold states 7/2$^{+}_{1}$, 5/2$^{+}_{2}$, 5/2$^{+}_{3}$ in 11 C whose properties are primarily known from the indirect measurements. Here we investigate the continuum-coupling induced collectivization of these resonances in the shell model embedded in the continuum. We predict a significant enhancement of the 10 B(p,α) 7 Be cross section at energies accessible to the laser-driven hot plasma facilities.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Graphene-Based Interconnect Exploration for Large SRAM Caches for Ultrascaled Technology Nodes

Graphene-based interconnects are considered promising replacements for traditional copper (Cu) interconnect due to their great electric properties. In this article, an interconnect-memory co- design framework is developed to efficiently optimize various graphene-based interconnect technologies. Four interconnect materials and heterogeneous design schemes are benchmarked against their traditional Cu counterparts to optimize large cache-level SRAM performance in terms of delay and energy per access, energy-delay product (EDP), and energy-delay-area product (EDAP). Here, a large design space exploration is performed based on realistic subarray design and device technology. Various interconnect- and array-level design parameters are studied to quantify the true potential of graphene-based wires for optimal memory performance.

42 ENGINEERING↗

eProject Builder (ePB) v3.1

eProject Builder (ePB) is a secure, web-based system that enables agencies and ESCOs to securely: (1) preserve, track, and access energy project information for the life of the contract (2) quickly generate data and reports for their portfolio of projects (3) develop project scenarios using standardized amortization calculations (4) benchmark new projects against historical project data

Larsen, Peter↗

Sun-Earth Libration Point Trajectory Analysis

Due to the constant observation environment and low energy access of Sun-Earth libration point orbits, they have become extremely popular for many NASA science missions. The nonlinearity and instability of the orbits have made mission analysis more difficult as traditional approximations are no longer applicable. But the sensitivity of the orbits also provides greater flexibility in orbit design. Some typical mission trajectories are examined.

Sun-Earth Libration↗

Systematic Review on Effects of Bioenergy From Edible Versus Inedible Feedstocks on Food Security

Achieving food security is a critical challenge of the Anthropocene that may conflict with environmental and societal goals such as increased energy access. The“fuel versus food”debate coupled with climate mitigation efforts has given rise to next-generation biofuels. Findings of this systematic review indicate just over half of the studies (56% of 224 publications) reported a negative impact of bioenergy production on food security. However, no relationship was found between bioenergy feedstocks that are edible versus inedible and food security (Pvalue=0.15). A strong relationship was found between bioenergy and type of food security parameter (Pvalue < 0.001), sociodemographic index of study location (Pvalue=0.001),spatial scale (Pvalue < 0.001), and temporal scale (Pvalue=0.017). Programs and policies focused on bioenergy and climat emitigation should monitor multiple food security parameters at various scales over the long term toward achieving diverse sustainability goals.

food security↗

Guide de base pour l'energie solaire hors reseau en Haiti: 1. Principes de base de l'electricite, de l'acces a l'energie et de l'energie solaire hors reseau

Cette formation donne un apercu des informations et des concepts cles de l'energie solaire hors reseau en Haiti, renforcant ainsi les connaissances fondamentales et la capacite de catalyser l'interet pour l'energie solaire hors reseau pour l'electrification rurale en Haiti. Ce cours a rythme libre est offert en anglais et en francais et couvre une variete de sujets lies a l'acces a l'energie en Haiti, notamment les produits solaires hors reseau, le potentiel du marche en Haiti, les considerations liees a l'offre et a la demande, la conception, l'installation et la maintenance du systeme, -modeles commerciaux solaires en reseau, modelisation financiere, genre et acces a l'energie, utilisation productive de l'energie et adaptation au climat. La formation est destinee aux etudiants universitaires, aux partenaires gouvernementaux, aux ONG, aux bailleurs de fonds, aux partenaires de developpement, aux professionnels, etc. Aucune connaissance prealable du solaire hors reseau ou d'Haiti n'est requise pour beneficier de cette formation. See NREL/PR-7A40-89244 for the English translation of this document.

electricity↗

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: calibration of lens sample redshift distributions using clustering redshifts with BOSS/eBOSS

ABSTRACT We present clustering redshift measurements for Dark Energy Survey (DES) lens sample galaxies used in weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering studies. To perform these measurements, we cross-correlate with spectroscopic galaxies from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Survey (BOSS) and its extension, eBOSS. We validate our methodology in simulations, including a new technique to calibrate systematic errors that result from the galaxy clustering bias, and we find that our method is generally unbiased in calibrating the mean redshift. We apply our method to the data, and estimate the redshift distribution for 11 different photometrically selected bins. We find general agreement between clustering redshift and photometric redshift estimates, with differences on the inferred mean redshift found to be below |Δz| = 0.01 in most of the bins. We also test a method to calibrate a width parameter for redshift distributions, which we found necessary to use for some of our samples. Our typical uncertainties on the mean redshift ranged from 0.003 to 0.008, while our uncertainties on the width ranged from 4 to 9 per cent. We discuss how these results calibrate the photometric redshift distributions used in companion papers for DES Year 3 results.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗