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DOE OSTI2023

Summary of Expansions and Updates in R&D GREET ® 2023

The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (GREET®) model was developed by Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and other federal agencies. R&D GREET is a life cycle analysis (LCA) model, structured to systematically examine the energy and environmental effects of a wide variety of transportation fuels and vehicle technologies in major transportation sectors (i.e., road, air, marine, and rail), other end-use sectors, and energy systems. Argonne has expanded and updated the model in various areas in R&D GREET 2023. This report provides a summary of the expansions and updates.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Summary of Expansions and Updates in R&D GREET ® 2024

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2025

Summary of Expansions and Updates in R&D GREET® 2024 Rev.1

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Supplement Analysis for the Proposed Shipment of High Burnup Research Cask to Idaho National Laboratory for Research and Development Purposes

DOE needs to continue with the HBUSFDP and transfer the HBURC to a facility capable of examination and testing of HBU SNF. These types of facilities do not exist at NAPS but are available at DOE national laboratories. The removal and eventual opening of the TN-32B research cask will provide DOE with the opportunity to gather data that will support continued safe storage of SNF at existing nuclear power plants, or a future federal consolidated storage facility. This effort will also help build public trust and confidence by demonstrating DOE’s ability to safely and securely transport commercial SNF using the certified Atlas rail consist.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2022

Next Generation System Analysis Model: Recently Added Features and Future Plans

To better enable informed decision-making regarding the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, the Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS) program within the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) has been sponsoring the development and application of system analysis tools capable of analyzing various system options for the management of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).With these tools, IWMS architecture analyses are being conducted to support the future deployment of a comprehensive nuclear waste management system that considers all major back-end aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle (i.e., transportation, storage, and disposal). The Next Generation System Analysis Model (NGSAM) is an agent-based simulation software tool expressly designed to be capable of modeling features within various IWMS architectures. NGSAM imports data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)’s unified database (e.g., historic assembly information, thermal profiles for assembly heat, and at-reactor dry storage loadings) to ensure that each simulation initializes with a realistic representation of the state of commercial SNF in the U.S. Recent major enhancements implemented into NGSAM in the period since NGSAM was last presented at the WM2019 conference include: • Tracking of railroad escort car acquisition and buffer car acquisition • The addition of heavy haul truck (HHT) and barge routes for some sites, as well as support for user-defined inter-modal routes • Updates to the logic that checks the transportation cask thermal limit maps prior to package transport • An allocation method that predicts when reactor sites would pack assemblies from their spent fuel pools for dry storage, and prioritizes shipments directly from the pools of those reactor sites in the preceding periods (before the predicted loadings to dry storage), thus reducing the number of casks loaded into dry storage at reactor sites • The addition of “reactor site family” operational limits to restrict the number of loads of SNF taken from the pool and from dry storage at a given reactor site each year • Added support for multiple canister loading map options and packages with multiple compatible transportation overpacks • Updates to the handling of non-commercial SNF, including a new database that contains data to support the updates • Updates to allow analysis of hypothetical scenarios which include repackaging at reactor sites, e.g., for possible comparative analysis with other scenarios • Implementation of additional output reports, or modification of existing ones • The ability to generate and implement user edits via the NGSAM website • The ability to model loading SNF from pool storage at an interim storage facility (ISF) into dry storage at the ISF • The ability to model consolidating SNF from different existing storage containers at a DOE site into the same DOE standard canister • The ability to model transferring SNF casks from one transportation mode to another, e.g., from HHT to rail, referred to as transloading. These new features have improved NGSAM capabilities and users’ experience with the model. Preliminary NGSAM requirements for modeling advanced reactor fuels, reprocessing, treatment, and conditioning were considered, and this paper describes them at a high level. Other nuclear fuel cycle system analysis tools developed under sponsorship of DOE-NE, like the VISION code developed at Idaho National Laboratory, might be better suited for initial high-level analysis of those technologies and advanced fuel cycles. As technologies are developed and system concepts evolve, NGSAM could provide value by providing more detailed modeling of transport, storage, and disposal of spent fuel and wastes from advanced reactors and advanced fuel cycles at the fuel element and waste container level.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Panel Session 145: Challenges and Opportunities in Establishing a System for Transportation of SNF/UNF

Issues associated with establishing a SNF Transportation System in the U.S. are complex. In part, this is because in the US when discussing SNF, there are two distinct categories. The two categories represent significant differences in ownership, transportation-regulator, and even the physical characteristics of the SNF. Specifically, the physical differences in the SNF include size of the rods, associated quantities to be shipped, cladding material, and radionuclide content/enrichment. The first is commercial SNF (i.e., that associated with nuclear power plants), owned by utilities, until a permanent repository is built with DOE obligated by law to then assume the responsibility for shipping and ownership of the SNF. Since no-permanent repository currently exists, most commercial SNF is stored near the reactor in which it was installed, hence requiring no shipments. Although current shipments of commercial SNF are very limited, the few that do occur are generally performed to support a utilities SNF consolidation effort utility and for post irradiation examination/testing. However, with approximately 83,000 metric tons currently being stored at more than 70 sites around the U.S., when a permanent repository becomes available, the required number of shipments will be extensive. The second category is DOE and research reactor fuel. These fuel rods are generally much smaller in length than commercial fuel rods, with the quantity of rods transported in a shipment significantly less than the number of rods in a typical commercial fuel assembly. Currently, most of the SNF shipments within the U.S come from this category. DOE is currently managing about 2500 metric tons of heavy metal of SNF. This panel focused on updates and status of transportation of SNF/UNF. Panelists provided updates and information on continuing impacts, risk assessment, equipment (rail cars, handling, securement), possible rail routing, and proposed inspection equipment/routing prior to shipments. Panelists with presentations: Preparing for Nuclear Waste Transportation (Daniel Ogg); Challenges and Opportunities in Establishing a System for Transportation of SNF/UNF (Kathy Langan); UNF Transportation: Challenges and Opportunities (Michael Valenzano)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2023

Assignment of Freight Traffic in a Large-scale Intermodal Network under Uncertainty

This paper presents a methodology for freight traffic assignment in a large-scale road-rail intermodal network under uncertainty. Network uncertainties caused by natural disasters have dramatically increased in recent years. Several of these disasters (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, Mississippi River Flooding, and Hurricane Harvey) severely disrupted the U.S. freight transportation network, and consequently, the supply chain. To account for these network uncertainties, a stochastic freight traffic assignment model is formulated. An algorithmic framework, involving the sample average approximation and gradient projection algorithm, is proposed to solve this challenging problem. The developed methodology is tested on the U.S. intermodal network with freight flow data from the Freight Analysis Framework. The experiments consider three types of natural disasters that have different risks and impacts on transportation networks: earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods. It is found that for all disaster scenarios, freight ton-miles are higher compared to the base case without uncertainty. The increase in freight ton-miles is the highest under the flooding scenario; this is because there are more states in the flood-risk areas, and they are scattered throughout the U.S.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2025

Techno-Economic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment of Alternative Fuels for Locomotives in the U.S. Freight Rail Sector

Freight rail is more energy-efficient than truck transport over long-haul distances, offering a low-energy and emissions-intensive option for transporting freight. This study evaluates techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment of seven alternative unblended fuels for freight locomotive engines─biodiesel, renewable diesel (RD), bio-oils, methanol, dimethyl ether (DME), ethanol, and ammonia─across 16 fuel pathways utilizing soybean, corn, woody biomass, renewable hydrogen, and waste sources, e.g., sludge, manure, and industrial CO 2 , and compares these to conventional diesel. The minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) ranged from $\$2.05$ to $\$8.27$ per diesel gallon equivalent (2020 US dollars), with biocrude and RDs produced from hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of sludge having the lowest MFSPs due to coproduct credits and avoided waste treatment cost. Life cycle GHG emissions ranged from −41 to 53 g of CO 2 e/MJ. RD from waste via HTL achieves negative emissions by diverting sludge/manure from GHG-intensive conventional management. Few pathways such as biocrude, methanol, and DME require additional control for SO X emissions in the refinery, while ethanol, FT-diesel, and bio-oil require additional control for particulate matter emissions. Bio-oil and RD from sludge have lower marginal abatement cost or MAC (–$\$38$/tonne CO 2 lowest) while methanol and ammonia with renewable hydrogen have higher MAC ($\$490$/tonne CO 2 maximum).

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2020

Resilience of Urban Transport Network-of-Networks under Intense Flood Hazards Exacerbated by Targeted Attacks

Natural hazards including floods can trigger catastrophic failures in interdependent urban transport network-of-networks (NoNs). Population growth has enhanced transportation demand while urbanization and climate change have intensified urban floods. However, despite the clear need to develop actionable insights for improving the resilience of critical urban lifelines, the theory and methods remain underdeveloped. Furthermore, as infrastructure systems become more intelligent, security experts point to the growing threat of targeted cyber-physical attacks during natural hazards. Here we develop a hypothesis-driven resilience framework for urban transport NoNs, which we demonstrate on the London Rail Network (LRN). We find that topological attributes designed for maximizing efficiency rather than robustness render the network more vulnerable to compound natural-targeted disruptions including cascading failures. Our results suggest that an organizing principle for post-disruption recovery may be developed with network science principles. Our findings and frameworks can generalize to urban lifelines and more generally to real-world spatial networks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Upcycling Associated Natural Gas into Liquid Chemical Intermediates

This report assesses the opportunity to utilize associated natural gas (ANG) that is currently flared or vented by conversion to value-added chemicals. In cases where ANG production is not sufficient to justify on-site capture and added investments for transportation and storage, there may be commercial opportunities to perform conversion and value-added processing of ANG. This analysis focuses on CH 4 conversion to liquid intermediates, as opposed to gaseous product, due to the opportunity to transport large volumes of liquids, by truck or rail as opposed to pipeline. This report assesses market opportunities for four liquid intermediates: benzene, toluene, xylene, and formic acid.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Feasibility and Compatibility of Alternative Fuels in the U.S. Rail Sector: Technoeconomic, Lifecycle, and Supply Chain Analysis

The U.S. rail sector is a cornerstone of the United States’ freight transportation system, responsible for moving approximately 40% of long-distance freight ton-miles each year (AAR, 2025). Freight demand is projected to grow over time (BTS, 2017) thereby necessitating the investigation of alternative fuels that can sustain operational efficiency while reducing emissions and cost impacts. At the same time, it is important to explore alternative fuels as new sources of energy that can increase energy security and resilience for this sector. This report investigates the feasibility and compatibility of seven alternative fuels in the U.S. rail sector, focusing on biofuels and fuels from other renewable energy sources. The study evaluates alternative fuel pathways, considering their technical, economic, and environmental aspects to provide stakeholders with a comprehensive understanding of potential solutions.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Summary of Expansions and Updates in R&D GREET® 2025

The research and development (R&D) version of Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (GREET®) model, or R&D GREET, is developed by Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and other federal agencies. R&D GREET is a life cycle analysis (LCA) model, structured to systematically examine the energy and environmental effects of a wide variety of transportation fuels and vehicle technologies in all transportation sub-sectors (i.e., road, air, marine, and rail) and other end-use sectors, and energy technology systems. Argonne has expanded and updated the model in many areas in R&D GREET 2025. This report provides a summary of the expansions and updates. R&D GREET is designed as an attributional LCA model, but specific consequential effects for certain pathways are included by default when they are scientifically important and/or highly policy relevant. For example, two major consequential elements – induced land use change (ILUC) for biofuels and avoided emissions for certain RNG-based pathways – are implemented by default in R&D GREET because they are highly relevant to our user base and crucial for a comprehensive evaluation of the environmental effects of these technologies. In a future version of R&D GREET, these consequential elements for biofuels and RNG could be more clearly distinguished from core attributional results. We will consider adding a highly visible toggle that would allow users to turn off or adjust these consequential impacts.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2026

Uncertainty quantification and reliability assessment for intermodal freight transportation

Intermodal freight optimization models support cost-effective, low-emission, and timely goods movement by coordinating trucks, rail, and barges. These models determine optimal flows, routing, and modal switches while respecting infrastructure and operational constraints. However, their real-world utility is often undermined by pervasive uncertainties-such as fluctuating transportation costs and emissions, variable terminal capacities, and uncertain freight demand-that distort key performance outcomes, including total system cost, carbon footprint, and transit time reliability. This study presents a structured framework for quantifying uncertainty in intermodal freight transportation (IFT) optimization. The framework evaluates how input uncertainty affects system performance and reliability, a critical need for ensuring that model-based decisions remain robust under real-world variability, especially amid volatile fuel prices, shifting demand, and growing disruptions. It integrates three complementary methods: (1) Sobol-based global sensitivity analysis to identify influential parameters affecting cost, emissions, and transit time, (2) Monte Carlo-based capacity perturbation analysis to assess robustness under probabilistic facility disruptions, and (3) Monte Carlo filtering with Bayesian inference to detect threshold-based performance vulnerabilities. The results highlight diesel truck unit cost as the dominant driver of variability. To improve system resilience, planners should prioritize uncertainty in fuel-related parameters when designing intermodal strategies.

Intermodal freight transportation↗

DOE OSTI2024

Improving Self-Driving Labs: Quantifying System-Level Experiment Repeatability and Broadening Instrument-Level Compatibility

Modular Autonomous Research System (MARS) is a self-driving laboratory (SDL) which performs wet-lab science with peptide-lanthanide combinations in an automated and, ultimately, an autonomous manner to aid in soil analysis for domestic lithium mining. Autonomous experimentation involves automated experimentation, experiment planning, and active learning. MARS consists of a 6-axis robotic arm (UR5e) on a linear rail, pipette robots (Opentrons 2), and microplate readers. These components transport, operate on, and collect data with chemical solutions in standard labware. For effective autonomy, MARS must perform system-level labware operations repeatably, plan experiments autonomously, and be portable between research-domains. Repeatability is evaluated by labware placement precision, such that future operations can properly locate labware, as well as the elapsed time, so that low variance mean estimates of experiment duration can inform high-level researcher decision making. Autonomous experiment planning is the next step to decouple experimentation from human management; however, there is a conflict between the ideal system-level experiment goals and the constraints imposed by instruments’ limitations. Sub-domain portability is a long-term goal to extend MARS’ research beyond the chemistry of peptide-lanthanide binding to other sub-domains without having to invest significant overhead to system retrofitting. To address these goals, we manually trained the robotic arm labware placement and modelled statistical failurerate and uncertainty Additionally, we benchmarked the duration and variance of each experiment sub-operation as a heuristic for research decision making. Next, we use a parameterized geometric program (PGP) approach to design experiments that optimize system-level objectives and satisfy instrument-level constraints. Lastly, we proposed a Python framework to maximize MARS’ extensibility to other scientific sub-domains through a JSON-based experiment specification.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2024

Safety Codes and Standards Review and Gap Analysis for Applicability to Hydrogen Rail Refueling, Defueling, Maintenance, and Storage

Hydrogen-powered locomotives may present an alternative to diesel for achieving transportation-related decarbonization, energy security, and resilience goals. As an emerging technology, hydrogen locomotives may not have adequate representation in current safety codes and standards. NFPA 2 and other appropriate codes and standards were reviewed to identify technical gaps in the code for hydrogen rail defueling, refueling, maintenance, and storage. Several technical gaps pertaining to setback distances, allowable quantities, ventilation rates, and grounding have been identified. Fueling requirements can be informed by road vehicle standards but may need to be revised for larger quantity hydrogen locomotive systems. Since there are no hydrogen-specific locomotive design and safety standards, some aspects of diesel-based locomotive standards may apply. CGA G- 5.5 currently provides the most guidance on height, placement, orientation, and design of vent systems, while other standards emphasize the importance of shielding vent stacks and provide requirements for orientation of their discharge.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2022

Deep Electrification Analysis: The Role of the U.S. Power Grid for Sustainable Transportation

This project attempts to quantify the size of electric generation for the entire nation to transition from a fossil fuel based transportation sector to a zero GHG emission-based energy source. The scope of this analysis is limited to decarbonizing the transportation sector, leaving the remaining sectors, such as power (for those that are still fossil based), industry, and building sectors, for later phases of study. The study year for this analysis is 2050, with expected escalation in transportation services and naturally occurring evolutions in the electric power sector and the entire economy. This analysis uses the projections of the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) Annual Energy Outlook (AEO 2020) Reference Case for study year 2050 [EIA/AEO2020] as a base-case. The transportation sector is disaggregated by the following modes and classes: (1) on-road (divided into light-duty, medium-duty, heavy-duty vehicles), (2) aviation, (3) maritime, and (4) rail. The decarbonization case was based on only 2 pathways: (1) electrification of on-road transportation except for 30% of heavy-duty vehicles, and (2) power-to-liquid for the remaining transportation modes. The study estimated for 11 US regions what the additional wind and storage capacities requirements are to replace the fossil-based fuels with renewable wind capacity. Considered were the utilization of the existing idle capacity particularly during the load valley at night and any additional new generation capacity in EIA projections for the reference case. To balance the additional wind capacity required significant energy storage capabilities which were estimated in terms of power capacity (GW) and energy capacity (GWh). The paper further characterizes the energy requirements by a relation of power capacity to duration, allowing the analyst to gain insights into what the best technology portfolio might be to meet the new balancing or flexibility needs.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2021

Radiological Handling and Containment Considerations in Support of an American Medical Isotope Producer

This work will discuss evaluation and design of new and modified facility level radiological containment, transfer, and handling systems in support of the United States’ American Medical Isotope Production Act. In the United States alone, Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is used as a precursor to locally generate its decay product, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), for use in approximately 40,000 medical procedures every day to detect cancer and heart disease. Currently, however, Mo-99 is primarily produced overseas and typically requires highly enriched uranium (HEU) which is classified as weapon -usable. This poses a serious security risk to the United States and, in 2012, Congress passed the American Medical Isotope ACT which aimed to cease all Mo-99 production that requires HEU and support American based companies who have found safer production methods. Through this effort, a system was designed and developed to access irradiated material in processing hot cells for ease of material introduction and removal in the confined area. The proposed solution uses a double-door design that allows for easy access to material while also providing shielding through a mechanically manipulated carousel. A system was also designed to transport irradiated materials from target reactors to a target receipt box using a rail guide system, pneumatic motor, and lead screw drive.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

New Jersey Transit Grid Distributed Generation Program. Cybersecurity Design Assurance Assessment

Superstorm Sandy caused a major disruption to passenger-rail and other commuter systems throughout New York and New Jersey. To address this issue, New Jersey Transit (NJT) established the NJ TRANSITGRID project, an effort designed to power bus, ferry, and limited passenger-rail service during natural or man-made disasters. Given the importance of these transportation systems, NJT partnered with Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) to assess the cyber-resilience of the information systems that monitor and control the electrical systems within the microgrid. The Sandia “tabletop” assessment is based on the most recent 20% design packages. From this assessment, the Sandia team identified several security areas that were undefined or did not implement industry best practices. Finally, the Sandia team presented possible follow-on assessment activities and recommended investigating multiple hardening technologies. Addressing these findings and adding state-of-the-art detection and mitigation technologies will help ensure the NJ TRANSITGRID is built with more comprehensive cyber-resilience features.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗