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SPC-71123 Rev 1 MARVEL Control Drum Actuator Torsional Spring

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a microreactor to produce electrical power utilizing a small nuclear core under the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) program. This specification defines the requirements for the procurement and factory acceptance testing of the MARVEL control drum actuator torsional spring. The purpose of this specification is to define the requirements to procure the MARVEL control drum actuator torsional spring component and witness a torsional spring rate Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) at the subcontractor’s facility with the contractor present. Any conflict between this specification and referenced Codes and Standards, or any supplementary specifications in the procurement documents requires written clarification from the Contractor prior to proceeding with any work. Any deviation from the procurement documents requires approval by the Contractor with the change request process.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN

Status memorandum on ORNL support of vendor irradiation capsule design and ASME irradiation code development and new ASTM test standard development activities

This report is in submission of completion of the Level 4 milestone number M4TG-24OR0501111 within the larger Advanced Reactor Technologies Gas Cooled Reactor program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The focus of this year’s efforts is to continue support of industry needs related to the development of future industry-funded irradiation programs. At ORNL these efforts included the development of a generalized three-dimensional CAD model of an irradiation creep capsules for graphite, cost estimates of the expansion of the Materials Irradiation Facility (MIF), involvement with ASTM D02.F0 “Manufactured Carbon and Graphite Products” and the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, and publication of papers supporting these efforts. This report will document the status of these activities.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS

Machine learning framework for predicting uranium enrichments from M400 CZT gamma spectra

A machine learning framework was developed for predicting uranium enrichments from M400 CZT gamma spectra. This framework leverages the availability of a large amount of measured M400 gamma spectra and uses a recently updated version of Gamma Detector Response and Analysis Software (GADRAS) for gamma spectrum analysis and generation. It also leverages the existing machine learning modules in Python for gamma spectrum data processing, curation, model training, benchmarking, and optimization of the deep machine learning models. The framework is used to develop a deep learning model to analyze gamma spectra from a set of U 3 O 8 samples with enrichments ranging from 0.31 to 93.17% and UF 6 cylinders with enrichments ranging from 0.2 to 4.95%, and the model performance is tested using a set of measured spectra and the respective declared enrichment values. Results show that the model can correctly classify 99.35% of the U 3 O 8 sample enrichments, and can predict the samples’ enrichments within an average absolute error of 0.099% (in percentage points of enrichment). For the UF 6 cylinders, the average absolute error was approximately 0.03%, with an accuracy of 98% in classifying discrete enrichment values of UF 6 samples. Finally, the results also show that the model has performed significantly better in terms of predicting enrichments in UF 6 cylinders based on measured gamma spectra than the GEM code, with a standard deviation (of the relative errors) of 2.23% (compared with the 11.51% value for the GEM code) based on results from a set of test data.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND

Evaluation of simulated HPGe detector efficiencies in OpenMC compared to MCNP

In late 2023, the open-source radiation transport code OpenMC introduced a pulse-height tally (PHT) feature, enabling users to track the total energy deposited by individual photons in OpenMC cells. This function represents an important improvement of the OpenMC code because it allows users to simulate the response function of a gamma detector without relying on closed-source alternatives. Despite this, limited work has been published evaluating OpenMC as a radiation transport code for simulating gamma spectroscopy experiments. This study attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of OpenMC in this space by directly comparing its PHT output to MCNP (a trusted industry-standard Monte Carlo code). In the first half of this study, a radiation transport experiment is described in which a detector with a complex internal geometry is exposed to various gamma-emitting isotopes ( 133 Ba, 137 Cs, and 60 Co) over a range of distances. The setup of this experiment was modeled in MCNP with sufficient detail to capture the efficiency characteristics of a high purity germanium (HPGe) detector for the primary gammas of each isotope. After good agreement between the MCNP model and experiment was achieved, an identical model was produced in OpenMC to allow direct comparison between the full energy peak (FEP) values produced in OpenMC and MCNP. The results show strong agreement between OpenMC and MCNP across the full range of tested energies, with each model’s FEP values typically within 2% of each other and most FEP areas within 4% of experimental data. Worse agreement was seen between the Monte Carlo codes and experiment below 300 keV (an expected result). For the 662 keV line of 137 Cs, both codes were found in poor agreement with experiment and each other over the full range of distances tested (possibly indicating an error with the 137 Cs experimental data). Ignoring the anomalous results of the 662 keV line, all other data show good qualitative and quantitative agreement between MCNP and OpenMC. This result demonstrates the accuracy of OpenMC’s PHT feature for spectroscopic applications in which detector efficiency is a primary concern.

07 - ISOTOPES AND RADIATION SOURCES

Navigating United States Standards and Regulation for Digital Energy Systems

This report provides an analysis of the U.S. standards and regulatory landscape for digital energy systems, focusing on cybersecurity, safety, and reliability requirements. It examines the interplay between federal mandates, state regulations, voluntary industry standards, and utility-specific policies, highlighting critical gaps between compliance and real-world risk mitigation. While NERC CIP standards enforce cybersecurity for Bulk Electric System assets, distribution-level infrastructure and emerging technologies often fall outside mandatory oversight, creating vulnerabilities. The report identifies systemic challenges such as reliance on self-attestation, uneven state adoption of safety codes, and lagging standards for advanced technologies like battery energy storage and inverter-based resources. Through a detailed gap analysis, it underscores the urgency of proactive risk-based approaches, independent verification, and strategic engagement with state and federal entities. Recommendations include adopting tiered security frameworks, strengthening procurement practices, and addressing emerging technology risks to ensure resilient and secure digital energy infrastructure. This guidance is intended for utilities, regulators, and stakeholders navigating compliance obligations and seeking to enhance cybersecurity and safety beyond minimum standards.

24 - POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION

Refactoring the elastic–viscous–plastic solver from the sea ice model CICE v6.5.1 for improved performance

This study focuses on the performance of the elastic–viscous–plastic (EVP) dynamical solver within the sea ice model, CICE v6.5.1. The study has been conducted in two steps. First, the standard EVP solver was extracted from CICE for experiments with refactored versions, which are used for performance testing. Second, one refactored version was integrated and tested in the full CICE model to demonstrate that the new algorithms do not significantly impact the physical results. The study reveals two dominant bottlenecks, namely (1) the number of Message Parsing Interface (MPI) and Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP) synchronization points required for halo exchanges during each time step combined with the irregular domain of active sea ice points and (2) the lack of single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) code generation. The standard EVP solver has been refactored based on two generic patterns. The first pattern exposes how general finite differences on masked multi-dimensional arrays can be expressed in order to produce significantly better code generation by changing the memory access pattern from random access to direct access. The second pattern takes an alternative approach to handle static grid properties. The measured single-core performance improvement is more than a factor of 5 compared to the standard implementation. The refactored implementation of strong scales on the Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors series node until the available bandwidth of the node is used. For the Intel® Xeon® CPU Max series, there is sufficient bandwidth to allow the strong scaling to continue for all the cores on the node, resulting in a single-node improvement factor of 35 over the standard implementation. This study also demonstrates improved performance on GPU processors.

58 GEOSCIENCES

GenASiS: General Astrophysical Simulation System. II. Self-gravitating Baryonic Matter*

GenASiS (General Astrophysical Simulation System) is a code being developed initially and primarily, though not exclusively, for the simulation of core-collapse supernovae on the world's leading capability supercomputers. This paper---the second in a series---documents capabilities for Newtonian self-gravitating fluid dynamics, including tabulated microphysical equations of state treating nuclei and nuclear matter (`baryonic matter'). Computation of the gravitational potential of a spheroid, and simulation of the gravitational collapse of dust and of an ideal fluid, provide tests of self-gravitation against known solutions. In multidimensional computations of the adiabatic collapse, bounce, and explosion of spherically symmetric pre-supernova progenitors---which we propose become a standard benchmark for code comparisons---we find that the explosions are prompt and remain spherically symmetric (as expected), with an average shock expansion speed and total kinetic energy that are inversely correlated with the progenitor mass at the onset of collapse and the compactness parameter.

Cardall, Christian [ORNL] (ORCID:000000020086105X)

An improved dataset for predicting mammal infecting viruses from genetic sequence information

There have been several attempts to develop machine learning (ML) models to identify human infecting viruses from their genomic sequences, with varying degrees of success. Direct comparison between models is problematic, because these models are typically trained and evaluated on different datasets with alternative data splitting schemes, features, and model performance metrics. In this paper we present a standardized dataset of mammal infecting and non-infecting viral pathogens, refined from the previous work of Mollentze et al. to include the latest literature evidence, roughly doubling the number of curated host-virus records available to the community, and new host target labels, primate and mammal. The new host labels were included for several reasons, including previous reports that classification performance is better at broader taxonomic ranks and the idea that there may be more data for primate infection that might serve as a suitable proxy for zoonotic potential and avoidance of false positives for human infection due to absence of evidence. On this dataset, we report the performance of eight machine learning models for predicting mammal-infecting viruses from their genomic sequences. We find that randomly assigning cases in our improved dataset to training/testing sets, when compared to the original assignments into training/testing in Mollentze et al., increases the overall average ROC AUC of prediction of human infection from 0.663 ± 0.070 to 0.784 ± 0.013, consistent with the reduction in phylogenetic distance between train and test sets (relative entropy change from 3.00 to 0.08). The broadest host category of mammal infection can be predicted most reliably at 0.850 ± 0.020. We share our improved dataset and code to enable standardized comparisons of machine learning methods to predict human host infections. Overall, we have presented preliminary evidence that classification of virus host infection is more tractable at higher taxonomic ranks, that unsurprisingly reducing the phylogenetic distance between training and test sets can improve predictive performance, that peptide kmer features appear to be harmful to out of sample model performance, and we are left with the question of whether models for virus host prediction can reasonably be expected to perform well in out of sample scenarios given the likelihood that viruses do not share a common ancestor. Consistent with this concern, when the data is resampled such that there is no overlap between viral families in training and test sets (relative entropy > 24), models perform no better than random chance at prediction of human infection regardless of whether kmers are included (ROC AUC 0.50 ± 0.08) or not (ROC AUC 0.50 ± 0.04).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

TropiRoot 1.0: Database of tropical root characteristics across environments

Tropical ecosystems contain the world's largest biodiversity of vascular plants. Yet, our understanding of tropical functional diversity and its contribution to global diversity patterns is constrained by data availability. This discrepancy underscores an urgent need to bridge data gaps by incorporating comprehensive tropical root data into global datasets. Here, we provide a database of tropical root characteristics. This new database, TropiRoot 1.0, will be instrumental in evaluating an array of hypotheses pertaining to root functional ecology and plant biogeography, both within the tropics and relative to other global biomes. The data compilation was conducted by the TropiRoot Initiative, in partnership with the Fine-Root Ecology Database (FRED) and the Global Root Trait (GRooT) database, Colorado State University (CSU) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Literature search and data extraction were conducted between 2020 and 2024. Literature was identified using Web of Science, Scopus, and complemented using the expert knowledge of members of TropiRoot. To provide broad environmental and geographical distributions, literature searches included root characteristics (traits) across global change drivers, natural gradients, and from different continents. We adopted FRED standardized data columns and streamlined the format to enhance accessibility for data extraction across various user groups. This optimized framework resulted in a smaller, yet comprehensive datasheet. To make the database compatible with other global root trait initiatives, column identification was standardized following the codes provided by FRED. These efforts culminated in data extracted from 104 new sources, resulting in more than 8000 rows of data (either species or community data). Most of the data in TropiRoot 1.0 include root characteristics such as root biomass, morphology, root dynamics, mass fraction, architecture, anatomy, physiology, and root chemistry. This initiative represents a 30% increase in the currently available data for tropical roots in FRED. TropiRoot 1.0 contains root characteristics from 25 different countries, where seven are located in Asia, six in South America, five in Central America and the Caribbean, four in Africa, two in North America, and 1 in Oceania. Due to the volume of data, when ancillary data were available, including soil data, these data were either extracted and included in the database or its availability was recorded in an additional column. Multiple contributors checked the entries for outliers during the collation process to ensure data quality. For text-based observations, we examined all cells to ensure that their content relates to their specific categories. For numerical observations, we ordered each numerical value from least to greatest and plotted the values, checking apparent outliers against the data in their respective sources and correcting or removing incorrect or impossible values. Some data (soil and aboveground) have different columns for the same variable presented in different units, including originally published units, but root characteristics data had units converted to match those reported in FRED. By filling a gap from global databases, TropiRoot 1.0 expands our knowledge of otherwise so far underrepresented regions and our ability to assess global trends. This advancement can be used to improve tropical forest representation in vegetation models. The data are freely available and should be cited when used.

FRED

Analysis of US Industrial Assessment Centers (IACs) implementation

Industrial energy assessments are a fundamental action toward developing a decarbonization strategy at any level. They provide an understanding of where energy efficiency opportunities exist and help to make informed business decisions about the costs and benefits of implementing sustainable policies and practices. This paper examines the effectiveness of the Department of Energy's Industrial Assessment Centers Program at providing useful energy-efficiency audits as well as the barriers faced by the program and plans for future growth and improvement. This paper presents an analysis of the program between 1981 and 2022, covering 20,290 industrial assessments and 151,198 recommendations, with $2.6 billion of recommended savings. The analysis includes a breakdown of the IAC recommendations and implemented projects based on both the industrial subsectors according to the Standard Industrial Classification code, energy type, and systems evaluated. The results include a 47 % implementation rate, a gap analysis to understand the missed opportunities, and a discussion about reasons for recommendation rejection. A comparison of the IAC Program with other country-level energy auditing or assessment programs was conducted, and suggestions for improving implementation rates were mentioned.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI

Accelerating lattice gauge theory studies with Agentic AI

Lattice gauge theory research, with its computationally intensive simulations and complex multi‑stage workflows, is well positioned to benefit from agentic AI systems. We demonstrate how such tools can support key components of lattice gauge theory research, including novel simulation code development using standard LQCD frameworks, HPC job orchestration, simulation data analysis, and expert‑guided tuning of algorithmic parameters such as Hasenbusch mass preconditioning and multigrid solvers. Our results show that agentic AI can reduce manual effort, improve productivity, and accelerate the research cycle while maintaining essential human oversight.

Ayyar, Venkitesh [Fermilab]

PVDeg: Enhancing Usability and AI-Driven Multi-Mechanism Degradation Modeling

PVDeg version 0.7.0, released in December 2025, introduced major enhancements to improve usability and performance. This update reorganized tutorials and tool notebooks to create a more intuitive experience, enabling users to easily follow and adapt workflows for their specific analyses. In addition to structural improvements, both the notebooks and core logic underwent significant optimization for efficiency, robustness, and style. These refinements were supported by new testing frameworks built on nbval and pytest, adherence to PEP8 standards, and extensive code refactoring, which collectively simplify onboarding for new developers. Looking ahead, version 0.8.0 will deliver advanced AI-driven capabilities. The primary focus is to further develop and automate the degradation workflow, designed to analyze PV module degradation across diverse locations and system configurations. By integrating large language models (LLMs) to scan literature and compile a comprehensive database of materials and degradation rates, this feature will enable modeling of multiple materials and mechanisms within a single, streamlined workflow. Users will be able to evaluate degradation impacts on different system architectures under varying environmental conditions, facilitating informed decisions on bill-of-materials optimization for specific deployment scenarios. These advancements position PVDeg as a powerful, user-friendly tool for accelerating PV reliability research and system design.

14 SOLAR ENERGY

Electric Vehicle Charging for Residential and Commercial Energy Codes: Technical Brief

Numerous studies show that sales of electric vehicles (EVs) have grown consistently over recent years in the U.S. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated 3 million EVs were on the road in 2022, and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) forecasts a total of 26.4 million EVs on the road by 2030. Based on this forecast, EEI projects the need for an additional 12.9 million EV charge ports by 2030. If EV charging infrastructure fails to keep pace with sales of EVs it could result in consumers stranded without options to power their vehicles. EVs are capable of providing substantial benefits to the consumers. EVs are less expensive to operate than conventional internal combustion engine vehicles, have lower maintenance costs, and have the convenience of fueling (charging) at home or work. Studies conducted in California show that costs associated with installing EV charging infrastructure can be substantially more expensive for retrofit scenarios compared to new construction, making inclusion of EV infrastructure in new construction codes a cost-effective policy option to increase infrastructure to meet growing demands. PNNL tracks adoption of mandatory EV provisions across the U.S. As of December 20, 2024, 12 states (California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont) and 53 local governments have added EV provisions to their building codes, local ordinances and zoning requirements. Originally published in 2022, this tech brief has been revised to align with recent model energy code committee discussions and published EV infrastructure code language. This technical brief summarizes market trends, costs and benefits, and provides sample code language for EV charging infrastructure for consideration to be included in model codes, such as the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1, as well as directly by states and local governments in their building codes. The technical brief summarizes related efforts undertaken by states and local governments, and builds upon language considered during the 2021 and 2024 IECC development cycles.

2021 IECC

Impacts of Model Building Energy Codes

The Department of Energy (DOE) Building Energy Codes Program (BECP) periodically evaluates national and state-level impacts associated with energy codes in residential and commercial buildings. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), funded by DOE, conducted an assessment of the prospective impacts of national model building energy codes from 2010 through 2040. A previous PNNL study evaluated the impact of the Building Energy Codes Program. A 2016 study looked more broadly at overall code impacts and this report describes the methodology used for the assessment and presents the impacts in terms of energy savings, consumer cost savings, and reduced emissions at the state level and at aggregated levels. In 2021, DOE conducted an interim and limited update to its 2016 study to evaluate potential building code updates using the 2016 methodology. That interim update includes estimated savings resulting from updates to the model energy codes, including the ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2016 (ASHRAE 90.1-2016) and 2019 editions, as well as the 2018 and 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). In 2023, DOE developed a fully updated report that includes code updates (ASHRAE 90.1-2019 and 2021 IECC), as well as additional enhancements and updates, including updated energy prices, annual floorspace additions, state code adoption dates, and emission factors, among others. This current version is another fully updated report that includes code updates (ASHRAE 90.1-2022 and 2024 IECC), as well as additional enhancements and updates, including updated energy prices, state code adoption dates, emission factors, and renewable energy contribution among others. Energy codes follow a three-phase cycle that starts with the development of a new model code, proceeds with the adoption of the new code by states and local jurisdictions, and finishes when the new code is implemented and builders, architects, and engineers are required to comply with the new provisions. The development of new model code editions creates the potential for increased energy savings. After a new model code is adopted, potential savings are realized in the field when new buildings (or additions and alterations) are constructed to comply with the new code. The contributions of all three phases are crucial to the overall impact of codes and are considered in this assessment. Figure ES.1 schematically describes the analysis framework. Energy savings are expressed in terms of energy use intensity (EUI) in the figure.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI

Highly-detailed neutronic and thermal-hydraulic coupled calculations for OPAL reactor using diverse codes and approaches

The industry-standard approach for designing and operating research reactors cores relies on well-established methodologies that consider uncoupled neutronic calculations and a subchannel analysis of the Thermal-Hydraulic (TH) associated problem. Advancements in computing power and codes allow detailed Multiphysics approaches to be implemented, thereby reducing conservatism. In this study, a comparative analysis of results from diverse detailed neutronic-TH coupled core approaches is developed. To address a realistic application case, the comparison is made for a reported critical configuration from the Open Pool Australian Lightwater research reactor (OPAL) at Hot Full Power (HFP) and low burnup. Both cell-core and stochastic methodologies for neutronics are evaluated, whereas two different subchannel codes are considered for TH. In conclusion, the convergence of the coupled schemes, and the consistency of the main parameters are discussed, showing the compatibility of the alternative methods and their ability to offer critical insights not captured by standard practices.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS

Low-overhead transversal fault tolerance for universal quantum computation

Fast, reliable logical operations are essential for realizing useful quantum computers. By redundantly encoding logical qubits into many physical qubits and using syndrome measurements to detect and correct errors, we can achieve low logical error rates. However, for many practical quantum error correction codes such as the surface code, owing to syndrome measurement errors, standard constructions require multiple extraction rounds—of the order of the code distance d—for fault-tolerant computation, particularly considering fault-tolerant state preparation. Here we show that logical operations can be performed fault-tolerantly with only a constant number of extraction rounds for a broad class of quantum error correction codes, including the surface code with magic state inputs and feedforward, to achieve ‘transversal algorithmic fault tolerance’. Through the combination of transversal operations7 and new strategies for correlated decoding, despite only having access to partial syndrome information, we prove that the deviation from the ideal logical measurement distribution can be made exponentially small in the distance, even if the instantaneous quantum state cannot be made close to a logical codeword because of measurement errors. We supplement this proof with circuit-level simulations in a range of relevant settings, demonstrating the fault tolerance and competitive performance of our approach. Furthermore, our work sheds new light on the theory of quantum fault tolerance and has the potential to reduce the space–time cost of practical fault-tolerant quantum computation by over an order of magnitude.

Zhou, Hengyun [QuEra Computing, Boston, MA (United

White Paper on Case Study of Safe Installation of Second-Life Energy Storage System

This technical report provides for a case study for the safe installation of a second-life, or repurposed, battery, that has been reconfigured for use as a stationary energy storage systems (ESS). Driven by legislative requirements such as California Senate Bill 615 and projections that retired EV batteries could meet a substantial portion of U.S. grid ESS needs beginning in 2035, the repurposing of EV batteries is anticipated to grow significantly. However, safety concerns arise from the effects of aging, unknown prior usage history, and changes in thermal runaway behavior, which may increase failure risks compared to new batteries. NFPA 855, the predominant U.S. standard for ESS installation, mandates that second-life batteries meet all requirements for new batteries, with repurposers complying with UL 1974 in addition to obtaining UL 9540 and UL 1973 listings. These are certifications that few repurposers have achieved and represent a regulatory barrier to entry for the market as a whole.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION

Implementation of McMurchie–Davidson Algorithm for Gaussian AO Integrals Suited for SIMD Processors

We report an implementation of the McMurchie− Davidson evaluation scheme for 1- and 2-particle Gaussian AO integrals designed for processors with Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instruction sets. Like in our recent MD implementation for graphical processing units (GPUs) [Asadchev, A.; Valeev, E. F.. J. Chem. Phys. 2024, 160, 244109.], variable-sized batches of shellsets of integrals are evaluated at a time. By optimizing for the floating point instruction throughput rather than minimizing the number of operations, this approach achieves up to 50% of the theoretical hardware peak FP64 performance for many common SIMD-equipped platforms (AVX2, AVX512, NEON), which translates to speedups of up to 30 over the state-of-the-art one-shellset-at-a-time implementation of Obara−Saika-type schemes in Libint for a variety of primitive and contracted integrals. As with our previous work, we rely on the standard C++ programming language such as the std::simd standard library feature to be included in the 2026 ISO C++ standard without any explicit code generation to keep the code base small and portable. The implementation is part of the open source LibintX library freely available at https://github.com/ValeevGroup/libintx.

Basis sets