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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 829 records · Page 46
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2012

Genome resequencing reveals multiscale geographic structure and extensive linkage disequilibrium in the forest tree Populus trichocarpa

Population genomics of forest trees provides crucial information for breeding, conservation, and bioenergy feedstock development. As part of a large-scale association study, we resequenced 16 genomes of the model tree Populus trichocarpa to an average depth of 39 . Analyses of the resulting data revealed surprisingly extensive population genetic structure and decay of linkage disequilibrium over much larger physical distances than the expected based on previous, smaller-scale studies. Rates of recombination varied widely across the genome but were largely predictable based on DNA sequence and methylation patterns. Our results suggest that genomewide association studies and accurate prediction of phenotypes from DNA data are more feasible in Populus than previously assumed, thereby laying the foundation for a step change in our understanding of tree biology.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2013

LEVERAGING AGING MATERIALS DATA TO SUPPORT EXTENSION OF TRANSPORTATION SHIPPING PACKAGES SERVICE LIFE

Nuclear material inventories are increasingly being transferred to interim storage locations where they may reside for extended periods of time. Use of a shipping package to store nuclear materials after the transfer has become more common for a variety of reasons. Shipping packages are robust and have a qualified pedigree for performance in normal operation and accident conditions but are only certified over an approved transportation window. The continued use of shipping packages to contain nuclear material during interim storage will result in reduced overall costs and reduced exposure to workers. However, the shipping package materials of construction must maintain integrity as specified by the safety basis of the storage facility throughout the storage period, which is typically well beyond the certified transportation window. In many ways, the certification processes required for interim storage of nuclear materials in shipping packages is similar to life extension programs required for dry cask storage systems for commercial nuclear fuels. The storage of spent nuclear fuel in dry cask storage systems is federally-regulated, and over 1500 individual dry casks have been in successful service up to 20 years in the US. The uncertainty in final disposition will likely require extended storage of this fuel well beyond initial license periods and perhaps multiple re-licenses may be needed. Thus, both the shipping packages and the dry cask storage systems require materials integrity assessments and assurance of continued satisfactory materials performance over times not considered in the original evaluation processes. Test programs for the shipping packages have been established to obtain aging data on materials of construction to demonstrate continued system integrity. The collective data may be coupled with similar data for the dry cask storage systems and used to support extending the service life of shipping packages in both transportation and storage.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Friendly Extensible Transfer Tool Beta Version

Often data transfer software is designed to meet specific requirements or apply to specific environments. Frequently, this requires source code integration for added functionality. An extensible data transfer framework is needed to more easily incorporate new capabilities, in modular fashion. Using FrETT framework, functionality may be incorporated (in many cases without need of source code) to handle new platform capabilities: I/O methods (e.g., platform specific data access), network transport methods, data processing (e.g., data compression.).

Collins, William P.↗
DOE OSTI2019

B61-12 Life Extension Program (Maintaining the Stockpile)

The B61 nuclear gravity bomb, deployed from U.S. Air Force and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bases, has almost 50 years of service, making it the oldest and most versatile weapon in the enduring U.S. stockpile. Numerous modifications have been made to improve the B61’s safety, security, and reliability since the first B61 entered service in 1968, and four B61 variants remain in the stockpile: the 3, 4, 7, and 11. However, the aging weapon system requires a life extension to continue deterring potential adversaries and reassuring our allies and partners of our security commitments to them.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2019

W76-1 Life Extension Program (Maintaining the Stockpile)

The W76-1 is a refurbished W76-0 warhead, which is a submarine-launched ballistic missile system that was first introduced into the stockpile for the Navy in 1978. The W76-1 Life Extension Program extends the originally designed warhead service life of 20 years to 60 years. The W76-1 continues to meet all missions and capabilities of the original W76-0 warhead and does not provide new military capabilities. NNSA completed refurbished warhead production at the Pantex Plant in December 2018.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2019

W80-4 Life Extension Program (Maintaining the Stockpile)

In close coordination with the Department of Defense,NNSA is extending the life of the W80-1 warhead through the W80-4 Life Extension Program (LEP) for use in the U.S. Air Force’s Long Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile. Together, the W80-4 and LRSO will help ensure the long-term effectiveness of the bomber leg of the Nation’s nuclear triad. The W80-4 LEP will also extend the warhead’s service life while enhancing its safety, security, and reliability.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2013

Life Extension Program for the Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit at Savannah River Site - 13179

Caustic Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) is currently used at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) for removal of cesium from the high-level salt-wastes stored in underground tanks. Currently, the Actinide Removal Process (ARP) and the CSSX process are deployed in the (ARP)/Modular CSSX Unit (MCU), to process salt waste for permanent disposition. The CSSX technology utilizes a multi-component organic solvent and annular centrifugal contactors to extract cesium from alkaline salt waste. The original plant was permitted for a three year design life; however, given the successful operation of the plant, a life extension program was completed to continue operations. The program included detailed engineering analyses of the life-expectancy of passive and active components, resulting in component replacement and/or maintenance and monitoring program improvements. The program also included a review of the operations and resulted in a series of operational improvements. Since the improvements have been made, an accelerated processing rate has been demonstrated. In addition, plans for instituting a next-generation solvent are in place and will enhance the decontamination factors. (author)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2017

Deterministic Selection of Design Extension Condition without Core Melt

The concept of beyond design basis accidents (BDBA) recently has been changed to design extension conditions (DEC). DEC is required to be considered in the design process, and it comprises conditions in events without core melt and conditions in events with core melt. DEC with core melt is a part of severe accident. A systematic and deterministic approach to select DEC without core melt for a pressurized water reactor (PWR) is introduced.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Extension of the DIF3D Code for Molten Salt Reactor Analysis

The molten salt reactor (MSR) with the fuel dissolved into the liquid salt has been selected as one of the six Generation-IV reactors due to its excellent characteristics in the aspects of sustainability, economy, passive safety, and resource utilization. In a MSR, the fuel salt is circulated throughout the whole system and thus some of delayed neutron precursors generated in the core decay in position of low importance or even out of the core. As a result, the multiplication factor (k-eff) of MSR is smaller than that of a reactor of stationary fuel when all the other conditions are same. Therefore, the neutronics code developed for stationary fuel cannot be applied directly to MSR analysis. In this paper, we describe the extension and application of the DIF3D code to MSR neutronics analysis. The DIF3D code system is a multi-group steady-state neutron diffusion and transport theory solver. It provides three flux solution options: finite-difference diffusion theory, nodal diffusion theory, and variational nodal transport theory methods. Eigenvalue, adjoint, fixed source and criticality (concentration) search problems are permitted. The DIF3D code has recently been modified to model the flowing fuel. To verify the new capability of DIF3D, the MSFR [4] core was analyzed with a wide range of velocity field of fuel salt and time spent outside of the core.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2024

A new track finding algorithm based on a multi-dimensional extension of the Hough Transform

We introduce a new pattern recognition algorithm for track finding in High Energy Physics Experiments based on an extension of the Hough Transform to multiple dimensions. A remarkable property of this algorithm is that the execution time is simply proportional to the total number of the hits to be processed, making it particularly attractive for high occupancy situations. The algorithm needs to be trained using a sufficiently large set of simulated tracks. The same track finding algorithm can be used for very different detector geometries and only the set of simulated tracks used for training needs to be changed. The particular structure of the algorithm also lends itself naturally to parallel hardware implementations which, combined with its intrinsic flexibility, should provide a most powerful tool for triggering at future colliders.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2015

Extensive sensitivity study of PWR fuel assay data - 14301

Accurate calculations of the isotopic composition of spent nuclear fuel play a fundamental role in several parts of nuclear energy. An important example is the use of burnup credit in criticality safety analysis, where the results gained from depletion calculations are used to determine the fuel composition in subsequent criticality calculations. The work presented here is a sensitivity study for depletion calculations of high-burnup fuel samples from the Vandellos II PWR that entails an unusually detailed evaluation of assay data. In addition to investigating the impacts of experimental uncertainties on the calculated isotopic composition, the consequences of various modelling approaches are studied to give quantitative estimations of the impact on accuracy. Furthermore, the reactivity of the calculated fuel composition is tracked, because this is the integral characteristic of the irradiated fuel that one is actually interested in for burnup credit applications. While the sensitivity study is performed only for one of the nine experimental samples of the Vandellos II assay data, the lessons learned lead to evaluation models with different levels of model detail for all fuel samples. The results show that the discrepancies between the measured and calculated isotopic compositions are considerably larger than the uncertainties inherent in the measurement and the calculation method would indicate. This is not unexpected, since large discrepancies are a common result of assay data recalculations. However, the unusually extensive sensitivity study performed here allows to exclude some possible sources of error: since the influence of experimental uncertainties like fuel assembly geometry and reactor parameters on the isotopic composition is shown to be small, one valuable conclusion of this study is to focus more on the measurement uncertainties of the chemical assay itself, and the nuclear data that the calculation is based upon. The study also demonstrates that using the reactivity of the depleted fuel as an additional comparison point between measurement and calculation can provide some orientation regarding the importance of the manifold influences on calculation results. Tracking this integral characteristic of the depleted fuel is very helpful in focusing on the actual impact of the depletion calculation uncertainties on criticality safety. (author)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Extension of the high-resolution thermal-hydraulics code ESCOT to hexagonal core geometries for multi-physics calculations

The extension of the capabilities of the pin-level nuclear reactor core thermal-hydraulics (T/H) code ESCOT to analyze hexagonal fueled cores and its performance are presented. ESCOT is an accurate yet fast core thermal-hydraulics solution aiming at high-fidelity and high-resolution multi-physics core analysis in the framework of massively parallel computing platforms. Its algorithm solution is based on the four-equation drift-flux model for two-phase calculations, these are numerically solved by applying the Finite Volume Method (FVM) and the Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure-Linked Equation (SIMPLE)-like algorithm in a staggered grid system. Constitutive models such as turbulent mixing, pressure drop, and vapor generation are employed to simulate key phenomena in subchannel-scale analysis. ESCOT is parallelized by a double (radial and axial) domain decomposition that enables its highly parallelized execution. The coupling of the code with the neutronics whole core solver for hexagonal geometries nTRACER is described. The newly implemented ESCOT features are validated by comparing single assembly and full core steady state nTRACER-ESCOT solutions with nTRACER standalone internal one-dimensional T/H solver results. The validation problems are based on the VVER 440 and VVER 1000 cores. ESCOT results show differences within an acceptable range with respect to the simple 1D nTRACER built-in solver. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2011

The effect of the atmospheric condition on the extensive air shower analysis at the Telescope Array experiment

The accuracies in determination of air shower parameters such as longitudinal profiles or primary energies with the fluorescence detection technique are strongly dependent on atmospheric conditions of the molecular and aerosol components. Moreover, air fluorescence photon yield depends on the atmospheric density, and the transparency of the air for fluorescence photons depends on the atmospheric conditions from EAS to FDs. In this paper, we describe the atmospheric monitoring system in the Telescope Array (TA experiment), and the impact of the atmospheric conditions in air shower reconstructions. The systematic uncertainties of the determination of the primary cosmic ray energies and of the measurement of depth of maximum development (X{sub max}) of EASs due to atmospheric variance are evaluated by Monte Carlo simulation.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2016

Nanosecond-level time synchronization of autonomous radio detector stations for extensive air showers

To exploit the full potential of radio measurements of cosmic-ray air showers at MHz frequencies, a detector timing synchronization within 1 ns is needed. Large distributed radio detector arrays such as the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) rely on timing via the Global Positioning System (GPS) for the synchronization of individual detector station clocks. Unfortunately, GPS timing is expected to have an accuracy no better than about 5 ns. In practice, in particular in AERA, the GPS clocks exhibit drifts on the order of tens of ns. We developed a technique to correct for the GPS drifts, and an independent method used for cross-checks that indeed we reach nanosecond-scale timing accuracy by this correction. First, we operate a “beacon transmitter” which emits defined sine waves detected by AERA antennas recorded within the physics data. The relative phasing of these sine waves can be used to correct for GPS clock drifts. In addition to this, we observe radio pulses emitted by commercial airplanes, the position of which we determine in real time from Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcasts intercepted with a software-defined radio. From the known source location and the measured arrival times of the pulses we determine relative timing offsets between radio detector stations. We demonstrate with a combined analysis that the two methods give a consistent timing calibration with an accuracy of 2 ns or better. Consequently, the beacon method alone can be used in the future to continuously determine and correct for GPS clock drifts in each individual event measured by AERA.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗