SEARCH · Search NASA
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
After completing this module, you should be able to: Describe the role of Nuclear Material Accounting and Control (NMAC) in comprehensive nuclear security at a facility; Describe purpose of NMAC; Identify differences between the use of NMAC for IAEA safeguards and for facility nuclear security; List NMAC elements and measures; and Describe process for resolution of irregularities
This report provides documentation intended to satisfy the mitigation requirements for a substantial portion of the above- and belowground utilities in Mercury on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) outlined in the associated Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). The U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) manages the property and anticipates conducting activities in the future that will affect these resources. These structures are entirely within the Mercury Historic District, which is eligible to the National Register of Historic Places. The district is considered eligible under Criteria A and C for the theme of nuclear testing, with a period of significance from 1951 through 1992. The utilities addressed here include the systems related to potable water and steam/high temperature hot water distribution, as well as the sewage system. More specifically, this documentation covers these underground utilities that were installed in Mercury from 1951 through 1977 and aboveground components installed from 1951 through 1992. (See also Appendix B listed separately in OSTI.)
This report satisfies the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) commitment to prepare a quarterly summary of waste shipments to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC) in Area 3 and Area 5. This report summarizes the third quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2019 and serves as a quarterly report for the following types of shipments: • Low-Level Radioactive Waste (LLW), • Mixed Low-Level Radioactive Waste (MLLW), • Classified Non-Radioactive (CNR) Waste, and • Classified Non-Radioactive Hazardous (CNRH) Waste. Tabular summaries are provided that include the following: • Number and external volume of LLW, MLLW, and CNR/CNRH shipments, • Waste generators for LLW, MLLW, and CNR/CNRH shipments to and on the NNSS, • Carriers for LLW, MLLW, and CNR/CNRH shipments to and on the NNSS, • Waste generator shipments by quarter, • Highway routes used by carriers, and • Incident and accident data applicable to LLW, MLLW, and CNR/CNRH shipments. In this report, shipments are accounted for upon arrival at the NNSS, while disposal volumes are accounted for upon waste burial. Volume reports using the Low-Level Waste Information System showing cubic feet (ft 3 ) of waste generated may vary slightly due to rounding conventions for conversions from cubic meters to ft 3 .
This project investigated the cyber-security impacts of moving from an all analog, point-to-point, instrumentation and control (I&C) system to a digital I&C system based on Modbus and a shared communication medium. A formalism called a hybrid attack graph was expanded to support the nuclear research reactor system. The hybrid attack graph allows one to check a system for vulnerabilities, in this case cyber-security vulnerabilities, and to document the attack vectors (scenarios) causing those vulnerabilities. In parallel, a simulation of the system was developed to model both the physical reactor parameters and operations, as well as the network interconnects and communications. This simulation platform was modeled on the nuclear research reactor located at Washington State University. The simulation platform provided a sandbox to evaluate and quantify the impact of identified and proposed vulnerabilities in the system and to determine the effectiveness of countermeasures at stopping these attacks. The simulation and hybrid attack graph tools were integrated to provide a streamlined process of generating attack scenarios, playing those scenarios out in the simulation, and then analyzing the results to correlate system state to states in the hybrid attack graph. This process was used to (1) quantify the impact of attack scenarios and (2) to determine if the system moved through the hybrid attack graph as anticipated. The hybrid attack graph tool was extended and customized to produce a tool to automatically identify critical assets (CAs) and critical digital assets (CDAs) as defined by NRC Regulatory Guide 5.71. This tool was verified using the nuclear research reactor at Washington State University. Finally, a series of educational modules covering the findings of the different aspects of this research have been created.
This paper presents research on the generation of a software security assessment instrument to aid developers in assessing and assuring the security of software in the development and maintenance lifecycles.
Information security analysis can be performed using game theory implemented in dynamic simulations of Agent Based Models (ABMs). Such simulations can be verified with the results from game theory analysis and further used to explore larger scale, real world scenarios involving multiple attackers, defenders, and information assets. Our approach addresses imperfect information and scalability that allows us to also address previous limitations of current stochastic game models. Such models only consider perfect information assuming that the defender is always able to detect attacks; assuming that the state transition probabilities are fixed before the game assuming that the players actions are always synchronous; and that most models are not scalable with the size and complexity of systems under consideration. Our use of ABMs yields results of selected experiments that demonstrate our proposed approach and provides a quantitative measure for realistic information systems and their related security scenarios.
PNNL's Radiation Detection for Nuclear Security Summer School gives graduate and advanced graduate students an understanding of how radiation detectors are used in national security missions.
Information security continues to evolve in response to disruptive changes with a persistent focus on information-centric controls and a healthy debate about balancing endpoint and network protection, with a goal of improved enterprise/business risk management. Economic uncertainty, intensively collaborative styles of work, virtualization, increased outsourcing and ongoing compliance pressures require careful consideration and adaptation. The Cyberspace Security Econometrics System (CSES) provides a measure (i.e., a quantitative indication) of reliability, performance, and/or safety of a system that accounts for the criticality of each requirement as a function of one or more stakeholders interests in that requirement. For a given stakeholder, CSES accounts for the variance that may exist among the stakes one attaches to meeting each requirement. The basis, objectives and capabilities for the CSES including inputs/outputs as well as the structural and mathematical underpinnings contained in this copyright.
This special analysis (SA) evaluates whether the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) Husman Irradiators waste stream (BCLAHUSMANS00, Revision 0) is suitable for disposal by shallow land burial (SLB) at the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site (RWMS). The LLNL Husman Irradiators waste stream consists of 3 fully self-shielded self-contained cesium-137 (137Cs) irradiators that have exceeded their useful lifetime (LLNL 2015). The LLNL Husman Irradiators waste stream requires an SA because the 137Cs activity concentration exceeds the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) Action Level (U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office [NNSA/NFO] 2013). The results indicate that all performance objectives can be met with disposal of the LLNL Husman Irradiators in a SLB trench. Addition of the LLNL Husman Irradiators inventory had no significant effect on the maximum mean and 95th percentile performance assessment results over the 1,000-year compliance period. The short half-life of 137Cs limits its potential impacts to a few hundred years after disposal. The 3 Husman Irradiators are suitable for disposal by SLB at the Area 5 RWMS.
This special analysis (SA) evaluates whether the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) EnergyX Macroencapsulated waste stream (B LAMACRONCAP, Revision 1) is suitable for disposal by shallow land burial (SLB) at the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site (RWMS) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The LLNL EnergyX Macroencapsulated waste stream is macroencapsulated mixed waste generated during research laboratory operations and maintenance (LLNL 2015). The LLNL EnergyX Macroencapsulated waste stream required a special analysis due to tritium (3H), cobalt-60 (60Co), cesium-137 (137Cs), and radium-226 (226Ra) exceeding the NNSS Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) Action Levels (U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office [NNSA/NFO] 2015).The results indicate that all performance objectives can be met with disposal of the waste stream in a SLB trench. Addition of the LLNL EnergyX Macroencapsulated inventory slightly increases multiple performance assessment results, with the largest relative increase occurring for the all-pathways annual total effective dose (TED). The maximum mean and 95th percentile 222Rn flux density remain less than the performance objective throughout the compliance period. The LLNL EnergyX Macroencapsulated waste stream is suitable for disposal by SLB at the Area 5 RWMS. The waste stream is recommended for approval without conditions.
This special analysis (SA) evaluates whether the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Low Activity Beta/Gamma Sources waste stream (BCLALADOEOSRP, Revision 0) is suitable for disposal by shallow land burial (SLB) at the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site (RWMS) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The LLNL Low Activity Beta/Gamma Sources waste stream consists of sealed sources that are no longer needed. The LLNL Low Activity Beta/Gamma Sources waste stream required a special analysis because cobalt-60 (60Co), strontium-90 (90Sr), cesium-137 (137Cs), and radium-226 (226Ra) exceeded the NNSS Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) Action Levels (U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office [NNSA/NFO] 2015). The results indicate that all performance objectives can be met with disposal of the LLNL Low Activity Beta/Gamma Sources in a SLB trench. The LLNL Low Activity Beta/Gamma Sources waste stream is suitable for disposal by SLB at the Area 5 RWMS. However, the activity concentration of 226Ra listed on the waste profile sheet significantly exceeds the action level. Approval of the waste profile sheet could potentially allow the disposal of high activity 226Ra sources. To ensure that the generator does not include large 226Ra sources in this waste stream without additional evaluation, a control is need on the maximum 226Ra inventory. A limit based on the generator’s estimate of the total 226Ra inventory is recommended. The waste stream is recommended for approval with the control that the total 226Ra inventory disposed shall not exceed 5.5E10 Bq (1.5 Ci).
These slides present a high level overview of an ongoing project sponsored by NNSA. The project is focused on economic analysis of physical security design of micro reactors. The slides will be presented to NNSA's office of International Nuclear Security (INS) at a program update meeting on May 28th, 2025.
Write-optimized data structures (WODS), offer the potential to keep up with cyberstream event rates and give sub-second query response for key items like IP addresses. These data structures organize logs as the events are observed. To work in a real-world environment and not fill up the disk, WODS must efficiently expire older events. As the basis for our research into organizing security monitoring data, we implemented a tool, called Diventi, to index IP addresses in connection logs using RocksDB (a write-optimized LSM tree). In this work, we extended Diventi to automatically expire data as part of the data structures’ normal operations. We guarantee that Diventi always tracks the N most recent events and tracks no more than N + k events for a parameter k < N, while ensuring the index is opportunistically pruned. To test Diventi at scale in a controlled environment, we used anonymized traces of IP communications collected at SuperComputing 2019. We synthetically extended the 2.4 billion connection events to 100 billion events. We tested Diventi vs. Elasticsearch, a common log indexing tool. In our test environment, Elasticsearch saw an ingestion rate of at best 37,000 events/s while Diventi sustained ingestion rates greater than 171,000 events/s. Our query response times were as much as 100 times faster, typically answering queries in under 80 ms. Furthermore, we saw no noticeable degradation in Diventi from expiration. We have deployed Diventi for many months where it has performed well and supported new security analysis capabilities.
In this paper, a symmetric cryptosystem has been suggested to increase security of double random phase encoding using superposition technique in fractional Hartley transform (FrHT) and gyrator transform (GT) domains. It uses structured phase mask (SPM) and hybrid mask (HM) deploying equal modulus decomposition (EMD). Related to original phase truncated Fourier transform (PTFT) based cryptosystem, the security of encoding and decoding is upgraded by using the superposition technique. With the usage of SPM we can increase the key space while encoding and can also overcome the axis alignment difficulty. Decoding is just the reversal of the encoding method. The proposed scheme has robustness against common attacks like: noise and occlusion attacks. With the help of numerical simulation results we also show that our cryptosystem is vulnerable to various attacks. Performance of the suggested method is calculated in terms of Mean Square Error (MSE) between original and decoded image and also the sensitivity of the SPM parameters and rotational angles of GT is investigated. The competence of the suggested method includes analysis on EMD, histogram and correlation coefficient. The suggested cryptosystem is also open to the occlusion attack and noise attack to analyze its performance and evenness.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly growing, multibillion dollar industry. AM is increasingly being used to manufacture functional parts, including components of safety critical systems in aerospace, automotive, and other industries. This makes AM an attractive attack target. AM Security is a fairly new field of research that addresses this novel threat. Here, this paper serves dual purposes: For researchers just entering AM security, we provide an in-depth introduction to this highly multi-disciplinary research field. And, for active researchers in the field, this paper provides a comprehensive, structured survey of the state of the art as well as our proposal for attack taxonomies.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the interactions between water, energy, and food security, referenced in this study as the nexus between water, energy, and food, and the impacts of global risks using the World Economic Forum's, 2017 Global Risks Report as a guideline. In this analysis, the authors reveal that water, energy, and food are interdependent and essential resources demanding sustainable, integrated and intelligent management. These vital resources are susceptible to many global risks which are maximized by extreme weather events, mass involuntary human migrations, and other hazards that predominantly endanger the vulnerable communities of less developed countries. In conclusion, policies carried out by the international community, decision-makers, civil society, and the private sector, must align to target and mitigate global risks, specifically, water, energy and food security.
Dynamic security assessment usually involves the simulation of system dynamics under large disturbances. The instant large disturbance occurs, the post-disturbance state of the system could deviate significantly from the pre-disturbance one. It is desirable and necessary to develop an efficient method to certify the existence of state and predict the approximate post-disturbance state because: (1) faster warning can be made in online assessment; and (2) the dynamic simulator can be given better initial values to calculate precise solutions, which prevents convergence failure brought on by poor initial values. We propose a novel approach for efficiently certifying and predicting the post-disturbance states in dynamic security assessment. Based on the fixed-point power flow mapping approach applied to salient pole generator models, the criterion for determining the existence and uniqueness of the post-disturbance solution is derived, and the bounds of post-disturbance solution can be rigorously characterized.
Thermal security region (TSR) is a powerful tool for monitoring and controlling the thermal security of bulk power grid with high penetration of renewable energy. One of the major challenges of TSR in practical application is to obtain the exact analytical expression of the TSR boundary (TSRB) because TSRB is a nonlinear hypersurface described by an implicit function. For this reason, the TSRB is usually approximated by hyperplane instead of getting the exact analytical expression. Traditionally, the coefficients of the hyperplane are estimated with a set of original TSRB points using least square estimation (LSE). However, LSE is a point estimation method, which is incapable of evaluating the quality of the estimation. In addition, the accuracy and computational efficiency of the hyperplane approximation are influenced by the number of TSRB points significantly. Here, a bootstrap based confidence interval estimation is proposed to estimate not only the coefficients of TSRB approximation hyperplane, but also the standard deviations and confidence intervals of the coefficients for evaluating the quality and reliability of the approximation results. First, empirical distribution functions (EDFs) of the coefficients of TSRB approximation hyperplane are approximated from a set of original TSRB points by using residual resampling bootstrap method. Then, the EDFs of the coefficients are employed to estimate the coefficients of the approximation hyperplane. Meanwhile, the standard deviations and confidence intervals of the estimated coefficients of the hyperplanes are also calculated for evaluating the quality and reliability of the approximation. The proposed approach is tested on the China Southern Power Grid (CSG). Results of simulations validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach in approximating the TSRB.