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DOE OSTI2024

Overview and Commentary on Applying the Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process to Photovoltaic System Devices

The rapid expansion of photovoltaic (PV) systems, particularly inverters, has introduced new cybersecurity challenges that threaten both local operations as well as the broader electrical grid’s stability. PV inverters, integrated into critical energy infrastructure are potential targets for cyber attacks due to vulnerabilities in firmware, remote access systems, and communication protocols. The Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) process, as defined by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), provides a framework for identifying, reporting, and addressing these vulnerabilities in a transparent and collaborative manner. This report outlines the CVD process as it applies to PV systems, detailing the roles of key stakeholders, such as manufacturers, grid operators, and security researchers. The report also highlights specific challenges in managing vulnerabilities for new and legacy PV systems, which includes those introduced by insecure communications and third-party supply chain components. By adhering to the CVD process, the PV industry can mitigate cybersecurity risks, ensure regulatory compliance, and maintain consumer trust, while safeguarding the operational resilience of the energy grid. Ultimately, the effective coordination of vulnerability management is crucial for securing the future of PV systems within the critical electric grid infrastructure landscape.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Autonomous Intelligence Measurements and Sensor Systems (AIMS): Gaussian Processes in Remote Sensing: Literature Review

Power grid resilience and reliability is crucial to supporting critical infrastructure. Service interruptions can have devastating consequences to communication, emergency, and transportation services, just to name a few. In addition to infrastructure, power services are crucial to everyday life. Nearly every element of modern-day living relies on a stable and functioning power grid - heating and cooling systems to lighting, refrigeration, telecommunications, and internet access. Interruptions in the power supply can range from minor inconveniences, such as the temporary loss of internet or television services, to more significant problems, like the inability to access medical equipment or emergency services during critical situations. As climate conditions worsen, the reliability of the power grid becomes even more significant. Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, or severe storms, can cause serious damage to power infrastructure, leading to prolonged power outages. Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns can strain the grid, resulting in increased demand for electricity, stressing transmission and distribution systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2025

Data Management in the Continuum: Cross-facility Object-based Data Transfers

Scientific workflows are evolving from relying on a monolithic storage subsystem at a single High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility to using geographically distributed file systems, repositories, and cloud storage. As a result, storing, accessing, transferring, and managing scientific data have become highly complex and prone to performance inefficiencies. This paper delves into these challenges by exploring an optimized end-to-end interface designed to seamlessly connect various local and remote storage systems, enabling efficient data movement of objects across HPC–Cloud and HPC–HPC environments. We showcase this capability through an object-focused data management runtime system, discuss the effects of relaxed consistency semantics in distributed object scenarios, and illustrate its application in an earthquake simulation workflow. Besides reducing the amount of data by selectively transferring regions of interest, our facility-local results achieved a speedup of 45 × over an optimized HDF5 usage and 15 × over the HDF5 with caching by using the new interface in PDC-XF.

Bez, Jean Luca↗

DOE OSTI2021

Analysis of Hybrid Gas–Dust Outbursts Observed at 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

Cometary outbursts offer a valuable window into the composition of comet nuclei with their forceful ejection of dust and volatiles in explosive events, revealing the interior components of the comet. Understanding how different types of outbursts influence the dust properties and volatile abundances, to better interpret what signatures can be attributed to primordial composition and what features are the result of processing, is an important task best undertaken with a multi-instrument approach. The European Space Agency Rosetta mission to 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko carried a suite of instruments capable of carrying out this task in the near-nucleus coma with unprecedented spatial and spectral resolution. In this work, we discuss two outbursts that occurred 2015 November 7 and were observed by three instruments on board: the Alice ultraviolet spectrograph, the Visual Infrared and Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, and the Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. Together, the observations show that mixed gas and dust outbursts can have different spectral signatures representative of their initiating mechanisms, with the first outburst showing indicators of a cliff collapse origin and the second more representative of fresh volatiles being exposed via a deepening fracture. This analysis opens up the possibility of remote spectral classification of cometary outbursts with future work.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2022

Simultaneous Observations of Surface Layer Profiles of Humidity, Temperature, and Wind Using Scanning Lidar Instruments

We demonstrate the combination of three Doppler lidars (DLs), a water vapor differential absorption lidar and a temperature rotational Raman lidar for the investigation of the interactions between the land-surface and the atmospheric boundary layer. This combination of scanning lidars was operated for the first time during the Land-Atmosphere Feedback Experiment at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program's Southern Great Plain site, Oklahoma, USA, in August 2017, and provided simultaneous surface layer profiles of horizontal wind, humidity and temperature. The horizontal wind profiles were determined using the dual-Doppler method with two DLs. The scans were performed above four towers providing atmospheric variables and fluxes. These combined lidar data allowed for the estimation of the friction velocity as well as the surface latent and sensible heat fluxes. For this purpose, profiles calculated with Monin-Obukhov similarity theory were fitted with the Levenberg-Marquardt nonlinear least squares curve-fitting method to the measured surface-layer lidar profiles. We present case studies of three 50-min periods to illustrate the new method. The measurements resulted in friction velocities of 0.31, 0.29, and 0.38 ms –1 , sensible surface heat fluxes of 312.1, 234.1, and 183.3 Wm –2 and latent surface heat fluxes of 251.8, 227.3, and 274.4 Wm –2 . These values were compared with the in-situ measurements of the towers. Considering the sampling differences and the error analyses, the results agree within 25.1%, 42.5%, and 28.8%, respectively, demonstrating that this synergy of scanning active remote sensing systems can be used to derive surface fluxes with reasonable accuracy.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Architecture Design for Remote Operation of Microreactors: Poster

The nuclear sector is pursuing a number of advanced reactor concepts, one of which is the microreactor, an advanced reactor characterized by a power output of less than 20 MWth. These reactors are intended for use in applications where traditional power solutions are economically or logistically impractical. One key feature required for the successful deployment of microreactors is a remote operation capability, which can dramatically cut staffing expenses by eliminating the need for licensed operators to be present at the site of each reactor and instead concentrate in a centrally located operations center. In moving to a remote operations framework for nuclear reactors, the number of potential attack surfaces for a cyber adversary looking to cause harm or disruption increases. Therefore, a robust cybersecurity architecture is required to mitigate these potential vulnerabilities. This paper explores the functional infrastructure, security, and communication requirements to adapt remote operations to nuclear applications. It then presents a reference architecture for remote operations of microreactors that applies best practices in cybersecurity and remote communications in the context of a digital twin remote operation system.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2020

Remote Entanglement via Adiabatic Passage Using a Tunably Dissipative Quantum Communication System

Effective quantum communication between remote quantum nodes requires high fidelity quantum state transfer and remote entanglement generation. Recent experiments have demonstrated that microwave photons, as well as phonons, can be used to couple superconducting qubits, with a fidelity limited primarily by loss in the communication channel. Adiabatic protocols can overcome channel loss by transferring quantum states without populating the lossy communication channel. In this work, we present a unique superconducting quantum communication system, comprising two superconducting qubits connected by a 0.73 m-long communication channel. Significantly, we can introduce large tunable loss to the channel, allowing exploration of different entanglement protocols in the presence of dissipation. When set for minimum loss in the channel, we demonstrate an adiabatic quantum state transfer protocol that achieves 99% transfer efficiency as well as the deterministic generation of entangled Bell states with a fidelity of 96%, all without populating the intervening communication channel, and competitive with a qubit-resonant mode-qubit relay method. We also explore the performance of the adiabatic protocol in the presence of significant channel loss, and show that the adiabatic protocol protects against loss in the channel, achieving higher state transfer and entanglement fidelities than the relay method.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2025

Multiscale Thermal-hydraulic analysis of the MARVEL micro-reactor using coupled MOOSE Subchannel (SCM) and SAM

MARVEL is a natural-convection-cooled sodium-potassium microreactor that is anticipated to generate 85 kilowatts of thermal energy. It will operate within Idaho National Laboratory’s Transient Reactor Test Facility and is being developed by the DOE Microreactor Program. MARVEL will be used to test microreactor applications, evaluate systems for remote monitoring, and develop autonomous control technologies. A thermal-hydraulic computational model of this facility is a valuable tool to study important transients and calculate the safety limits of the micro-reactor design. For this purpose, the authors have chosen to use a multiscale coupled simulation: SCM for modeling the reactor core and SAM for the reactor’s primary cooling system. SCM is MOOSE physics module for subchannel analysis, which was designed to model single-phase flows through liquid-metal cooled, wire-wrapped fuel pin sub-assemblies, ordered in a triangular lattice. The SCM code was modified to be able to model MARVEL’s unique geometry. SAM is a systems analysis module based on the MOOSE framework. It aims to provide fast-running, whole-plant transient analyses capability with improved-fidelity for various advanced reactor types. The coupling between the two SCM and SAM for MARVEL modeling is done implementing a domain over-lapping approach. The resulting coupled simulation can model transients such as reactor startup/shutdown and provide an intermediate fidelity picture of the temperature field and other variables, in the core. Results for the steady-state simulations are presented in the article as well as flow blockage transient.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Multiscale Thermal-hydraulic analysis of the MARVEL microreactor using a coupled SAM and SCM simulation. (PPTX)

This is .pptx document presenting a summary of the paper of the same name that has been submitted and accepted to NURETH-21: MARVEL is a natural-convection-cooled sodium-potassium microreactor that is anticipated to generate 85 kilowatts of thermal energy. It will operate within Idaho National Laboratory Transient Reactor Test Facility and is being developed by the DOE Microreactor Program. MARVEL will be used to test microreactor applications, evaluate systems for remote monitoring, and develop autonomous control technologies. A thermal-hydraulic computational model of this facility is a valuable tool to study important transients and calculate the safety limits of the micro-reactor design. For this purpose, the authors have chosen to use a multiscale coupled simulation: SCM for modeling the reactor core and SAM for the reactor's primary cooling system. SCM is MOOSE physics module for subchannel analysis, which was designed to model single-phase flows through liquid-metal cooled, wire-wrapped fuel pin sub-assemblies, ordered in a triangular lattice. The SCM code was modified to be able to model MARVEL?s unique geometry. SAM is a systems analysis module based on the MOOSE framework. It aims to provide fast-running, whole-plant transient analyses capability with improved-fidelity for various advanced reactor types. The coupling between the two SCM and SAM for MARVEL modeling is done implementing a domain over-lapping approach. The resulting coupled simulation can model transients such as reactor startup/shutdown and provide an intermediate fidelity picture of the temperature field and other variables, in the core. Results for the steady-state simulations are presented in the article as well as flow blockage transient.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN↗

DOE OSTI2023

Individually identifiable surface acoustic wave sensors, tags and systems

A surface-launched acoustic wave sensor tag system for remotely sensing and/or providing identification information using sets of surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor tag devices is characterized by acoustic wave device embodiments that include coding and other diversity techniques to produce groups of sensors that interact minimally, reducing or alleviating code collision problems typical of prior art coded SAW sensors and tags, and specific device embodiments of said coded SAW sensor tags and systems. These sensor/tag devices operate in a system which consists of one or more uniquely identifiable sensor/tag devices and a wireless interrogator. The sensor device incorporates an antenna for receiving incident RF energy and re-radiating the tag identification information and the sensor measured parameter(s). Since there is no power source in or connected to the sensor, it is a passive sensor. The device is wirelessly interrogated by the interrogator.

Hines, Jacqueline H.↗

DOE OSTI2025

RENEWABLE MARINE-SOURCE INTEGRATED HEAT PUMP FOR SPACE CONDITIONING, WATER HEATING, AND FRESH WATER HARVESTING IN REMOTE COASTAL AND ISLAND COMMUNITIES

US coastal and island communities have vulnerable energy infrastructure and high energy costs, which are exacerbated by climate change. A unique opportunity exists to use thermal energy from year-round mild temperature variations to satisfy the broad energy needs of these communities. The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed a small-scale marine-source integrated heat pump (MS-IHP) that, as a single appliance, combines space conditioning, dehumidification (including fresh water harvesting from humid air), and water heating for home and commercial building applications in remote coastal and island communities. The unique, innovative features of the MS-IHP offer improved efficiency and substantially reduced costs for space conditioning, dehumidification, and water heating by seamlessly integrating a heat pump, heat pump water heater, and dehumidifier by using a single compressor; optimal year-round space cooling and heating, dehumidification, water harvesting, and water heating; and improved thermal comfort and reliable operation without frosting and defrosting because of the ocean’s warm temperatures and high heat capacity. Preliminary testing was conducted by retrofitting a commercial heat pump, demonstrating an outperformed performance compared with traditional air-source heat pumps. The MS-IHP technology can help decarbonize energy systems in remote coastal and island communities.

Gao, Zhiming [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000271397995)↗

DOE OSTI2022

High-efficiency microwave-optical quantum transduction based on a cavity electro-optic superconducting system with long coherence time

Abstract Frequency conversion between microwave and optical photons is a key enabling technology to create links between superconducting quantum processors and to realize distributed quantum networks. We propose a microwave-optical transduction platform based on long-coherence time superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities coupled to electro-optic optical cavities to mitigate the loss mechanisms that limit the attainment of high conversion efficiency. We optimize the microwave-optical field overlap and optical coupling losses in the design while achieving long microwave and optical photon lifetime at milli-Kelvin temperatures. This represents a significant enhancement of the transduction efficiency up to 50% under incoming pump power of 140 μW, which allows the conversion of few-photon quantum signals. Furthermore, this scheme exhibits high resolution for optically reading out the dispersive shift induced by a superconducting transmon qubit coupled to the SRF cavity. We also show that low microwave losses enhance the fidelity of heralded entanglement generation between two remote quantum systems. Finally, high precision in quantum sensing can be reached below the standard quantum limit.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2020

Innovation in Radiological Security, Part 1 of 2 – Using a Cloud Solution to Compress the Timely Detection Model

The design and implementation of new security technologies must account for numerous and complex operational challenges. For example, traditionally isolated systems must now survive amid the proliferation of network connectivity and endure the dynamic environments created by organizations tolerating bring-your-own-device policies. When evaluating the cyber, physical, or cyber-physical security of an asset, a common practice in the security industry is to apply the Timely Detection Model (TDM)—a versatile concept that relates the security functions of detection, delay, and response to the progression of an oppositional force’s attack timeline. If implemented correctly, security enhancements can compress the TDM to offer efficiencies to the stakeholders responsible for adjudicating threat scenarios. The efficiencies gained by the response force allow for more effective protection strategies to be realized. One such enhancement, deployed within the radiological security domain—the Sentry-Remote Monitoring System (Sentry-RMS)—is a stand-alone security system that detects, assesses, and communicates priority alarms as a means of thwarting internal and external threats. The SEntry-RMS CommUnications and REsponse (Sentry-SECURE) platform—an optional feature of the Sentry-RMS—is being developed to facilitate more efficient alarm adjudication by site stakeholders and, if necessary, a faster response by law enforcement. This Cloud-hosted platform receives protected information from deployed Sentry-RMS units and relays it to stakeholders that have vested interests in maintaining an elevated level of situational awareness. Operationally, this enables real-time delivery of high-priority alarm and video imagery directly to an identified response stakeholder, such as local law enforcement or site management, via natively developed mobile applications or full platform integration. The Sentry-SECURE platform, as implemented by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Radiological Security, is an example of an innovative security technology that compresses the TDM by (1) enabling a more efficient time to target and (2) better informing a response force’s predetermined tactics, techniques, and procedures. This paper explores the platform’s operational roles, highlights its principal functions, and presents a use case that demonstrates how the platform provides enhanced situational awareness when adjudicating priority alarms.

Sentry-RMS, Timely Detection Model, Sentry-SECURE↗

DOE OSTI2022

Ageing Management for Extended Long-Term Dry Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel and Transportation

The principal objectives of the Coordinated Research Project (CRP) and CRADA were to (1) investigate how ageing effects leading to degradation of materials used in the spent fuel dry storage systems could be managed by ageing management programs (AMPs) and (2) using existing AMPs as a basis, establish guidance on how to develop, generate, and maintain AMPs for dry storage systems of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) that can be accomplished in various ways. The PI (Dr. Liu) is an internationally recognized expert on ageing management for license renewal of nuclear power plants and independent spent fuel dry storage installations. Dr. Liu was invited by IAEA to participate in this CRP and served as Chair of the Working Group, supporting the IAEA CRP Lead, with other members from Argentina, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Argonne’s scope of work in the CRADA for the CRP included (1) ageing management guidance documents developed by Argonne for DOE and used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and industry and (2) research leveraged from the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy on the mechanical properties of high-burnup fuel cladding and the ARG-US remote monitoring systems technology developed for the DOE Packaging Certification Program, Office of Packaging and Transportation, Office of Environmental Management.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Micropulse Lidar (MPL) Handbook

The micropulse lidar (MPL) is a ground-based optical remote sensing system designed primarily to determine the altitude of clouds overhead. The physical principle is the same as for radar. Pulses of energy are transmitted into the atmosphere; the energy scattered back to the transceiver is collected and measured as a time-resolved signal. From the time delay between each outgoing transmitted pulse and the backscattered signal, the distance to the scatterer is infered. Besides real-time detection of clouds, post-processing of the lidar return can also characterize the extent and properties of aerosol or other particle-laden regions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Integrating Characteristic Arctic Vegetation in a Land Surface Model Improves Representation of Carbon Dynamics Across a Tundra Landscape

Arctic warming is altering vegetation and carbon dynamics with global implications, yet Earth System Model (ESM) predictions in the Arctic remain highly uncertain, in part due to historically limited data for model parameterization and validation. As such, ESMs typically represent Arctic ecosystems in an oversimplified manner. Recently, nine plant functional types (PFTs) designed to realistically represent tundra vegetation were integrated into the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (ELM) and parameterized using plot-scale observations from a single site. Additional evaluation was needed to determine their transferability across the Arctic. Here, in this study, we evaluated whether refined representation of tundra vegetation improved model accuracy by conducting spatially explicit 100 × 100 m resolution ELM simulations on Alaska's Seward Peninsula. Simulations with the default two-PFT configuration and with the nine Arctic-specific PFTs were benchmarked against observations of net ecosystem exchange, gross primary production, and aboveground biomass from multiple data streams including an eddy covariance flux tower, flux chambers, and aircraft and unoccupied aerial system hyperspectral remote sensing. Evaluation revealed that Arctic-specific PFT simulations produced more realistic landscape-level carbon exchanges, and better captured observed heterogeneity in biomass and productivity, explaining 60%–70% of spatial variance (R 2 = 0.6–0.7) compared to just 12%–18% (R 2 = 0.12–0.18) with the default configuration. However, the refined model failed to reproduce observed aboveground biomass for highly productive alder-willow communities, requiring further evaluation of carbon allocation parameterizations for tall shrubs that are increasingly expanding across tundra landscapes. Our results demonstrate that enhanced representation of vegetation heterogeneity boosts predictive understanding of tundra carbon dynamics, facilitating regional to pan-Arctic model and remote-sensing scaling.

Murphy, Bailey A. [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (↗

DOE OSTI2023

Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential

Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced and satellite-derived approaches to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands. Despite regional variation, the predictions demonstrated remarkable consistency at a global scale, with only a 12% difference between the ground-sourced and satellite-derived estimates. At present, global forest carbon storage is markedly under the natural potential, with a total deficit of 226 Gt (model range = 151–363 Gt) in areas with low human footprint. Most (61%, 139 Gt C) of this potential is in areas with existing forests, in which ecosystem protection can allow forests to recover to maturity. The remaining 39% (87 Gt C) of potential lies in regions in which forests have been removed or fragmented. Although forests cannot be a substitute for emissions reductions, our results support the idea that the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of diverse forests offer valuable contributions to meeting global climate and biodiversity targets.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Photo-Swing CO2 Capture Using a Branched Polyethylenimine As Sorbents and TiN Light Absorber

Using branched polyethylenimine as the sorbent material for dilute CO2 capture, a photo-swing method is demonstrated in an industrially relevant support architecture using titanium nitride (TiN) nanosized light absorbers coupled with low-power LEDs with irradiances up to 420 mW cm-2. The photo-swing desorption process is applied to dry and humid streams of 400 ppm CO2 diluted in N2. Consistent with known sorption mechanisms for aminopolymers, humid CO2 streams increased the CO2 uptake, in our case by ~30%. The photo-swing CO2 capture desorbed ~83% and ~100% CO2 compared to thermally-driven desorption over the same period for a dry and humid CO2 stream, respectively. The photo-swing CO2 capture exhibits robust performance over >90 cycles without significant signs of photo(thermal) induced sorbent degradation. This work lays the groundwork for photo-swing DAC technology as a scalable, energy-efficient solution for CO2 capture, well-suited for modular systems in remote locations utilizing intermittent renewable energy sources.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗