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At least 937 records · Page 52
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Energy Security and Resilience (ESR) Initiative

Central to achieving reduced carbon emissions and sustained economic recovery from the COVID pandemic is a national energy system based on low-carbon technologies and resistant to disruption from severe weather events and human attacks. NREL’s Energy Security and Resilience (ESR) Initiative applies NREL’s expertise in the design and operation of clean, highly distributed energy systems to the most pressing security and resilience challenges.

cybersecurity↗
DOE OSTI2012

Remediation of Mercury-Contaminated Storm Sewer Sediments from the West End Mercury Area at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - 12061

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, TN has faced an ongoing challenge from mercury entrapped in soils beneath and adjacent to buildings, storm sewers, and process pipelines. Previous actions to reduce the quantity and/or mobilization of mercury-contaminated media have included plugging of building floor drains, cleaning of sediment and sludge from sumps, manholes, drain lines, and storm sewers, lining/relining of storm sewers and replacement of a portion of the storm sewer trunk line, re-routing and removal of process piping, and installation of the Central Mercury Treatment System to capture and treat contaminated sump water. Despite the success of these actions, mercury flux in the storm sewer out-falls that discharge to Upper East Fork Poplar Creek (UEFPC) continues to pose a threat to long-term water quality. A video camera survey of the storm sewer network revealed several sections of storm sewer that had large cracks, separations, swells, and accumulations of sediment/sludge and debris. The selected remedy was to clean and line the sections of storm sewer pipe that were determined to be primary contributors to the mercury flux in the storm sewer out-falls. The project, referred to as the West End Mercury Area (WEMA) Storm Sewer Remediation Project, included cleaning sediment and debris from over 2,460 meters of storm sewer pipe followed by the installation of nearly 366 meters of cure-in-place pipe (CIPP) liner. One of the greatest challenges to the success of this project was the high cost of disposal associated with the mercury-contaminated sludge and wastewater generated from the storm sewer cleaning process. A contractor designed and operated an on-site wastewater pre-treatment system that successfully reduced mercury levels in 191 cubic meters of sludge to levels that allowed it to be disposed at Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS) disposal cell as a non-hazardous, low-level waste. The system was also effective at pre-treating over 1,514,000 liters of wastewater to levels that met the waste acceptance criteria for the on-site West End [wastewater] Treatment Facility (WETF). This paper describes the storm sewer cleaning and lining process and the methods used to process the mercury-contaminated sludge and wastewater, as well as several 'lessons learned' that would be relevant to any future projects involving storm sewer cleaning and debris remediation. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2012

Successful Characterization Strategies for the Active High Risk Y-12 National Security Complex 9201-5 (Alpha-5) Facility, Oak Ridge, TN - 12164

Building 9201-5 (Alpha 5) was completed in May 1944 and served as a production facility for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Y-12 Weapons Plant. During the Manhattan Project, it functioned as a uranium enrichment facility. The facility was renovated and altered over the years, converting the calutrons to support other missions. Alpha 5 consists of 4 floors and a basement measuring approximately 600,000 square feet. The facility contains various pieces of equipment remaining from legacy operations. A significant amount (approximately 200,000 kgs) of mercury (Hg) has been spilled in the facility over the operational history of the building. To further complicate matters, beryllium (Be) contamination in 9201-5 is found throughout approximately sixty percent of the facility. Concentrations varying from very low (< 0.2 micrograms (μg)/100 cm{sup 2}) to areas where concentrations are relatively high, approximately 600 μg/100 cm{sup 2}, in regulated beryllium areas. The primary site related contaminants (SRCs) for the waste in this facility are enriched uranium, depleted uranium, beryllium and mercury. This facility represents the highest environmental risk for DOE-ORO EM and NNSA at Y-12 and must be quickly addressed to minimize impacts to future Y-12 missions, as well as human health and the environment. As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), approximately 700,000 cubic feet of legacy material was removed in 2010 and 2011. In addition, characterization of the 9201-5 facility was scheduled in the winter and spring of 2011. This activity was initiated in January 2011 and was completed in July 2011. Heavy schedule pressure was further complicated by the fact that this building has active utility, security and process systems. Given these complex variables, a unique, out of the box characterization strategy was forged in an effort to bound radiological and chemical contaminants, as well as providing the appropriate level of quality to ensure that this data could be used to develop waste profiles when deactivation, decontamination and demolition (D and D) activities are authorized at a future date. The characterization strategy involved a hybrid model of statistically-based and biased sampling events. To achieve the desired results, traditional intrusive sampling and laboratory analysis, as well as a number of field-based characterization methodologies (e.g., X-ray Fluorescence [XRF], Lumex and Non-Destructive Assay [NDA]) were utilized. Results were captured and synthesized into meaningful, usable conclusions in a facility characterization report that will more accurately aid D and D cost estimates for future remedial actions. This massive characterization campaign involved over 1,200 separate sample locations using 4 separate characterization methods and was successfully completed to meet a performance-based milestone within 8 months of initiation. (authors)

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Nevada National Security Site Industrial Sites Project Closeout - 12498

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office is responsible for environmental restoration (ER) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). This includes remediation at Industrial Sites where past nuclear testing activities and activities that supported nuclear testing may have or are known to have resulted in the release of contaminants into the environment. Industrial Sites at the NNSS have included nuclear facilities that supported the nuclear rocket/missile development programs, gas stations, landfills, spill sites, ordnance sites, and numerous other waste disposal and release sites. The NNSS Industrial Sites activities neared completion at the end of fiscal year 2011 while other activities required under the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) and part of the same NNSS ER Project are forecasted to extend to 2027 or beyond. With the majority of Industrial Sites corrective action units (CAUs) completed (more than 250 CAUs and over 1,800 corrective action sites), it was determined that an activity closeout process should be implemented to ensure that the work completed over the past 15 years is well documented in a comprehensive and concise summary. While the process used to close each individual CAU is described in approved documents, no single document describes in summary fashion the work completed to close the many individual Industrial Sites. The activity closeout process will be used to develop an Industrial Sites closeout document that describes these years of work. This document will summarize the number of Industrial Sites closed under the FFACO and provide general descriptions of projects, contaminants removed, and sites closed in place with corresponding Use Restrictions. Other pertinent information related to Industrial Sites work such as the project history, closure decisions, historical declarations, remediation strategies, and final CAU status will be included in the closeout document, along with a table listing each CAU and corresponding corrective action sites within each CAU. Using this process of conducting the activity closeout and developing a closeout document may prove useful for other ER projects within the DOE complex in describing how a long period of ER can be summarized in a single document. The NNSS Industrial Sites activities were completed over the span of 15 years and involved the investigation, cleanup or Use Restriction, and closure of more than 260 CAUs and over 1,800 sites. These activities will conclude in FY 2012 (with the exception of one CAU). In order to capture the work completed over this length of time and document decisions made during the activities, a closeout effort was initiated. The closeout will review the work conducted during the Industrial Sites activities and produce a single document that summarizes Industrial Sites activities. This closeout is being conducted at an interim stage in the overall NNSA/NSO ER Project since the Soils and UGTA activities will continue for a number of years, but the completion of the Industrial Sites project warrants conducting a closeout now while personnel are available and information is still current. The process followed by NNSA/NSO in conducing project closeout for the Industrial Sites portion of the ER program may prove useful within the DOE complex in demonstrating how a large ER project can be summarized. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2015

The evolution of the Nevada National Security site waste acceptance criteria - 15312

The Nevada National Security Site Waste Acceptance Criteria (DOE/NV--325) is an evolution of requirements spanning almost three decades of waste acceptance at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The original waste acceptance criteria (WAC) document was written in 1978 (document NVO-185) and underwent multiple revisions as time passed and disposal experience was gained. This document came into being when the NNSS first started receiving significant quantities of low-level radioactive waste (LLW) from offsite U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) generators, such as the Mound and Rocky Flats Plants. The original WAC was far less prescriptive and rigorous than the current criteria since many of the current DOE order directives, Federal/State laws, and regulations did not exist. The current WAC reflects the results of numerous revisions in order to address the nuances of the varied waste streams and package configurations accepted for disposal at the NNSS. This includes waste streams that exhibit challenges not previously faced or covered by the WAC and therefore, from time to time, require new information and or changes to be made to the WAC. These wastes now represent a growing percentage of the remaining waste at cleanup sites across the DOE Complex. These waste streams present challenges, such as the technical basis for ensuring safe transportation to and disposal at the NNSS. The current WAC (Rev. 10 dated June 2013), is Available online at: http://www.nv.energy.gov/library/publications/Environmental/DOENV{sub 3}25.pdf). Other challenges for the NNSS include incorporating new and emerging technologies and addressing stakeholder concerns. Addressing these challenges sometimes results in changes to the NNSS WAC. Drivers for revising the NNSS WAC over the years have included operating experience improvements, the need to specify waste origin/ownership, and identifying preferred transportation routing. This paper will discuss various aspects of the NNSS WAC, and how it has evolved based upon DOE orders and requirements, acceptance of offsite mixed wastes, acceptance of non-radioactive classified wastes, stakeholder concerns and agreements, and the changing face of the remaining legacy waste at DOE sites across the United States. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2015

Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) Environmental Remediation Using EPA's Model Evaluation Guidance to Move to Closure - 15588

The National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) has adapted the Environmental Protection Agency's guidance on environmental model evaluation as a framework for evaluating corrective action investigation models. Model evaluation is an important confidence building activity, which is needed to support closure of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) Corrective Action Units (CAUs) associated with underground nuclear testing. Through this process, site-investigation models of groundwater flow and contaminant transport are reviewed and compared to new site-specific data to determine if the results can be used to support regulatory decisions required for closure and to achieve NNSA/NFO site management objectives. The regulatory decisions include identifying and establishing CAU regulatory boundaries; identifying institutional controls, including use-restriction boundaries; and developing a long-term closure monitoring program. A successful case study from Frenchman Flat, Nevada is used to illustrate the model evaluation process. Groundwater flow and transport from two of the 10 underground nuclear tests in Frenchman Flat had the largest potential for contaminating groundwater, and were selected for evaluation. Wells were drilled, logged, hydraulically tested, sampled, and analyzed for radionuclides and the data was evaluated with respect to previous site conceptualization and numerical model results. The approach and results of this process as applied to the PIN STRIPE test and how it helped build confidence to close the Frenchman Flat CAU is described in this case study. (authors)

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

Risk informed cyber security for nuclear power plants - 342

Nuclear power plants are increasingly adding digital components for plant operation, safety, and security. These digital components fill a gap with legacy equipment where replacement components no longer exist. They also benefit operation of the plant by increasing efficiency in power generation, monitoring of equipment and plant parameters, as well as aiding operator control. However, the addition of digital components and systems also adds cyber risks with previously unanalyzed failure modes and attack vectors are introduced with these new systems. These risks are difficult to identify, analyze, and mitigate due to the increasingly complex nature of the digital components and the integration of these components with additional plant processes and communication networks. The research presented in this paper develops a new method that addresses the cyber risk to inform appropriate levels of protection. EPRI and Sandia are working under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to develop an effective method of evaluating the cyber risk in production nuclear power facilities. The Cyber Hazards Analysis Risk Methodology (CHARM) focuses on ensuring adequate controls are in place for appropriate cyber protection of the plant from radiological release or generation risk. Existing plant hazards analyses (e.g., PRA, FTA) do not account for software deficiencies or adversarial intent. This method leverages existing plant analyses and MIT's Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) to create cyber informed fault trees. These new fault trees will provide the basis for comprehensive cyber risk analysis and help ensure potential gaps in cyber security controls are identified and corrected. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Internship Presentation: Integrating Safety and Cybersecurity: Security-by-Design with SOWT Analysis for Reactor Testing

This study covers leveraging reactor testing facilities that are primarily designed with a focus on safety to enhance cybersecurity testing. By incorporating reactor security-by-design with reactor safety-by-design principles and adopting defense-in-depth strategies that emphasize both safety and security, the research evaluates applicable cyber tools, models, and solutions. This includes simulating specific cyber-attack scenarios using reactor simulators and performing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to improve the cybersecurity of reactor systems.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN↗
DOE OSTI2026

TSDC: Transportation Secure Data Center: Real-World Data for Planning, Modeling, and Analysis

The Transportation Secure Data Center is a centralized repository for high-resolution transportation data from hundreds of travel and transit surveys and studies. It makes vital transportation data broadly available to users while preserving the privacy of survey participants. It houses surveys and studies conducted by state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, transit agencies, cities, and other public agencies. Meanwhile, the Livewire Data Platform empowers research, industry, and academic partners to easily and securely preserve, maintain, share, discover, and gain access to transportation and mobility data. Livewire accommodates a range of datasets, including behavioral, experimental, model, analytical, and raw data at the vehicle, traveler, and system levels. Datasets support mobility research and planning spanning urban science, connected and automated vehicles, fueling and charging infrastructure, mobility decision science, multimodal transportation, vehicle efficiency, and more.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Supporting U.S. National Security Through Cybersecurity Partnerships

At NLR, we're studying energy evolutions and threats to understand the challenges they pose and uncover ways to leverage grid advancements to achieve more secure, defensible, and reliable systems. Our integrated research approach bridges the gap between cyber threats and real-world consequences to deliver actionable solutions that reduce vulnerabilities and help strengthen U.S. national security.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Incorporating the Role(s) of Human Actors in Complex System Design for Safety and Security

Traditional systems engineering demonstrates the importance of customer needs in scoping and defining design requirements; yet, in practice, other human stakeholders are often absent from early lifecycle phases. Human factors are often omitted in practice when evaluating and down-selecting design options due to constraints such as time, money, access to user populations, or difficulty in proving system robustness through the inclusion of human behaviors. Advances in systems engineering increasingly include non-technical influences into the design, deployment, operations, and maintenance of interacting components to achieve common performance objectives. Furthermore, such advances highlight the need to better account for the various roles of human actors to achieve desired performance outcomes in complex systems. Many of these efforts seek to infuse lessons and concepts from human factors (enhanced decision-making through Crew Resource Management), systems safety (Rasmussen's “drift toward danger”) and organization science (Giddens' recurrent human acts leading to emergent behaviors) into systems engineering to better understand how socio-technical interactions impact emergent system performance. Safety and security are examples of complex system performance outcomes that are directly impacted by varying roles of human actors. Using security performance of high consequence facilities as a representative use case, this article will outline the System Context Lenses to understand how to include various roles of human actors into systems engineering design. Several exemplar applications of this organizing lenses will be summarized and used to highlight more generalized insights for the broader systems engineering community.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2012

Statistical Methods Applied to Gamma-ray Spectroscopy Algorithms in Nuclear Security Missions

In a wide range of nuclear security missions, gamma-ray spectroscopy is a critical research and development priority. One particularly relevant challenge is the interdiction of special nuclear material for which gamma-ray spectroscopy supports the goals of detecting and identifying gamma-ray sources. This manuscript examines the existing set of spectroscopy methods, attempts to categorize them by the statistical methods on which they rely, and identifies methods that have yet to be considered. Our examination shows that current methods effectively estimate the effect of counting uncertainty but in many cases do not address larger sources of decision uncertainty—ones that are significantly more complex. We thus explore the premise that significantly improving algorithm performance requires greater coupling between the problem physics that drives data acquisition and statistical methods that analyze such data. Untapped statistical methods, such as Bayes Modeling Averaging and hierarchical and empirical Bayes methods have the potential to reduce decision uncertainty by more rigorously and comprehensively incorporating all sources of uncertainty. We expect that application of such methods will demonstrate progress in meeting the needs of nuclear security missions by improving on the existing numerical infrastructure for which these analyses have not been conducted.

detection algorithm.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Risk-Averse Bi-Level Stochastic Network Interdiction Model for Cyber-Security Risk Management

Security of cyber networks is crucial; recent severe cyber-attacks have had a devastating effect on many large organizations. The attack graph, which maps the potential attack paths of a cyber network, is a popular tool for analyzing cyber system vulnerability. In this study, we propose a bi-level stochastic network interdiction model on an attack graph to enable a risk-averse, resource constrained cyber network defender to optimally deploy security countermeasures that protect against attackers with an uncertain budget. This risk- averse conditional-value-at-risk (CVaR) model minimizes a weighted sum of the expected maximum loss over all scenarios and the expected maximum loss from the most damaging attack scenarios. We develop a customized constraint and column generation algorithm to solve our model as well as several acceleration techniques to improve the computational efficiency. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the acceleration techniques enable the solution of relatively large problems within a reasonable amount of time: applying all the acceleration techniques also reduces the average computation time of the basic algorithm by 71% for 100-node graphs. Using metrics called mean-risk value of stochastic solution and value of risk-aversion, computational results suggest that our stochastic risk-averse model significantly outperforms deterministic and risk-neutral models when 1) the distribution of attacker budget is heavy-right-tailed and 2) the defender is highly risk-averse.

Bhuiyan, Tanveer H.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling distributed energy resource aggregations in security constrained unit commitment and economic dispatch

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently issued Order 2222, which requires all wholesale electricity markets in the US to allow distributed energy resources (DERs) to participate in the market as aggregated resources. These DER aggregations may be composed of many individual resources that are offered and dispatched by the market as a single entity. We present here a model of a distributed energy resource aggregator (DERA) that is scheduled by a market operator’s security constrained unit commitment (SCUC) and security constrained economic dispatch (SCED). The DERA model includes constraints for battery energy storage systems (BESSs), demand response resources (DRRs), and a simple distributed energy resource (DER). This paper describes a model for each resource type and presents two methods for the DERA to generate market offer curves: a profit-maximizing optimization to compute cost curves and a direct cost algorithm to determine dispatch costs for each resource and combine into cost curves. Once all participating DERAs are scheduled in SCUC/SCED, the model is then modified to dispatch individual DERs to maximize profit or minimize schedule deviation of the DERAs. A simulation of a representative day illustrates the DERA offers, the scheduled generation, and the DERA dispatch. Findings show the potential for unavoidable schedule deviations due to internal DER constraints and due to economic incentives to deviate from the SCUC/SCED schedules. This highlights the importance of DERA offer construction on market efficiency and system reliability. Novel aspects of our approach include: (1) We consider the asymmetry of price incentives impacting DERAs from the wholesale market compared to those impacting consumers from the retail market, as imposed by current regulations and laws. (2) We model aggregate consumer response through statistically parameterizable utility functions rather than a potentially impractical approach of modeling each individual consumer. (3) We show how to use the DERA operational dispatch model to create offers into the wholesale electricity market. (4) We show how DERAs may fail to meet their scheduled dispatch because the market offer format may not permit them to fully express their operational features such as intertemporal costs and constraints to the market.

aggregations↗
DOE OSTI2014

Safety, security and dual-use chemicals

Many chemicals that are frequently used in laboratories and industries can be harmful if not handled properly. Chemical safety best practices are designed to protect people from accidentally being exposed to hazardous chemicals. On the other hand, chemical security best practices are designed to protect people from someone deliberately exposing others to hazardous chemicals. Finally, many chemical safety best practices overlap with chemical security best practices, but there are important differences, as will be discussed in this paper.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Idaho national laboratory to demonstrate collaboration first versus competition to accelerate achieving a secure clean energy future by 2031

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) announced at COP27 it would reach net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2031. As a Nuclear, Energy and Environment, and National Homeland Security laboratory, the predominant solution to closing the clean energy gap will include nuclear as a safe, clean, reliable and affordable electricity source with the additional benefit of producing heat and hydrogen to fuel INL’s large transportation fleet. INL’s collaboration first vs. competition is essential to the program’s success. The focused actions in INL’s Nuclear Roadmap include: Infrastructure, Licensing/Regulatory, Financial, Time to Market, Fuel Cycle and Public Confidence/Communications. The roadmap also includes nuclear technology innovations and creative partnerships with utility providers, regulators, businesses, community members, and Indigenous Peoples to accelerate deployment of advanced reactors. Through development of the Net-Zero Nuclear Roadmap, INL will offer a model to provide safe and secure energy for the nation and the world by: (1) establishing the necessary infrastructure on its 890-square mile site to support demonstration, (2) showing proven pathways through the licensing and regulation process, (3) partnering with utilities to ensure commercial application, and (4) collaborating with industry to site new technologies.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗