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Uranium-233 has played an important role in solution critical experiments going back to the 50's and 60's, including experiments from the Falstaff Program. More recently, management of legacy 233 U material across the DOE complex has led to a requirement for improved nuclear cross sections.
This report presents the results of monitoring conducted for water quality, water levels, and institutional controls in calendar year (CY) 2020 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Management (EM) Nevada Program’s Underground Test Area (UGTA) Activity at Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 98, Frenchman Flat (FF), at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), Nevada (Figure 1-1). This report also presents analytical laboratory results (including results of quality assurance/quality control samples, such as field duplicates [FDs]); and verification of use restrictions (URs), institutional controls, and water use. Groundwater samples were collected; water levels were measured; and well site surveillance was conducted in support of the Underground Test Area (UGTA) Closure Report for Corrective Action Unit 98: Frenchman Flat, Nevada National Security Site, Nevada (NNSA/NFO, 2016) and its ensuing Records of Technical Change (ROTCs).
The U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) plans to demolish 10 buildings and one structure in Area 12 Camp at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in Nye County, Nevada, to meet current and future National Weapons Science, Global and Homeland Security Program, and Environmental Management mission requirements and to reduce dangers to site workers from some of these resources. These demolitions constitute an undertaking subject to review under Title 54 U.S.C. § 306108, commonly known as Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, Title 54 U.S.C. § 300101, et seq., and its implementing regulations, 36 C.F.R. Part 800. These resources were recorded and evaluated as individually ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places (National Register or NRHP) by Menocal and Shaw (2019). Upon review by the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and internal review by Desert Research Institute (DRI) and NNSA/NFO staff, it was determined that these resources needed to be rerecorded and evaluated in relation to what appeared to be a National Register-eligible Historic District made up of the entirety of Area 12 Camp. Based on preliminary information, it appeared that all 11 resources would likely be contributing elements of that historic district. With that assumption in mind, recording of the entire proposed Area 12 Camp Historic District was done for three purposes. First, it would result in a definitive significance evaluation of the 11 resources in question. Second, recording of the entire camp would be offered as an appropriate mitigation measure for the demolition of these resources. Third, it would present an essential background for future management of resources within the district boundaries. Prior to the present survey, Area 12 Camp had not yet been systematically recorded; therefore, DRI surveyed an area of approximately 229 acres for architectural resources. This effort resulted in the identification, recording, and evaluation of the Area 12 Camp Historic District (SHPO Resource No. D372), including the identification of its contributing components. This district is recommended eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A and C. It is unevaluated under Criteria B and D. The Area 12 Historic District contains 71 Principal Resources, which include landscapes, buildings, and structures. Of these resources, 69 (including 10 of the 11 resources to be removed) are recommended as contributing elements of the historic district during its period of significance corresponding to nuclear testing from 1960 through 1992. During most of the Cold War, the government reservation now called the NNSS was named the Nevada Test Site (NTS).
The Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 98, Frenchman Flat (FF) Closure Report (CR) (NNSA/NFO, 2016) and its ensuing Records of Technical Change (ROTCs) (compiled in DOE/EMNV, 2019) required the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Management (EM) Nevada Program’s Underground Test Area (UGTA) Activity to collect data for five years to establish triggers for the monitoring network and analyze the monitoring points for viability in long-term monitoring. This document provides the results of the five-year evaluation and presents recommendations for future monitoring of CAU 98.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is located in a moderate wildfire risk region. The region has a history of damaging wildland fire activity and is also susceptible to changing environmental conditions (drought, elevated temperatures) that may lead to an increase in wildfire frequency and consequence over time. An integrated, site-wide wildland fire management plan is required by the Department of Energy and is to be consistent with the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. The NREL Wildland Fire Management Plan (WFMP) provides an integrated approach to reducing risk to wildland fire at NREL. The goals of the WFMP are to protect human health and safety, protect NREL facilities and research, enhance community protection, diminish risk and consequences of wildland fires, and maintain the health of the ecosystem. The WFMP accomplishes these goals through the use of tools such as fire behavior modeling, fire growth modeling, a structure ignition risk assessment, and through the application of robust fire prevention, emergency management, and environmental programs. The NREL WFMP was developed in a collaborative manner with input from regional stakeholders including cities, counties, local fire departments, and other governmental agencies. The WFMP provides for recommendations to reduce overall wildland fire risk to life safety and property at NREL.
In an effort to define the roadmap for establishing the necessary electrical infrastructure at the Idaho National Laboratory to fully support connection of NRIC reactors, this roadmap serves to identify the current forecasted reactors planned for installation at INL and provide a consolidated list of the identified infrastructure improvements that will be necessary to support testing of NRIC reactors. Additionally, the roadmap will leverage this information to establish an integrated timeline to support detailed planning and execution of system improvements. To drive this planning, requirements, as derived from authoritative sources, will be identified. A clear definition of impacted stakeholders will be established, as well as a list of risks that will need to be managed as the program moves forward.
The purpose of this document is to provide a conceptual design of the distribution system application development platform being developed for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) Program by the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium project GM0063. The platform will be referred to as GridAPPS-D. This document provides a high level, conceptual view of the platform and provides related background and contextual information. This document is intended to both educate readers about the technical work of the project and to serve as a point of reference for the project team. The document will be updated as the project progresses.
In an effort to define the roadmap for establishing the necessary electrical infrastructure at the Idaho National Laboratory to fully support connection of NRIC reactors, this roadmap serves to identify the current forecasted reactors planned for installation at INL and provide a consolidated list of the identified infrastructure improvements that will be necessary to support testing of NRIC reactors. Additionally, the roadmap will leverage this information to establish an integrated timeline to support detailed planning and execution of system improvements. To drive this planning, requirements, as derived from authoritative sources, will be identified. A clear definition of impacted stakeholders will be established, as well as a list of risks that will need to be managed as the program moves forward.
This report presents a comparative assessment of the performance of frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) and spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR) in detecting a wide range of electrical cable anomalies. All tests and results reported herein were performed at the PNNL Accelerated and Real-Time Environmental Nodal Assessment (ARENA) cable and motor test bed. The primary objective of this work was to evaluate the effectiveness of SSTDR, a fledgling cable monitoring technique that shows promise for application in online monitoring of energized cable systems, against FDR, an offline technique widely employed in the nuclear power plant (NPP) industry. FDR tests are becoming more widely used in nuclear power plant cable aging management and test programs – particularly for low voltage cables. FDR capabilities for these kinds of tests have been reported by PNNL and others. The FDR test is performed on de-energized cables by connecting the FDR instrument to two of the cable conductors, or one conductor and the shield. A broad band low voltage (< 5 V) chirp is introduced in the cable, and any reflected response is captured in the frequency domain. The captured reflection is then processed by performing an inverse Fourier transform to a time domain response which can then be converted to a distance response based on the cable velocity of propagation (VoP). SSTDR measurements are functionally similar to FDR measurements in that a broad-band voltage signal composed of a square or sine wave modulated pseudo-random sequence of chips (< 5 volts), is injected onto one of the cable conductors. The injected signal will experience partial energy reflection and transmission at each impedance discontinuity along the transmission line. Any reflected response is detected by computing a cross-correlation between the reflected signals and a delayed copy of the incident SSTDR signal. the time delay for the reflected signal to experience the best matched correlation with the incident signal, indicates the travel time for the signal to reach a change in impedance. By knowing this time delay and velocity of propagation (VoP) of the signal, one can compute the physical distance. A big advantage that SSTDR measurements have over other methods is the ability to be connected to energized or live wires (currently up to 1kV) thereby enabling online monitoring of cables. SSTDR has been used successfully in several applications, e.g., aircraft, rail, and photovoltaic systems. In this work FDR and SSTDR cable assessment techniques were used to characterize a variety of cable anomalies and faults including: (1) Presence or absence of a motor; (2) Ground faults and short circuit faults; (3) Moist environments and water ingress faults; (4) Accelerated thermal aging. Both shielded and non-shielded cables were evaluated in this report. Offline measurements were made using FDR and online measurements were made by SSTDR for a range of test scenarios. Based on the results across all cable anomalies evaluated in this study, FDR displayed high sensitivity towards cable condition assessment, while SSTDR showed promise for future application in monitoring NPP cable systems. However, further developments are suggested to improve the resolution and sensitivity of SSTDR towards faults and anomalies in low voltage cables.rt presents a comparative
This is the user guide for the tool described here: Development of technologies that convert carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into products is part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Carbon Conversion Program portfolio. One such technology under development converts CO 2 to value-added products via electrochemical reduction, where catalysts are used on the cathode to promote CO 2 conversion across the electrochemical catalyst (ECC) cell. Broadly, the ECC is integrated with balance of plant (BOP) equipment (e.g., compressors, pumps, heat exchangers, purification units) in system configurations to produce the desired product. To guide research and development (R&D) toward advancements that may make such conversion technologies economically competitive, researchers may use sensitivity analyses related to the ECC system cost and performance, including that of the cathodic and anodic catalysts. This tool is intended to inform developers and Program in assessing proposed R&D on ECC systems early in the development process. Results will guide researchers on where efforts would be best directed. The tool may be accessed here: https://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analysis/details?id=55293cb1-6881-4181-a2b0-d00b711ce74b.
This plan describes the approach for collecting and analyzing groundwater samples to meet the objectives of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental describes the approach for collecting and analyzing groundwater samples to meet the objectives of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Management (EM) Nevada Program’s UGTA Activity. The Plan is designed to ensure compliance with the UGTA Quality Assurance Plan (QAP), and the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order.
This document summarizes outcomes and finding in FY 2022 from a project sponsored by the Nuclear Safety Research and Development Program, which is managed by the Office of Nuclear Safety, within the Office of Environment, Health, Safety and Security. Literature survey and data collection are discussed in Sections 1 and 2, respectively. Numerical modeling of particulate transports in ventilation systems performed for standard geometries and a full-scale ventilation system is described in Section 3, and Section 4 summarizes the development of proof-of-concept sensors featuring ultrasound technology for particle deposition removal. Conclusions and recommendations are outlined in Section 5.
On behalf of the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program in the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, we are organizing a Workshop on Energy-Efficient Computing for Science (EECS). Energy efficiency involves coordination across all the interoperating components of a computing system—in particular, applications, algorithms, system software, programming models, data management, and the hardware on which they run. Looking 10-15 years into the future, the goal is to dramatically lower the energy costs of the computational platforms (from the data center to the edge) serving DOE science while expanding the capabilities of these systems, broadening their applicability to science challenges of interest to DOE and the nation.
Molten salt reactor developers rely on thermal property data to design, license and operate the reactors. The Molten Salt Thermal Database-Thermophysical Properties (MSTDB-TP) was established under the DOE Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to serve as a single source of thermophysical property values measured for a wide variety of molten salt systems for use by researchers, molten salt reactor developers, and regulators. These properties include density, viscosity and thermal diffusivity and conductivity. Published measurements of molten salt properties are lacking for many salts of interest and the data that are available are often inconsistent. This creates a challenge for MSR developers when determining which property values to use when designing their reactors. It is the purpose of this work to apply a consistent ranking system to all data entries that indicates the quality of property values listed in the database. These rankings will be the technical basis for down-selections by the database developers and alert users about the quality of the available property values. MSTDB-TP collects all available property data and indicates preferred data sets or correlations. However, all available data sets are included in the database. Quality assessments and rankings are being applied to data in MSTDB-TP to provide an indication of the quality of each data set independent of consistency with other data. Previous reports detailed the ranking system that was followed and assessments of unary fluoride data sets. Documentation of the quality of data in MSTDB-TP was continued by reviewing and assessing all available sources of density, viscosity and thermal diffusivity or conductivity values for unary chloride salts in MSTDB-TP V3.0 using the same criteria.
This document summarizes outcomes and findings from a project sponsored by the Nuclear Safety Research and Development Program, which is managed by the Office of Nuclear Safety, within the Office of Environment, Health, Safety and Security.
The Underground Test Area (UGTA) Sampling Plan for Corrective Action Units (CAUs) 101 and 102: Central and Western Pahute Mesa, Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), Nevada (referred to herein as “the Plan”) (DOE/EMNV, 2025) describes the approach for collecting and analyzing groundwater samples to meet the objectives of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Management (EM) Nevada Program’s UGTA Activity. The Plan is designed to ensure compliance with the UGTA Quality Assurance Plan (QAP) (DOE/EMNV, 2024), and the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) (1996, as amended).
Olfaction plays a key role in the location of food and oviposition resources by tephritid fruit flies. Adult females, including oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis, can sustain egg production throughout their lives provided they obtain sufficient protein. Thus, preferential attraction to food or oviposition sites (host fruit) will depend on a fly’s particular physiological state. In this study, laboratory bioassays were conducted with mature, mated B. dorsalis (provisioned protein and sugar ad libitum) to evaluate attraction to traps baited with torula yeast versus six host fruit sources (guava, guava juice, mango, orange, Surinam cherry, or white sapote). Females that preferred fruit laid a significant number of eggs around the trap entrance (average 405 eggs/fly), while almost no eggs were laid by females that preferred yeast (0.5 and 1.3 eggs/fly on two occasions). Similar results were observed in a bioassay using headspace extracts of guava juice and torula yeast, supporting olfactory-mediated responses. When individual females were allowed to oviposit in guava juice traps 0–24 h after a choice test, 45.8% of females that chose guava juice laid eggs (average 14.7 eggs/fly), compared with 27.5% that chose yeast (average 6.5 eggs/fly). Dissections indicated that females with a preference for guava juice had an egg load 2.4 times greater than females that preferred yeast. These results suggest there is an olfactory-based behavioral switch in preference from protein to host odors when female B. dorsalis are oviposition-ready. We discuss the implications of our findings for practical behavioral management and detection programs for B. dorsalis.
A new generation of heat pump water heaters (HPWH) has been introduced into the U.S. market that promises to provide significant energy savings for water heating. Many electric utilities are promoting their widespread adoption as a key technology for meeting energy conservation goals and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is, however, considerable uncertainty regarding the space conditioning impact of an HPWH installed in a conditioned space. There is also uncertainty regarding the potential for deployment of HPWHs in demand response (DR) programs to help manage and balance peak utility loads in a similar manner as conventional electric resistance water heaters (ERWH). To help answer these uncertainties, controlled experiments have been undertaken over 30 months in a matched pair of unoccupied Lab Homes located on the campus of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington.