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DOE OSTI2021

Markets and Economic Requirements for Fission Batteries and Other Nuclear Systems

Fission Batteries (FBs) are nuclear reactors defined by five characteristics which enable large-scale deployment: cost competitive, standardized sizes for economic mass production, easy installation and removal, secure and safe unattended operation with high reliability. FBs are not defined by technology or power level. Technical and market considerations suggest that most FBs will produce 20 to 30 MWt. This proceedings reports on the outcomes of two workshops that were held in January 2021 to better define markets and economic challenges for FBs. Three major markets were identified. The largest market is the industrial and commercial heat market. There are about 4000 industrial users (excluding utilities) that require more than one megawatt of heat. The number of customers versus size of heat demand was determined. In a low-carbon world there is the potential for many additional customers—including expanded biofuels production and district heat. The second market is for non-grid electricity. This includes co-generation plants that produce heat and electricity for a single customer. The third market is the maritime market with ~100,000 ships worldwide. In the United States, natural gas is the low-cost energy option today and will remain so unless constraints or taxes impact its use. If restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, the FB competition includes natural gas with carbon capture, biofuels, hydrogen and grid electricity. Natural gas with carbon capture is not economically viable on a small scale. Biofuels may be expensive but may be the economically preferred option for locations with small energy demands of a few megawatts. Hydrogen is a potential competitor with many of the characteristics of natural gas. Grid electricity is not a competitive source of heat. For FBs to be economically competitive, the price of delivered heat must be $20-50/MWh ($6-15/million BTU). The economically competitive range for non-grid electricity is estimated at $70-100/MWh. These electricity prices are competitive with the retail prices of electricity in many parts of the United States for the customer. FBs are not expected to be competitive selling wholesale electricity to the grid. To achieve the aforementioned cost targets for heat and electricity markets, FB designers must (1) maximize the power output within the constraints of a FB (e.g., truck transportability, passive decay heat removal), (2) drastically reduce the size of onsite staff, (3) adopt core designs with low fuel costs (enrichment and fabrication), and (4) develop a system design that is efficiently manufactured in factories. The business case depends upon more than being just a replacement for natural gas. The largest incentives for adoption of FBs is where they create new markets and new sources of revenue. An example is the paper and pulp industry that burns biomass wastes to provide heat and electricity to make paper. An external heat source could meet the demand for heat and electricity by the paper process and enable converting waste biomass into liquid biofuels rather than burning to provide heat. Other markets, such as data centers, are driven by special energy requirements such as extreme reliability. Most customers are not in the energy business but need heat and electricity to produce a product—a manufactured good, education, retail sales (shopping malls), marine transport or some other product. As a consequence, there will be large incentives to lease rather than own FBs. Leasing avoids the regulatory challenges that remain with the owner of the FB. Leasing creates large incentives for FP standardization of sizes and transportability to maintain the value of the FB at the end of the lease—similar to the leasing of jet engines and aircraft. The economic constraints combined with technical constraints suggest competitive FBs will likely have outputs exceeding 10 MWt. There appear to be little incentives for very long-lived reactor cores because such machines require much larger inventories of fuel. Maintenance requirements and the options to provide technology updates may favor shorter lifetimes (~5 years). The assessment is that there is the potential for FBs to be economically viable and play a major role in global decarbonization in three markets: heat, non-grid electricity and maritime applications.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2023

A Plan to Qualify New Fuel for the High Flux Isotope Reactor for Material Minimization

The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is one of five high power research reactors the Office of Material Management and Minimization (M3) Program, Office of Conversion is working to convert from using highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to using low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. This effort stems from the primary objective within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to achieve permanent threat reduction by minimizing, and when possible, eliminating weapon-usable nuclear material around the world. Under M3’s Office of Conversion, the U.S. High Performance Research Reactor (USHPRR) Project is pursuing fuel qualification and licensing of the high-performance reactors to operate with LEU fuels. All high-performance reactors except HFIR will be converted to LEU monolithic uranium-molybdenum alloy fuel. HFIR will be evaluated for conversion to LEU using a uranium silicide fuel, namely, U3Si2-Al dispersion fuel.The mission of the USHPRR Project is to develop the technology needed to reduce, and eventually eliminate, worldwide use of HEU in civilian applications. The goal is to develop the technical means needed to use low enriched uranium (LEU) instead of HEU fuel in research and test reactors without significant penalties in performance, economics, or safety of the reactors. The USHPRR Project has four major elements, called Pillars: Fuel Qualification (FQ) managed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Fuel Fabrication (FF) managed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Reactor Conversion (RC) managed at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne), and Cross-Cutting (CC) managed at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). FQ is responsible for the qualification of the fuel type. RC is responsible for supporting reactor conversion analysis and overseeing licensing submittals leading to conversions of domestic reactors to LEU fuel. For the FQ effort, FQ (INL) worked in collaboration with RC (Argonne) and ORNL to develop the plan for the uranium silicide fuel qualification for HFIR.The resulting HFIR Fuel Qualification Plan provides the general approach for the USHPRR team to move the selected uranium silicide fuel design for HFIR conversion through qualification. Authorization and use in HFIR will be approved through the DOE’s Office of Science. Uranium silicide fuel was previously qualified in NUREG-1313 at an approximate maximum heat flux of 1.4 MW/m2 and a maximum fuel section temperature of about 130°C. In addition to the different regulator process utilized by DOE, these upper limits will be exceeded in HFIR; therefore, further testing will be necessary to ensure the fuel can meet HFIR qualification requirements. The HFIR fuel loading may exceed 4.8 gU/cm3 which was determined in the NUREG-1313 safety evaluation to be acceptable for use in non-power NRC-regulated reactors provided there exist no other safety considerations. In addition, the uranium silicide fuel will need to be qualified in a HFIR-specific design. This plan includes the currently available information from the USHPRR Project Functions and Requirements document and expands these requirements to ensure that planned tests have traceable results providing evidence that the requirements have been met. Data collection methods are discussed as well as the process to show that the requirements have been met. This document is designed to provide a pathway for researchers to obtain data necessary and at the appropriate quality level for HFIR fuel qualification.

Shokes, Tamara↗

DOE OSTI2024

HiFiPDV2 v. 2

SAND2024-01061O The HiFiPDV-2 software is similar to other photonic Doppler velocimetry (PDV) analysis codes in that it converts signals from intensity-time space to frequency-time space using a short-time Fourier transform (STFT). It then analyzes peaks of the resulting power spectral density information to extract the velocity-time history. The unique aspects of HiFiPDV and HiFiPDV-2 are that this reduction process is repeated for an array of reasonable STFT input variables. The resulting population distribution of output velocity-time histories is evaluated to determine the most likely velocity history and its associated uncertainty. This uncertainty is defined as the systematic uncertainty of the PDV signal as it is a function of input values to the reduction process. The HiFiPDV-2 program brings new functionality and efficiency to these calculations—most notably significant reductions in memory usage and calculation times, the ability to evaluate frequency-shifted signals, and the ability to filter out baseline signals. Developers recommend that users have at least 2 GB of RAM per CPU core in their system. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Voorhees, Travis↗

DOE OSTI2021

A High-Frequency Planar Transformer with Medium-Voltage Isolation: Preprint

This paper presents the design of a low-loss, high-frequency planar transformer having medium-voltage (10's of kV) isolation capability while transformer primary and secondary windings are interleaved to reduce losses. Medium-voltage isolation between adjacent printed circuit board (PCB) layers is extremely challenging using traditional PCB dielectrics. The isolation requirement is met using PCB with $7$\,kV/mil polyimide (Panasonic Felios RF775) as the dielectric, and by an appropriate layout of the windings and the inter-winding vias. The transformer is used to implement a dual active bridge (DAB) converter in a stackable dc-ac architecture where the dc port is connected to a photovoltaic (PV) string and ac outputs are connected in series to achieve direct PV string-to-medium voltage conversion without the need for low-voltage collection or a bulky line frequency transformer. Since each DAB transformer processes time-varying power, a design methodology is developed to minimize line-cycle-averaged losses. Experimental results are presented for a 1:1 planar transformer in a 7.5\,kW SiC-based dc-to-ac module operating at 200 kHz. Isolation of 26 kV between the primary and secondary layers and between the windings and the core is verified using a hipot tester.

41 EE - Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)↗

DOE OSTI2023

A Plan to Qualify New Fuel for the High Flux Isotope Reactor for Material Minimization

The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is one of five high power research reactors the Office of Material Management and Minimization (M3) Program, Office of Conversion is working to convert from using highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to using low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. This effort stems from the primary objective within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to achieve permanent threat reduction by minimizing, and when possible, eliminating weapon-usable nuclear material around the world. Under M3’s Office of Conversion, the U.S. High Performance Research Reactor (USHPRR) Project is pursuing fuel qualification and licensing of LEU fuels to support the high-performance reactors. All high-performance reactors except HFIR will be converted to LEU monolithic uranium-molybdenum alloy fuel. HFIR will be evaluated for conversion to LEU using a uranium silicide fuel, namely, U3Si2-Al dispersion fuel. The mission of the USHPRR Project is to develop the technology needed to reduce, and eventually eliminate, worldwide use of HEU in civilian applications. The goal is to develop the technical means needed to use low enriched uranium (LEU) instead of HEU fuel in research and test reactors without significant penalties in performance, economics, or safety of the reactors. The USHPRR Project has four major elements, called Pillars: Fuel Qualification (FQ) managed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Fuel Fabrication (FF) managed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Reactor Conversion (RC) managed at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne), and Cross-Cutting (CC) managed at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). FQ is responsible for the qualification of the fuel type. RC is responsible for supporting reactor conversion analysis and overseeing licensing submittals leading to conversions of domestic reactors to LEU fuel. For the FQ effort, FQ (INL) worked in collaboration with RC (Argonne) and ORNL to develop the plan for the uranium silicide fuel qualification for HFIR. The resulting HFIR Fuel Qualification Plan provides the general approach for the USHPRR team to move the selected uranium silicide fuel design for HFIR conversion through qualification. Authorization and use in HFIR will be approved through the DOE’s Office of Science. Uranium silicide fuel was previously qualified in NUREG-1313 at an approximate maximum heat flux of 1.4 MW/m2 and a maximum fuel section temperature of about 130°C. In addition to the different regulator process utilized by DOE, these upper limits will be exceeded in HFIR; therefore, further testing will be necessary to ensure the fuel can meet HFIR qualification requirements. The HFIR fuel loading may exceed 4.8 gU/cm3 which was determined in the NUREG-1313 safety evaluation to be acceptable for use in non-power NRC-licensed reactors provided there exist no other safety considerations. In addition, the uranium silicide fuel will need to be qualified in a HFIR-specific design. This plan includes the currently available information from the USHPRR Project Functions and Requirements document and expands these requirements to ensure that planned tests have traceable results providing evidence that the requirements have been met. Data collection methods are discussed as well as the process to show that the requirements have been met. This document is designed to provide a pathway for researchers to obtain data necessary and at the appropriate quality level for HFIR fuel qualification

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Shared mooring system designs and cost estimates for wave energy arrays

For floating renewable energy devices to become more cost-efficient and commercially scalable, their mooring system designs must be low-cost and suited for large-scale installations. Large arrays of floating devices, such as wave energy converters (WECs), will likely be designed with an individual mooring system for each device in the array. However, new mooring technology advancements provide options to use shared mooring lines to connect adjacent devices to one another, reducing the total number of anchors in the array, thereby reducing material use and cost. Here, this paper explores the design, modeling, and cost analysis of shared mooring systems for various sizes of arrays consisting of heaving oscillating water column (OWC) WECs. Shared mooring systems for WEC arrays sized in 2 x N and N x N grid layouts are designed to meet the relevant design standards, checking their performance with a nonlinear time-domain dynamic simulation, and the costs of each are calculated and compared. Several assumptions are taken in the design process to produce efficient results, providing a preliminary optimization for guidance on design decisions rather than a full, detailed design analysis. Mooring system costs per WEC were found to decrease as the number of WECs in the array increase, up to certain array sizes. The 2 x 3 array had the lowest mooring system cost per WEC out of all arrays considered, with a 60% cost reduction relative to using individual mooring systems. The 3 x 3 and 4 x 4 arrays achieved a 50% cost per WEC reduction. In addition to these significant cost reductions, the shared mooring system designs can provide advantages through smaller mooring system footprints, lower installation times, and less seabed disturbance.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

DOE OSTI2024

CalWave's xWave Design for PacWave (Final Technical Report)

CalWave Inc. (CalWave) is developing a wave energy converter (WEC) technology that can generate electricity from ocean waves. CalWave’s design offers a unique approach to wave energy conversion that operates fully submerged and can actively adjust the wave excitation. This capability gives the architecture enhanced survivability in ocean storms without adding significant costs. Prior to this project, CalWave had completed a demonstration of a fully functional WEC system in an open ocean demonstration at nominal 1:5 scale under FOA 1663. The goal of this project was the detailed design, following relevant standards and industry best-practices, of a variant of the xWave WEC technology that can safely and efficiently operate at the DOE’s PacWave South test site for a targeted deployment of up two years. The WEC design and associated review processes proceeded in two distinct project phases: a ‘Preliminary’ and a ‘Final’ design phase. The first phase of the project consisted of the systematic design of the WEC’s key features with regards to appropriate IEC standards. The work resulted in a preliminary design of the xWave hull including structural and Power Take-Off (PTO) load estimates, as well as performance estimates for all ocean conditions the WEC would operate in at PacWave South. Following the first open-water demonstration of CalWave’s small-scale “x1” device under FOA 1663, lessons learned were fed directly into a comprehensive review of the xWave design in the second design phase of this FOA project. CalWave’s work was supported by Sandia National Lab (SNL) and the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) on the holistic WEC design, and detailed feedback from specialized partners on hull design, mooring and anchoring specification, and electrical grid interconnection. Optimization of the WEC system was performed using a novel numerical optimization tool developed by Sandia and optimization trends were confirmed via an experimental model scale tank test campaign. Performance estimates for PacWave and a detailed xWave design including integration of all relevant system components were concluded. The mooring design was also concluded in the Final design phase using the most up to date sea floor characterization (CPT) data.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

DOE OSTI2025

A sub-5 ps jitter time-to-digital converter ASIC with back-gate delay tuning in 22 nm CMOS

We present the design of a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) ASIC together with performance characterization results at cryogenic temperature (6-8 K), and at room temperature using emulated Low-Gain Avalanche Detector (LGAD) signals. The TDC design uses a two-step architecture with a ring-oscillator based counter and a Vernier delay line fine TDC. The TDC is implemented in an FD-SOI process, and back-gate tuning is used not only to correct threshold variation due to cryogenic operation, but also as a novel way to tune TDC delay elements with very little overhead. Using this technique, we demonstrate a design with very low power (0.5 mW) and area (0.003 mm 2 ). We present test results using the Fermilab Constant Fraction Discriminator (FCFD) ASIC to produce discriminated signals from an internal charge injection mechanism that mimics the waveform and signal amplitude of minimum ionizing particles impinging on LGAD sensors. We characterize the time precision of the full system and verify that the TDC ASIC contributes a negligible amount to the total system time precision, fully consistent with the expected jitter contribution of less than 5 ps. In conclusion, the results presented here demonstrate the utility of our TDC for applications in physics and quantum communications.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2023

Boosting the performance of reversible solid oxide electrochemical cells with a novel hybrid oxygen electrode, Pr 1.39 Ba 0.14 Sr 0.53 Co 1.48 Fe 0.76 O 6- δ -Ba 0.66 Sr 0.34 CoO 3- δ

Solid oxide electrochemical cells (SOECs) stand out as a highly promising clean energy technology that offers several benefits, showing significant potential to play a pivotal role in the transition towards a sustainable and low-carbon energy future. SOECs can efficiently convert the chemical energy stored in fuels to electricity in fuel cell mode, and produce various chemicals from abundant feedstocks (e.g., CO 2 , H 2 O) and intermittent solar/wind-based renewable electricity. Despite extensive efforts that have been devoted to designing novel materials and optimizing SOEC manufacturing processes, aiming to achieve enhanced energy efficiency, the current SOECs still suffer from poor performance, which is mainly due to the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) kinetics. To address this challenge, in this work, we have successfully designed an in situ formed hybrid oxygen electrode material (Pr 1.39 Ba 0.14 Sr 0.53 Co 1.48 Fe 0.76 O 6- δ -Ba 0.66 Sr 0.34 CoO 3- δ ), which significantly improves the surface oxygen exchange coefficient and bulk oxygen-ion diffusion coefficient, enhancing the OER and ORR electrocatalytic activities. Further, the SOECs equipped with this newly developed oxygen electrode achieved exceptional performance for power generation using both hydrogen and propane as the fuels. At 750 °C, a peak power density of 2.4 W cm -2 was obtained with H 2 as the fuel. Additionally, the SOECs attain unprecedented performance in steam electrolysis mode. A current density of 4.4 A cm -2 was achieved at 1.3 V and 750 °C, which represents the highest performance among all yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolyte-based SOECs. The SOECs also deliver remarkable stability during the accelerated stability testing, highlighting the great potential of Pr 1.39 Ba 0.14 Sr 0.53 Co 1.48 Fe 0.76 O 6- δ -Ba 0.66 Sr 0.34 CoO 3- δ as a high-performance oxygen electrode for next generation SOECs.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2021

Comprehensive process and environmental impact analysis of integrated DBD plasma steam methane reforming

Utilization of electricity generated from renewable sources to obtain hydrogen, H 2 , is of critical importance to decrease the overall carbon footprint. Here in this work, integration of a dielectric discharge barrier (DBD) plasma reactor to convert low calorific value gas, such as landfill gas or coal mine gas into hydrogen, into the existing steam methane reforming (SMR) technology was evaluated using process design considerations. In particular, a DBD-enhanced catalytic SMR reactor was modeled to operate at near atmospheric pressure and 500 °C sequentially with the conventional reformer to obtain ~ 65 kmol/hr H2 for distributed production. This allowed decreasing the size of the conventional reformer albeit at the increased overall electricity consumption. Calculated process economics showed that only at an electricity cost of less than $0.004/kWh does the hybrid DBD plasma process derived H 2 price become competitive with that of the conventional SMR. A Life Cycle Assessment framework was used to compare environmental impacts from the conventional SMR, hybrid DBD SMR and hybrid DBD SMR utilizing only onshore wind-derived electricity. Larger environmental impacts in the plasma reformer were obtained due to the use of electricity for the plasma reforming operation, which was modeled as coming from the typical U.S. grid mix. Utilizing only 100% wind-derived electricity provided certain environmental benefits, except for the ecotoxicity impact where the wind power scenario modeled here only reduced ecotoxicity impacts associated with electricity by 30%.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging Existing Assets for Long Duration Energy Storage

Increased renewables penetration to electrical grid is necessary to reduce overall emissions from the electrical power generation sector. Nonetheless, its integration creates challenges to grid operators who must match the power being generated by intermittent renewables and other traditional energy sources with the demand from consumers, while ensuring the reliability and power quality for the entire system. Energy storage has been proposed as an alternative to natural gas peaking plants and a form to deliver excess renewable energy generation at times of peak demand. For energy storage to provide benefits to end customers (energy consumers), it must be reliable, efficient, and cost effective. The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), one of the surveys that integrate the Prairie Research Institute (PRI), aims to develop a Center for Energy Storage at Existing Assets (CESEA) at UIUC with the participation of Waste Pressure Corp and Ecotek Engineering USA LLC. CESEA will focus on LDES systems that can integrate to existing infrastructure in a manner that reduces the initial capital expenditure and demonstrates the ability to repurpose fossil assets that would otherwise become stranded, to serve the energy transition. CESEA aims to leverage UIUC’s unique facilities to validate LDES systems performance at a relevant operating environment. UIUC’s facilities include a 85-MW combined heat and power (CHP) power plant, two (2) solar PV plants totaling over 18 MWdc of installed capacity, an electrical grid along with a substation at transmission and distribution voltages, a 22-mile gas pipeline network operating at two pressure levels, along with steam and chilled water distribution networks. The new LDES systems will connect to the existing UIUC grid through a new test electrical station, which will have the capacity to accommodate additional connections to test new devices and technologies as part of future CESEA R&D activities. The test electrical station will contain meters, instrumentation, and controls to accurately capture data and allow optimization of control algorithms. CESEA will initially focus on technologies that: i) utilize existing equipment or facilities to perform at least one of the process steps in LDES (charging, storage, or discharging), ii) leverage mature or commercially available components or controls, iii) show potential for cost-leadership in 10+ hour storage at a commercial scale. Initial technologies that were identified to meet these criteria include Compressed Gas Energy Storage (CGES), and TES. CGES stores electricity by raising the pressure of a compressible gas inside a control volume and converting the stored energy to electricity via expansion-generation. CGES is a generalization of CAES that covers any working gas (not just air). A successful CGES demo will help to circumvent many challenges faced by CAES (long development times due to site prospecting, high cost of compression and storage, heat recovery management, etc.) by: 1) utilizing existing infrastructure (compressors, pipelines, underground storage or pressure vessels) used in the transportation and storage of industrial gases for LDES charging and storage; 2) deploying over sites already-developed for industrial applications with minor additional work; 3) leveraging the price structure of commercial industrial gas to cover the costs of electricity used during charging. A previous DOE-sponsored conceptual study (DE-FE-0032018) estimated the levelized cost of energy of a 1.1 MW / 17 MWh CGES system at $0.08/kWh, with a commercial 10x scale system cost estimated at <$0.04/kWh (Giardinella, 2022). The pilot-sized system was estimated to avoid up to 2693 tons of CO2/year.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

DOE OSTI2023

2022 Small Turbine Certification Awardee: NPS Solutions

Inverters convert the direct current power generated by wind turbines into the alternating current needed to serve local loads and feed onto the electricity grid. Although distributed wind systems typically supply electricity for homes and businesses near the turbines, these systems can also provide clean power to strengthen grid resilience. Certification to UL 1741 SA ensures that inverters will enable distributed wind turbines to provide grid support services and stay online when the grid experiences stability issues. Small companies often find the electrical listing process too complex and expensive to undertake on their own, so few distributed wind turbine inverters are certified to this standard. A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP) award is helping NPS Solutions (NPS) secure this critical certification for the inverter in its 100-kilowatt NPS 100C wind turbine, which is optimized for on-site generation at farms, businesses, schools, hospitals, and remote locations.

CIP↗

DOE OSTI2023

Transport Modeling of As-Run ATR Cycles to Support U-10Mo Research Reactor Fuel Qualification Experiment

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Materials Management and Minimization has been tasked with converting the five remaining United States High Performance Research Reactors (U.S. HPRR) from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulates Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reactor (MITR), Missouri University Research Reactor (MURR), and National Bureau of Standards Reactor (NBSR); and DOE regulates the High Flux Isotope Reactor and Advanced Test Reactor (ATR). To meet the high demands of these reactors, the U.S. HPRR program has chosen to use 90% uranium - 10% molybdenum (U-10Mo) monolithic fuel. This plate-type fuel will undergo multiple irradiation experiment campaigns in ATR, from mini-plates to full element tests, over a large range of operating conditions. This will provide data in support of the fuel qualification of each reactor. This summary focuses on the as-run neutronic analysis of the first series of mini-plate (MP-1) experiments, which have been irradiated in the ATR. MP-1 experiment’s main goal is to demonstrate the fabrication process and meet the fuel irradiation performance requirements with primary focus on the fuel plates associated with the three NRC reactors, with a small focus on the low power requirements of the ATR fuel. The MP-1 experiments are planned to be the basis of the monolithic U-10Mo fuel for qualification through the NRC.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Transport Modeling of As-Run ATR Cycles for U-10Mo Fuel Qualification Experiment

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2022

High Yield, Economical and Environmentally Benign Production of Rare Earth Elements from Coal Ash (Phase II Final Summary Report)

Fly ash stored in landfills and ponds across the United States is an attractive, abundant domestic resource for the cost-effective recovery of rare earth elements (REE) and other critical minerals (CM). Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and its team members, Winner Water Services (WWS) and University of Kentucky/Center for Applied Energy Research (UK/CAER) successfully executed a multiphase program that developed technologies and their implementation in a pilot plant. We demonstrated plant operations for cost-effective and environmentally-friendly production of rare earth element oxide (REO) concentrates, and the critical minerals scandium and aluminum (in the forms of salts or oxide products), from coal ash. We also constructed and demonstrated a research-scale (0.5 kg/day) micropilot facility to validate the key physical and chemical processing operations, predict yields, and troubleshoot process bottlenecks. The project team then designed, constructed and operated two decoupled pilot plants: (1) an operational pilot plant for physical separation processes with capacity of 0.4 metric tons per day (tpd), where we optimized processes to produce selected ash fractions as the feedstock for chemical processing and as valuable byproducts such as cenospheres, magnetic ash, and secondary fuel carbon, and (2) an operational pilot plant for chemical ash processing with a capacity of 0.5 tpd that developed optimized processes for the production of: (a) REO concentrates, (b) critical minerals (Sc, Al), and (c) beneficiated ash as a valuable byproduct suitable for cement applications. In Phase I, the project team (with Equinox Chemicals in place of WWS) developed and demonstrated the feasibility of the physical and chemical separation processes, developed the design of a pilot plant, and began the development of a preliminary techno-economic model. In the baseline (initial) Phase II program, the project team developed and demonstrated the above pilot scale plant, producing salable REE concentrates, including Y and Sc (REYSc), plus commercially viable byproducts, using environmentally safe and high-yield physical and chemical enrichment processes. The team successfully demonstrated chemical pilot design, construction, shakedown, and operations of the plant. We produced the Phase II deliverable REYSc concentrate ((50 g of >60 wt.% purity REYSc salts on elemental basis), generated the feed for the Phase II follow-on program, identified processing challenges for future optimizations, and refined the techno-economic model. In the Phase II follow-on program, the project team: (1) developed and demonstrated processes to increase the REE amount by 3X (content basis) and convert the Phase II REE salt mixture to an oxide mixture, (2) produced/delivered >38 g of REO mixture with >85 wt.% purity (elemental basis); (3) developed processes to recover critical minerals scandium and aluminum from intermediate streams; (4) produced/delivered > 1 g of scandium salt mixture with >85 wt. % purity (elemental basis); (5) produced/delivered > 100 g of aluminum oxide type material with >70% wt. purity (elemental basis); and (6) updated the techno-economic model from the baseline Phase II program to assess CAPEX and OPEX of a commercial operation. This program has developed extensive databases on process chemistry, unit operations, plant engineering, and techno-economics that will enable further scale-up toward commercial plant design. Specific future developments will be focused on achieving dramatic savings in energy, reagent usage, and operating costs. The combined results will contribute significantly for maturing the technologies of REE recovery from coal byproducts and promote the establishment of domestic REE and CM supply chains.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

DOE OSTI2020

Binderjet Additive Manufacturing for Complex Heat Exchanger Geometries

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems play a role in the worlds development of renewable energy. Mirrors are used to concentrate sunlight that is converted into electricity or other forms of useful energy. CSP impact depends significantly on its overall economics. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Solar Energy Technology Office (SETO) cost goals for 2030include $0.05/kWh levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for a baseload plant [1]. The power cycle cost goal is $900/kWe [1]. The envisioned recompression supercritical carbondioxide (sCO2) power cycle includes four heat exchangers, which together are at least ¾ of the total power cycle cost. Meeting the cost target requires reducing the heat exchanger cost. The 260 bar and 588 °C heat exchanger requirements are challenging. Shell and tube heat exchangers can meet the requirements, but the size and cost are prohibitive. State-of-the-art diffusion bonded printed circuit heat exchanger designs are 3 m3 or larger and expensive to manufacture. Additive manufacturing enables novel heat exchanger geometries that can reduce heat exchanger size and mass [2]. Binderjet technology is an additive manufacturing modality. It selectively deposits binder material onto the powder bed to form a solid part one layer at a time. Once applied, the binder is cured, the remaining powder removed, and the part heat treated in steps to remove the binder, sinter the metal powder, and densify the part. The Binderjet printing process is more than 10x faster than the best-known metal additive modality, direct metal laser melting (DMLM), thus enabling 10x the part through-put rate [3]. The high throughput rate results in a low-cost manufacturing process capable of creating complex heat exchanger geometries. This paper introduces a complex heat exchanger geometry and methods of Binderjet processing to fabricate the geometry.

Barua, Ananda↗

DOE OSTI2022

2.3.3.404 - National Lab and University Collaboration for MHK Instrumentation and Data Processing Tools

Field and laboratory validation, testing, demonstration, and operation are critical steps for increasing the technology readiness level of marine energy (ME) converters because they provide high-quality testing and performance data that are critical information used to feed all aspects of technology development. This project, in partnership with industry, enables the marine and hydrokinetic energy (MHK) community to reliably and efficiently collect, process, manage, and share quality data by facilitating access to and development of instrumentation, guidelines and data processing/QA tools. Under this project, open-source data processing code (MHKiT) and tools (ME Data Pipeline, MRE Code Hub, PRIMRE Code Catalog), instrumentation (loads measurements), data acquisition systems (miniDAQ), and measurement guidance tools (Telesto, high EMI guidance) were developed to facilitate the collection and processing of quality laboratory and field data. Overall, this project is intended to improve the quality of the data collected during laboratory and field demonstration projects by standardizing the collection and processing techniques, as well as by improving access to instrumentation, code, and measurement guidance. Quality data will, in turn, lead to improved knowledge capture following ME device testing.

data processing↗

DOE OSTI2021

Roundtable on Foundational Science for Carbon-Neutral Hydrogen Technologies (Technology Status Document)

This document summarizes the status of carbon-neutral hydrogen production, storage and transport, and utilization. The state of the art in the implementation, limitations, and challenges of these technologies are summarized. Sources of hydrogen are broadly categorized as hydrcoarbons or water and the processes used to convert these sources to hydrogen as catalytic, thermochemical, or electrochemical. Catalytic steam methane reforming of methane is the dominant process today. Other processes have smaller production volumes and the technology is less mature, but are being deployed at increasing rates, most notably water electrolyzers for hydrogen fueling stations. Efficient transport and storage of hydrogen is one of the major challenges facing a hydrogen-based energy economy. This arises in part from its low volumetric energy density necessitating very high pressures or cryogenic temperatures to store sufficient amounts for practical applications. High-pressure compressed hydrogen cylinders are the incumbent hydrogen storage technology for applications such as light-duty fuel cell electric vehicles, for example. The storage of hydrogen in materials or in chemicals is being pursued to address the issues associated with compression, such as parasitic energy loss and weight, size, and cost of storage containers. The complex nature of the chemical and physical processes involved in the uptake, storage, and release of hydrogen has slowed the discovery of suitable hydrogen storage materials. Both small and large-scale storage face the challenge of embrittlement of the storage media by hydrogen. There is a myriad of uses of hydrogen offering the promises of improving the efficiency of various applications and reducing or eliminating CO 2 emissions. These range from direct electrochemical conversion to electricity to power vehicles and grid-level stationary applications to combustion to production of chemicals and commodities. One of the most impactful applications in terms of reduction of CO 2 emissions is fuel cell passenger vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles such as class 8 trucks. The challenges facing widespread deployment of fuel cells, beyond the major hurdle of the lack of a hydrogen distribution infrastructure, are cost and durability, primarily related to the precious metal cathode catalyst and its durability. The other uses of hydrogen from conversion to hydrocarbons, polymer upcycling, and upgrading of bio-oils are at varying stages of maturity and also face fundamental challenges associated with catalytic processes and materials.

08 HYDROGEN↗