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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8

Integration of the Kromek D3S Detector and Spot Robot For Secondary Inspections

Inspecting vehicles and containers for the presence of nuclear material is a challenging task for border control and security. When performed manually by inspectors, this task also has an associated risk of exposing the inspectors to unknown radiation. With the advent of agile, easy-to-program, quadruped robots like the Boston Dynamics Spot, automation of secondary inspection can improve the efficiency of the inspection process and alleviates the radiation risks to inspectors. In this project, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Massachussetts at Lowell explored how to automate a simple secondary inspection mission. The Spot robot comes with its own software development kit (SDK) that allows clients/users to write custom code in the Python programming language to control the robot. Spot also has a payload computer called Spot-CORE, which runs the Ubuntu Linux operating system and allows users to integrate external sensors, such as a radiation detector, with Spot. In this study, the Kromek D3S detector has been integrated with Spot via the Spot-CORE, allowing Spot to capture gamma spectra and neutron counts for a specified acquisition period. Two custom routines, search and confirmation, have been developed and executed in this specified order. The search routine directs Spot to go around the nearest obstacle, e.g., vehicle and container, in a preset distance and step to collect gamma and neutron gross counts with the D3S detector. The radiation data and the robot location corresponding to each step are stored and fed to the confirmation routine at the end of the search. The confirmation routine then navigates Spot to the locations of the highest gamma or neutron counts to perform a long, e.g., one minute, measurement, and gives the operators the signature gamma spectra and neutron counts at the hotspots. This paper presents a detailed description of this automated system along with results of the preliminary tests in identifying the location and signature of a 137Cs radiation source in a vehicle.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Delivering Contextual Knowledge and Critical Skills of Disruptive Technologies through Problem-Based Learning in Research Experiences for Undergraduates Setting

The recent development in transportation, such as energy-efficient and autonomous vehicles, defines a condition for the students in transportation engineering. Students in the field of transportation engineering should be ready upon their graduation with new knowledge and skills that are compatible with the need of the industry and sustainable engineering practices.During summers of 2018 and 2019, we developed and implemented an eight-week program to increase the knowledge and skills of students coming from multidisciplinary fields related to autonomous vehicles. Problem of “How much will platooning reduce fuel consumption and emissions per vehicle mile traveled?” was instrumentalized in subsequent activities to introduce the comprehensive knowledge structure of autonomous vehicles.The engineering concept of reducing the cost and sustainability was embedded in the leading research question that helped us to develop and implement activities on an overall knowledge structure in autonomous vehicles. The goal of using problem-based learning activities was not to encourage the students to focus on reaching the solution merely. We aimed to introduce the multidisciplinary knowledge and critical skills aspects of learning about disruptive technologies.In this paper, we will discuss how a multidisciplinary research approach was incorporated into a problem-based learning activity. The students were introduced the subjects related to math, physics, computer science, and biology as the integration of the knowledge structure of autonomous vehicles. We will also present the results on students’ use of critical skills such as machine learning and computer programming.

Comert, Gurcan↗

ESnet Requirements Review Program Through the IRI Lens: A Meta-Analysis of Workflow Patterns Across DOE Office of Science Programs (Final Report)

The Department of Energy (DOE) ensures America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. The DOE’s Office of Science (SC) delivers groundbreaking scientific discoveries and major scientific tools that transform our understanding of nature and advance the energy, economic, and national security of the United States. The SC’s programs advance DOE mission science across a wide range of disciplines and have developed the research infrastructure needed to remain at the forefront of scientific discovery. The DOE SC’s world-class research infrastructure — exemplified by the 28 SC scientific user facilities — provides the research community with premier observational, experimental, computational, and network capabilities. Each user facility is designed to provide unique capabilities to advance core DOE mission science for its sponsor SC program and to stimulate a rich discovery and innovation ecosystem. Research communities gather and flourish around each user facility, bringing together diverse perspectives. A hallmark of many facilities is the large population of students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scientists who contribute as full-fledged users. These facility staff and users collaborate over years to devise new approaches to utilizing the user facility’s core capabilities. The history of the SC user facilities has many examples of wildly inventive researchers challenging operational orthodoxy to pioneer new vistas of discovery; for example, the use of the synchrotron X-ray light sources for study of proteins and other large biological molecules. This continual reinvention of the practice of science — as users and staff forge novel approaches expressed in research workflows — unlocks new discoveries and propels scientific progress. Within this research ecosystem, the high-performance computing (HPC) and networking user facilities stewarded by SC’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program play a dynamic cross-cutting role, enabling complex workflows demanding high performance data, networking, and computing solutions. The DOE SC’s three HPC user facilities and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) high-performance research network serve all of the SC’s programs as well as the global research community. Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) conceive, build, and provide access to a range of supercomputing, advanced computing, and large-scale data-infrastructure platforms, while ESnet interconnects DOE SC research infrastructure and enables seamless exchange of scientific data. All four facilities operate testbeds to expand the frontiers of computing and networking research. Together, the ASCR facilities enterprise seeks to understand and meet the needs and requirements across SC and DOE domain science programs and priority efforts, highlighted by the formal requirements reviews (RRs) methodology. In recent years, the research communities around the SC user facilities have begun experimenting with and demanding solutions integrated with HPC and data infrastructure. This rise of integrated-science approaches is documented in many community and high-level government reports. At the dawn of the era of exascale science and the acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, there is a broad need for integrated computational, data, and networking solutions. In response to these drivers, DOE has developed a vision for an Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI): To empower researchers to meld DOE’s world-class research tools, infrastructure, and user facilities seamlessly and securely in novel ways to radically accelerate discovery and innovation.

42 ENGINEERING↗

GronOR: Massively Parallel and GPU-Accelerated Non-Orthogonal Configuration Interaction for Large Molecular Systems

GronOR is a program package for non-orthogonal configuration interaction calculations for an electronic wave function built in terms of anti-symmetrized products of multi-configuration molecular fragment wave functions. The two-electron integrals that have to be processed may be expressed in terms of atomic orbitals or in terms of an orbital basis determined from the molecular orbitals of the fragments. The code has been specifically designed for execution on distributed memory massively parallel and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-accelerated computer architectures, using an MPI+OpenACC/OpenMP programming approach. The task-based execution model used in the implementation allows for linear scaling with the number of nodes on the largest pre-exascale architectures available, provides hardware fault resiliency, and enables effective execution on systems with distinct central processing unit-only and GPU-accelerated partitions. The code interfaces with existing multi-configuration electronic structure codes that provide optimized molecular fragment orbitals, configuration interaction coefficients, and the required integrals. Algorithm and implementation details, parallel and accelerated performance benchmarks, and an analysis of the sensitivity of the accuracy of results and computational performance to thresholds used in the calculations are presented.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Pyomo.GDP: an ecosystem for logic based modeling and optimization development

We present three core principles for engineering-oriented integrated modeling and optimization tool sets—intuitive modeling contexts, systematic computer-aided reformulations, and flexible solution strategies—and describe how new developments in Pyomo.GDP for Generalized Disjunctive Programming (GDP) advance this vision. We describe a new logical expression system implementation for Pyomo.GDP allowing for a more intuitive description of logical propositions. The logical expression system supports automated reformulation of these logical constraints to linear constraints. We also describe two new logic-based global optimization solver implementations built on Pyomo.GDP that exploit logical structure to avoid “zero-flow” numerical difficulties that arise in nonlinear network design problems when nodes or streams disappear. These new solvers also demonstrate the capability to link to external libraries for expanded functionality within an integrated implementation. We present these new solvers in the context of a flexible array of solution paths available to GDP models. Finally, we present results on a new library of GDP models demonstrating the value of multiple solution approaches.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Revenue prediction for integrated renewable energy and energy storage system using machine learning techniques

Revenue estimation for integrated renewable energy and energy storage systems is important to support plant owners or operators’ decisions in battery sizing selection that leads to maximized financial performances. A common approach to optimizing revenues of a hybrid hydro and energy storage system is using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). Although MILP models can provide accurate production cost estimations, they are typically very computationally expensive. To provide a fast yet accurate first-step information to hydropower plant owners or operators who consider integrating energy storage systems, we propose an innovative approach to predicting optimal revenues of an integrated energy generation and storage system. In this study, we examined the performance of two prediction techniques: Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) and machine learning (ML) models developed based on artificial neural networks (ANN). Predictive equations and models are generated based on optimized solutions from a market participation optimization model, the Conventional Hydropower Energy and Environmental Resource System (CHEERS) model. The two predicting techniques reduce the computational time to evaluate annual revenue for one set of battery configurations from 3 h to 1 to 4 min per run while also being implementable with significantly less data. The model validation prediction errors of developed GAMs and ML models are generally below 5%; for model testing predictions, the ML models consistently outperform the regression equations in terms of root mean square errors. This new approach allows plant owners, operators, or potential investors to quickly access multiple battery configurations under different energy generation and market scenarios. This new revenue prediction method will therefore help reduce the barriers, and thereby promoting the deployment of battery hybridization with existing renewable energy sources.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Extending C++ for Heterogeneous Quantum-Classical Computing

In this report we present qcor - a language extension to C++ and compiler implementation that enables heterogeneous quantum-classical programming, compilation, and execution in a single-source context. Our work provides a first-of-its-kind C++ compiler enabling high-level quantum kernel (function) expression in a quantum-language agnostic manner, as well as a hardware-agnostic, retargetable compiler workflow targeting a number of physical and virtual quantum computing backends. qcor leverages novel Clang plugin interfaces and builds upon the XACC system-level quantum programming framework to provide a state-of-the-art integration mechanism for quantum-classical compilation that leverages the best from the community at-large. qcor translates quantum kernels ultimately to the XACC intermediate representation, and provides user-extensible hooks for quantum compilation routines like circuit optimization, analysis, and placement. This work details the overall architecture and compiler workflow for qcor, and provides a number of illuminating programming examples demonstrating its utility for near-term variational tasks, quantum algorithm expression, and feed-forward error correction schemes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Combining Iteration-Free Polarization with Large Time Step Stochastic-Isokinetic Integration

In order to accelerate molecular dynamics simulations using polarizable force fields, we combine a new extended Lagrangian approach that eliminates the self-consistent field step (iEL/0-SCF) with a stochastic integration scheme that allows for a long time step using a multiple time scale algorithm (SIN(R)). We consider different algorithms for the combined scheme that places different components of the nonbonded forces into different time scales, as well as splitting individual nonbonded forces across time scales, to demonstrate that the combined method works well for bulk water as well as for a concentrated salt solution, aqueous peptide, and solvated protein. Depending on system and desired accuracy, the iEL/0-SCF and SIN(R) combination yields lower bound computational speed-ups of ~6–8 relative to a molecular dynamics Verlet integration using a standard SCF solver implemented in the reference program TINKER 8.1. Finally, the combined approach embodies a significant advance for equilibrium simulations in the canonical ensemble of many-body potential energy surfaces for condensed phase systems with speed-ups that exceed what is possible by either method alone.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

IMPLEMENTING CYBERSECURITY INTO AN EXISTING NATIONAL NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION PROGRAMME – A CASE STUDY

Cyber threat profiling and risk mitigation is critical to any nuclear state organization and should be considered as part of any comprehensive nuclear security programme. Defining and evaluating the impact of the cyber threat to mission can be challenging. An existing national nuclear non-proliferation organization undertook an effort to incorporate computer security activities into its programme to address cyber risk. One of the primary goals of this endeavour was to develop a set of prioritised recommendations for organizational follow-through. The organization dedicated subject matter expert resources in the form of a cyber task force to support this goal. Opportunities were identified where computer security could be built into each programme including office-level strategies and tools. Of course, no new identified threat vector is easily considered and incorporated into existing programmes without impact. There are many obstacles to be overcome. Technically literate subject matter experts are difficult to find, management has comparatively less experience applying computer security into its programmes, and trying to change the culture to consider computer security risk at policy and programmatic levels takes time and management attention. As an outcome of this process, a roadmap for program integration was developed, including the establishment of a cyber support team. This paper will discuss the challenges and successes associated with establishing such a team.

Cyber Security, Nuclear, Non-proliferation↗

Verification of Upcoming MCNP Features For Estimating Nuclear Data Sensitivities in Fixed Source Simulations [Abstract]

Predictive simulation codes, like the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) transport code, are used throughout the nuclear community. These simulations are based on nuclear data. Maximizing the accuracy and precision of nuclear data maximizes the accuracy and precision of the overall simulation. This is imperative to applications that rely on simulations. For example, improving nuclear data for special nuclear material improves simulation accuracy in stockpile stewardship applications, which results in larger safety margins and decreased operational costs. The improvement and validation of nuclear data is completed through integral benchmark experiments. Past benchmarks have primarily been limited to focus on the effective multiplication factor ($\kappa$ eff ); broadening the purview of benchmarks beyond $\kappa$ eff -dependent nuclear data addresses nuclear data deficiencies. Different response types depend on different areas of nuclear data. This dependence is quantified as nuclear data sensitivity: the change in response due to perturbation of a contributing parameter. The larger the nuclear data sensitivity of a response, the more the experiment is influenced by the uncertainties of the nuclear data. The optimization of nuclear data sensitivities in future benchmarks would result in more detailed validation of lesser studied areas of nuclear data. Currently, direct sensitivity capabilities are not easily found for all experiment types and parameters. An MCNP tool to directly estimate the cross section sensitivities of tallied values is under development. Additionally, updates have been made to the perturbation feature of MCNP, which can be used in a less direct approach to estimating sensitivities. This work verifies these features to estimate nuclear data sensitivities in fixed source simulations of a 4.5-kg sphere of alpha- phase weapons-grade plutonium surrounded by differing amounts of copper and polyethylene. Integrated estimates made using MCNP’s tools were found to statistically agree with integrated estimates made from manual perturbation of nuclear data proving the validity of the MCNP tools.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Hybrid Particle Swarm-Interpolation Algorithm for Improved Critical Experiment Design

The typical goal of designing a critical experiment is twofold: a system that is both critical and optimized for some other value. This value could be an energy-integrated sensitivity, percent fissions in a certain energy range, or some other value that can be calculated by a transport code. By simulating different combinations of reflector, moderator, and fuel thicknesses a designer can identify such a desirable configuration. The domain of all possible combinations of these thicknesses is referred to as the experiment search space. As more dimensions are added, the search space increases in size exponentially. For a three-dimensional case, which includes three thickness values between zero and ten centimeters to the nearest tenth of a millimeter, a total of 1,000 3 , configurations exists. Rather than check each configuration individually, which would be extremely computationally expensive, it has been shown to be more efficient to use a conventional particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to identify critical and optimal configurations. This work presents the theory and implementation of a novel hybrid PSO interpolation algorithm to perform these optimizations faster than a conventional PSO algorithm. To demonstrate this, an example optimization will be carried out by the conventional and hybrid PSO algorithms and their performances will be compared.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Application of a Density Law via Python for Aqueous Plutonium Nitrate

A predictive density tool has been developed in Python to reduce bias and uncertainty in nuclear criticality safety calculations for plutonium nitrate systems. The Pitzer Method and an empirical method were implemented into the tool, allowing for plutonium nitrate density calculations. Additionally, the Python tool can generate atom densities for a MCNP6.2 material card using the density from the selected method and directly the densities into a prepared MCNP6 input text file. The material card and density are calculated based on customizable user inputs of plutonium content, nitric acid content, temperature, plutonium isotope weight percentages and impurity concentrations. The Python tool has been validated and verified against the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments to predict densities within a root mean square error of 1.0% for the Pitzer method and 1.8% for the empirical method. These errors in density were shown to lead to a ±0.5% error in MCNP6.2 calculated k effective for the Pitzer method and a ±1.7% error for the Empirical method. Simultaneous work is also being done at the University of New Mexico and Los Alamos National Laboratory to create a similar tool for plutonium chloride solutions, which aims to provide the accreditation of the chlorine absorption. These capabilities will not only provide more accurate models but also lead the way towards a better understanding of solution systems and potential relaxation in the conservatism of the current aqueous plutonium processing limits.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

IER 441: Experiments to Measure the Effect of Tantalum on Critical Systems (SNL/ORNL) [Slides]

This presentation provides information on the experiments to measure the effect of Tantalum (Ta) on critical systems. This talk presents details on the Sandia Critical Experiments Program with the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) and the Burnup Credit Critical Experiment (BUCCX). The presentation highlights motivations, experiment design, and evaluations and publications.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

teemi: An open-source literate programming approach for iterative design-build-test-learn cycles in bioengineering

Synthetic biology dictates the data-driven engineering of biocatalysis, cellular functions, and organism behavior. Integral to synthetic biology is the aspiration to efficiently find, access, interoperate, and reuse high-quality data on genotype-phenotype relationships of native and engineered biosystems under FAIR principles, and from this facilitate forward-engineering strategies. However, biology is complex at the regulatory level, and noisy at the operational level, thus necessitating systematic and diligent data handling at all levels of the design, build, and test phases in order to maximize learning in the iterative design-build-test-learn engineering cycle. To enable user-friendly simulation, organization, and guidance for the engineering of biosystems, we have developed an open-source python-based computer-aided design and analysis platform operating under a literate programming user-interface hosted on Github. The platform is called teemi and is fully compliant with FAIR principles. In this study we apply teemi for i) designing and simulating bioengineering, ii) integrating and analyzing multivariate datasets, and iii) machine-learning for predictive engineering of metabolic pathway designs for production of a key precursor to medicinal alkaloids in yeast. The teemi platform is publicly available at PyPi and GitHub.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Prediction of stability constants of metal–ligand complexes by machine learning for the design of ligands with optimal metal ion selectivity

The new LOGKPREDICT program integrates HostDesigner molecular design software with the machine learning (ML) program Chemprop. By supplying HostDesigner with predicted log K values, LOGKPREDICT enhances the computer-aided molecular design process by ranking ligands directly by metal–ligand binding strength. Harnessing reliable experimental data from a historic National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) database and data from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), we train message passing neural net algorithms. The multi-metal NIST-based ML model has a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.629 ± 0.044 (R 2 of 0.960 ± 0.006), while two versions of lanthanide-only IUPAC-based ML models have, respectively, RMSE of 0.764 ± 0.073 (R 2 of 0.976 ± 0.005) and 0.757 ± 0.071 (R 2 of 0.959 ± 0.007). For relative log K predictions on an out-of-sample set of six ligands, demonstrating metal ion selectivity, the RMSE value reaches a commendably low 0.25. Here we showcase the use of LOGKPREDICT in identifying ligands with high selectivity for lanthanides in aqueous solutions, a finding supported by recent experimental evidence. We also predict new ligands yet to be verified experimentally. Therefore, our ML models implemented through LOGKPREDICT and interfaced with the ligand design software HostDesigner pave the way for designing new ligands with predetermined selectivity for competing metal ions in an aqueous solution.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

E3SMFC

SAND2025-01123O E3SMFC is a software tool that integrates a feedback controller algorithm into the E3SM climate model to regulate sulfur dioxide injection, aiming to achieve specific climate outcomes. The program uses proportional-integral-derivative feedback control to adjusts sulfur dioxide levels in both spatial and temporal dimensions. It will only operate on computers that can run the DOE climate model E3SM. 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.

Ojetola, Samuel↗

Estimating Energy Market Schedules using Historical Price Data

The global climate crisis is expected to reshape the energy generation landscape in the coming decades. Increasing integration of non-dispatchable renewable energy resources into energy infrastructures and markets creates uncertainty as well as new opportunities for flexible energy systems. To conduct proper economic evaluation of flexible energy systems, such as integrated energy systems (IES), advancements in modelling of market interactions, such as bidding, is crucial. This work presents a shortcut algorithm which uses two mixed integer linear programs to compute dispatch schedules (e.g., hourly power production targets) that are constrained by the resource's bid information and characteristics (e.g., minimum up and down times) based on historical locational marginal price (LMP) data. The proposed algorithm is approximately 100 times faster and uses orders of magnitude less data than a full production cost model (PCM). We find the shortcut simulator recapitulates generator dispatch signals for the Prescient PCM with approximately 4% error for the RTS-GMLC test system.

electricity generation↗