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At least 19 records

Ion Exchange Processing of AW-105 Hanford Tank Waste through Crystalline Silicotitanate in a Staged 2- then 3-Column System

The Hanford Site stores an estimated 56 million gallons of mixed radioactive and chemically hazardous waste in large underground tanks. In support of the Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) Program for expediting Hanford tank waste supernate treatment, laboratory-scale ion exchange processing using prototypic unit operations was conducted on AW-105 tank waste at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. This report describes the small-scale ion exchange testing with 9.2 L of diluted and filtered supernate from Tank 241-AW-105 (hereafter referred to as AW-105) at 16 °C (62 °F). One of the waste acceptance criteria (WAC) for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) Low-Activity Waste Facility is that the waste must contain less than 3.18×10 -5 Ci 137 Cs per mole of Na. For the AW-105 tank waste to meet this criterion, only 0.225% of the influent 137 Cs concentration may be delivered to the WTP; this requires a Cs decontamination factor of 445. Testing with AW-105 matched current Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) facility prototypic operations where a lead-lag configuration was used until the lag column reached the WAC limit, then a polish column was brought online for continued processing in a lead-lag-polish column configuration. Feed was processed at 1.9 bed volumes (BVs) per hour; the flowrate, in terms of contact time with the crystalline silicotitanate (CST) bed, matched the expected flowrate at TSCR. The Cs-decontaminated product was retained for vitrification testing (to be reported separately). The lead column reached 83% Cs breakthrough after processing ~1500 BVs of feed; the 50% Cs breakthrough was interpolated from the breakthrough data and occurred at 1041 BVs. Despite the AW-105 having a significantly higher K concentration (0.55 M compared to 0.10 M), testing compared to previous AP-107 ion exchange column testing at 16 °C showed no difference in BVs processed to reach the WAC on the lead column and only an approximate ~20 BV decrease in volume processed to reach the WAC limit on the lag column. The negligible differences in capacity despite the 5x concentration differences in K was determined to be due to the significantly lower NO3 concentration in the AW-105 supernate compared to the AP-107 tank waste matrix. A comparison in breakthrough curves for the two tests also indicated slightly faster kinetic behavior in the AW-105, with the variations in feed matrices (lower NO3 concentration) likely responsible for the deviation. The Cs effluent from the lag column reached the WAC limit after processing 772 BVs. Anticipating this breakthrough point, the polish column was preemptively installed around 675 BVs. Cs breakthrough from the lag column began at 300 BVs, reaching 1.10×10 1 µCi/mL, or 14.13 % Cs breakthrough, after processing all 1500 BVs of feed. The polish column processed nominally 830 BVs and reached 2.10×10 -1 µCi/mL, or 0.27 % Cs breakthrough at the conclusion of the test. Table S.1 and Figure S.1 summarize the observed column performance and relevant Cs loading characteristics.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W

Filtration of Hanford Tank 241-AW-105 Supernatant at 16 °C

Approximately 9 L of supernatant from Hanford waste tank 241-AW-105 was delivered by Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C) to the Radiochemical Processing Laboratory (RPL) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The thirty-six 241-AW-105 sample bottles consisted of four sets of nine samples, with each set pulled from a unique tank sampling level. Prior to testing, samples from each level were composited and diluted to 5.5 M Na to provide nominally level-independent feed for dead-end filtration and ion exchange testing. The composited 241-AW-105 supernatant was chilled to 16 °C for 1 week prior to testing. Filtration testing was then conducted using a backpulse dead-end filter (BDEF) system equipped with a feed vessel and a Mott inline filter (Model 6610, Media Grade 5) in the hot cells of the RPL. The purpose of this testing was to (a) demonstrate dead-end filtration (DEF) of 241-AW-105 feed at reduced temperature to obtain prototypic Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) flux rates and identify issues that may impact filtration after dilution to 5.5 M Na, and (b) provide feed for follow-on ion exchange unit operation. The feed was filtered through the BDEF system at a targeted flux of 0.065 gpm/ft2. For most of the filtration campaign, the differential pressure required to effect filtration at 0.065 gpm/ft2 was slow to increase. After all the feed bottles had been pumped into the slurry reservoir, the bottoms of the bottles were added to the reservoir and transmembrane pressure (TMP) reached 2.0 psid (the TSCR action limit). A backpulse was performed after >50 hours of filtration to remove fouled solids and reduce the TMP. The filter was cleaned after completing filtration of the 241-AW-105 feed, and clean water flux tests showed filter performance was effectively restored. Solids concentrated from the backpulse solutions were composed of steel-like particles, uranium-bearing phases, Mn-Fe phases, a Ce-bearing phase, Zr phases, and some smaller Ca-bearing particles. The Ca-bearing and U bearing phases were identified as calcite and clarkeite, respectively.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W

Vitrification of Hanford Tank 241-AW-105 Waste and Equivalent Simulant

Hanford Site nuclear waste is to be vitrified at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which is a part of the safe and efficient retrieval, treatment, and disposal mission of the U.S. Department of Energy - Hanford Field Office. A portion of Hanford tank 241-AW-105 (referred to herein as AW-105) waste was retrieved by Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C) and transferred to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Compared to previously received and vitrified wastes (AP-107, AP-101, AN-107 and AP-105), the concentration of potassium in AW-105 was greater by an order of magnitude.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W

Automated Particle Analysis of Hanford Tank Wastes 241-AN-106, 241-AN-101, and 241-AW-105

This effort is involved in developing particle size and density distribution (PSDD) for the major phases within Hanford tank waste sludge. The object of this work has been to use automated particle analysis (APA) methods on the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to provide PSDDs. The PSDD can be used to quantify the proportion of gibbsite particles likely to settle quickly and enable blending of wastes that may be prone to pipeline plugging such as the uranium phase, clarkeite with other wastes. The Hanford tank waste solids were analyzed with SEM combined with x-ray Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) using APA. This method can allow thousands of individual particles to be characterized and so may provide a more representative view of the samples and information PSDDs. We characterized several as-received sludge samples and developed PSDD with APA. Sample preparation methods were found to impact the collected results, as it was more difficult to collect representative samples of the larger particles. Much of the material was also dried and cemented together that further impacted results.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W

A two-fluid solar-wind model with intermittent Alfvénic turbulence

In one of the leading theories for the origin of the solar wind, photospheric motions launch Alfvén waves (AWs) that propagate along open magnetic-field lines through the solar atmosphere and into the solar wind. The radial variation in the Alfvén speed causes some of the AWs to reflect, and counter-propagating AWs subsequently interact to produce Alfveńic turbulence, in which AW energy cascades from long wavelengths to short wavelengths and dissipates, heating the plasma. In this paper we develop a one-dimensional two-fluid solar-wind model that includes Alfvénic turbulence, proton temperature anisotropy and a novel method for apportioning the turbulent heating rate between parallel proton heating, perpendicular proton heating and electron heating. We employ a turbulence model that accounts for recent observations from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which find that AW fluctuations in the near-Sun solar wind are intermittent and less anisotropic than in previous models of anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Our solar-wind model reproduces a wide range of remote observations of the corona and in-situ measurements of the solar wind, and our turbulent heating model consists of analytic equations that could be usefully incorporated into other solar-wind models and numerical models of more distant astrophysical plasmas.

astrophysical plasmas

How Cloud is Accelerating Research at NREL

This presentation coincides with AWS's announcement of their new Parallel Computing Service (PCS) which allows for easy creation of HPC-style clusters in their AWS cloud computing platform. I helped them beta test this service before it was made generally available in August. AWS asked if we would be interested in discussing our experience with the PCS service, and our experience with HPC workloads in the cloud in general, so this slideshow discusses a brief history of scientific computing at NREL and shares a bit of our experiences and approach to utilizing cloud services for HPC-style workloads.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

Charged Higgs search in 2HDM

In this paper, we present a comprehensive study of the collider search limits on the charged Higgses in the four types of Two Higgs Double Models (2HDM). In addition to constraints from flavor physics measurements, we include both the LEP charged Higgs search channels, as well as the LHC search results on the light and heavy charged Higgses. We consider both the conventional charged Higgs search channels of H ± → τν, cs, cb, tb, and the latest search results on the exotic decay channels H ± → AW ± /HW ± . We find that H ± → AW ± /HW ± are complementary to the conventional fermionic channels for m H ± < m t . For heavy H ± , H ± → AW ± /HW ± extend the reach of tan β beyond that of H ± → tb in the Type-L 2HDM. We also present the combined reach of all the neutral and charged Higgs searches.

2HDM

Search for an axion-like particle in B → K (*) a(→ γγ) decays at Belle

We report a search for an axion-like particle a in B → K (*) a decays using data collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy electron-positron collider. The search is based on a 711 fb −1 data sample collected at the Υ(4S) resonance energy, corresponding to a sample of 772 × 10 6 Υ(4S) events. In this study, we search for the decay of the axion-like particle into a pair of photons, a → γγ. We scan the two-photon invariant mass in the range 0.16 GeV–4.50 GeV for the K modes and 0.16 GeV–4.20 GeV for the K * modes. No significant signal is observed in any of the modes, and 90% confidence level upper limits are established on the coupling to the W boson, g aW , as a function of a mass. The limits range from 3 × 10 −6 GeV −1 to 3 × 10 −5 GeV −1 , improving the current constraints on g aW by a factor of two over the most stringent previous experimental results.

B physics

Influence of Antarctic and Greenland Continental Shelf Circulation on High‐Latitude Oceans in E3SM

The science objectives of this project are to simulate and understand the impacts of both deep-basin warm-water intrusions and land-ice melt on the continental shelf circulations and sea-ice distributions around the margins of Greenland and Antarctica. As well, the role of subsurface ocean heat from the Atlantic on declining sea-ice cover in the Arctic is explored. Mesoscale processes and fine bathymetry are implicated in cross-shelf property transports around both Greenland and Antarctica. Therefore, we configured and ran an atmospheric reanalysis-forced global ocean/sea-ice simulation on a grid that reduces from 8 km at the Equator to 2 km at the poles (UH8to2) with 60 vertical levels. It was produced using the Energy Exascale Earth System Model ‘‘HiLAT’’ code (E3SMv0-HiLAT) that uses the Parallel Ocean Program (POP) and CICE5 as its ocean and sea-ice components, respectively. Two main UH8to2 simulations were carried out: one for 1975-2009 and the other for July 2016-2020 after it was initialized from a 1/25° data-assimilative ocean/sea-ice prediction system ocean/sea-ice state. The UH8to2 is not coupled to an active land-ice model. Rather, land-ice melt is represented by observationally informed freshwater fluxes (FWFs). Short (multi-year) UH8to2 simulations were conducted to understand sensitivities when Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) melt is released only at the ocean surface or when it is distributed over the upper water column in accordance with fjord melt plume behavior; these cases were compared with a no GrIS melt case. West Greenland continental shelf currents were fastest in the vertical distribution case and an increase in baroclinic conversion at the shelf break associated with increased eddy kinetic energy was found relative to the surface release case. Further, salinity is lower and meltwater volume greater in the eastern Labrador Sea in the vertical distribution case. For the Arctic, the veracity of the UH8to2 was evaluated for 2017-2020 using available observations. Simulated seasonal sea-ice thickness and concentration are realistic, but the ice is unrealistically thin in the central and eastern Arctic in the fall. Comparisons of vertical sections of ocean temperature, salinity, and buoyancy collected from Ice-Tethered Profilers (ITPs) in the eastern Arctic in the fall and winter of 2019/2020 and co-located/concurrent UH8to2 fields show the stratification over the top 100 m of the water column is too low in the model, the simulated mixed layer too deep, and the simulated subsurface Atlantic Water (AW) too warm; these biases may contribute to the sea-ice biases. A model intercomparison study using the UH8to2 and a forced 1/25° regional Arctic ocean/sea-ice (uses the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model and CICE5) simulation further investigates the relationship between AW and sea-ice in the eastern Arctic. The models show a mesoscale-rich pulse of Atlantic Water extending into the eastern basin that reaches maximum intensity in late winter of 2018, after which it decreases in strength. Concurrent and co-located sea-ice melt or the inhibition of sea-ice growth is seen and is attributed to halocline mesoscale eddies doming into the mixed layer with convection bringing this heat into the vicinity of the sea-ice.

58 GEOSCIENCES

HydroGEN Consortium: Advancements in Hydrogen Production

HydroGEN Energy Materials Network (EMN) is an U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) EERE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO)-funded consortium that aims to accelerate the discovery and development of advanced water splitting materials (AWSM) for clean, low-cost hydrogen production. Materials innovations are key to enhancing performance, durability, and cost of hydrogen generation technologies. HydroGEN is focused on low technology readiness level AWS technologies, including low- (alkaline exchanged membrane electrolysis) and high-temperature electrolysis (proton-conducting solid oxide electrolysis), photoelectrochecmical (PEC) and thermochemical (TCH) water splitting. The AWS technologies in this consortium study proton conduction in solid oxide electrolysis and hydroxide conduction in polymer electrolysis, and proton transport in photoelectrochemical water splitting. This presentation will provide an overview of the HydroGEN EMN and technical highlights of a few lab-led and DOE-awarded "seedling" R&D projects. HydroGEN continues to grow its community of industry, university, and national laboratories, forming a national innovation ecosystem focused on renewable hydrogen production.

08 HYDROGEN

HydroGEN Consortium

HydroGEN Energy Materials Network (EMN) is an U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) EERE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO)-funded consortium that aims to accelerate the discovery and development of advanced water splitting materials (AWSM) for clean, low-cost hydrogen production. Materials innovations are key to enhancing performance, durability, and cost of hydrogen generation technologies. HydroGEN is focused on low technology readiness level AWS technologies, including low- (alkaline exchanged membrane electrolysis) and high-temperature electrolysis (proton-conducting solid oxide electrolysis), photoelectrochecmical (PEC) and thermochemical (TCH) water splitting. The AWS technologies in this consortium study proton conduction in solid oxide electrolysis and hydroxide conduction in polymer electrolysis, and proton transport in photoelectrochemical water splitting. This presentation will provide an overview of the HydroGEN EMN and technical highlights of a few lab-led and DOE-awarded "seedling" R&D projects. HydroGEN continues to grow its community of industry, university, and national laboratories, forming a national innovation ecosystem focused on renewable hydrogen production.

08 HYDROGEN

Methods for Measuring and Computing the Reference Temperature in Newton’s Law of Cooling for External Flows

Newton’s law of cooling requires a reference temperature (𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 ) to define the heat-transfer coefficient (ℎ). For external flows with multiple temperatures in the freestream, obtaining 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 is a challenge. One widely used method, referred to as the adiabatic-wall (AW) method, obtains 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 by requiring the surface of the solid exposed to convective heat transfer to be adiabatic. Another widely used method, referred to as the linear-extrapolation (LE) method, obtains 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 by measuring/computing the heat flux ($𝑞^{′′}_𝑠$) on the solid surface at two different surface temperatures (𝑇 𝑠 ) and then linearly extrapolating to $𝑞^{′′}_𝑠$ = 0. A third recently developed method, referred to as the state-space (SS) method, obtains 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 by probing the temperature space between the highest and lowest in the flow to account for the effects of 𝑇 𝑠 or $𝑞^{′′}_𝑠$ on 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 . This study examines the foundation and accuracy of these methods via a test problem involving film cooling of a flat plate where $𝑞^{′′}_𝑠$ switches signs on the plate’s surface. Results obtained show that only the SS method could guarantee a unique and physically meaningful 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 where 𝑇 𝑠 =𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 on a nonadiabatic surface $𝑞^{′′}_𝑠$ = 0. The AW and LE methods both assume 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 to be independent of 𝑇 𝑠 , which the SS method shows to be incorrect. Though this study also showed the adiabatic-wall temperature, 𝑇 𝐴𝑊 , to be a good approximation of 𝑇 𝑟𝑒𝑓 (<10% relative error), huge errors can occur in ℎ about the solid surface where |𝑇 𝑠 −𝑇 𝐴𝑊 | is near zero because where 𝑇 𝑠 =𝑇 𝐴𝑊 , $𝑞^{′′}_𝑠$ ≠ 0.

Newton's law of cooling

MSD CoP Webinar: "Advances in MSD-LIVE to Support the MSD Community of Practice"

Context: This webinar was hosted by the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice (MSD CoP; https://multisectordynamics.org). Advances in MSD-LIVE to Support the MSD Community of Practice Presenters: Casey Burleyson and Zoe Guillen (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Abstract: The MultiSector Dynamics Living, Intuitive, Value-adding, Environment (MSD-LIVE; msdlive.org) is a cloud-based data management system and advanced computing platform that enables MSD researchers to document and archive their data, run their models and analysis tools, and share their data, software, and workflows within the MSD Community of Practice. Recently, several high-profile datasets have attracted many new users to MSD-LIVE. This webinar has two goals: 1) To refamiliarize the MSD community and new users with the components of the platform (e.g., the data repository, model training notebooks, and data dashboards) and to highlight examples of how these components are advancing MSD science and 2) To demonstrate new features in v3 of the platform, released in late 2025. The main new feature in v3 is the ability to interactively explore data in MSD-LIVE without downloading it. MSD-LIVE users can now click a button in our data repository and launch a blank Jupyter notebook with access to the underlying data on AWS. Users can use the notebook to write analysis, visualization, or subsetting routines that process the data directly on the AWS cloud. We also added a GitHub integration feature that allows users to share analysis or visualization code they develop with the community of MSD-LIVE users. The webinar will wrap up with a look at what's coming next for MSD-LIVE in 2026. Moderator: Patrick M. Reed (MSD CoP Facilitation Team) This webinar was held on: May 12th, 2026 from 1-2 PM EST.

Open Science

Computer Vision on Edge Devices for the Short Term Prediction of Cloud Cover

Edge Computing and IoT are important pieces of today's technological landscape. Here, we build a low-cost IoT sensor for sky imaging and program it using AWS GreenGrass, one of the leading IoT platforms. We demonstrate remote reprogramming of this device to load software that predicts sun shading events through the linear advection method, which is a baseline algorithm that can be used to benchmark algorithmic improvements in future work. Some future directions for sky imaging research are enumerated.

14 SOLAR ENERGY

Using the ATLAS experiment software on heterogeneous resources

With the large dataset expected from 2030 onwards by the HL-LHC at CERN, the ATLAS experiment is reaching the limits of the current data processing model in terms of traditional CPU resources based on x86_64 architectures and an extensive program for software upgrades towards the HL-LHC has been set up. The ARM CPU architecture is becoming a competitive and energy efficient alternative. Accelerators like GPUs are available in any recent HPC. In the past years ATLAS has successfully ported its full data processing and simulation software framework Athena to ARM and has invested significant effort in porting parts of the reconstruction and simulation algorithms to GPUs. We report on the successful usage of the ATLAS experiment offline and online software framework Athena on ARM and GPUs through the PanDA workflow management system at various WLCG sites. Furthermore we report on performance optimizations of the builds for ARM CPUs and the GPU integration efforts. We will discuss performance comparisons of different ARM and x86_64 architectures on WLCG resources and Cloud compute providers like GCP and AWS using ATLAS productions workflows as used in the Hep-Score23 benchmark suite.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS

sparkctl [SWR-25-109]

This package implements configuration and orchestration of Spark clusters with standalone cluster managers. This is useful in environments like HPCs where the infrastructure implemented by cloud providers, such as AWS, is not available. It is particularly helpful when users want to deploy Spark but do not have administrative control of the servers.

Thom, Daniel [National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Flexible Pilot Jobs Framework for Distributed High Throughput Computing

Experimental particle physics has been at the forefront of analyzing the world’s largest datasets for decades. The high-energy physics (HEP) community was among the first to develop suitable software and computing tools for this purpose. GlideinWMS is a Glidein-based workload management system whose purpose is to provide experiments like CMS at CERN, DUNE at Fermilab, and others, a way to access and efficiently use vast amounts of computing resources. This system wants to provide a simple way to submit jobs to a set of computing resources, that will be provided to users behind the scenes. Glideins are the pilot jobs executed on the worker nodes at the grid sites, performing operations such as hardware detection, environment setup, and error handling. After all these operations, they will launch the actual user job. Many grid sites are supported, such as shared clusters, Google CE, and AWS. My internship aimed to design and code a flexible pilot jobs framework that will replace the one used by GlideinWMS, developing a modular and flexible skeleton of the Glidein and adding further functionalities. My project also focused on the application of machine learning techniques as support to this management system.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS