Award Data

Arguably the most important issue facing the further development of magnetic fusion via advanced tokamaks is to predict, avoid, or mitigate disruptions. This problem recently becameone of the most challenging and hot topics in fusion research due to several potentially damaging effects, all of which can impact the ITER device. Among four disruption related topics: MHD dynamics, plasma edge physics ...

Improving wind energy harvesting system reliability is a challenge that requires advanced technologies and innovation to support growth and development of domestic wind energy. Toimprove quality assurance inspection of wind turbine parts and, in particular, to improvetechnologies to perform quality assurance inspection on very large, thick wind turbine parts, new technology is critically needed to ...

Commercially available lithium-ion cells use electrolytes containing a mixture of organic carbonate solvents combined with lithium hexafluorophosphate salt. These electrolytes have significant disadvantages limiting the performance and safety of large li-ion batteries for automotive applications: regular electrolytes are flammable and the instability of the salt causes battery performance degradat ...

While design improvements have been achieved, considerable difficulty continues to be encountered in the development of accelerator structures for future linear colliders required to operate with long term reliability at loaded average accelerating gradients of 100 megavolts per meter and radio-frequency pulse lengths in the range of 150 to 250 nanoseconds. A recently completed series of high pow ...

Low cost and compact high power and high repetition rate laser is a critical component for next generation high repetition rate accelerators for DOE HEP programs. However, current technologies are limited and breakthrough technologies are needed. PolarOnyx is to develop a 2 micron high power (kW) and high repetition rate (1-100 MHz) femtosecond fiber laser system (Polaris laser system). PolarOnyx ...

High-brightness electron beams are required for a number of applications, from advanced accelerators to 4th generation light sources. However, the current technology for producing such beams requires an expensive, complicated laser system to drive a photocathode in a radio frequency gun. This technology is difficult to extend to high duty cycles, as is necessary for many applications in research a ...

The proposed International Linear Collider will require a high-accuracy beam position monitor (BPM) at each quadrupole magnet to aid with beam alignment and as an input to feedforward schemes to cancel alignment errors. In order to meet the requirements of ILC, the BPMs will require sub-micron position resolution, fast transient response, and a relatively large clear aperture of 78 mm. FAR-TECH, ...

Our nation has a significant underground cable infrastructure that represents 15% to 20% of installed electric distribution capacity (many millions of feet). A portion of this infrastructure is reaching the end of its design life or reliable service life. Complete replacement of old or failing cable systems is a costly option and, at any rate, unnecessary because, depending on their environment, ...

The detection of radioactive xenon is an important component of both national and international efforts to detect nuclear explosions. Existing radioxenon detection systems have high sensitivity, but a better discrimination of Xe isotopes is desirable to better distinguish the radioxenon background created by nuclear power plants and medical isotope facilities from a nuclear explosion. Existing sys ...

Many different types of metals and their chemical species are present in groundwater and soil at DOE sites. Mercury is a particular concern because it is a very toxic element that is widely spread in the atmosphere and water. Despite advances to measurement technology at laboratory level, the real time in-situ monitoring technologies for mercury and other metals are still lacking both in terms of ...