Award Data

To monitor for compliance with nonproliferation treaties such as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), several hundred ground stations around the world collect radionuclide aerosols from the atmosphere and measure the isotopic composition to detect, locate, and characterize nuclear events. These stations must process enormous volumes of air to collect minute amounts of the radioactive ...

New types of nuclear power plants under development that to enable nuclear power to provide a large-scale source of environmentally benign power generation while improving safety and minimizing proliferation risks. For best performance, these reactors will require large numbers of uranium alloy fuel pins made with unique geometries. No method currently exists for producing large numbers of fuel pi ...

Detectors and radiation monitors for future high energy and nuclear physics experiments must be able to withstand radiation environments several orders of magnitude harsher than those of any current device. At present, most radiation detectors are based on silicon technology, however, the practical radiation tolerance of silicon falls far short of requirements in future experiments and silicon mus ...

Oxygen enriched air (OEA) is a valuable tool to enhance combustion processes and improve the energy efficiency. OEA reduces the presence of parasitic nitrogen and therefore flame temperature and associated heat transfer is higher with OEA. A membrane process is the most energy efficient way to make low end OEA (25-35%). Studies show that using 35% OEA reduces fuel consumption and CO2 generation by ...

Actionable understanding of system behavior in the subsurface is required for a wide spectrum of societal and engineering needs by both commercial firms and government entities. These needs include, for example, water resource management, precision agriculture, contaminant remediation, unconventional energy production, CO2 sequestration monitoring and climate studies. Such actionable understanding ...

The subsurface plays a critical, multifaceted role in USA energy security. The subsurface contains energy resources (conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons as well as geothermal) and provides hundreds of years of safe storage capacity for carbon dioxide (CO2). As demonstrated by the impact of domestic non-conventional hydrocarbon production over the past ten years both USA energy security an ...

There are imminent needs for improvements and advancements in the research and development of new sensor materials and measurements techniques for nuclear material control and accountability. Nuclear storage facilities for used fuel and electrochemical recycling facilities need more robust safeguards and security than ever. In addition, fuel monitoring must be done in a cost effective manner. How ...