Award Data

New types of nuclear power plants are under development that will 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 annular geometries that reduce fuel temperature and swelling compared to solid ...

To monitor for compliance with nonproliferation treaties such as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, approximately 80 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 process enormous volumes of air to collect minute amounts of the radioactive isotopes ne ...

Grid modernization requires adoption of modern information technologies in an incremental manner to continue support of legacy assets and use case while enabling seamless integration of and transition to modern paradigms. Empowering domain experts and stakeholders to easily customize modern technologies to the unique needs of grid operation and maintenance is critical. In the Phase I effort Machfu ...

The Company’s development is addressing one of the most basic human needs: access to potable water. Without adequate potable water, society succumbs to human suffering i.e. dehydration, disease and inevitably limited supply results in human conflict. There is therefore a need for an efficient, and cost effective method of producing quality potable water from low grade sources such as brackish or ...

High-temperature superconductors (HTS) are a vital technology for future particle accelerators, motors, generators and other electric power systems, fusion reactors, and many other medical and defense applications requiring high magnetic fields. One remaining limiting factor limiting to the implementation of HTS systems is the lack of adequate sensors to monitor the temperature and strain states o ...

Highway-rail grade crossings, at which there is an abrupt change in the level of the road surface as it crosses the tracks, present a severe hang-up risk to vehicles with low ground clearance. In Phase I and II, ATR developed a conceptual design for a Low Ground Clearance Vehicle Detection System (LGCVDS) to actively prevent such accidents. The LGCVDS is able to use a priori crossing profile data ...

The discovery and commercial development of licensed vaccines often take many years of research followed by years of pre-clinical and clinical development. We propose to assess the feasibility of using a novel irradiation-inactivation technology to develop vaccines more rapidly. The technology utilizes a manganese-peptide complex to protect antigenic proteins from ionizing radiation while allowing ...

Ocean and tidal currents contain a huge amount of power that is currently untapped. This power could be used very efficiently to desalinate water for water-poor regions located near coastlines. A major obstacle is the high cost of manufacturing and deployment of ocean systems. We propose an innovative new technology that can dramatically reduce the manufacturing and deployment costs of hydrokineti ...

The majority of additive manufacturing (AM) processes are plagued by a lack of online process control. Most existing quality assurance methods involve an inspection of the finished part rather than online quality control, leaving a need for an online inspection system that can assist in the amelioration of flaws during the manufacturing process. Thus, a monitoring method to optimize the manufactur ...

A major concern with nuclear energy is the safe storage of the spent nuclear fuel before final disposal. A monitoring sensor located inside a storage cask to provide direct measurements of internal conditions is of particular interest to DOE. Conventional wireless sensors have inherent limitations because the stainless steel canister shields the RF signals from wireless sensors inside the canister ...