Award Data

Computational fluid dynamics methods have found increasing use in high fidelity modeling of complex systems, particularly within nuclear power systems. For example, the phenomenon of thermal stratification in a sodium-cooled fast reactor under natural circulation conditions is resolvable with computational fluid dynamics, but not traditional system-level models. The high accuracy of computational ...

Electric grids are quickly evolving with advanced monitoring and information management as well as communication through connected devices. Although the number of devices and sensors coming online is increasing exponentially, the same vulnerabilities remain in data integrity at the source and during transport. The overall objectives of this proposal is to design a system to improve grid reliabilit ...

Diesel engines are critical to modern economies—moving 70% of the nation’s goods—but they remain coupled to the need for petroleum-based Diesel fuel, which presents challenges. Diesel fuel prices are volatile (creating uncertainty about the fuel’s long-term economics), while the need for oil drives demand for imports. Emissions are challenging as well, as heavy-duty Diesel engines generate ...

Carbon fiber is fast replacing metal in products used in auto vehicles, aerospace, defense, sports, wind turbines, and other industries primarily due to its strength to lightweight. However, carbon fiber is expensive, energy intensive, brittle, and wasteful. Creating a hybrid bamboo/carbon fiber material should reduce cost, weight, energy use, and waste, while improving reformability, recyclabilit ...

Superconducting materials are essential for particle accelerators to support high-energy physics research. New manufacturing processing techniques are needed to enable next generation niobium- based SRF cavities that reduce cost, improve quality factor, increase accelerating gradient, and provide in-situ cleaning to mitigate field emission. The high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) tech ...

Scalable manufacturing techniques are needed for high-quality coatings on nuclear fuel to provide: (1) enhanced safety during design basis and beyond design basis (>1200°C) accident conditions, (2) provide better performance to enable higher linear heat (>7kW/ft, >20% uprate) generation during baseline operation to enable more energy production from existing nuclear plants, (3) enable higher fuel ...

Silicon-based sensors are central to particle physics experiments and particle tracking detectors. Users now demand smaller mass, higher data rate, smaller pixels, and sophisticated front-end processing. Lowering the system mass mitigates loss of information due to multiple scattering and conversions as particles traverse a vertex plane. However, the ionization signal is generally proportional to ...

The changing global nuclear security landscape requires new imaging tools for remote detection applications. Integrating multiple imaging applications into one sensor has that advantage of reducing unmanned aerial vehicle payloads which can result in enhanced, streamlined data collection with fewer flights. While gathering different optical field signatures such as intensity, wavelength, and polar ...

Under this Phase I grant, NuMat Technologies (NuMat) will determine if metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) can be used to remove impurities from hydrogen gas streams at the point of use. The impurities of interest include carbon monoxide, ammonia, sulfur-containing compounds, hydrocarbons, and water. Under the first objective of Phase I, a comprehensive evaluation of MOFs will be carried out to identi ...

New technologies are needed to increase the cost effectiveness of the current light water reactor fleet as well as support materials test reactors and transient test reactors, in keeping with the GAIN initiative for cross-cutting technology. Advances in sensors and instrumentation for visual inspection and accountability are of particular interest. To address this need, Vega Wave Systems, Inc. wil ...