Award Data

It is becoming increasingly apparent that we, as a nation, need to quickly develop smarter solutions to control the overall generation and distribution of electrical energy as power demand across the grid expands in response to the increasing population and the growing prospect of energy intensive technologies coming online. Peak demand spikes occurring regularly throughout the power grid have rea ...

CdZnTe remains the material of choice for room temperature semiconductor detection of X- and -ray radiation. The proposed program seeks to develop an alternate method for growth of this material which would achieve superior material properties similar to those obtained by the slower growth method of Traveling Heater Method, but at a substantially higher growth rates. Material with high composition ...

There is a critical need for low cost, high performance gamma-ray detectors for identification and localization of special nuclear materials (SNM) such as plutonium and weapons grade uranium. Cadmium zinc telluride (Cd1-xZnxTe or & quot;CZT & quot;) has emerged as the leading room temperature semiconductor gamma ray detector. However, despite decades of research and recent improvements in crystal ...

A Light Water Reactor (LWR) is equipped with control and shutdown rods that are inserted into and withdrawn from the core to control the power level in the reactor. The positioning of the control and shutdown rods is performed via the plants rod control system, which in a typical Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) includes a number of subsystems and components such as the Control Rod Drive Mechanism ...

Advanced sensors and measurement techniques are needed to increase resolution, and sensitivity to defects while reducing the intrusiveness and cost of inspection at nuclear power plants. Zirconium, a metal with a low neutron absorption cross section, is widely used in nuclear power plants and close proximity to the reactor of zirconium parts presents limitations for in-service inspection because t ...

The high energy physics community seeks high performance multifilament superconducting wire for use in magnets operating in the range of 12-15T or higher. Nb3Sn conductors fabricated by the internal tin (IT) method presently represent the state-of-the-art for these applications. The internal tin tube (ITT) method holds the promise to compete with such conductors if their performance can be raised ...

Currently available Aluminum nitridesilicon carbide (AlNSiC) composite lossy dielectrics are not suitable as high order mode (HOM) absorbers in superconductor radio frequency (SRF) cavities in linear accelerators operating at cryogenic temperatures. Even though they have favorable dielectric properties at room temperature, AlNSiC composites become totally lossless at cryogenic temperatures due to ...

The emerging field of visual analytics, which integrates analytical reasoning with interactive visualization, appears to be a promising technique for improving the business practices in todays electric power industry. The conducted investigation has revealed that the existing commercial power grid visualization tools focus on displaying the data rather than providing users an interactive ability t ...

For synchronous photoinjection of GaAs photoemission guns, a high-average-power green laser light source with an RF-pulse repetition rate in the range of 0.5 to 3 GHz is required to advance fundamental accelerator technology and its application to nuclear physics scientific research. The efficiency of GaAs photocathodes degrade over time. In order to maintain a constant photoemission, the photoinj ...

Difficulties associated with thick lithium-diffused entrance windows on the outside of p-type coaxial and point-contact germanium gamma-ray detectors have always been a technical hindrance. The lithium dead layer limits the low-energy detection range and adds background in the energy spectrum, thereby limiting commercial access to application areas including pure-science measurements, programmatic ...