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Tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel is a key component of advanced small modular nuclear fission reactors due to its inherent safety at high temperatures and irradiation levels and decreased proliferation risk relative to current reactor fuels. A more efficient cooling method for TRISO fuel compacts would increase heat transfer, allow for an increase in fuel density, and further improve accident ...

Plastics are indispensable materials for the modern life and global economy, but current practices in the generation and disposal of commodity plastics are largely unsustainable and causing severe worldwide plastics pollution and enormous materials' energy and value losses to the economy. In particular, plastics are a material of choice in packaging applications but they are currently designed for ...

The laser plasma accelerator (LPA) is a very promising technology for generating gamma rays for the detection of contraband bulk nuclear materials, but is currently limited by the rate at which the beam can be pulsed. Erosion of the capillary plasma channel is the main limiting factor and can be mitigated through the use of artificial diamond to construct the channel. Computational modeling and ...

During altitude-induced hypoxia, operator cognitive and physical capacity degrades, compromising individual and team performance. Cognitive degradation is linked to falling brain energy levels, increased reliance on anaerobic energy production and lactate accumulation. Ketones are the evolutionary alternative substrate to glucose for brain metabolic requirements; previous studies demonstrated that ...

Special OperationsForces (SOF)are an integral aspect of the US military. SOF operators are among the most elite and highly qualified individuals in the U.S.military. As such, extraordinary physical and mental demands are placed upon them to excel in extreme environments for extended periods of time. This unrelenting cycle of combat deployments and intense pre-deployment training shortens the funct ...

Energy consumption is quickly becoming one of the primary bottlenecks of compute clusters and supercomputers. The DOE is a primary developer and consumer of these power hungry supercomputers, however smaller cluster machines are also widely used through other government agencies and industries. Yet, there are few power profiling tools that allow application developers transparent insight into the ...

Higher operating temperature for the gas turbine engine is needed for enhanced efficiency, lower emission and increased performance goal. The current state-of-the-art thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are not adequate to provide the needed protection for the metallic components of the turbine engine operating at higher TBC surface temperature (>1300

High power RF windows are failing due to single surface multipactor. A more effective and robust technique is required to address this problem. This program will investigate two approaches for addressing multipactor failure in high power windows. The first will explore improved methods for depositing surface films to reduce secondary electron emission. The second approach will investigate changes ...

The energy storage device is today

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are emerging as attractive alternatives to traditional HDDs due to there reduced power consumption and potential for increased performance. SSDs have the potential to improve the performance of both Checkpoint Restart (CPR) and the Metadata Server (MDS) for high performance File Systems, e.g., Lustre. However, the write performance of SSDs is relatively poor (compared to ...