The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has had a longstanding goal of introducing uncertainty into the analysis it routinely conducts in compliance with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) and for strategic management purposes. The need to introduce some treatment of uncertainty arises both because it would be good general management practice, and because intuitively many of the technologies under development by EERE have a considerable advantage in an uncertain world. For example, an expected kWh output from a wind generator in a future year, which is not exposed to volatile and unpredictable fuel prices, should be truly worth more than an equivalent kWh from an alternative fossil fuel fired technology. Indeed, analysts have attempted to measure this value by comparing the prices observed in fixed-price natural gas contracts compared to ones in which buyers are exposed to market prices (see Bolinger, Wiser, and Golove and (2004)). In addition to the routine reasons for exploring uncertainty given above, the history of energy markets appears to have exhibited infrequent, but troubling, regime shifts, i.e., historic turning points at which the center of gravity or fundamental nature of the system appears to have abruptly shifted. Figure 1 below …

Report on an analysis of the energy savings and cost impacts associated with the use of newer and more efficiently commercial building energy codes in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Seismic borehole C4998 was cored through the upper portion of the Columbia River Basalt Group and Ellensburg Formation to provide detailed lithologic information and intact rock samples that represent the geology at the Waste Treatment Plant. This report describes the drilling of borehole C4998 and documents the geologic data collected during the drilling of the cored portion of the borehole.

Assessing long-term performance of Category 3 waste cement grouts for radionuclide encasement requires knowledge of the radionuclide-cement interactions and mechanisms of retention (i.e. sorption or precipitation). This understanding will enable accurate prediction of radionuclide fate when the waste forms come in contact with groundwater. A set of diffusion experiments using carbonated and non-carbonated concrete-soil half cells was conducted under unsaturated conditions (4% and 7% by wt moisture content). Spiked concrete half-cell specimens were prepared with and without colloidal metallic iron addition and were carbonated using supercritical carbon dioxide. Spikes of I and Re were added to achieve measurable diffusion profile in the soil part of the half-cell. In addition, properties of concrete materials likely to influence radionuclide migration such as carbonation were evaluated in an effort to correlate these properties with the release of iodine and rhenium.

Recent theoretical descriptions as to the magnitude of effect that quantum confinement has on he conduction band (CB) of CdSe quantum dots (QD) have been conflicting. In this manuscript, we experimentally identify quantum confinement effects in the CB of CdSe QDs for the first time. Using X-ray absorption spectroscopy, we have unambiguously witnessed the CB minimum shift to higher energy with decreasing particle size and have been able to compare these results to recent theories. Our experiments have been able to identify which theories correctly describe the CB states in CdSe QDs. In particular, our experiments suggest that multiple theories describe the shifts in the CB of CdSe QDs and are not mutually exclusive.

In this final report, we discuss both theoretical and applied research resulting from our DOE project, ICEKAP 2004: A Collaborative Joint Geophysical Imaging Project at Krafla and IDDP. The abstract below begins with a general discussion of the problem we addressed: the location and characterization of “blind” geothermal resources using microearthquake and magnetotelluric measurements. The abstract then describes the scientific results and their application to the Krafla geothermal area in Iceland. The text following this abstract presents the full discussion of this work, in the form of the PhD thesis of Stephen A. Onacha. The work presented here was awarded the “Best Geophysics Paper” at the 2005 Geothermal Resources Council meeting, Reno. This study presents the modeling of buried fault zones using microearthquake and electrical resistivity data based on the assumptions that fluid-filled fractures cause electrical and seismic anisotropy and polarization. In this study, joint imaging of electrical and seismic data is used to characterize the fracture porosity of the fracture zones. P-wave velocity models are generated from resistivity data and used in locating microearthquakes. Fracture porosity controls fluid circulation in the hydrothermal systems and the intersections of fracture zones close to the heat source form important upwelling zones for …

A tensonometer for stretching metal foils has beenconstructed for the study of strain broadening in x-ray diffraction lineprofiles. This device, which is designed for use on the powderdiffractometer in Station 2.3 at Daresbury Laboratory, allows in-situmeasurements to be performed on samples under stress. It can be used fordata collection in either transmission or reflection modes using eithersymmetric or asymmetric diffraction geometries. As a test case,measurements were carried out on a 18mum thick copper foil experiencingstrain levels of up to 5 percent using both symmetric reflection andsymmetric transmission diffraction. All the diffraction profilesdisplayed peak broadening and asymmetry which increased with strain. Themeasured profiles were analysed by the fundamental parameters approachusing the TOPAS peak fitting software. All the observed broadenedprofiles were modelled by convoluting a refineable diffraction profile,representing the dislocation and crystallite size broadening, with afixed instrumental profile pre-determined usinghigh quality LaB6reference powder. The de-convolution process yielded "pure" sampleintegral breadths and asymmetry results which displayed a strongdependence on applied strain and increased almost linearly with appliedstrain. Assuming crystallite size broadening in combination withdislocation broadening arising from fcc a/2<110>111 dislocations,we have extracted the variation of mechanic al property with strain. Theobservation of both peak asymmetry and broadening has been interpreted asa manifestation of …

This dissertation presents the results of a research agenda aimed at improving integration and stability in nanocrystal-based solar cells through advances in active materials and device architectures. The introduction of 3-dimensional nanocrystals illustrates the potential for improving transport and percolation in hybrid solar cells and enables novel fabrication methods for optimizing integration in these systems. Fabricating cells by sequential deposition allows for solution-based assembly of hybrid composites with controlled and well-characterized dispersion and electrode contact. Hyperbranched nanocrystals emerge as a nearly ideal building block for hybrid cells, allowing the controlled morphologies targeted by templated approaches to be achieved in an easily fabricated solution-cast device. In addition to offering practical benefits to device processing, these approaches offer fundamental insight into the operation of hybrid solar cells, shedding light on key phenomena such as the roles of electrode-contact and percolation behavior in these cells. Finally, all-inorganic nanocrystal solar cells are presented as a wholly new cell concept, illustrating that donor-acceptor charge transfer and directed carrier diffusion can be utilized in a system with no organic components, and that nanocrystals may act as building blocks for efficient, stable, and low-cost thin-film solar cells.

This dissertation was motivated by the alarming number of biomedical device failures reported in the literature, coupled with the growing trend towards the use of Nitinol for endovascular stents. The research is aimed at addressing two of the primary failure modes in Nitinol endovascular stents: fatigue-crack growth and overload fracture. The small dimensions of stents, coupled with their complex geometries and variability among manufacturers, make it virtually impossible to determine generic material constants associated with specific devices. Instead, the research utilizes a hybrid of standard test techniques (fracture mechanics and x-ray micro-diffraction) and custom-designed testing apparatus for the determination of the fracture properties of specimens that are suitable representations of self-expanding Nitinol stents. Specifically, the role of texture (crystallographic alignment of atoms) and the austenite-to-martensite phase transformation on the propagation of cracks in Nitinol was evaluated under simulated body conditions and over a multitude of stresses and strains. The results determined through this research were then used to create conservative safe operating and inspection criteria to be used by the biomedical community for the determination of specific device vulnerability to failure by fracture and/or fatigue.

This report presents preliminary operational guidelines and supporting work products developed through the interagency Operational Guidelines Task Group (OGT). The report consolidates preliminary operational guidelines, all ancillary work products, and a companion software tool that facilitates their implementation into one reference source document. The report is intended for interim use and comment and provides the foundation for fostering future reviews of the operational guidelines and their implementation within emergency preparedness and response initiatives in the event of a radiological dispersal device (RDD) incident. The report principally focuses on the technical derivation and presentation of the operational guidelines. End-user guidance providing more details on how to apply these operational guidelines within planning and response settings is being considered and developed elsewhere. The preliminary operational guidelines are categorized into seven groups on the basis of their intended application within early, intermediate, and long-term recovery phases of emergency response. We anticipate that these operational guidelines will be updated and refined by interested government agencies in response to comments and lessons learned from their review, consideration, and trial application. This review, comment, and trial application process will facilitate the selection of a final set of operational guidelines that may be more or less inclusive …

In this report, we present: -- The Pitzer ion-interactiontheory and models -- Input file requirements for using the TOUGHREACTPitzer ion-interaction model and associated databases -- Run-time errormessages -- Verification test cases and application examples. For themain code structure, features, overall solution methods, description ofinput/output files for parameters other than those specific to theimplemented Pitzer model, and error messages, see the TOUGHREACT User'sGuide (Xu et al., 2005). The TOUGHREACT Pitzer version runs on aDEC-alpha architecture CPU, under OSF1 V5.1, with Compaq Digital FortranCompiler. The compiler run-time libraries are required for execution aswell as compilation. The code also runs on Intel Pentium IV andhigher-version CPU-based machines with Compaq Visual Fortran Compiler orIntel Fortran Compiler (integrated with the Microsoft DevelopmentEnvironment). The minimum hardware configuration should include 1 GB RAMand 1 GB (2 GB recommended) of available disk space.