GRIDS Project: USC is developing an iron-air rechargeable battery for large-scale energy storage that could help integrate renewable energy sources into the electric grid. Iron-air batteries have the potential to store large amounts of energy at low cost—iron is inexpensive and abundant, while oxygen is freely obtained from the air we breathe. However, current iron-air battery technologies have suffered from low efficiency and short life spans. USC is working to dramatically increase the efficiency of the battery by placing chemical additives on the battery’s iron-based electrode and restructuring the catalysts at the molecular level on the battery’s air-based electrode. This can help the battery resist degradation and increase life span. The goal of the project is to develop a prototype iron-air battery at significantly cost lower than today’s best commercial batteries.

GRIDS Project: LBNL is designing a flow battery for grid storage that relies on a hydrogen-bromine chemistry which could be more efficient, last longer and cost less than today’s lead-acid batteries. Flow batteries are fundamentally different from traditional lead-acid batteries because the chemical reactants that provide their energy are stored in external tanks instead of inside the battery. A flow battery can provide more energy because all that is required to increase its storage capacity is to increase the size of the external tanks. The hydrogen-bromine reactants used by LBNL in its flow battery are inexpensive, long lasting, and provide power quickly. The cost of the design could be well below $100 per kilowatt hour, which would rival conventional grid-scale battery technologies.

This plan describes environmental monitoring as required by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Order 450.1, “Environmental Protection Program,” and additional environmental monitoring currently performed by other organizations in and around the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The objective of DOE Order 450.1 is to implement sound stewardship practices that protect the air, water, land, and other natural and cultural resources that may be impacted by DOE operations. This plan describes the organizations responsible for conducting environmental monitoring across the INL, the rationale for monitoring, the types of media being monitored, where the monitoring is conducted, and where monitoring results can be obtained. This plan presents a summary of the overall environmental monitoring performed in and around the INL without duplicating detailed information in the various monitoring procedures and program plans currently used to conduct monitoring.

This paper presents activities and results associated with Phase 1 (pre-stimulation phase) of an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) demonstration project at the northwest part of The Geysers geothermal field, California. The paper presents development of a 3-D geological model, coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) modeling of proposed stimulation injection as well as current plans for stimulation and monitoring of the site. The project aims at creating an EGS by directly and systematically injecting cool water at relatively low pressure into a known High Temperature (about 280 to 350 C) Zone (HTZ) located under the conventional (240 C) steam reservoir at depths of {approx}3 km. Accurate micro-earthquake monitoring initiated before the start of the injection will be used as a tool for tracking the development of the EGS and monitoring changes in microseismicity. We first analyzed historic injection and micro-earthquake data from an injection well (Aidlin 11) located about 3 miles to the west of the new EGS demonstration area. Thereafter, we used the same modeling approach to predict the likely extent of the zone of enhanced permeability for a proposed initial injection in two wells (Prati State 31 and Prati 32) at the new EGS demonstration area. Our modeling indicates that the …

Idaho National Laboratory developed the Tritium Permeation Analysis Code (TPAC) for tritium permeation in the Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (VHTR). All the component models in the VHTR were developed and were embedded into the MATHLAB SIMULINK package with a Graphic User Interface. The governing equations of the nuclear ternary reaction and thermal neutron capture reactions from impurities in helium and graphite core, reflector, and control rods were implemented. The TPAC code was verified using analytical solutions for the tritium birth rate from the ternary fission, the birth rate from 3He, and the birth rate from 10B. This paper also provides comparisons of the TPAC with the existing other codes. A VHTR reference design was selected for tritium permeation study from the reference design to the nuclear-assisted hydrogen production plant and some sensitivity study results are presented based on the HTGR outlet temperature of 750 degrees C.

The 3M Company has developed a high-temperature low-sag conductor referred to as Aluminum-Conductor Composite-Reinforced or ACCR. The conductor uses an aluminum metal matrix material to replace the steel in conventional conductors. The objective of this work is to accelerate the commercial acceptance by electric utilities of this new conductor design by testing four representative conductor classes in controlled conditions. A unique facility called the Powerline Conductor Accelerated Testing (PCAT) Facility was built at ORNL for testing overhead conductors. The PCAT has been uniquely designed for testing overhead bare transmission line conductors at high currents and temperatures after they have been installed and tensioned to the manufacturer's specifications. The ability to operate a transmission line conductor in this manner does not exist elsewhere in the United States. Four classes of ACCR cable designed by the 3M Company have been successfully test at ORNL small, medium, large and small/compact. Based on these and other manufacturer tests, the 3M Company has successfully introduced the ACCR into the commercial market and has completed over twenty installations for utility companies.

Broad Funding Opportunity Announcement Project: Ohio State has developed an iron-based material and process for converting syngas—a synthetic gas mixture—into electricity, H2, and/or liquid fuel with zero CO2 emissions. Traditional carbon capture methods use chemical solvents or special membranes to separate CO2 from the gas exhaust from coal-fired power plants. Ohio State’s technology uses an iron-based oxygen carrier to generate CO2 and H2 from syngas in separate, pure product streams by means of a circulating bed reactor configuration. The end products of the system are H2, electricity, and/or liquid fuel, all of which are useful sources of power that can come from coal or syngas derived from biomass. Ohio State is developing a high-pressure pilot-scale unit to demonstrate this process at the National Carbon Capture Center.

We experimentally demonstrate low-power-consumption vortex-core switching in magnetic nanodisks using tailored rotating magnetic fields produced with orthogonal and unipolar Gaussian-pulse currents. The optimal width of the orthogonal pulses and their time delay are found, from analytical and micromagnetic numerical calculations, to be determined only by the angular eigenfrequency {omega}{sub D} for a given vortex-state disk of polarization p, such that {sigma}=1/{omega}{sub D} and {Delta}t={pi}/2 p/{omega}{sub D} . The estimated optimal pulse parameters are in good agreement with the experimental results. This work lays a foundation for energy-efficient information recording in vortex-core cross-point architecture.

Our proposal focuses on cloud-radiation processes in a general 3D cloud situation, with particular emphasis on cloud optical depth and effective particle size. We also focus on zenith radiance measurements, both active and passive. The proposal has three main parts. Part One exploits the “solar-background” mode of ARM lidars to allow them to retrieve cloud optical depth not just for thin clouds but for all clouds. This also enables the study of aerosol cloud interactions with a single instrument. Part Two exploits the large number of new wavelengths offered by ARM’s zenith-pointing ShortWave Spectrometer (SWS), especially during CLASIC, to develop better retrievals not only of cloud optical depth but also of cloud particle size. We also propose to take advantage of the SWS’ 1 Hz sampling to study the “twilight zone” around clouds where strong aerosol-cloud interactions are taking place. Part Three involves continuing our cloud optical depth and cloud fraction retrieval research with ARM’s 2NFOV instrument by, first, analyzing its data from the AMF-COPS/CLOWD deployment, and second, making our algorithms part of ARM’s operational data processing.

Knowledge of the electric and magnetic elastic form factors of the nucleon is essential for an understanding of nucleon structure. Of the form factors, the electric form factor of the neutron has been measured over the smallest range in Q{sup 2} and with the lowest precision. Jefferson Lab experiment 02-013 used a novel new polarized {sup 3}He target to nearly double the range of momentum transfer in which the neutron form factor has been studied and to measure it with much higher precision. Polarized electrons were scattered off this target, and both the scattered electron and neutron were detected. G{sup n}{sub E} was measured to be 0.0242 ± 0.0020(stat) ± 0.0061(sys) and 0.0247 ± 0.0029(stat) ± 0.0031(sys) at Q{sup 2} = 1.7 and 2.5 GeV{sup 2}, respectively.

The Kansas Wind Working Group (WWG) is a 33-member group announced by former Governor Kathleen Sebelius on Jan. 7, 2008. Formed through Executive Order 08-01, the WWG will educate stakeholder groups with the current information on wind energy markets, technologies, economics, policies, prospects and issues. Governor Mark Parkinson serves as chair of the Kansas Wind Working Group. The group has been instrumental in focusing on the elements of government and coordinating government and private sector efforts in wind energy development. Those efforts have moved Kansas from 364 MW of wind three years ago to over 1000 MW today. Further, the Wind Working Group was instrumental in fleshing out issues such as a state RES and net metering, fundamental parts of HB 2369 that was passed and is now law in Kansas. This represents the first mandatory RES and net metering in Kansas history.

Romania successfully completed the world’s first air shipment of spent nuclear fuel transported in Type B(U) casks under existing international laws and without shipment license special exceptions when the last Romanian highly enriched uranium (HEU) spent nuclear fuel was transported to the Russian Federation in June 2009. This air shipment required the design, fabrication, and licensing of special 20 foot freight containers and cask tiedown supports to transport the eighteen TUK 19 shipping casks on a Russian commercial cargo aircraft. The new equipment was certified for transport by road, rail, water, and air to provide multi modal transport capabilities for shipping research reactor spent fuel. The equipment design, safety analyses, and fabrication were performed in the Russian Federation and transport licenses were issued by both the Russian and Romanian regulatory authorities. The spent fuel was transported by truck from the VVR S research reactor to the Bucharest airport, flown by commercial cargo aircraft to the airport at Yekaterinburg, Russia, and then transported by truck to the final destination in a secure nuclear facility at Chelyabinsk, Russia. This shipment of 23.7 kg of HEU was coordinated by the Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return Program (RRRFR), as part of the U.S. Department …

A natural circulation pattern in a Very High Gas-Cooled Reactor during a hypothetical air-ingress accident has been investigated using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods in order to compare with the previous 1-D flow path model for the air-ingress analyses. The GT-MHR 600 MWt reactor was selected to be the reference design and modeled by a half symmetric 3-D geometry using FLUENT 6.3, a commercial CFD code. The simulation was carried out as steady-state calculations, and the boundary conditions were either assumed or provided from the 1-D GAMMA code results. Totally, 12 different cases have been estimated, and many notable findings and results have been obtained in this study. According to the simulations, the natural circulation pattern in the reactor was quite different from the previous 1-D assumptions. A large re-circulation flow with thermal stratification phenomena was clearly observed in the hot-leg and the lower plenum in the 3-D model. This re-circulation flow provided approximately an order faster air-ingress speed (0.46 m/s in superficial velocity) than previously predicted values by 1-D modeling (0.02~0.03 m/s). It indicates that the 1-D air-ingress modeling may significantly distort the air-ingress scenario and consequences. In addition, the complicated natural circulation pattern is eventually expected to lead …

BEEST Project: Sion Power is developing a lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery, a potentially cost-effective alternative to the Li-Ion battery that could store 400% more energy per pound. All batteries have 3 key parts—a positive and negative electrode and an electrolyte—that exchange ions to store and release electricity. Using different materials for these components changes a battery’s chemistry and its ability to power a vehicle. Traditional Li-S batteries experience adverse reactions between the electrolyte and lithium-based negative electrode that ultimately limit the battery to less than 50 charge cycles. Sion Power will sandwich the lithium- and sulfur-based electrode films around a separator that protects the negative electrode and increases the number of charges the battery can complete in its lifetime. The design could eventually allow for a battery with 400% greater storage capacity per pound than Li-Ion batteries and the ability to complete more than 500 recharge cycles.

The ForCent forest ecosystem model was developed by making major revisions to the DayCent model including: (1) adding a humus organic pool, (2) incorporating a detailed root growth model, and (3) including plant phenological growth patterns. Observed plant production and soil respiration data from 1993 to 2000 were used to demonstrate that the ForCent model could accurately simulate ecosystem carbon dynamics for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory deciduous forest. A comparison of ForCent versus observed soil pool {sup 14}C signature ({Delta} {sup 14}C) data from the Enriched Background Isotope Study {sup 14}C experiment (1999-2006) shows that the model correctly simulates the temporal dynamics of the {sup 14}C label as it moved from the surface litter and roots into the mineral soil organic matter pools. ForCent model validation was performed by comparing the observed Enriched Background Isotope Study experimental data with simulated live and dead root biomass {Delta} {sup 14}C data, and with soil respiration {Delta} {sup 14}C (mineral soil, humus layer, leaf litter layer, and total soil respiration) data. Results show that the model correctly simulates the impact of the Enriched Background Isotope Study {sup 14}C experimental treatments on soil respiration {Delta} {sup 14}C values for the different soil organic …

GRIDS Project: Fluidic is developing a low-cost, rechargeable, high-power module for Zinc-air batteries that will be used to store renewable energy. Zinc-air batteries are traditionally found in small, non-rechargeable devices like hearing aids because they are well-suited to delivering low levels of power for long periods of time. Historically, Zinc-air batteries have not been as useful for applications which require periodic bursts of power, like on the electrical grid. Fluidic hopes to fill this need by combining the high energy, low cost, and long run-time of a Zinc-air battery with new chemistry providing high power, high efficiency, and fast response. The battery module could allow large grid-storage batteries to provide much more power on very short demand—the most costly kind of power for utilities—and with much more versatile performance.

Our objectives in this study are to quantify the discharge rate of uranium (U) to the Columbia River from the Hanford Site's 300 Area, and to follow that U down river to constrain its fate. Uranium from the Hanford Site has variable isotopic composition due to nuclear industrial processes carried out at the site. This characteristic makes it possible to use high-precision isotopic measurements of U in environmental samples to identify even trace levels of contaminant U, determine its sources, and estimate discharge rates. Our data on river water samples indicate that as much as 3.2 kg/day can enter the Columbia River from the 300 Area, which is only a small fraction of the total load of dissolved natural background U carried by the Columbia River. This very low-level of Hanford derived U can be discerned, despite dilution to < 1 percent of natural background U, 350 km downstream from the Hanford Site. These results indicate that isotopic methods can allow the amounts of U from the 300 Area of the Hanford Site entering the Columbia River to be measured accurately to ascertain whether they are an environmental concern, or are insignificant relative to natural uranium background in the Columbia …

Core promoters are critical regions for gene regulation in higher eukaryotes. However, the boundaries of promoter regions, the relative rates of initiation at the transcription start sites (TSSs) distributed within them, and the functional significance of promoter architecture remain poorly understood. We produced a high-resolution map of promoters active in the Drosophila melanogaster embryo by integrating data from three independent and complementary methods: 21 million cap analysis of gene expression (CAGE) tags, 1.2 million RNA ligase mediated rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RLMRACE) reads, and 50,000 cap-trapped expressed sequence tags (ESTs). We defined 12,454 promoters of 8037 genes. Our analysis indicates that, due to non-promoter-associated RNA background signal, previous studies have likely overestimated the number of promoter-associated CAGE clusters by fivefold. We show that TSS distributions form a complex continuum of shapes, and that promoters active in the embryo and adult have highly similar shapes in 95% of cases. This suggests that these distributions are generally determined by static elements such as local DNA sequence and are not modulated by dynamic signals such as histone modifications. Transcription factor binding motifs are differentially enriched as a function of promoter shape, and peaked promoter shape is correlated with both temporal and spatial …

This report describes a bioenergetic model developed to allocate seasonal pulse flows to benefit salmon growth. The model links flow with floodplain inundation and production of invertebrate prey eaten by juvenile Chinook salmon. A unique quantile modeling approach is used to describe temporal variation among juvenile salmon spawned at different times. Preliminary model outputs are presented and future plans to optimize flows both to maximize salmon growth and hydropower production are outlined.

A Symposium on Turbulence and Combustion was held at Cornell University on August 3-4, 2009. The overall goal of the Symposium was to promote future advances in the study of turbulence and combustion, through an unique forum intended to foster interactions between leading members of these two research communities. The Symposium program consisted of twelve invited lectures given by world-class experts in these fields, two poster sessions consisting of nearly 50 presentations, an open forum, and other informal activities designed to foster discussion. Topics covered in the lectures included turbulent dispersion, wall-bounded flows, mixing, finite-rate chemistry, and others, using experiment, modeling, and computations, and included perspectives from an international community of leading researchers from academia, national laboratories, and industry.

In one of our earlier studies [Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 022509 (2008)], we proposed a concept of robust information storage, recording and readout, which can be implementaed in nonvolatile magnetic random-access memories and is based on the energetically degenerated twofold ground states of vortex-core magnetizations. In the present study, we experimentally demonstrate reliable memory-bit selection and information recording in vortex-core cross-point architecture, specifically using a two-by-two vortex-state disk array. In order to efficiently switch a vortex core positioned at the intersection of crossed electrodes, two orthogonal addressing electrodes are selected, and then two Gaussian pulse currents of optimal pulse width and time delay are applied. Such tailored pulse-type rotating magnetic fields which occurs only at the selected intersection is prerequisite for a reliable memory-bit selection and low-power-consumption recording of information in the existing cross-point architecture.

One of the options considered for future upgrades of the LHC injector complex entails the replacement of the PSwith the PS2, a longer circumference and higher energy synchrotron. Electron cloud effects represent an importantpotential limitation to the achievement of the upgrade goals. We report the results of numerical studies aimingat estimating the e-cloud density thresholds for the occurrence of single bunch instabilities.

This document catalogs the characteristics of current and potential future DC products and power systems.

An illumination grade warm white (WW) LED, having correlated color temperature (CCT) between 2800 K and 3500K and capable of producing 800 lm output at 100 lm/W, has been developed in this program. The high power WW LED is an ideal source for use as replacement for incandescent, and Halogen reflector and general purpose lamps of similar lumen value. Over the two year period, we have made following accomplishments: developed a high power warm white LED product and made over 50% improvements in light output and efficacy. The new high power WW LED product is a die on ceramic surface mountable LED package. It has four 1x1 mm{sup 2} InGaN pump dice flip chip attached to a ceramic submount in 2x2 array, covered by warm white phosphor ceramic platelets called Lumiramic™ and an overmolded silicone lens encapsulating the LED array. The performance goal was achieved through breakthroughs in following key areas: (1) High efficiency pump LED development through pump LED active region design and epi growth quality improvement (funded by internal programs). (2) Increase in injection efficiency (IE) represented by reduction in forward voltage (V{sub f}) through the improvement of the silver-based p-contact and a reduction in spreading resistance. The …