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This report presents results of system evaluations and lifecycle cost analyses performed for several different commercial-scale high-temperature electrolysis (HTE) hydrogen production concepts. The concepts presented in this report rely on grid electricity and non-nuclear high-temperature process heat sources for the required energy inputs. The HYSYS process analysis software was used to evaluate both central plant designs for large-scale hydrogen production (50,000 kg/day or larger) and forecourt plant designs for distributed production and delivery at about 1,500 kg/day. The HYSYS software inherently ensures mass and energy balances across all components and it includes thermodynamic data for all chemical species. The optimized designs described in this report are based on analyses of process flow diagrams that included realistic representations of fluid conditions and component efficiencies and operating parameters for each of the HTE hydrogen production configurations analyzed. As with previous HTE system analyses performed at the INL, a custom electrolyzer model was incorporated into the overall process flow sheet. This electrolyzer model allows for the determination of the average Nernst potential, cell operating voltage, gas outlet temperatures, and electrolyzer efficiency for any specified inlet steam, hydrogen, and sweep-gas flow rates, current density, cell active area, and external heat loss or gain. The …

An overview of the recent measurements of the top quark properties in proton antiproton collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV is presented. These measurements are based on 5.4-8.7 fb{sup -1} of data collected with the D0 and CDF experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The top quark mass and width measurements, studies of the spin correlation in top quark pair production, W boson helicity measurement, searches for anomalous top quark couplings and Lorentz invariance violation are discussed.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about the Innovative Materials and Processes for Advanced Carbon Capture Technologies (IMPACCT) program including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet discusses the development of gelled membranes as part of the "Achieving a 10,000 GPU Permeance for Post-Combustion Carbon Capture with Gelled Ionic Liquid-Based Membranes" project.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about the Plants Engineered to Replace Oil (PETRO) program including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet discusses the the development of a variant of Camelina, a crop that can be used to produce liquid fuels as part of the "Development of a Dedicated, High-Value Biofuels Crop" project.

Direct-drive-implosion experiments on the OMEGA laser [T. R. Boehly et al., Opt. Commun. 133, 495 (1997)] have showed discrepancies between simulations of the scattered (non-absorbed) light levels and measured ones that indicate the presence of a mechanism that reduces laser coupling efficiency by 10%-20%. This appears to be due to crossed-beam energy transfer (CBET) that involves electromagnetic-seeded, low-gain stimulated Brillouin scattering. CBET scatters energy from the central portion of the incoming light beam to outgoing light, reducing the laser absorption and hydrodynamic efficiency of implosions. One-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations including CBET show good agreement with all observables in implosion experiments on OMEGA. Three strategies to mitigate CBET and improve laser coupling are considered: the use of narrow beams, multicolor lasers, and higher-Z ablators. Experiments on OMEGA using narrow beams have demonstrated improvements in implosion performance.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Legacy Management conducted annual sampling at the Rulison, Colorado, Site for the Long-Term Hydrologic Monitoring Program (LTHMP) on May 18, 2011. The samples were shipped to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Radiation and Indoor Environments National Laboratory in Las Vegas, Nevada, for analysis. All requested analyses were successfully completed, with the exception of the determination of tritium concentration by the enrichment method. The laboratory no longer provides that service. Samples were analyzed for gamma-emitting radionuclides by high-resolution gamma spectrometry and for tritium using the conventional method. Starting in 2012, DOE will retain a different laboratory that provides the enriched tritium analysis service.

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This goal of this project was to develop cyber security audit and attack detection tools for industrial control systems (ICS). Digital Bond developed and released a tool named Bandolier that audits ICS components commonly used in the energy sector against an optimal security configuration. The Portaledge Project developed a capability for the PI Historian, the most widely used Historian in the energy sector, to aggregate security events and detect cyber attacks.

This book chapter presents an overview of research conducted in our laboratory on preparation, optical and physico-chemical properties of metallic and nanohybrid materials. Metallic nanoparticles, particularly gold, silver, platinum or a combination of those are the main focus of this review manuscript. These metallic nanoparticles were further functionalized and used as templates for creation of complex and ordered nanomaterials with tailored and tunable structural, optical, catalytic and surface properties. Controlling the surface chemistry on/off metallic nanoparticles allows production of advanced nanoarchitectures. This includes coupled or encapsulated core-shell geometries, nano-peapods, solid or hollow, monometallic/bimetallic, hybrid nanoparticles. Rational assemblies of these nanostructures into one-, two- and tridimensional nano-architectures is described and analyzed. Their sensing, environmental and energy related applications are reviewed.

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This 'campus executive' project sought to advance solar thermochemical technology for producing the chemical fuels. The project advanced the common interest of Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Arizona in creating a sustainable and viable alternative to fossil fuels. The focus of this effort was in developing new methods for creating unique monolithic composite structures and characterizing their performance in thermochemical production of hydrogen from water. The development and processing of the materials was undertaken in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Arizona; Sandia National Laboratories performed the thermochemical characterization. Ferrite/yttria-stabilized zirconia composite monoliths were fabricated and shown to have exceptionally high utilization of the ferrite for splitting CO{sub 2} to obtain CO (a process analogous to splitting H{sub 2}O to obtain H{sub 2}).

For future experiments at the intensity frontier precise and accurate knowledge of beam time structure will be critical to understanding backgrounds. The proposed Mu2e experiment calls for {approx} 200ns (FW, 40 ns rms) bunches of 3 x 10{sup 7} 8 GeV protons and a bunch spacing of 1695 ns. The interbunch beam must be suppressed from the main pulse by a factor of 10{sup -10}, this is known as the beam extinction requirement. Beam from Fermilab's Booster will be formed into 2.5 MHz buckets in the Fermilab Recycler then transferred to the Delivery Ring (formerly the Debuncher) and slow spilled from a single filled bucket in an h = 4 RF system. Because the final extinction level is not expected from the Delivery Ring an AC dipole and collimation system will be used to achieve final extinction. Here I present calculations leading to a first estimate of the extinction level expected upon extraction from the Delivery Ring of {le} 3.36 x 10{sup -4}. Intrabunch, residual gas scattering and scattering off the extraction septum are included. Contributions from bunch formation are not considered.

The Unites States predicted 60% growth in energy demand by 2030 makes oil and natural gas primary target fuels for energy generation. The fact that the peak of oil production from shallow wells (< 5000 m) is about to be reached, thereby pushing the oil and natural gas industry into deeper wells. However, drilling to depths greater than 5000 m requires increasing the strength-to weight ratio of the drill pipe materials. Grade UD-165 is one of the ultra- high yield strength carbon steels developed for ultra deep drilling (UDD) activities. Drilling UDD wells exposes the drill pipes to Cl{sup -}, HCO{sub 3}{sup -}/CO{sub 3}{sup 2-}, and H{sub 2}S-containig corrosive environments (i.e., sour environments) at higher pressures and temperatures compared to those found in conventional wells. Because of the lack of synergism within the service environment, operational stresses can result in catastrophic brittle failures characteristic for environmentally assisted cracking (EAC). Approximately 75% of all drill string failures are caused by fatigue or corrosion fatigue. Since there is no literature data on the corrosion fatigue performance of UD-165 in sour environments, research was initiated to better clarify the fatigue crack growth (FCGR) behavior of this alloy in UDD environments. The FCGR behavior …

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At the Atucha-I pressurized heavy water reactor in Argentina, fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pools are stored by suspending them in two vertically stacked layers. This introduces the unique problem of verifying the presence of fuel in either layer without physically moving the fuel assemblies. Movement of fuel, especially from the lower layer, would involve a major effort on the part of the operator. Given that the facility uses both natural uranium and slightly enriched uranium at 0.85 w% {sup 235}U, and has been in operation since 1974, a wide range of burnups and cooling times can exist in any given pool. Additionally, while fuel assemblies are grouped together in a uniform fashion, the packing density from group to group can vary within a single pool. A tool called the Spent Fuel Neutron Counter (SFNC) was developed and successfully tested at the site to verify, in an in-situ condition, the presence of fuel up to burnups of 8,000 MWd/t. Since the neutron source term becomes a nonlinear function of burnup beyond this burnup, a new algorithm was developed to predict expected response from the SFNC at measurement locations covering the entire range of burnups, cooling times, and initial enrichments. …

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This paper presents an analysis of beam losses along the current design of the FNAL GeV Superconducting CW Linac. Simulations from the RFQ exit up to the end of the linac (~440 meters) are performed using the beam dynamics codes TRACK and TRACEWIN. The impact of beam mismatch, element misalignments and RF jitter on the beam dynamics is discussed and corresponding beam loss patterns are presented. A correlation scheme to compensate for misalignments is described.