This is a report on the developed atmospheric boundary layer environmental observations program on offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The report provides information on the project objectives, deployment of instruments, data availability, data processing, data formats, preliminary data analyses, and recommendations.

Report discussing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) WaterSense program that concerns water conservation and use.

Under its SciDAC-1 and SciDAC-2 grants, the USQCD Collaboration developed software and algorithmic infrastructure for the numerical study of lattice gauge theories.

The nuclear industry has been slow to incorporate digital sensor technology into nuclear plant designs due to concerns with digital qualification issues. However, the benefits of digital sensor technology for nuclear plant instrumentation are substantial in terms of accuracy, reliability, availability, and maintainability. This report demonstrates these benefits in direct comparisons of digital and analog sensor applications. It also addresses the qualification issues that must be addressed in the application of digital sensor technology.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the Pacific Northwest Site Office (PNSO) have recently completed an effort to identify the current state of the campus and gaps that exist with regards to space needs, facilities and infrastructure. This effort has been used to establish a campus strategy to ensure PNNL is ready to further the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) mission. Ten-year business projections and the impacts on space needs were assessed and incorporated into the long-term facility plans. In identifying/quantifying the space needs for PNNL, the following categories were addressed: Multi-purpose Programmatic (wet chemistry and imaging laboratory space), Strategic (Systems Engineering and Computation Analytics, and Collaboration space), Remediation (space to offset the loss of the Research Technology Laboratory [RTL] Complex due to decontamination and demolition), and Optimization (the exit of older and less cost-effective facilities). The findings of the space assessment indicate a need for wet chemistry space, imaging space, and strategic space needs associated with systems engineering and collaboration space. Based on the analysis, a 10-year campus strategy evolved that balanced four strategic objectives, as directed by the DOE Office of Science (DOE-SC): • Mission Alignment - maintain customer satisfaction • Reasonable & Achievable - do …

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Conventional Event-Tree (ET) based methodologies are extensively used as tools to perform reliability and safety assessment of complex and critical engineering systems. One of the disadvantages of these methods is that timing/sequencing of events and system dynamics are not explicitly accounted for in the analysis. In order to overcome these limitations several techniques, also know as Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (DPRA), have been developed. Monte-Carlo (MC) and Dynamic Event Tree (DET) are two of the most widely used D-PRA methodologies to perform safety assessment of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP). In the past two years, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has developed its own tool to perform Dynamic PRA: RAVEN (Reactor Analysis and Virtual control ENvironment). RAVEN has been designed to perform two main tasks: 1) control logic driver for the new Thermo-Hydraulic code RELAP-7 and 2) post-processing tool. In the first task, RAVEN acts as a deterministic controller in which the set of control logic laws (user defined) monitors the RELAP-7 simulation and controls the activation of specific systems. Moreover, the control logic infrastructure is used to model stochastic events, such as components failures, and perform uncertainty propagation. Such stochastic modeling is deployed using both MC and DET algorithms. In …

A permanent observatory has been installed on the seafloor at Federal Lease Block, Mississippi Canyon 118 (MC118), northern Gulf of Mexico. Researched and designed by the Gulf of Mexico Hydrates Research Consortium (GOM-HRC) with the geological, geophysical, geochemical and biological characterization of in situ gas hydrates systems as the research goal, the site has been designated by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management as a permanent Research Reserve where studies of hydrates and related ocean systems may take place continuously and cooperatively into the foreseeable future. The predominant seafloor feature at MC118 is a carbonate-hydrate complex, officially named Woolsey Mound for the founder of both the GOM-HRC and the concept of the permanent seafloor hydrates research facility, the late James Robert “Bob” Woolsey. As primary investigator of the overall project until his death in mid-2008, Woolsey provided key scientific input and served as chief administrator for the Monitoring Station/ Seafloor Observatory (MS-SFO). This final technical report presents highlights of research and accomplishments to date. Although not all projects reached the status originally envisioned, they are all either complete or positioned for completion at the earliest opportunity. All Department of Energy funds have been exhausted in this effort but, in addition, …

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DOE G 413.3-10A, Section 3.a states: “The Contractor has primary responsibility for implementing and maintaining a surveillance program to ensure continued compliance of the system with ANSI/EIA-748B. DOE O 413.3B requires the FPD to ensure the contractor conducts a Self-Surveillance annually. This annual Self-Surveillance,…should cover all 32 guidelines of the ANSI/EIA748B. Documentation of the Self-Surveillance is sent to the CO and the PMSO (copy to OECM) confirming the continued compliance of their EVMS ANSI/EIA748B...” This review, and the associated report, is deemed to satisfy this requirement.

Groundwater recharge on Pahute Mesa was estimated using the chloride mass-balance (CMB) method. This method relies on the conservative properties of chloride to trace its movement from the atmosphere as dry- and wet-deposition through the soil zone and ultimately to the saturated zone. Typically, the CMB method assumes no mixing of groundwater with different chloride concentrations; however, because groundwater is thought to flow into Pahute Mesa from valleys north of Pahute Mesa, groundwater flow rates (i.e., underflow) and chloride concentrations from Kawich Valley and Gold Flat were carefully considered. Precipitation was measured with bulk and tipping-bucket precipitation gauges installed for this study at six sites on Pahute Mesa. These data, along with historical precipitation amounts from gauges on Pahute Mesa and estimates from the PRISM model, were evaluated to estimate mean annual precipitation. Chloride deposition from the atmosphere was estimated by analyzing quarterly samples of wet- and dry-deposition for chloride in the bulk gauges and evaluating chloride wet-deposition amounts measured at other locations by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program. Mean chloride concentrations in groundwater were estimated using data from the UGTA Geochemistry Database, data from other reports, and data from samples collected from emplacement boreholes for this study. Calculations were …

This project has been in effect from July 25th, 2008 to July 24th, 2013. It supported 19 graduate students and 6 post-doctoral students and resulted in 23 publications, 7 articles in preparation, 44 presentations, and many other outreach efforts. Two representative recent publications are appended to this report. The project brought in more than $750,000 in cost share from North Carolina State University. The project funds also supported the purchase and installation of approximately $667,000 in equipment supporting solar energy research.

As part of the reliability project work, researchers from Vanderbilt University, Fermi National Laboratory and Illinois Institute of technology developed a real-time cluster fault-tolerant cluster monitoring framework. The goal for the scientific workflow project is to investigate and develop domain-specific workflow tools for LQCD to help effectively orchestrate, in parallel, computational campaigns consisting of many loosely-coupled batch processing jobs. Major requirements for an LQCD workflow system include: a system to manage input metadata, e.g. physics parameters such as masses, a system to manage and permit the reuse of templates describing workflows, a system to capture data provenance information, a systems to manage produced data, a means of monitoring workflow progress and status, a means of resuming or extending a stopped workflow, fault tolerance features to enhance the reliability of running workflows. In summary, these achievements are reported: • Implemented a software system to manage parameters. This includes a parameter set language based on a superset of the JSON data-interchange format, parsers in multiple languages (C++, Python, Ruby), and a web-based interface tool. It also includes a templating system that can produce input text for LQCD applications like MILC. • Implemented a monitoring sensor framework in software that is in production …

This final report to the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) for DE-EE0000210 covers the period from October 1, 2009 to July 31, 2013. Under this project, DOE awarded UConn about $1,248,242 to conduct the research and development on a new class of 3D composite nanostructure based catalysts for lean NOx emission control. Much of the material presented here has already been submitted to DOE/NETL in quarterly technical reports. In this project, through a scalable solution process, we have successfully fabricated a new class of catalytic reactors, i.e., the composite nanostructure array (nano-array) based catalytic converters. These nanocatalysts, distinct from traditional powder washcoat based catalytic converters, directly integrate monolithic substrates together with nanostructures with well-defined size and shape during the scalable hydrothermal process. The new monolithic nanocatalysts are demonstrated to be able to save raw materials including Pt-group metals and support metal oxides by an order of magnitude, while perform well at various oxidation (e.g., CO oxidation and NO oxidation) and reduction reactions (H{sub 2} reduction of NOx) involved in the lean NOx emissions. The size, shape and arrangement of the composite nanostructures within the monolithic substrates are found to be the key in enabling the …

Based on data available in 2009, a decision was ma

The ability to collect key system level information is critical to the safe, efficient and reli- able operation of advanced energy systems. With recent advances in sensor development, it is now possible to push some level of decision making directly to computationally sophisticated sensors, rather than wait for data to arrive to a massive centralized location before a decision is made. This type of approach relies on networked sensors (called “agents” from here on) to actively collect and process data, and provide key control deci- sions to significantly improve both the quality/relevance of the collected data and the as- sociating decision making. The technological bottlenecks for such sensor networks stem from a lack of mathematics and algorithms to manage the systems, rather than difficulties associated with building and deploying them. Indeed, traditional sensor coordination strategies do not provide adequate solutions for this problem. Passive data collection methods (e.g., large sensor webs) can scale to large systems, but are generally not suited to highly dynamic environments, such as ad- vanced energy systems, where crucial decisions may need to be reached quickly and lo- cally. Approaches based on local decisions on the other hand cannot guarantee that each agent performing its task …

Tensile testing has been conducted on Alloy 617 ba

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The National Certification Standard for the Geothermal Heat Pump Industry adds to the understanding of the barriers to rapid growth of the geothermal heat pump (GHP) industry by bringing together for the first time an analysis of the roles and responsibilities of each of the individual job tasks involved in the design and installation of GHP systems. The standard addresses applicable qualifications for all primary personnel involved in the design, installation, commissioning, operation and maintenance of GHP systems, including their knowledge, skills and abilities. The resulting standard serves as a foundation for subsequent development of curriculum, training and certification programs, which are not included in the scope of this project, but are briefly addressed in the standard to describe ways in which the standard developed in this project may form a foundation to support further progress in accomplishing those other efforts. Follow-on efforts may use the standard developed in this project to improve the technical effectiveness and economic feasibility of curriculum development and training programs for GHP industry personnel, by providing a more complete and objective assessment of the individual job tasks necessary for successful implementation of GHP systems. When incorporated into future certification programs for GHP personnel, the standard …

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