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Precise measurements of low power CW electron beam current for the Jefferson Lab Nuclear Physics program have been performed using a Tungsten calorimeter. This paper describes the rationale for the choice of the calorimeter technique, as well as the design and calibration of the device. The calorimeter is in use presently to provide a 1% absolute current measurement of CW electron beam with 50 to 500 nA of average beam current and 1-3 GeV beam energy. Results from these recent measurements will also be presented.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of River Protection (ORP) is responsible for management and completion of the River Protection Project (RPP) mission, which comprises both the Hanford Site tank farms operations and the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The RPP mission is to store, retrieve and treat Hanford's tank waste; store and dispose of treated wastes; and close the tank farm waste management areas and treatment facilities by 2047. The WTP is currently being designed and constructed by Bechtel National Inc. (BNI) for DOE-ORP. BNI relies on a number oftechnical services from other Hanford contractors for WTP's construction and commissioning. These same services will be required of the future WTP operations contractor. The WTP interface management process has recently been improved through changes in organization and technical issue management documented in an Interface Management Plan. Ten of the thirteen active WTP Interface Control Documents (ICDs) have been revised in 2012 using the improved process with the remaining three in progress. The value of the process improvements is reflected by the ability to issue these documents on schedule.

We summarize the technical progress and accomplishments on the evaluation methodology for proliferation resistance and physical protection (PR and PP) of Generation IV nuclear energy systems. We intend the results of the evaluations performed with the methodology for three types of users: system designers, program policy makers, and external stakeholders. The PR and PP Working Group developed the methodology through a series of demonstration and case studies. Over the past few years various national and international groups have applied the methodology to nuclear energy system designs as well as to developing approaches to advanced safeguards.

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The International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP) was established to preserve integral reactor physics experimental data, including separate or special effects data for nuclear energy and technology applications. Numerous experiments that have been performed worldwide, represent a large investment of infrastructure, expertise, and cost, and are valuable resources of data for present and future research. These valuable assets provide the basis for recording, development, and validation of methods. If the experimental data are lost, the high cost to repeat many of these measurements may be prohibitive. The purpose of the IRPhEP is to provide an extensively peer-reviewed set of reactor physics-related integral data that can be used by reactor designers and safety analysts to validate the analytical tools used to design next-generation reactors and establish the safety basis for operation of these reactors. Contributors from around the world collaborate in the evaluation and review of selected benchmark experiments for inclusion in the International Handbook of Evaluated Reactor Physics Benchmark Experiments (IRPhEP Handbook) [1]. Several new evaluations have been prepared for inclusion in the March 2012 edition of the IRPhEP Handbook.

The creation of a large database of integral fast reactor physics experiments advanced nuclear science and technology in ways that were unachievable by less capital intensive and operationally challenging approaches. They enabled the compilation of integral physics benchmark data, validated (or not) analytical methods, and provided assurance of future rector designs The integral experiments performed at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) represent decades of research performed to support fast reactor design and our understanding of neutronics behavior and reactor physics measurements. Experiments began in 1955 with the Zero Power Reactor No. 3 (ZPR-3) and terminated with the Zero Power Physics Reactor (ZPPR, originally the Zero Power Plutonium Reactor) in 1990 at the former ANL-West site in Idaho, which is now part of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Two additional critical assemblies, ZPR-6 and ZPR-9, operated at the ANL-East site in Illinois. A total of 128 fast reactor assemblies were constructed with these facilities [1]. The infrastructure and measurement capabilities are too expensive to be replicated in the modern era, making the integral database invaluable as the world pushes ahead with development of liquid metal cooled reactors.

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Since 1981, the United States (U.S.) Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) [1] requires a plant- specific simulator facility for use in training at U.S. nuclear power plants (NPPs). These training simulators are in near constant use for training and qualification of licensed NPP operators. In the early 1980s, the Halden Man-Machine Laboratory (HAMMLab) at the Halden Reactor Project (HRP) in Norway first built perhaps the most well known set of research simulators. The HRP offered a high- fidelity simulator facility in which the simulator is functionally linked to a specific plant but in which the human-machine interface (HMI) may differ from that found in the plant. As such, HAMMLab incorporated more advanced digital instrumentation and controls (I&C) than the plant, thereby giving it considerable interface flexibility that researchers took full advantage of when designing and validating different ways to upgrade NPP control rooms. Several U.S. partners—the U.S. NRC, the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), Sandia National Laboratories, and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) – as well as international members of the HRP, have been working with HRP to run control room simulator studies. These studies, which use crews from Scandinavian plants, are used to determine crew behavior in a variety of normal …

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In 2007, the FAST wind turbine simulation tool, developed and maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), was expanded to include capabilities that are suitable for modeling floating offshore wind turbines. In an effort to validate FAST and other offshore wind energy modeling tools, DOE funded the DeepCwind project that tested three prototype floating wind turbines at 1/50th scale in a wave basin, including a semisubmersible, a tension-leg platform, and a spar buoy. This paper describes the use of the results of the spar wave basin tests to calibrate and validate the FAST offshore floating simulation tool, and presents some initial results of simulated dynamic responses of the spar to several combinations of wind and sea states.

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Core bypass flow is one of the key issues with the prismatic Gas Turbine-Modular Helium Reactor, and it refers to the coolant that navigates through the interstitial, non-cooling passages between the graphite fuel blocks instead of traveling through the designated coolant channels. To determine the bypass flow, a double scale representative model was manufactured and installed in the Matched Index-of-Refraction flow facility; after which, stereo Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was employed to measure the flow field within. PIV images were analyzed to produce vector maps, and flow rates were calculated by numerically integrating over the velocity field. It was found that the bypass flow varied between 6.9-15.8% for channel Reynolds numbers of 1,746 and 4,618. The results were compared to computational fluid dynamic (CFD) pre-test simulations. When compared to these pretest calculations, the CFD analysis appeared to under predict the flow through the gap.