Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program for the development of efficient, high-energy permanent magnets (project title "High-Energy Permanent Magnets for Hybrid Vehicles and Alternative Energy") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

A recommendation to eliminate all characterization of pour stream glass samples and the glass fabrication and Product Consistency Test (PCT) of the sludge batch qualification sample was made by a Six-Sigma team chartered to eliminate non-value-added activities for the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) sludge batch qualification program and is documented in the report SS-PIP-2006-00030. That recommendation was supported through a technical data review by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and is documented in the memorandums SRNL-PSE-2007-00079 and SRNL-PSE-2007-00080. At the time of writing those memorandums, the DWPF was processing sludge-only waste but, has since transitioned to a coupled operation (sludge and salt). The SRNL was recently tasked to perform a similar data review relevant to coupled operations and re-evaluate the previous recommendations. This report evaluates the validity of eliminating the characterization of pour stream glass samples and the glass fabrication and Product Consistency Test (PCT) of the sludge batch qualification samples based on sludge-only and coupled operations. The pour stream sample has confirmed the DWPF's ability to produce an acceptable waste form from Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) blending and product composition/durability predictions for the previous sixteen years but, ultimately the pour stream analysis has added minimal value to …

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Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program to develop an energy storage device that converts water and sunlight into a renewable fuel (project title "Affordable Energy from Water and Sunlight") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

A screening study of the steam reforming reaction on clean and oxygen covered early transition-metal carbides surfaces is performed by means of density-functional theory calculations. It is found that carbides provide a wide spectrum of reactivities, from too reactive via suitable to too inert. Several molybdenum-based systems are identified as possible steam reforming catalysts. The findings suggest that carbides provide a playground for reactivity tuning, comparable to the one for pure metals.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program formacroalgae aquafaming to increase feedstock and biofuels (project title "MacroAlgae Butanol") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program for carbon capture and release (project title "Low-Cost Electrochromic Film on Plastic for Net-Zero Energy Building") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program to use carbon nanotube membranes for removing carbon dioxide from coal plant exhaust (project title "Carbon Nanotube Membranes for Energy-Efficient Carbon Sequestration") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

Although significant performance improvements have been realized since the first demonstration of sunlight-driven water splitting in 1972, mainstream adoption of photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells remains limited by an absence of cost-effective electrodes that show simultaneously high conversion efficiency and good durability. Here we outline current and future efforts to use advanced theoretical techniques to guide the development of a durable, high-performance PEC electrode material. Working in close collaboration with experimental synthesis and characterization teams, we use a twofold approach focusing on: (1) rational design of novel high-performance electrode materials; and (2) characterization and optimization of the electrode-electrolyte interface.

The RAGS (Radiochemical Analysis of Gaseous Samples) diagnostic apparatus was recently installed at the National Ignition Facility. Following a NIF shot, RAGS is used to pump the gas load from the NIF chamber for purification and isolation of the noble gases. After collection, the activated gaseous species are counted via gamma spectroscopy for measurement of the capsule areal density and fuel-ablator mix. Collection efficiency was determined by injecting a known amount of {sup 135}Xe into the NIF chamber, which was then collected with RAGS. Commissioning was performed with an exploding pusher capsule filled with isotopically enriched {sup 124}Xe and {sup 126}Xe added to the DT gas fill. Activated xenon species were recovered post-shot and counted via gamma spectroscopy. Results from the collection and commissioning tests are presented. The performance of RAGS allows us to establish a noble gas collection method for measurement of noble gas species produced via neutron and charged particle reactions in a NIF capsule.

A condition for sheath instability due to secondary electron emission (SEE) is derived for low collisionality plasmas. When the SEE coefficient of the electrons bordering the depleted loss cone in energy space exceeds unity, the sheath potential is unstable to a negative perturbation. This result explains three different instability phenomena observed in Hall thruster simulations including a newly found state with spontaneous ~20MHz oscillations. When instabilities occur, the SEE propagating between the walls becomes the dominant contribution to the particle flux, energy loss and axial transport.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program for the development of a new large-scale battery technology (project title "Electroville: High Amperage Energy Storage Device - Energy for the Neighborhood" including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (project title "Direct Wafer Enabling Terawatt Photovoltaics") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

A storage ring with tunable momentum compaction has the advantage in achieving different RMS bunch length with similar RF capacity, which is potentially useful for many applications, such as linear collider damping ring and pre-damping ring where injected beam has a large energy spread and a large transverse emittance. A tunable bunch length also makes the commissioning and fine tuning easier in manipulating the single bunch instabilities. In this paper, a compact ring design based on a supercell is presented, which achieves a tunable momentum compaction while maintaining a large dynamic aperture.

In 2008, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel identified three frontiers for research in high energy physics, the Energy Frontier, the Intensity Frontier, and the Cosmic Frontier. In this paper, I will describe how Fermilab is configuring and upgrading the accelerator complex, prior to the development of Project X, in support of the Intensity Frontier.

NASA's JUNO mission will arrive at Jupiter in July 2016, after nearly five years in space. Since operational costs tend to rise with mission time, minimizing such times becomes a top priority. We present the conceptual design for a 10MW aneutronic fusion engine with high exhaust velocities that would reduce transit time for a Jupiter mission to eighteen months and enable more challenging exploration missions in the solar system and beyond. __________________________________________________

A bounded plasma where the hot electrons impacting the walls produce more than one secondary on average is studied via particle-in-cell simulation. It is found that no classical Debye sheath or space-charge limited sheath exists. Ions are not drawn to the walls and electrons are not repelled. Hence the unconfined plasma electrons travel unobstructed to the walls, causing extreme particle and energy fluxes. Each wall has a positive charge, forming a small potential barrier or "inverse sheath" that pulls some secondaries back to the wall to maintain the zero current condition.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (project title "Nanotechnology Membrane-based Dehumidifier") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

Numerous electron beam applications would benefit from increased average current without sacrificing beam brightness. Work is underway at LLNL to investigate the performance of X-band photoinjectors that would generate electron bunches at a rate matching the RF drive frequency, i.e. one bunch per RF cycle. A critical part of this effort involves development of photo-cathode drive laser technology. Here we present a new laser architecture that can generate pulse trains at repetition rates up to several GHz. This compact, fiber-based system is driven directly by the accelerator RF and so is inherently synchronized with the accelerating fields, and scales readily over a wide range of drive frequencies (L-band through X-band). The system will be required to produce 0.5 {mu}J, {approx}200 fs rise time, spatially and temporally shaped UV pulses designed to optimize the electron beam brightness. Presented is the current status of this system, producing 2 ps pulses from a continuous-wave source.

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The presence of significant intensities of un-bunched beam is a potentially serious issue in the LHC. Procedures using damper kickers for cleaning both the Abort Gap (AG) and the buckets targeted for injection, are currently in operation at flat bottom. Recent observations of relatively high population of the AG during physics runs brought up the need for AG cleaning during luminosity operation. In this paper the results of experimental studies performed in October 2011 are presented.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program to develop wind turbines with more efficient control systems (project title "Adaptive Turbine Blades: Blown Wing Technology for Low-Cost Wind Power") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contract information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.

A muon-to-electron conversion experiment at Fermilab, Mu2e, is being designed to probe for new physics beyond the standard model at mass scales up to 10{sup 4} TeV. For this experiment, the advance in experimental sensitivity will be four orders of magnitude when compared to existing data on charged lepton flavor violation. The muon beam will be produced by delivering a proton beam contained in short 100-ns bunches onto a muon production target, with an inter-bunch separation of about 1700 ns. A critical requirement of the experiment is to ensure a low level of background at the muon detector consistent with the required sensitivity. To meet the sensitivity requirement, protons that reach the target between bunches must be suppressed by an enormous factor, so that an extinction factor, defined as a number of background protons between main bunches per proton in such a bunch, should not exceed 10{sup -9}. This paper describes the advanced beam optics and results of numerical modeling with STRUCT and MARS codes for a beam line with a collimation system that allows us to achieve the experimental extinction factor of one per billion.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about a new program to efficiently separate micro-solids from water (project title "Scaling and Commercialization of Algae Harvesting Technologies") including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet is the first open solicitation, announcing funding opportunities for involvement in the project.