Urbanization is reshaping China's economy, society, and energy system. Between 1990 and 2008 China added more than 300 million new urban residents, bringing the total urbanization rate to 46%. The ongoing population shift is spurring energy demand for new construction, as well as additional residential use with the replacement of rural biomass by urban commercial energy services. This project developed a modeling tool to quantify the full energy consequences of a particular form of urban residential development in order to identify energy- and carbon-efficient modes of neighborhood-level development and help mitigate resource and environmental implications of swelling cities. LBNL developed an integrated modeling tool that combines process-based lifecycle assessment with agent-based building operational energy use, personal transport, and consumption modeling. The lifecycle assessment approach was used to quantify energy and carbon emissions embodied in building materials production, construction, maintenance, and demolition. To provide more comprehensive analysis, LBNL developed an agent-based model as described below. The model was applied to LuJing, a residential development in Jinan, Shandong Province, to provide a case study and model proof of concept. This study produced results data that are unique by virtue of their scale, scope and type. Whereas most existing literature focuses on building-, …

We developed a mathematical method to analyze flow cytometry data to describe the kinetics of {gamma}H2AX and pATF2 phosphorylations ensuing various qualities of low dose radiation in normal human fibroblast cells. Previously reported flow cytometry kinetic results for these DSB repair phospho-proteins revealed that distributions of intensity were highly skewed, severely limiting the detection of differences in the very low dose range. Distributional analysis reveals significant differences between control and low dose samples when distributions are compared using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Radiation quality differences are found in the distribution shapes and when a nonlinear model is used to relate dose and time to the decay of the mean ratio of phosphoprotein intensities of irradiated samples to controls. We analyzed cell cycle phase and radiation quality dependent characteristic repair times and residual phospho-protein levels with these methods. Characteristic repair times for {gamma}H2AX were higher following Fe nuclei as compared to X-rays in G1 cells (4.5 {+-} 0.46 h vs 3.26 {+-} 0.76 h, respectively), and in S/G2 cells (5.51 {+-} 2.94 h vs 2.87 {+-} 0.45 h, respectively). The RBE in G1 cells for Fe nuclei relative to X-rays for {gamma}H2AX was 2.05 {+-} 0.61 and 5.02 {+-} 3.47, at 2 …

The Used Fuel Disposition (UFD) Campaign within DOE-NE is evaluating storage and disposal options for a range of waste forms and a range of geologic environments. To assess the potential performance of conceptual repository designs for the combinations of waste form and geologic environment, a master set of Features, Events, and Processes (FEPs) has been developed and evaluated. These FEPs are based on prior lists developed by the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) and the international repository community. The objective of the UFD FEPs activity is to identify and categorize FEPs that are important to disposal system performance for a variety of disposal alternatives (i.e., combinations of waste forms, disposal concepts, and geologic environments). FEP analysis provides guidance for the identification of (1) important considerations in disposal system design, and (2) gaps in the technical bases. The UFD FEPs also support the development of performance assessment (PA) models to evaluate the long-term performance of waste forms in the engineered and geologic environments of candidate disposal system alternatives. For the UFD FEP development, five waste form groups and seven geologic settings are being considered. A total of 208 FEPs have been identified, categorized by the physical components of the waste disposal system …

The Used Fuel Disposition (UFD) Campaign within DOE-NE is evaluating storage and disposal options for a range of waste forms and a range of geologic environments. For each waste form and geologic environment combination, there are multiple options for repository conceptual design. The Disposal Systems Evaluation Framework (DSEF) is being developed to formalize the development and documentation of options for each waste form and environment combination. The DSEF is being implemented in two parts. One part is an Excel workbook with multiple sheets. This workbook is designed to be user friendly, such that anyone within the UFD Campaign can use it as a guide to develop and document repository conceptual designs that respect thermal, geometric, and other constraints. The other part is an Access relational database file that will be centrally maintained to document the ensemble of conceptual designs developed with individual implementations of the Excel workbook. The DSEF Excel workbook includes sheets for waste form, environment, geometric constraints, engineered barrier system (EBS) design, thermal, performance assessment (PA), materials, cost, and fuel cycle system impacts. Each of these sheets guides the user through the process of developing internally consistent design options, and documenting the thought process. The sheets interact with …

Recently a Resistive Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) package has been added to the KULL code. In order to be compatible with the underlying hydrodynamics algorithm, a new sub-zonal magnetics discretization was developed that supports arbitrary polygonal and polyhedral zones. This flexibility comes at the cost of many more unknowns per zone - approximately ten times more for a hexahedral mesh. We can eliminate some (or all, depending on the dimensionality) of the extra unknowns from the global matrix during assembly by using a Schur complement approach. This trades expensive global work for cache-friendly local work, while still allowing solution for the full system. Significant improvements in the solution time are observed for several test problems.

The last unknown neutrino mixing angle theta_13 is one of the fundamental parameters of nature; it is also a crucial parameter for determining the sensitivity of future long-baseline experiments aimed to study CP violation in the neutrino sector. Daya Bay is a reactor neutrino oscillation experiment designed to achieve a sensitivity on the value of sin^2(2*theta_13) to better than 0.01 at 90percent CL. The experiment consists of multiple identical detectors placed underground at different baselines to minimize systematic errors and suppress cosmogenic backgrounds. With the baseline design, the expected anti-neutrino signal at the far site is about 360 events per day and at each of the near sites is about 1500 events per day. An overview and current status of the experiment will be presented.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and A123 Systems, Inc. collaborated on this project to develop a better understanding, quality control procedures, and safety testing for A123 System’s nanocomposite separator (NCS) technology which is a cell based patented technology and separator. NCS demonstrated excellent performance. x3450 prismatic cells were shown to survive >8000 cycles (1C/2C rate) at room temperature with greater than 80% capacity retention with only NCS present as an alternative to conventional polyolefin. However, for a successful commercialization, the coating conditions required to provide consistent and reliable product had not been optimized and QC techniques for being able to remove defective material before incorporation into a cell had not been developed. The work outlined in this report addresses these latter two points. First, experiments were conducted to understand temperature profiles during the different drying stages of the NCS coating when applied to both anode and cathode. One of the more interesting discoveries of this study was the observation of the large temperature decrease experienced by the wet coating between the end of the infrared (IR) drying stage and the beginning of the exposure to the convection drying oven. This is not a desirable situation as the temperature gradient could have …

The objective of this program was to use a new media – videos posted on YouTube – to augment education about the emerging Smart Grid. All of the specific tasks have been completed per plan, with twelve videos and three podcasts posted on YouTube on the NEMA Vids4Grids channel.

The Department of Energy - Savannah River (DOE-SR) previously provided direction to Savannah River Remediation (SRR) to maintain fissile concentration in glass below 897 g/m{sup 3}. In support of the guidance, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) provided a technical basis and a supporting Microsoft{reg_sign} Excel{reg_sign} spreadsheet for the evaluation of fissile loading in Sludge Batch 5 glass based on the Fe concentration in glass as determined by the measurements from the Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) acceptability analysis. SRR has since requested that SRNL provide the necessary information to allow SRR to update the Excel spreadsheet so that it may be used to maintain fissile concentration in glass below 897 g/m{sup 3} during the processing of Sludge Batch 6 (SB6). One of the primary inputs into the fissile loading spreadsheet includes a bounding density for SB6-based glasses. Based on the measured density data of select SB6 variability study glasses, SRNL recommends that SRR utilize the 99/99 Upper Tolerance Limit (UTL) density value at 38% WL (2.823 g/cm{sup 3}) as a bounding density for SB6 glasses to assess the fissile concentration in this glass system. That is, the 2.823 g/cm{sup 3} is recommended as a key (and fixed) input into the …

The field of metamaterials is driven by fascinating and far-reaching theoretical visions, such as perfect lenses, invisibility cloaking, and enhanced optical nonlinearities. However, losses have become the major obstacle towards real world applications in the optical regime. Reducing the losses of optical metamaterials becomes necessary and extremely important. In this thesis, two approaches are taken to reduce the losses. One is to construct an indefinite medium. Indefinite media are materials where not all the principal components of the permittivity and permeability tensors have the same sign. They do not need the resonances to achieve negative permittivity, {var_epsilon}. So, the losses can be comparatively small. To obtain indefinite media, three-dimensional (3D) optical metallic nanowire media with different structures are designed. They are numerically demonstrated that they are homogeneous effective indefinite anisotropic media by showing that their dispersion relations are hyperbolic. Negative group refraction and pseudo focusing are observed. Another approach is to incorporate gain into metamaterial nanostructures. The nonlinearity of gain is included by a generic four-level atomic model. A computational scheme is presented, which allows for a self-consistent treatment of a dispersive metallic photonic metamaterial coupled to a gain material incorporated into the nanostructure using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. …

Radiochemical analysis of post-shot debris inside the National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber can help determine various diagnostic parameters associated with the implosion efficiency of the fusion capsule. This capability is limited by the amount of target isotope that can be loaded inside the capsule ablator without affecting performance and the collection efficiency of the capsule debris after implosion. Prior to designing a collection system, the chemical nature and distribution of the debris inside the chamber must be determined and analysis methods developed. The focus of our current work has been on determining the elemental composition and distribution of debris on various blast shields and witness plates that were exposed to the chamber during ignition shots that occurred in 2009. These passive collection plates were used to develop both non-destructive and chemical analysis techniques to determine debris composition and melt depth at various shot energy profiles. A summary of these data will be presented along with our current strategy for the 2011 campaign.

5098-SR-05-0 PROJECT-SPECIFIC TYPE A VERIFICATION FOR THE HIGH FLUX BEAM REACTOR UNDERGROUND UTILITIES REMOVAL PHASE 3 TRENCH 1 BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY

Imaging x-ray crystal spectrometer #2;XCS#3; arrays are being developed as a US-ITER activity for Doppler measurement of Ti and v profiles of impurities #2;(W, Kr, and Fe)#3; with ~#4;7 cm (a/30)#3; and 10-100 ms resolution in ITER. The imaging XCS, modeled after a prototype instrument on Alcator C-Mod, uses a spherically bent crystal and 2D x-ray detectors to achieve high spectral resolving power (E / dE >#2;6000)#3; horizontally and spatial imaging vertically. Two arrays will measure Ti and both poloidal and toroidal rotation velocity profiles. The measurement of many spatial chords permits tomographic inversion for the inference of local parameters. The instrument design, predictions of performance, and results from C-Mod are presented.

Low-energy ion beam bombardment induced self-assembly has been used to form various periodic nano-size wave-ordered structures (WOS). Such WOS can be used as hard etching masks to produce nanowire arrays, trenches etc., on other materials by means of traditional etching or ion sputtering. These periodic nano-size structures have a wide range of applications, including flat panel displays, optical electronics, and clean energy technologies (solar and fuel cells, lithium batteries). In order to achieve high throughput of the above processes, a large area RF-driven multicusp nitrogen ion source has been developed for the application of nitrogen ion beam induced surface modification. An integrated ion beam system, which can house either a large area RF-driven multicusp ion source or a commercially available microwave ion source (Roth & Rau AG Tamiris 400-f) have been designed, manufactured, assembled, and tested.

The work presented in this thesis mainly focuses on the nucleation and growth of metal thin films on multimetallic surfaces. First, we have investigated the Ag film growth on a bulk metallic glass surface. Next, we have examined the coarsening and decay of bilayer Ag islands on NiAl(110) surface. Third, we have investigated the Ag film growth on NiAl(110) surface using low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). At last, we have reported our investigation on the epitaxial growth of Ni on NiAl(110) surface. Some general conclusions can be drawn as follows. First, Ag, a bulk-crystalline material, initially forms a disordered wetting layer up to 4-5 monolayers on Zr-Ni-Cu-Al metallic glass. Above this coverage, crystalline 3D clusters grow, in parallel with the flatter regions. The cluster density increases with decreasing temperature, indicating that the conditions of island nucleation are far-from-equilibrium. Within a simple model where clusters nucleate whenever two mobile Ag adatoms meet, the temperature-dependence of cluster density yields a (reasonable) upper limit for the value of the Ag diffusion barrier on top of the Ag wetting layer of 0.32 eV. Overall, this prototypical study suggests that it is possible to grow films of a bulk-crystalline metal that adopt the amorphous character of …

Metallic glasses have been a promising class of materials since their discovery in the 1960s. Indeed, remarkable chemical, mechanical and physical properties have attracted considerable attention, and several excellent reviews are available. Moreover, the special group of glass forming alloys known as the bulk metallic glasses (BMG) become amorphous solids even at relatively low cooling rates, allowing them to be cast in large cross sections, opening the scope of potential applications to include bulk forms and net shape structural applications. Recent studies have been reported for new bulk metallic glasses produced with lower cooling rates, from 0.1 to several hundred K/s. Some of the application products of BMGs include sporting goods, high performance springs and medical devices. Several rapid solidification techniques, including melt-spinning, atomization and surface melting have been developed to produce amorphous alloys. The aim of all these methods is to solidify the liquid phase rapidly enough to suppress the nucleation and growth of crystalline phases. Furthermore, the production of amorphous/crystalline composite (ACC) materials by partial crystallization of amorphous precursor has recently given rise to materials that provide better mechanical and magnetic properties than the monolithic amorphous or crystalline alloys. In addition, these advances illustrate the broad untapped potential …

We investigate the collider implications of Split Universal Extra Dimensions. The non-vanishing fermion mass in the bulk, which is consistent with the KK-parity, largely modifies the phenomenology of Minimal Universal Extra Dimensions. We scrutinize the behavior of couplings and study the discovery reach of the Tevatron and the LHC for level-2 Kaluza-Klein modes in the dilepton channel, which would indicates the presence of the extra dimensions. Observation of large event rates for dilepton resonances can result from a nontrivial fermion mass profile along the extra dimensions, which, in turn, may corroborate extra dimensional explanation for the observation of the positron excess in cosmic rays. The Minimal Universal Extra Dimensions scenario has received great attention. Recently non-vanishing bulk fermion masses have been introduced without spoiling the virtue of KK-parity. The fermion profiles are no longer simple sine/cosine functions and depend upon the specific values of bulk parameters. The profiles of fermions are split along the extra dimensions while the wave functions of the bosons remain the same as in UED. A simple introduction of a KK-parity conserving bulk fermion mass has significant influences on collider aspects as well as astrophysical implications of UED. For instance, the DM annihilation fraction into certain …

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This article uses an analytical approach to determine the dilution of an unsteadily-generated solute in an unsteady solvent stream, under cyclic temporal boundary conditions. The goal is to find a simplified way of showing equivalence of such a process to a reference case where equivalent dilution is defined as a weighted average concentration. This derivation has direct applications to the ventilation of indoor spaces where indoor air quality and energy consumption cannot in general be simultaneously optimized. By solving the equation we can specify how much air we need to use in one ventilation pattern compared to another to obtain same indoor air quality. Because energy consumption is related to the amount of air exchanged by a ventilation system, the equation can be used as a first step to evaluate different ventilation patterns effect on the energy consumption. The use of the derived equation is demonstrated by representative cases of interest in both residential and non-residential buildings.

Many modern scientific applications rely on highly computation intensive calculations. However, most applications do not concentrate as much on the role that input/output operations can play for improved performance and portability. Parallelizing input/output operations of large files can significantly improve the performance of parallel applications where sequential I/O is a bottleneck. A proper choice of I/O library also offers a scope for making input/output operations portable across different architectures. Thus, use of parallel I/O libraries for organizing I/O of large data files offers great scope in improving performance and portability of applications. In particular, sequential I/O has been identified as a bottleneck for the highly scalable MFDn (Many Fermion Dynamics for nuclear structure) code performing ab-initio nuclear structure calculations. We develop interfaces and parallel I/O procedures to use a well-known parallel I/O library in MFDn. As a result, we gain efficient I/O of large datasets along with their portability and ease of use in the down-stream processing. Even situations where the amount of data to be written is not huge, proper use of input/output operations can boost the performance of scientific applications. Application checkpointing offers enormous performance improvement and flexibility by doing a negligible amount of I/O to disk. Checkpointing …

Our current state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction experiments are primarily sensitive to the position of the uranium atom. While the uranium - low-Z element bond (such as U-H or U-F) changes under pressure and temperature the X-ray diffraction investigations do not reveal information about the bonding or the stoichiometry. Questions that can be answered by Raman spectroscopy are (i) whether the bonding strength changes under pressure, as observed by either blue- or red-shifted peaks of the Raman active bands in the spectrum and (ii) whether the low-Z element will eventually be liberated and leave the host lattice, i.e. do the fluorine, oxygen, or hydrogen atoms form dimers after breaking the bond to the uranium atom. Therefore Raman spectra were also collected in the range where those decomposition products would appear. Raman is particularly well suited to these types of investigations due to its sensitivity to trace amounts of materials. One challenge for Raman investigations of the uranium compounds is that they are opaque to visible light. They absorb the incoming radiation and quickly heat up to the point of decomposition. This has been dealt with in the past by keeping the incoming laser power to very low levels on the tens of …

The idea of building power conversion systems around Power Electronic Building Blocks (PEBBs) was initiated by the U.S. Office of Naval Research in the mid 1990s. A PEBB-based design approach is advantageous in terms of power density, modularity, reliability, and serviceability. It is obvious that this approach has much appeal for pulsed power conversion including the International Linear Collider (ILC) klystron modulator application. A hierarchical control architecture has the inherent capability to support the integration of PEBBs. This has already been successfully demonstrated in a number of industrial applications in the recent past. This paper outlines the underlying concepts of a hierarchical control architecture for a PEBB-based Marx-topology ILC klystron modulator. The control in PEBB-based power conversion systems can be functionally partitioned into (three) hierarchical layers; system layer, application layer, and PEBB layer. This has been adopted here. Based on such a hierarchical partition, the interfaces are clearly identified and defined and, consequently, are easily characterised. A conceptual design of the hardware manager, executing low-level hardware oriented tasks, is detailed. In addition, the idea of prognostics is briefly discussed.

The aim of this project was to engineer the materials studied to enhance the so-called 3S criteria: Sensitivity, Selectivity, and Stability, by using the advantage of controlling structure and properties at nanometer dimensions. It targeted sensor materials that are able to detect poisonous gases resulting from coal-gasification processes, especially sulfur containing emissions. Research findings based on this award demonstrate that doping tungsten oxide (WO{sub 3}) with a small amount of Ti (e.g. 5% in our work) results in a new material that has a higher structural symmetry (e.g. tetragonal morphology) as well as narrower crystalline particle size distribution. As high quality materials with excellent ordered structure and narrower particle-size distributions (which can also withstand high-temperature technological environments such as those encountered in furnaces and coal gasification systems without their structure being affected by phase transformations) are needed for developing new, more sensitive sensor materials, W-Ti-O thin films grown by RF sputtering are valuable candidates for such roles. It is well known that pure WO{sub 3} will change its structure at elevated temperatures. Our work indicates that, Ti doping not only increases the stability of the resultant material by promoting structural phase modifications, but also increases its sensitivity by increasing the …

The main objective of this project was to develop, validate and apply remote sensing methods to retrieve vertical profiles of precipitation over the DOE ARM CART sites using currently available remote sensors. While the ARM Program invested very heavily into developments of remote sensing methods and instruments for water vapor and non-precipitating cloud parameter retrievals, precipitation retrievals and studies lagged behind. Precipitation, however, is a crucial part of the water cycle, and without detailed information on rainfall and snowfall, significant improvements in the atmospheric models of different scales (i.e., one of the ARM Program's main goals) is difficult to achieve. Characterization of the vertical atmospheric column above the CART sites is also incomplete without detailed precipitation information, so developments of remote sensing methods for retrievals of parameters in precipitating cloud condition was essential. Providing modelers with retrieval results was also one of the key objectives of this research project.