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Containment Sodium Chemistry Models in MELCOR

Annals of Nuclear Energy

Bays, Nathan R.; Humphries, Larry L.; Denman, Matthew R.

To meet regulatory needs for sodium fast reactors’ future development, including licensing requirements, Sandia National Laboratories is modernizing MELCOR, a severe accident analysis computer code developed for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Specifically, Sandia is modernizing MELCOR to include the capability to model sodium reactors. However, Sandia’s modernization effort primarily focuses on the containment response aspects of the sodium reactor accidents. Sandia began modernizing MELCOR in 2013 to allow a sodium coolant, rather than water, for conventional light water reactors. In the past three years, Sandia has been implementing the sodium chemistry containment models in CONTAIN-LMR, a legacy NRC code, into MELCOR. These chemistry models include spray fire, pool fire and atmosphere chemistry models. Only the first two chemistry models have been implemented though it is intended to implement all these models into MELCOR. A new package called “NAC” has been created to manage the sodium chemistry model more efficiently. In 2017 Sandia began validating the implemented models in MELCOR by simulating available experiments. The CONTAIN-LMR sodium models include sodium atmosphere chemistry and sodium-concrete interaction models. This paper presents sodium property models, the implemented models, implementation issues, and a path towards validation against existing experimental data.

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A zoning algorithm for dynamic cyber zone defense

2017 IEEE 7th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference, CCWC 2017

Mcbride, Marci; Bays, Nathan R.

Attacks on cyber systems continue to plague public and private sector enterprises. While cyber zone defense is an appealing strategy to prevent, disrupt and tolerate these attacks, existing approaches assign hosts to zones based on their function (for example, printer zones and sensor zones) or place in the architecture (for example, corporate zones and demilitarized zones). This leaves the large number of human-operated commodity workstations within an enterprise unaddressed. We propose a dynamic zoning algorithm which periodically or asynchronously assigns hosts to zones based on peer requests made by their human operators. The proposed algorithm runs quickly on basic hardware for a large enterprise, and the zone statistics converge to values that match what simple mathematical models predict. We conclude that dynamic cyber zone defense calls for additional research and is a candidate for technology transfer.

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NSRD-10: Leak Path Factor Guidance Using MELCOR

Bays, Nathan R.; Humphries, Larry L.

Estimates of the source term from a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear facility requires that the analysts know how to apply the simulation tools used, such as the MELCOR code, particularly for a complicated facility that may include an air ventilation system and other active systems that can influence the environmental pathway of the materials released. DOE has designated MELCOR 1.8.5, an unsupported version, as a DOE ToolBox code in its Central Registry, which includes a leak-path-factor guidance report written in 2004 that did not include experimental validation data. To continue to use this MELCOR version requires additional verification and validations, which may not be feasible from a project cost standpoint. Instead, the recent MELCOR should be used. Without any developer support and lack of experimental data validation, it is difficult to convince regulators that the calculated source term from the DOE facility is accurate and defensible. This research replaces the obsolete version in the 2004 DOE leak path factor guidance report by using MELCOR 2.1 (the latest version of MELCOR with continuing modeling development and user support) and by including applicable experimental data from the reactor safety arena and from applicable experimental data used in the DOE-HDBK-3010. This research provides best practice values used in MELCOR 2.1 specifically for the leak path determination. With these enhancements, the revised leak-path-guidance report should provide confidence to the DOE safety analyst who would be using MELCOR as a source-term determination tool for mitigated accident evaluations.

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Development of Dynamic Ellipsometry for Measurements or Iron Conductivity at Earth's Core Conditions

Grant, Sean C.; Ao, T.; Davis, Jean-Paul; Bays, Nathan R.; Seagle, Cristopher T.; Lin, Jung-Fu; Bernstein, Aaron

The CHEDS researchers are engaged in a collaborative research project to study the properties of iron and iron alloys under Earth’s core conditions. The Earth’s core, inner and outer, is composed primarily of iron, thus studying iron and iron alloys at high pressure and temperature conditions will give the best estimate of its properties. Also, comparing studies of iron alloys with known properties of the core can constrain the potential light element compositions found within the core, such as fitting sound speeds and densities of iron alloys to established inner- Earth models. One of the lesser established properties of the core is the thermal conductivity, where current estimates vary by a factor of three. Therefore, one of the primary goals of this collaboration is to make relevant measurements to elucidate this conductivity.

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High Performance Computing - Power Application Programming Interface Specification Version 2.0

Bays, Nathan R.; Grant, Ryan; Levenhagen, Michael; Olivier, Stephen L.; Bays, Nathan R.; Ward, Harry L.; Younge, Andrew J.

Measuring and controlling the power and energy consumption of high performance computing systems by various components in the software stack is an active research area. Implementations in lower level software layers are beginning to emerge in some production systems, which is very welcome. To be most effective, a portable interface to measurement and control features would significantly facilitate participation by all levels of the software stack. We present a proposal for a standard power Application Programming Interface (API) that endeavors to cover the entire software space, from generic hardware interfaces to the input from the computer facility manager.

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Results 1876–1900 of 2,510
Results 1876–1900 of 2,510
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