Overview

The NSUF mission is to facilitate the advancement of nuclear science and technology by providing nuclear energy researchers with access to world-class capabilities at no cost to the researcher. This mission is enabled by a consortium of partners that make available state-of-the-art experimental irradiation testing, post irradiation examination, and INL high performance computing as well as technical and scientific assistance for the design and execution of projects. Access to NSUF capabilities is granted through competitive proposal processes.

The Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) award process offers an avenue for researchers to perform irradiation effects studies of limited scope on nuclear fuels and materials of interest utilizing NSUF facilities. Completion of RTE projects is expected within 9 months of award. Prospective researchers are strongly encouraged to request samples from the NSUF Nuclear Fuels and Materials Library.

RTE proposals are typically solicited and awarded three times per year. They are reviewed and evaluated for technical merit, relevancy, and feasibility. The number of awards is dependent on the availability of funding. Further explanation of the review process can be found at RTE Technical Review Process. Proposals must support the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy mission.

NSUF will give special consideration to Principal Investigators from Minority Serving Institutions (MSI). For an institution listed in the directory, the NSUF will add five points to the proposal’s average technical score. For additional information on MSIs refer to the information below.

LEARN MORE ABOUT RTE RESEARCH AREAS OF INTEREST »

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RTE REVIEW PROCESS  »

Rules for Proposal Submission

Content: 

1. The study proposed must be original and shall not duplicate any work currently funded by a DOE, or other Federal, program or project.
2. The proposed scope of work to be funded by the NSUF must have the potential to produce data at the requested NSUF facilities that will lead to a scientific or engineering outcome suitable for publication that will be attributed to the NSUF.

Facilities: 

3. While complying with all other rules, a proposal may request NSUF funding for use of NSUF capabilities at up to three partner institutions:
• ONE partner institution for sample preparation; 
• ONE partner institution for irradiation; and 
• ONE partner institution for post-irradiation examination (PIE).
4. Proposals requesting NSUF funding only for sample preparation and/or sample shipment will not be accepted.
5. Proposals involving the examination of more non-irradiated structural or cladding reference samples than irradiated samples will not be accepted.

Funding:

6. The NSUF will only support activities at, and shipping between, NSUF facilities. 
7. The NSUF does not provide funding to the PI to support salaries, tuition, travel, or other costs typically supported via NE Program R&D funds.
8. Applicants must have a source of R&D funding that will fund all components of the proposed project not funded by the NSUF.
9. Completion of all NSUF funded work proposed must require no more than nine months from the date of award. 

Applicant:

10. Only one principal investigator is allowed per proposal.
11. A principal investigator may submit no more than one proposal per RTE call.
12. A principal investigator may have only two active RTE projects.
13. A project is considered active until a completion report is submitted and approved (please refer to completion report criteria for additional information).
14. Proposals are welcomed from principal investigators affiliated with a U.S. university, U.S. government laboratory, U.S. entity or foreign entity incorporated in the U.S. 
15. Proposals from principal investigators not from a U.S. institution will be accepted as long as the proposal includes a collaborator who is from a U.S. university, U.S. government laboratory, U.S. entity, or foreign entity incorporated in the U.S. This collaborator must have a significant role in the experiment or project that supports the RTE. NSUF will contact the U.S. collaborator to verify their role in the project.
16. All proposals must include a technical narrative as well as curriculum vitae (or equivalent) for the PI and all team members.
17. Proposals must include all publications the PI and co-PIs have produced as a result of any and all previous NSUF funded experiments or projects (RTE, beamline, and CINR).
18. Data generated from the work must be made available to the research community in a timely manner. The PI is responsible for the collection, management, and sharing of the research data through a data management plan.
    

Completion Report Criteria 

A satisfactory completion report will contain the following:

• summary of both the work completed and the data obtained, In addition,  the PI must make all project data available to the research community (see RTE rule #18).  Data storage is available through an NSUF data storage system.  Contact Matt Anderson at: matthew.anderson2@inl.gov for details and access.
• description of the potential impact to the state-of-knowledge.

If the applicant has two active RTE projects, submission of a completion report for one of the active projects must be completed at least two weeks before a call closes to allow for time for review (approval may require iteration). Upon approval, the completion report will be posted on the NSUF website under the applicant’s project, where it will be accessible to the public.  The completion report can be uploaded as Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF documents. An example of a satisfactory completion report is available here.

Users will be allowed to prepare, but not submit, a proposal that would create a third RTE project prior to approval of a completion report that closes an active RTE project. On beginning preparation of the proposal, users will be informed that submission of the proposal will not be allowed until a completion report is approved.

Failure to meet any of the above rules will result in disqualification of the proposal. 

SUBMIT AN RTE PROPOSAL  »

Facility Guidelines for RTE Experiments

The included guidelines are designed to help researchers develop a proposal that can be executed within the RTE schedule and budget.  Applicants should work with each facility representative (NSUF Partner Institutions - NSUF (inl.gov)) to ensure that their proposed work (scope, number of specimens, etc.) can be accomplished within the RTE guidelines for that facility. The guidelines are based on the average cost of instrument time at each facility, on a typical work week, and on the assumption that only one instrument is used each day.

Estimated Facility Access Guidelines:

Up to 3 Weeks

• Center for Advanced Energy Studies - Microscopy and Characterization Suite
  
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Low Activation Materials Development and Analysis Facility
  
• University of Florida - Materials Characterization Facility
  

Up to 2 Weeks

• Argonne National Laboratory - Intermediate Voltage Electron Microscopy - Tandem Facility
  
• Idaho National Laboratory - Analytical Laboratory, Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory
• Los Alamos National Laboratory - Lujan Center Beamlines, Plutonium Surface Science Laboratory
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory
• North Carolina State University - Nuclear Reactor Program
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - Radiochemistry Processing Laboratory, Materials Science and Technology Laboratory (PIE only)
• Purdue University - Interaction of Materials with Particles and Components Testing Facility
• Sandia National Laboratory - Ion Beam Laboratory, Gamma Irradiation Facility
• Texas A&M University – Accelerator Laboratory
• The Ohio State University - Nuclear Reactor Laboratory
• University of California, Berkeley - Nuclear Materials Laboratory
• University of Michigan - Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory
• University of Wisconsin - Characterization Laboratory for Irradiated Materials, Wisconsin Tandem Accelerator Ion Beam
• Westinghouse - Churchill Laboratory Services

Up to 1 Week

• Idaho National Laboratory - Hot Fuel Examination Facility
  
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – Center for Accelerator Mass Spectroscopy 
  
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Irradiated Fuels Examination Laboratory, Irradiated Materials Examination and Testing Facility
  

Up to 3 Days

• Brookhaven National Laboratory - NSLS II X-ray Powder Diffraction (XPD) Beamline 

Proposals that request irradiation and PIE should assumeapproximately one week of access time at the irradiation facility and one weekat the PIE facility to remain within the suggested RTE guidelines.

Neutron irradiation experiments that require the use of ATR, TREAT, HFIR or MITR in core positions do not qualify for an RTE award due to expense and duration of project.

A cost estimate will be developed based on the requested scope. This cost estimate will be used in evaluation of the proposal.  Controlling costs and scope among all proposals helps to ensure that the projects can be completed within nine months from award and helps to maintain fairness for all applicants. 

Failure to follow the guidelines, as well as excessively scoped proposals, may render your proposal “not feasible” based on costs alone. Proposals that utilize multiple facilities may result in an estimate that cannot be accommodated within the bounds of a RTE and thus deem the proposal “not feasible.” Principal investigators will receive project specific feedback if the proposal was not recommended for award when deemed “not feasible”. 

To maintain the goal of the rapid user facility access program, the progress of awarded RTEs will be periodically monitored by NSUF staff.  Any projects that are not making satisfactory progress or have exceeded nine months from the date of award will be subject to cancellation. 

RTE Completion

Upon completion a PI will be asked to submit a satisfactory completion report.  A satisfactory completion report will contain the following: (1) A summary of both the work completed and the data obtained and (2) a description of the potential impact to the state-of-knowledge. The completion report can be uploaded as a Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF document.

After submittal, a completion report will be reviewed by the NSUF Program Office staff. If the report is determined to be satisfactory, the project status will be changed to complete. If the report is deemed unsatisfactory, the report will be returned to the PI with comments that will need to be addressed prior to resubmission.

After approval, the completion report will go through a classification and export control review for external release. Once the completion report is approved for external release, it will be posted on the NSUF website under the PI’s project, where it will be accessible to the public.

Applicants will be allowed to prepare, but not submit, a proposal that if awarded would create a third active RTE project for a PI. On initiation of the proposal, applicants will be informed that submission of the proposal will not be allowed until a completion report for one of the active projects is approved. Completion reports must be submitted at least two weeks prior to the close of the call to allow time for review. Applicants are encouraged to submit completion reports well in advance of the close of a RTE call as iteration may be required prior to approval.

An example of a satisfactory completion report is available at this link.

Minority Serving Institutions

Information on Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) can be found at: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/edlite-minorityinst-list.html. This information predominately covers institutions that have been awarded grants through the Department of Education and does not currently include all institutions that may meet the definition of an MSI.  

Also, a consolidated list of MSIs based on 2020 U.S. Department of Education data, as compiled by Rutgers University, is provided for your convenience at the following link: https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/content/msi-directory. The Department of Energy does not validate the comprehensiveness of the list on this site.

During the recommendation process, NSUF will review each RTE proposal to see if the Principal Investigator (PI) is from an institution listed in the United States Department of Education directory. For those on the MSI list, five points will be manually added to the average technical score on the recommendation spreadsheet and duly noted in the recommendation provided to the NSUF Federal Program Manager.

VIEW NSUF PARTNERS AND CAPABILITIES  »

Acknowledging the NSUF

• NSUF Access: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy under DOE Idaho Operations Office Contract DE-AC07- 05ID14517 as part of a Nuclear Science User Facilities experiment.
• HPC work:  This research made use of Idaho National Laboratory computing resources which are supported by the Office of Nuclear Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Science User Facilities under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517.