Nine shallow (c70 ft), closely spaced core holes were continuously cored in the upper units of the 1.22 Ma Tshirege Member of the Bandelier Tuff at Technical Area (TA)-3 of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The goal of the investigation was to identify faults that may have potential for earthquake-induced surface rupture at the site of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) building, a sensitive Laboratory facility that houses nuclear materials research functions. The holes were located from 25 ft to 115 ft from the building perimeter. Careful mapping of Lithologic sequences in cores, supplemented with focused sampling for geochemical analyses, yielded high confidence in the accuracy of delineating buried contacts within the Tshirege Member. Geologic analysis and investigation of the trends of surfaces interpolated from contacts in the core holes using commercially available software helped infer minor faulting in the strata beneath the building. Results show that gently north-northeast-dipping beds underlie the CMR building. The tilted beds are faulted by two small, closely spaced, parallel reverse faults with a combined vertical separation of approximately 8 ft. The faults are inferred from lithologically and geochemically repeated sections of core at about 55-ft depth in hole SHB-CMR-6. The data from nearby …

The purpose of this work was to explore the use of immersive technologies, such as those used in synthetic environments (commordy referred to as virtual realily, or VR), in enhancing the mesh- generation process for 3-dimensional (3D) engineering models. This work was motivated by the fact that automatic mesh generation systems are still imperfect - meshing algorithms, particularly in 3D, are sometimes unable to construct a mesh to completion, or they may produce anomalies or undesirable complexities in the resulting mesh. It is important that analysts and meshing code developers be able to study their meshes effectively in order to understand the topology and qualily of their meshes. We have implemented prototype capabilities that enable such exploration of meshes in a highly visual and intuitive manner. Since many applications are making use of increasingly large meshes, we have also investigated approaches to handle large meshes while maintaining interactive response. Ideally, it would also be possible to interact with the meshing process, allowing interactive feedback which corrects problems and/or somehow enables proper completion of the meshing process. We have implemented some functionality towards this end -- in doing so, we have explored software architectures that support such an interactive meshing process. …

The U.S. Department of Energy is developing an estimate of the underdeveloped hydropower potential in the United States. For this purpose, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory developed a computer model called Hydropower Evaluation Software (HES). HES measures the undeveloped hydropower resources available in the United States, using uniform criteria for measurement. The software was developed and tested using hydropower information and data provided by the Southwestern Power Administration. It is a menu-driven program that allows the personal computer user to assign environmental attributes to potential hydropower sites, calculate development suitability factors for each site based on the environmental attributes present, and generate reports based on these suitability factors. This report describes the resource assessment results for the State of California.

To more fully understand the species compositions and environmental relationships of high-elevation terrestrial plant communities in the Los Alamos region, 30 plots in randomly selected, upland locations were sampled for vegetation, topographic, and soils characteristics. The locations of these plots were constrained to be above 2,134 m (7,000 ft) above mean sea level. The field results were summarized, analyzed, and incorporated into a previously developed classification of vegetation and land cover types. The revised and updated discussions of the environmental relationships at these sites and their associated species compositions are included in this report. A key to the major land cover types in the Los Alamos region was also revised in accordance with the new information and included herein its entirety.

The Division of Materials Sciences is responsible for basic research and research facilities in materials science topics important to the mission of the Department of Energy. The programmatic divisions under the Office of Basic Energy Sciences are Chemical Sciences, Engineering and Geosciences, and Energy Biosciences. Materials Science is an enabling technology. The performance parameters, economics, environmental acceptability and safety of all energy generation, conversion, transmission and conservation technologies are limited by the properties and behavior of materials. The Materials Sciences programs develop scientific understanding of the synergistic relationship among synthesis, processing, structure, properties, behavior, performance and other characteristics of materials. Emphasis is placed on the development of the capability to discover technologically, economically, and environmentally desirable new materials and processes, and the instruments and national user facilities necessary for achieving such progress. Materials Sciences subfields include: physical metallurgy, ceramics, polymers, solid state and condensed matter physics, materials chemistry, surface science and related disciplines where the emphasis is on the science of materials. This report includes program descriptions for 517 research programs including 255 at 14 DOE National Laboratories, 262 research grants (233 of which are at universities), and 29 Small Business Innovation Research Grants. Five cross-cutting indices located at the …

Monitoring and surveillance, on and around the Nevada Test Site, (NTS) by US Department of Energy (DOE) contractors and NTS user organizations during 1997, indicated that operations on the NTS were conducted in compliance with applicable DOE, state, and federal regulations and guidelines. All discharges of radioactive liquids remained onsite in containment ponds, and there was no indication of potential migration of radioactivity to the offsite area through groundwater. Surveillance around the NTS indicated that airborne radioactivity from diffusion, evaporation of liquid effluents, or resuspension of soil was not detectable offsite, and exposure above existing background to members of the offsite population was not measured by the offsite monitoring program. Using the US Environmental Protection Agency`s (EPA`s) Clean Air Package 1988 (CAP88)-PC model and NTS radionuclide emissions and environmental monitoring data, the calculated effective dose equivalent (EDE) to the maximally exposed individual offsite would have been 0.089 mrem. Hazardous wastes were shipped offsite to approved disposal facilities.