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A summary is presented of the activities and results of research in nuclear chemistry, nuclear geochemistry, nuclear cosmochemistry, and other minor areas from 1950 to 1976. A complete listing is given of publications, doctoral dissertations, and reports resulting from the research. A chronological list provides an overview of the activities at any particular time. (JSR)

The subject thermocouple design has been analyzed for maximum expected hydraulic loading and found to be adequate. The natural frequency of the thermocouple was found to be between the vortex shedding frequencies for the gas and liquid phase so that a tendency for resonance will exist. However, since the thermocouple support will have a restricted displacement, stresses found are below the endurance limit and, thus, are acceptable in respect to fatigue life as well as primary stress due to pressure loading.

This report discusses the Permitting Plan regarding NEPA, SEPA, RCRA, and other regulatory standards and alternatives, for planning the environmental permitting of the Canister Storage Building, Project W-464.

The January 1992 quarterly progress report discusses a two-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) of the proposed retrofit MHD coil. The superconducting Cable-in-Conduit Conductor (CICC) winding pack has a smooth, semi-elliptical cross section and is supported by a similarly shaped strap which resists the electromagnetic forces tending to separate the coils on each side of the channel. The coils are designed to produce a peak on-axis field of 4.5 tesla with a nominal current density of 13.05{times}10{sup 6} A/m{sup 2}. A sketch of the magnet system and structure is shown in Fig. 1.0-1. The objective of this analysis is to quantify the highly 3-D characteristics of the proposed superconductivity magnet system, and develop an appropriate support concept. A fully paramatized 3-D finite element model of the coil and structure is developed as a means of obtaining the field and stress solutions. The flexibility of FEA and a model built using design parameters allows variations in the coil end turn bend radius, strap thickness, support details and positions to be studied. The preliminary results show the calculated stresses as a result of this iterative design process.

The demand plot has a 5-set, modified pump decay curve; it shows that 20,000 gpm emergency flow would be required within 80 seconds of complete pump power failure. Bases for the demand curve are constant bulk inlet temperature of 2 C, constant bulk outlet temperature of 95 C, K-3 I&E fuel elements, and initial reactor flow of 188,000 gpm.

In January 1990, the Department of Energy initiated this project with the objective to develop the technology for general purpose, portable gamma ray imaging cameras useful to the nuclear industry. The ultimate goal of this R&D initiative is to develop the analog to the color television camera where the camera would respond to gamma rays instead of visible photons. The two-dimensional real-time image would be displayed would indicate the geometric location of the radiation relative to the camera`s orientation, while the brightness and ``color`` would indicate the intensity and energy of the radiation (and hence identify the emitting isotope). There is a strong motivation for developing such a device for applications within the nuclear industry, for both high- and low-level waste repositories, for environmental restoration problems, and for space and fusion applications. At present, there are no general purpose radiation cameras capable of producing spectral images for such practical applications. At the time of this writing, work on this project has been underway for almost 18 months. Substantial progress has been made in the project`s two primary areas: mechanically-collimated (MCC) and electronically-collimated camera (ECC) designs. We present developments covering the mechanically-collimated design, and then discuss the efforts on the electronically-collimated …

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Fully dense, nanocrystalline ceramic articles were prepared by the new nanofabrication process. The process consists of two steps: synthesis of ceramic nanoparticles and fabrication of dense, nanocrystalline ceramic parts. The synthesis step produced 10-nanometer-diameter crystallites, and is capable of being scaled up to kilogram/hour production rates. The fabrication step produced dense parts at significantly reduced sintering temperatures and times -- representing a factor of 10--100 reduction in process energy requirements. The process was demonstrated by producing ultrafine-grained yttria-stabilized ZrO{sub 2}, an important material with a variety of energy-related applications (solid electrolytes, oxygen sensors, electrode materials, thermal barrier coatings, etc.). Results from this period clearly illustrate the capabilities of this energy-efficient and directly commercializable process for producing dense, nanocrystalline, multicomponent oxide ceramics.

A large number of irradiation tests have been conducted with UO{sub 2} fuel elements to characterize the behavior of Zircaloy cladding when cooling water is allowed to penetrate the cladding to the fuel core. The test element, is designed so that cooling water will be in contact with the surface of the UO{sub 2} fuel core during irradiation. The irradiation behavior of the UO{sub 2} will be compared to the behavior of similarly irradiated, non-defected UO{sub 2} fuel-elements. Several characteristics are of particular interest: (1) Previous investigations have shown that fission fragments formed in UO{sub 2} fuel cores tend to migrate from their point of formation. The fission fragment distribution in this element will be compared with that observed in other irradiated UO{sub 2} fuel cores. (2) This test will provide a direct measure of fission products released from UO{sub 2} during irradiation. (3) Sintered UO{sub 2} is quite resistant to erosion and is, in general, chemically stable in a water environment. This test will provide data concerning the dissolution rate of UO{sub 2} in water during irradiation. (4) Since the coolant will be in direct contact with the fuel, the average temperature of the fuel will be comparatively low. …

Introduction: "It is the purpose of this note to describe the construction and operation of the plasma injectors used in the magnetic high compression experiments in progress at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore. As the investigations of these injections is still in progress, remarks concerning their operation or the characteristics of the injected plasma are of a tentative nature."

We investigated differences in the statistical power to assign parentage between an artificially propagated and wild salmon population. The propagated fish were derived from the wild population, and are used to supplement its abundance. Levels of genetic variation were similar between the propagated and wild groups at 11 microsatellite loci, and exclusion probabilities were >0.999999 for both groups. The ability to unambiguously identify a pair of parents for each sampled progeny was much lower than expected, however. Simulations demonstrated that the proportion of cases the most likely pair of parents were the true parents was lower for propagated parents than for wild parents. There was a clear relationship between parentage assignment ability and the degree of linkage disequilibrium, the estimated effective number of breeders that produced the parents, and the size of the largest family within the potential parents. If a stringent threshold for parentage assignment was used, estimates of relative fitness were biased downward for the propagated fish. The bias appeared to be largely eliminated by either fractionally assigning progeny among parents in proportion to their likelihood of parentage, or by assigning progeny to the most likely set of parents without using a statistical threshold. We used a DNA-based …

Report describes process and methodology associated with a rapid prototype tool for integrating project risk analysis and health & safety risk analysis for decontamination and decommissioning projects.

The U.S. wood products industry is a leader in the production of innovative wood materials. New products are taking shape within a growth industry for fiberboard, plywood, particle board, and other natural material-based energy efficient building materials. However, at the same time, standards for clean air are becoming ever stricter. Emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) during production of wood products (including methanol, formaldehyde, acetylaldehyde, and mercaptans) must be tightly controlled. Conventional VOC and HAP emission control techniques such as regenerative thermal oxidation (RTO) and regenerative catalytic oxidation (RCO) require significant amounts of energy and generate secondary pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and spent carbon. Biological treatment of air emissions offers a cost-effective and sustainable control technology for industrial facilities facing increasingly stringent air emission standards. A novel biological treatment system that integrates two types of biofilter systems, promises significant energy and cost savings. This novel system uses microorganisms to degrade air toxins without the use of natural gas as fuel or the creation of secondary pollutants. The replacement of conventional thermal oxidizers with biofilters will yield natural gas savings alone in the range of $82,500 to $231,000 per year per unit. Widespread use of …

The work done with DOE support during this 15 year period was extensive and successful. It is best summarized by the list of 58 publications (below) which reported progress made with DOE support. These are from the grant period and a few more recent reporting on grant research. Mostly these are primary research reports in reviewed journals. There are also, however, many summary reviews in review journals and in scientific monographs, as they also are key places for reporting research progress. What we did during this grant period (and much longer) was to characterize genetic determinants for bacterial resistances to additional toxic heavy metals of DOE concern, through starting with phenotypic properties of the resistant bacteria to DNA sequence determination and characterization of the genes involved. Over the years (and as shown in the list of publications), the toxic metal-forming elements we have studied included Ag, As, Cd, Cr, and Hg. In each case, we started with basically nothing (or very little) known, progressed through quite detailed understanding, until other laboratory groups also became strongly involved in related studies. More recently, with DOE support, we were the first laboratory group in the world to identify genes for bacterial resistance to …

The Illinois Wind Working Group (IWWG) was founded in 2006 with about 15 members. It has grown to over 200 members today representing all aspects of the wind industry across the State of Illinois. In 2008, the IWWG developed a strategic plan to give direction to the group and its activities. The strategic plan identifies ways to address critical market barriers to the further penetration of wind. The key to addressing these market barriers is public education and outreach. Since Illinois has a restructured electricity market, utilities no longer have a strong control over the addition of new capacity within the state. Instead, market acceptance depends on willing landowners to lease land and willing county officials to site wind farms. Many times these groups are uninformed about the benefits of wind energy and unfamiliar with the process. Therefore, many of the project objectives focus on conferences, forum, databases and research that will allow these stakeholders to make well-educated decisions.

The quantum many-body physics of strongly-correlated fermions is studied in a degenerate, strongly- interacting atomic Fermi gas, first realized by our group with DOE support in 2002. This system, which exhibits strong spin pairing, is now widely studied and provides an important paradigm for testing predictions based on state-of-the-art many-body theory in fields ranging from nuclear matter to high temperature superfluidity and superconductivity. As the system is strongly interacting, both the superfluid and the normal fluid are nontrivial and of great interest. A central part of our program on Fermi gases is the connection between the study of thermodynamics, supported by DOE and the study of hydrodynamic transport, supported by NSF. This connection is especially interesting in view of a recent conjecture from the string theory community on the concept of nearly perfect normal fluids, which exhibit a minimum ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density in strongly-interacting, scale-invariant systems.

The fission and spallation reactions caused in uranium by bombardment with high energy protons (340 t o 350 MeV) were investigated. The reaction products were separated from the target by chemical processes and identified by their radioactive properties. The relative yields of the observed fission products were measured, and the results plotted as a function of mass number. Several of the spallation products were identified and their yields estimated. An attempt was made to determine the most probable atomic number for a nuclide of given mass formed directly from fission. Studies were made of the relative yields along several isobaric chains as a function of atomic number. From these data predictions of the mass and charge of the fissioning nucleus are made.

The second volume of a report documenting the suitability of Illinois for plant locations to produce synthetic liquid fuels, based on raw materials.

Report documenting the suitability of Oregon for plant locations to produce synthetic liquid fuels, based on raw materials, water sources, and local interest.

This report provides the results of the annual post-closure inspections conducted at the closed Corrective Action Unit (CAU) sites located on the Tonopah Test Range (TTR), Nevada. This report covers calendar year 2009 and includes inspection and repair activities completed at the following seven CAUs: · CAU 400: Bomblet Pit and Five Points Landfill (TTR) · CAU 407: Roller Coaster RadSafe Area (TTR) · CAU 424: Area 3 Landfill Complexes (TTR) · CAU 426: Cactus Spring Waste Trenches (TTR) · CAU 453: Area 9 UXO Landfill (TTR) · CAU 484: Surface Debris, Waste Sites, and Burn Area (TTR) · CAU 487: Thunderwell Site (TTR) The annual post-closure inspections were conducted May 5–6, 2009. All inspections were conducted according to the post-closure plans in the approved Closure Reports. The post-closure inspection plan for each CAU is included in Attachment B, with the exception of CAU 400. CAU 400 does not require post-closure inspections, but inspections of the vegetation and fencing are conducted as a best management practice. The inspection checklists for each site inspection are included in Attachment C, the field notes are included in Attachment D, and the site photographs are included in Attachment E. Vegetation monitoring of CAU 400, …

Since the emerging of second generation sequencing technologies, the evaluation of different sequencing approaches and their assembly strategies for different types of genomes has become an important undertaken. Next generation sequencing technologies dramatically increase sequence throughput while decreasing cost, making them an attractive tool for whole genome shotgun sequencing. To compare different approaches for de-novo whole genome assembly, appropriate tools and a solid understanding of both quantity and quality of the underlying sequence data are crucial. Here, we performed an in-depth analysis of short-read Illumina sequence assembly strategies for bacterial and archaeal genomes. Different types of Illumina libraries as well as different trim parameters and assemblers were evaluated. Results of the comparative analysis and sequencing platforms will be presented. The goal of this analysis is to develop a cost-effective approach for the increased throughput of the generation of high quality microbial genomes.

We have developed two processes with the Biomek FX robot to construct 454 titanium and Illumina libraries in order to meet the increasing library demands. All modifications in the library construction steps were made to enable the adaptation of the entire processes to work with the 96-well plate format. The key modifications include the shearing of DNA with Covaris E210 and the enzymatic reaction cleaning and fragment size selection with SPRI beads and magnetic plate holders. The construction of 96 Titanium libraries takes about 8 hours from sheared DNA to ssDNA recovery. The processing of 96 Illumina libraries takes less time than that of the Titanium library process. Although both processes still require manual transfer of plates from robot to other work stations such as thermocyclers, these robotic processes represent about 12- to 24-folds increase of library capacity comparing to the manual processes. To enable the sequencing of many libraries in parallel, we have also developed sets of molecular barcodes for both library types. The requirements for the 454 library barcodes include 10 bases, 40-60percent GC, no consecutive same base, and no less than 3 bases difference between barcodes. We have used 96 of the resulted 270 barcodes to construct …

Fosmid or BAC end sequencing plays an important role in de novo assembly of large genomes like fungi and plants. However construction and Sanger sequencing of fosmid or BAC libraries are laborious and costly. The current 454 Paired-End (PE) Library and Illumina Jumping Library construction protocols are limited with the gap sizes of approximately 20 kb and 8 kb, respectively. In the attempt to understand the limitations of constructing PE libraries with greater than 30Kb gaps, we have purified 18, 28, 45, and 65Kb sheared DNA fragments from yeast and circularized the ends using the Cre-loxP approach described in the 454 PE Library protocol. With the increasing fragment sizes, we found a general trend of decreasing library quality in several areas. First, redundant reads and reads containing multiple loxP linkers increase when the average fragment size increases. Second, the contamination of short distance pairs (<10Kb) increases as the fragment size increases. Third, chimeric rate increases with the increasing fragment sizes. We have modified several steps to improve the quality of the long span PE libraries. The modification includes (1) the use of special PFGE program to reduce small fragment contamination; (2) the increase of DNA samples in the circularization step …