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Age related degradation effects in safety related systems of nuclear power plants should be managed to prevent safety margins from eroding below the acceptable limits provided in plant design bases. The Nuclear Plant Aging Research (NPAR) Pro- gram, conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and other related aging management programs are developing technical information on managing aging. The aging management process central to these efforts consists of three key elements: 1) selecting structures, systems, and components (SSCs) in which aging should be controlled; 2) understanding the mechanisms and rates of degradation in these SSCs; and 3) managing degradation through effective inspection, surveillance, condition monitoring, trending, record keeping, mainten- ance, refurbishment, replacement, and adjustments in the operating environment and service conditions. This document concisely reviews and integrates information developed under the NPAR Program and other aging management studies and other available information related to understanding and managing age-related degradation effects and provides specific refer- ences to more comprehensive information on the same subjects.

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The following is a description of some studies the author made on the resonant Schottky detectors in the Tevatron. The author doubts that this document contains any information that wasn't known previously, but the hope is that this document will serve as a useful self-contained reference for users of the system.

This engineering note documents the calculations done to properly size the liquid/gas nitrogen piping system for the D-Zero refrigerator, solenoid, and VLPC upgrade. See the line sketch of the system on the next page. The sketch shows the chosen line sizes, estimated lengths of piping runs, estimated steady state flow rates and pressure drops for each pipe section. The raw calculations are attached as an appendix. The estimated steady state flow rates were developed in D-Zero EN-421, 'Helium and LN2 Storage Requirements for the D-Zero Upgrade'. The pressure drop calculations take into account the two phase property of the fluid on the inlet piping. The outlet piping is sized for saturated vapor. These calculations supplement sizing that was done in D-Zero EN-416, rev. 6/26/95, 'Pipe Sizing for Solenoid/VLPC Cryogenic Systems', EN-416 only looked at the Solenoid and VLPC sections of the system. In a previous EN-430, 'LN2 control valve sizing', a calculation was done to address the cool down flow rate necessary. The minimum cooldown flow rate needed for a simultaneous, serial cooldown of the refrigerator, solenoid and VLPC system was 6.4 g/s. This warm flow would get choked by an opening less than 0.175-inch in diameter. All the piping/tubing …

There were 5 control valves and 2 manual valves for the liquid nitrogen distribution system that needed to be sized and procured for the upgrade. This engineering note documents the calculations done to properly size these valves. A table summarizes the valve choices. The raw calculations are attached as an appendix. The calculations jump around a bit. No effort was made to re-organize or rewrite them for the reader. The sizing calcs. on Pages 1 through 4 were first pass calcs. based on pure liquid to the valves with no attention to flashing/choking. The calcs on pages 5 through 8 then refine the calculations by considering the LN2 to the valve inlets to be two phase with quality of 0.032. This is a real situation if the LN2 subcooler is out of service for use as a He cooldown heat exchanger. Also, flashing would occur for this situation and is taken into account. The end result of this refinement pushed the Cv values up by about a factor of 3 over the initial calcs. of pages 1 through 4. The results of the refined (correct) calculations pages 5 through 8 appear in the table above. The required operating Cv's are …

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This is an upgrade to the thermal contraction analysis sound in D0 Engineering Note: 3823.115-EN-426. In this new design, a portion of the transfer lines are consolidated into one 6-inch vacuum jacket. Since all four transfer lines follow the same path and are of equal lengths, the stress analysis is performed on only one transfer line using the design system ALGOR{reg_sign}. The GHe Cooldown Supply line is analyzed for combined pressure, thermal movement, and dead weight and all the stresses were below the allowable stress limit of 25,050 psi.

A number of current and prospective power plant concepts were investigated to evaluate their potential to serve as the basis of the next generation geothermal power plant (NGGPP). The NGGPP has been envisaged as a power plant that would be more cost competitive (than current geothermal power plants) with fossil fuel power plants, would efficiently use resources and mitigate the risk of reservoir under-performance, and minimize or eliminate emission of pollutants and consumption of surface and ground water. Power plant concepts were analyzed using resource characteristics at ten different geothermal sites located in the western United States. Concepts were developed into viable power plant processes, capital costs were estimated and levelized busbar costs determined. Thus, the study results should be considered as useful indicators of the commercial viability of the various power plants concepts that were investigated. Broadly, the different power plant concepts that were analyzed in this study fall into the following categories: commercial binary and flash plants, advanced binary plants, advanced flash plants, flash/binary hybrid plants, and fossil/geothed hybrid plants. Commercial binary plants were evaluated using commercial isobutane as a working fluid; both air-cooling and water-cooling were considered. Advanced binary concepts included cycles using synchronous turbine-generators, cycles with …

This Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) was prepared to determine the adequacy of system design and the reliability of the Compressed Air System (CAS) and its failures, which have a potential to impact Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) construction, testing, operations, and life support for Refuge Chambers. This FMEA is required by Section 5.9 of Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project (YMP) Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability Plan (Reference 5.1). The CAS FMEA identifies the failure mode of various components that could detract the CAS from normal operation.

This document consists of two reports contributed to the XXIV International Cosmic Ray Conference (Rome, Italy, August 28--September 8, 1995) from the SuperKamiokande Collaboration: one on the SuperKamiokande outer data acquisition system, and one on preliminary results from muon/electron identification tests at KEK of IMB3-detector phototubes and electronics.

This report describes efforts to identify the metabolic pathways of heterocyclic amines in animals and humans. These heterocyclic amines are potent mutagens when foods derived from muscle and other protein sources are cooked. Attempts have been made to study the effects of these toxic compounds on DNA. Attention is focused on the potential cancer risks associated with their intake as food.

This report is quarterly progress report on the Los Alamos National Laboratory Science Education Programs. Included in the report are dicussions on teacher and faculty enhancement, curriculum improvement, student support, educational technology, and institutional improvement.

This report describes integrated tank/heat exchanger modeling and experiments. Experiments were performed on a Rheem wrap-around 80 gallon electric hot water heater tank with the bottom heating element replaced by a 120 feet long coil of copper tubing wrapped around the outside lower half of the tank. The bottom two-thirds of the tank is heated by hot antifreeze circulating from the solar collector through the copper coil. Results are discussed.

The properties and performance of a ceramic component is determined by a combination of the materials from which it was fabricated and how it was processed. Most ceramic components are manufactured by dry pressing a powder/binder system in which the organic binder provides formability and green compact strength. A key step in this manufacturing process is the removal of the binder from the powder compact after pressing. The organic binder is typically removed by a thermal decomposition process in which heating rate, temperature, and time are the key process parameters. Empirical approaches are generally used to design the burnout time-temperature cycle, often resulting in excessive processing times and energy usage, and higher overall manufacturing costs. Ideally, binder burnout should be completed as quickly as possible without damaging the compact, while using a minimum of energy. Process and computational modeling offer one means to achieve this end. The objective of this study is to develop an experimentally validated computer model that can be used to better understand, control, and optimize binder burnout from green ceramic compacts.

This progress report summarizes a project to treat the diffusion and transport phenomena in multicomponent systems from an atomistic point of view mainly by means of a kinetic method based on the Cluster Variation Method (CVM)-Path Probability Method (PPM) formalism. As is well known, the CVM has established itself as one of the most systematic methods of statistical thermodynamics, and macroscopic phenomena treated by thermodynamics can thus be investigated atomistically in great detail. The author describes work in a number of different applications, summarized here by the section titles: percolation threshold in electronic conduction {beta}-alumina type solid electrolytes; mixed alkali effect; chemical diffusion problem; soft lattice gas model and rigid lattice gas model; diffusion in semiconductors; diffusion in ordered alloys; kinetics of relaxation process of hopping ionic conduction.

Objective is to apply artificial intelligence and expert systems to capturing, integrating, and articulating key knowledge from geology, geostatistics, and petroleum engineering to develop accurate descriptions of petroleum reservoirs. Goal is to develop a single expert system for use by small producers and independents to efficiently exploit reservoirs.

It has long been known that concrete reflection can be an important factor in determining the critical state of any fissile system, single unit or storage array. Since there can be a large variation in the chemical makeup of concrete, mass-limit reduction factors are necessarily conservative, and may lead to a very uneconomical storage arrangement. This study was undertaken to clarify the importance of the various concrete constituents and to determine some general guidance as to the magnitude of the reactivity effects for the more likely fissile material storage conditions.

This publication consists of two parts: OCRWM (Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management) Bulletin; and Of Mountains & Science which has articles on the Yucca Mountain project. The OCRWM provides information about OCRWM activities and in this issue has articles on multi-purpose canister design, and transportation cask trailer.

The ICF quarterly report is published by the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Topics included in this issue include: system description and initial performance results for beamlet, design and performance of the beamlet amplifiers and optical switch, beamlet pulse-generation and wavefront-control system, large-aperture, high- damage-threshold optics for beamlet, beamlet pulsed power system, beamlet laser diagnostics, and beam propagation and frequency conversion modeling for the beamlet laser.

Advanced polymer systems that possess microstructural features that are responsive to temperature, electrolyte concentration, and shear conditions are being synthesized which will be superior to polymers presently used for mobility control in enhanced oil recovery. Improved polymer performance is accomplished by controlling hydrophobic or ampholytic interactions between individual polymer chains in solution. Of special interest to our group have been (1) the elucidation of the mechanism of associative thickening and (2) the tailoring of thickeners with reversible associations responsive to changes in pH, ionic strength, temperature, or shear stress. A polymerization technique, termed ``micellar`` polymerization utilizes a surfactant to solubilize a relatively low mole percent of a hydrophobic monomer in water for copolymerization with a hydrophilic monomer. In this report, we examine the role of surfactant-to-monomer ratio (SMR) in the reaction medium on microstructure utilizing the N-[(1- pyrenylsulfonamido)ethyl] acrylamide (APS) monomer as a fluorescent label. Comparison is made with previously reported terpolymers of identical AM/AA compositions with N-(4-decyl)phenylacrylamide as the hydrophobic monomer. Unlike the uncharged copolymer of AM/APS, however, the AM/AA/APS terpolymers of this study do not show intermolecular associative thickening, apparently due to insufficient liaisons of hydrophobic microdomains even at high concentrations of terpolymer.

During pulverized coal combustion, a fume of submicron particles is formed from the mineral matter in the parent coal. Studies of the variation in chemical composition with particle size have revealed that much of the submicron fume is formed from volatilized coal ash. The formation and evolution of the ash fume is governed by homogeneous nucleation, condensation, and coagulation. Vapors of refractory species nucleate relatively early in the combustion process. Coagulation of those fine particles results in a size distribution that is approximately log normal. More volatile species remain in the gas phase until after the nucleation has taken place. Condensation on the surfaces of both the fume and the larger residual ash particles results in the enrichment of the fine particles with volatile, and frequently toxic trace species. The resultant concentration of heavy metals in the size interval between 0.1 and 1 {mu}m may allow disproportionate amounts of these species to escape collection, even by the best of gas cleaning systems. A comprehensive theoretical treatment of the aerosol dynamics of pyrogenous fumes requires a number of extensions of the classical descriptions. Rigorous descriptions of the coagulation of dense, spherical particles are available, but fume particles are rarely spherical. The …

This analysis is prepared by the Mined Geologic Disposal System (MGDS) Waste Package Development Department in response to a request received via a QAP-3-12 Design Input Data Request (Ref. 5.16) from WAST Design (formerly MRS/MPC Design). The request is to provide: (1) Dryness requirements for the Multi-Purpose Canister (MPC) cavity environment after loading and closure operations at the Purchaser site. The objective of this analysis is to provide a response to the foregoing request. The analysis treats nominal loading conditions only, not accidents or accident conditions. In particular, leaky (waterlogged) fuel rods are not considered. The purpose of this analysis is to provide the basis for the response.