IceCube is a 1 km3 neutrino detector now being built at the South Pole. Its 4800 optical modules will detect Cherenkov radiation from charged particles produced in neutrino interactions. IceCube will search for neutrinos of astrophysical origin, with energies from 100 GeV up to 1019 eV. It will be able to separate nue, nu mu and nu tau. In addition to detecting astrophysical neutrinos, IceCube will also search for neutrinos from WIMP annihilation in the Sun and the Earth, look for low-energy (10 MeV) neutrinos from supernovae, and search for a host of exotic signatures. With the associated IceTop surface air shower array, it will study cosmic-ray air showers. IceCube construction is now 50percent complete. After presenting preliminary results from the partial detector, I will discuss IceCube's future plans.

The pressure dependence of the Raman shift of diamond for highly stressed anvils at the diamond-anvil sample interface has been measured for different culet shapes up to 180 GPa at ambient temperature. By using hydrogen samples, which constitute both a quasi-hydrostatic medium and a sensitive pressure sensor, some of the effects of culet and tip size have been determined. We propose that the divergent results in the literature can be partly ascribed to different anvil geometries. Experiments show increasing second order dependence of the diamond Raman shift with pressure for decreasing tip size. This is an important consideration when using the diamond anvils as a pressure sensor.

Experiments in NSTX have now unambiguously demonstrated the coupling of toroidal plasmas produced by the technique of CHI to inductive sustainment and ramp-up of the toroidal plasma current. This is an important step because an alternate method for plasma startup is essential for developing a fusion reactor based on the spherical torus concept. Elimination of the central solenoid would also allow greater flexibility in the choice of the aspect ratio in tokamak designs now being considered. The transient CHI method for spherical torus startup was originally developed on the HIT-II experiment at the University of Washington.

The precise value of the thermal capture cross section of238U is uncertain, and evaluated cross sections from various sourcesdiffer by more than their assigned uncertainties. A number of theoriginal publications have been reviewed to assess the discrepant data,corrections were made for more recent standard cross sections andotherconstants, and one new measurement was analyzed. Due to the strongcorrelations in activation measurements, the gamma-ray emissionprobabilities from the beta decay of 239Np were also analyzed. As aresult of the analysis, a value of 2.683 +- 0.012 barns was derived forthe thermal capture cross section of 238U. A new evaluation of thegamma-ray emission probabilities from 239Np decay was alsoundertaken.

Spent nuclear fuels are received from reactor sites around the world and are being stored in the L-Basin at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in Aiken, South Carolina. The predominant fuel types are research reactor fuel with aluminum-alloy cladding and aluminum-based fuel. Other fuel materials include stainless steel and Zircaloy cladding with uranium oxide fuel. Chemistry control and corrosion surveillance programs have been established and upgraded since the early 1990's to minimize corrosion degradation of the aluminum cladding materials, so as to maintain fuel integrity and minimize personnel exposure from radioactivity in the basin water. Recent activities have been initiated to support additional decades of wet storage which include fuel inspection and corrosion testing to evaluate the effects of specific water impurity species on corrosion attack.

Evidence is presented concerning the effect of surfaces on the segmental motion of PEO-based polymer electrolytes in lithium batteries. For dry systems with no moisture the effect of surfaces of nano-particle fillers is to inhibit the segmental motion and to reduce the lithium ion transport. These effects also occur at the surfaces in composite electrodes that contain considerable quantities of carbon black nano-particles for electronic connection. The problem of reduced polymer mobility is compounded by the generation of salt concentration gradients within the composite electrode. Highly concentrated polymer electrolytes have reduced transport properties due to the increased ionic cross-linking. Combined with the interfacial interactions this leads to the generation of low mobility electrolyte layers within the electrode and to loss of capacity and power capability. It is shown that even with planar lithium metal electrodes the concentration gradients can significantly impact the interfacial impedance. The interfacial impedance of lithium/PEO-LiTFSI cells varies depending upon the time elapsed since current was turned off after polarization. The behavior is consistent with relaxation of the salt concentration gradients and indicates that a portion of the interfacial impedance usually attributed to the SEI layer is due to concentrated salt solutions next to the electrode surfaces …

The use of nonreactive isotopic tracers coupled to a full thermal-hydrological reservoir simulation allows for an improved method of investigating how reservoir fluids contained within matrix and fractures contribute over time to fluids produced from geothermal systems. A combined field and modeling study has been initiated to evaluate the effects of injection, production, and fracture-matrix interaction on produced noble gas contents and isotopic ratios. Gas samples collected periodically from the Aidlin steam field at The Geysers, California, between 1997 and 2006 have been analyzed for their noble gas compositions, and reveal systematic shifts in abundance and isotopic ratios over time. Because of the low concentrations of helium dissolved in the injection waters, the injectate itself has little impact on the helium isotopic composition of the reservoir fluids over time. However, the injection process may lead to fracturing of reservoir rocks and an increase in diffusion-controlled variations in noble gas compositions, related to gases derived from fluids within the rock matrix.

Using both the absolute and relative surrogate techniques, the {sup 236}U(n,f) cross section was deduced over an equivalent neutron energy range of 0 to 20 MeV. A 42 MeV {sup 3}He beam from the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was used to perform a ({sup 3}He,{alpha}) pickup reaction on targets of {sup 235}U (J{sup {pi}}=7/2{sup -}) and {sup 238}U (J{sup {pi}}=0{sup +}) and the fission decay probabilities were determined. The {sup 235}U({sup 3}He,{alpha}f) and {sup 238}U({sup 3}He,{alpha}f) were surrogates for {sup 233}U(n,f) and {sup 236}U(n,f), respectively. The cross sections extracted using the Surrogate Method were compared to directly measured cross sections. The sensitivity of these cross sections to the J{sup {pi}}-population distributions was explored.

Neutron-absorbing Fe-based amorphous-metal coatings have been developed that are more corrosion resistant than other criticality-control materials, including Al-B{sub 4}C composites, borated stainless steels, and Ni-Cr-Mo-Gd alloys. The presence of relatively high concentration of boron in these coatings not only enhances its neutron-absorption capability, but also enables these coatings to exist in the amorphous state. Exceptional corrosion resistance has been achieved with these Fe-based amorphous-metal alloys through additions of chromium, molybdenum, and tungsten. The addition of rare earth elements such as yttrium has lowered the critical cooling rate of these materials, thereby rendering them more easily processed. Containers used for the storage of nuclear materials, and protected from corrosion through the application of amorphous metal coatings, would have greatly enhanced service lives, and would therefore provide greater long-term safety. Amorphous alloy powders have been successfully produced in multi-ton quantities with gas atomization, and applied to several half-scale spent fuel storage containers and criticality control structures with the high-velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF) thermal spray process. Salt fog testing and neutron radiography of these prototypes indicates that such an approach is viable for the production of large-scale industrial-scale facilities and containers. The use of these durable neutron-absorbing materials to coat stainless steel containers and …

During the past two years, the US heavy ion fusion science program has made significant experimental and theoretical progress in simultaneous transverse and longitudinal beam compression, ion-beam-driven warm dense matter targets, high-brightness beam transport, advanced theory and numerical simulations, and heavy ion target physics for fusion. First experiments combining radial and longitudinal compression {pi} of intense ion beams propagating through background plasma resulted in on-axis beam densities increased by 700X at the focal plane. With further improvements planned in 2008, these results enable initial ion beam target experiments in warm dense matter to begin next year. They are assessing how these new techniques apply to higher-gain direct-drive targets for inertial fusion energy.

Under the Nuclear/Radiological Incident Annex of the National Response Framework, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has specific responsibilities as a coordinating agency and for leading interagency response elements in the Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC). Emergency response planning focuses on rapidly providing response elements in stages after being notified of a nuclear/radiological incident. The use of Home Teams during the field team deployment period and recent advances in collecting and transmitting data from the field directly to assessment assets has greatly improved incident assessment times for public protection decisions. The DOE’s Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) based in Las Vegas, Nevada, has successfully deployed technical and logistical support for this mission at national exercises such as Top Officials Exercise IV (TOPOFF IV). In a unique response situation, DOE will provide advance contingency support to NASA during the scheduled launch in the fall of 2009 of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The MSL rover will carry a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium’s radioactive decay. DOE assets and contingency planning will provide a pre-incident response posture for rapid early plume phase assessment in the highly unlikely launch anomaly.

Plant mounds or blow-sand mounds are accumulations of soil particles and plant debris around the base of shrubs and are common features in deserts in the southwestern United States. An important factor in their formation is that shrubs create surface roughness that causes wind-suspended particles to be deposited and resist further suspension. Shrub mounds occur in some plant communities on the Nevada Test Site, the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), and Tonopah Test Range (TTR), including areas of surface soil contamination from past nuclear testing. In the 1970s as part of early studies to understand properties of actinides in the environment, the Nevada Applied Ecology Group (NAEG) examined the accumulation of isotopes of Pu, 241Am, and U in plant mounds at safety experiment and storage-transportation test sites of nuclear devices. Although aerial concentrations of these contaminants were highest in the intershrub or desert pavement areas, the concentration in mounds were higher than in equal volumes of intershrub or desert pavement soil. The NAEG studies found the ratio of contaminant concentration of actinides in soil to be greater (1.6 to 2.0) in shrub mounds than in the surrounding areas of desert pavement. At Project 57 on the NTTR, 17 percent …

This document summarizes the findings of the Accelerator Working Group (AWG) of the International Scoping Study (ISS) of a Future Neutrino Factory and Superbeam Facility. The work of the group took place at three plenary meetings along with three workshops, and an oral summary report was presented at the NuFact06 workshop held at UC-Irvine in August, 2006. The goal was to reach consensus on a baseline design for a Neutrino Factory complex. One aspect of this endeavor was to examine critically the advantages and disadvantages of the various Neutrino Factory schemes that have been proposed in recent years.

In multisection laser diodes, the amplitude or frequency modulation (AM or FM) efficiency can be improved using the gain lever effect. To study gain lever, InGaAs double quantum well (DQW) edge emitting lasers have been fabricated with integrated passive waveguides and dual sections providing a range of split ratios from 1:1 to 9:1. Both the electrical and the optical gain lever have been examined. An electrical gain lever with greater than 7 dB enhancement of AM efficiency was achieved within the range of appropriate DC biasing currents, but this gain dropped rapidly outside this range. We observed a 4 dB gain in the optical AM efficiency under non-ideal biasing conditions. This value agreed with the measured gain for the electrical AM efficiency under similar conditions. We also examined the gain lever effect under large signal modulation for digital logic switching applications. To get a useful gain lever for optical gain quenched logic, a long control section is needed to preserve the gain lever strength and a long interaction length between the input optical signal and the lasing field of the diode must be provided. The gain lever parameter space has been fully characterized and validated against numerical simulations of a …

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) is a large (1.5 MSLOC), hierarchical, distributed system that controls all aspects of the NIF laser [1]. The ICCS team delivers software updates to the NIF facility throughout the year to support shot operations and commissioning activities. In 2006, there were 48 releases of ICCS: 29 full releases, 19 patches. To ensure the quality of each delivery, thousands of manual and automated tests are performed using the ICCS Test Controller test infrastructure. The TestController system provides test inventory management, test planning, automated test execution and manual test logging, release testing summaries and test results search, all through a web browser interface. Automated tests include command line based frameworks server tests and Graphical User Interface (GUI) based Java tests. Manual tests are presented as a checklist-style web form to be completed by the tester. The results of all tests, automated and manual, are kept in a common repository that provides data to dynamic status reports. As part of the 3-stage ICCS release testing strategy, the TestController system helps plan, evaluate and track the readiness of each release to the NIF facility.

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Projection optical systems built for Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) demonstrated the ability to produce, support and position reflective optical surfaces for achieving transmitted wavefront errors of 1 nm or less. Principal challenges included optical interferometry, optical manufacturing processes, multi-layer coating technology and opto mechanics. Our group was responsible for designing, building and aligning two different projection optical systems: a full-field, 0.1 NA, four-mirror system for 70 nm features and a small-field, 0.3 NA, two-mirror system for 30 nm features. Other than physical size and configuration, the two systems were very similar in the way they were designed, built and aligned. A key difference exists in the optic mounts, driven primarily by constraints from the metrology equipment used by different optics manufacturers. As mechanical stability and deterministic position control of optics will continue to play an essential role in future systems, we focus our discussion on opto-mechanics and primarily the optic mounts.

The formation and growth of sigma phase in 2205 duplex stainless steel was observed and measured in real time using synchrotron radiation during 10 hr isothermal heat treatments at temperatures between 700 C and 850 C. Sigma formed in near-equilibrium quantities during the isothermal holds, starting from a microstructure which contained a balanced mixture of metastable ferrite and austenite. In situ synchrotron diffraction continuously monitored the transformation, and these results were compared to those predicted by thermodynamic calculations. Differences between the calculated and measured amounts of sigma, ferrite and austenite suggest that the thermodynamic calculations underpredict the sigma dissolution temperature by approximately 50 C. The data were further analyzed using a modified Johnson-Mehl-Avrami (JMA) approach to determine kinetic parameters for sigma formation over this temperature range. The initial JMA exponent, n, at low fractions of sigma was found to be approximately 7.0, however, towards the end of the transformation, n decreased to values of approximately 0.75. The change in the JMA exponent was attributed to a change in the transformation mechanism from discontinuous precipitation with increasing nucleation rate, to growth of the existing sigma phase after nucleation site saturation occurred. Because of this change in mechanism, it was not possible …

The experimental and theoretical status of the ''near perfect fluid'' at RHIC is discussed. While the hydrodynamic paradigm for understanding collisions at RHIC is well established, there remain many important open questions to address in order to understand its relevance and scope. It is also a crucial issue to understand how the early equilibration is achieved, requiring insight into the active degrees of freedom at early times.

We conduct a series of high-resolution, fully self-consistent dissipation less N-body simulations to investigate the cumulative effect of substructure mergers onto thin disk galaxies in the context of the {Lambda}CDM paradigm of structure formation. Our simulation campaign is based on a hybrid approach combining cosmological simulations and controlled numerical experiments. Substructure mass functions, orbital distributions, internal structures, and accretion times are culled directly from cosmological simulations of galaxy-sized cold dark matter (CDM) halos. We demonstrate that accretions of massive subhalos onto the central regions of host halos, where the galactic disk resides, since z {approx} 1 should be common occurrences. In contrast, extremely few satellites in present-day CDM halos are likely to have a significant impact on the disk structure. This is due to the fact that massive subhalos with small orbital pericenters that are most capable of strongly perturbing the disk become either tidally disrupted or suffer substantial mass loss prior to z = 0. One host halo merger history is subsequently used to seed controlled N-body experiments of repeated satellite impacts on an initially-thin Milky Way-type disk galaxy. These simulations track the effects of six dark matter substructures, with initial masses in the range {approx} (0.7-2) x 10{sup …

Isopiestic vapor-pressure measurements were made for Li{sub 2}SO{sub 4}(aq) from 0.1069 to 2.8190 mol {center_dot} kg{sup -1} at 298.15 K, and from 0.1148 to 2.7969 mol {center_dot} kg{sup -1} at 323.15 K, with NaCl(aq) as the reference standard. Published thermodynamic data for this system were reviewed, recalculated for consistency, and critically assessed. The present results and the more reliable published results were used to evaluate the parameters of an extended version of Pitzer's ion-interaction model with an ionic-strength dependent third virial coefficient, as well as those of the standard Pitzer model, for the osmotic and activity coefficients at both temperatures. Published enthalpies of dilution at 298.15 K were also analyzed to yield the parameters of the ion-interaction models for the relative apparent molar enthalpies of dilution. The resulting models at 298.15 K are valid to the saturated solution molality of the thermodynamically stable phase Li{sub 2}SO{sub 4} {center_dot} H{sub 2}O(cr). Solubilities of Li{sub 2}SO{sub 4} {center_dot} H{sub 2}O(cr) at 298.15 K were assessed, and the selected value of m(sat.) = 3.13 {+-} 0.04 mol {center_dot} kg{sup -1} was used to evaluate the thermodynamic solubility product K{sub s}(Li{sub 2}SO{sub 4} {center_dot} H{sub 2}O, cr, 298.15 K) = (2.62 {+-} 0.19) and …

We examine the branching ratio of the N{sub 4,5} (4d {yields} 5f ) spectra of Th, U, Np, Pu, Am, and Cm metal using electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) in a transmission electron microscope (TEM), together with many-electron atomic spectral calculations and the spin-orbit sum rule. Our results show that: (1) The actinide metals Pu, Am, and Cm exhibit intermediate coupling. (2) The intermediate coupling values for the 5f states as calculated using a many-electron atomic model are correct for the actinides, this being proven by our new results for curium. (3) The EELS branching ratio is sensitive to the degree of 5f electron delocalization, which is illustrated by the transition from LS to intermediate coupling between U and Pu.

We report recent measurements of branching fractions and charge asymmetries of charmless hadronic B decays using the data collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric energy e{sup +}e{sup -} collider.

Dramatic advances in data management have been made as a result of the Paperless FRMAC initiative, sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Emergency Response (NA-42). The FRMAC (Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center) is the hub for all radiological monitoring and the production of data products that interpret those measurements in terms of protective action guidelines. As such, very large amounts of data must be quickly assimilated from numerous sources and then widely distributed as graphical interpretations as fast as possible. Paperless FRMAC is a broad initiative to move that data faster, farther and better through telemetry, automation, and networking. This discussion reviews for the first time the status of the now two-year-old Paperless FRMAC initiative. Key features of Paperless FRMAC include multipath telemetry of measurements from DOE field teams, 24/7 Internet presence, early data entry by first responders, support for distance collaborations, and data exchange with the EPA’s SCRIBE database. The heart of the enterprise is the RAMS database, which provides seamless interfacing with GIS, LIMS, and TurboFRMAC for calculations. Paperless FRMAC is presented to users via two Internet websites. The first, FRMAC Portal website, is restricted to the emergency responders for data input, analysis, and product development. The …