Work sponsored by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) to identify and perform preliminary assessments of candidate BWR (boiling water reactor) in-vessel accident management strategies was completed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) during fiscal year 1990. Mitigative strategies for containment events have been the subject of a companion study at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The focus of this Oak Ridge effort was the development of new strategies for mitigation of the late phase events, that is, the events that would occur in-vessel after the onset of significant core damage. The work began with an investigation of the current status of BWR in-vessel accident management procedures and proceeded through a preliminary evaluation of several candidate new strategies. The steps leading to the identification of the candidate strategies are described. The four new candidate late-phase (in-vessel) accident mitigation strategies identified by this study and discussed in the report are: (1) keep the reactor vessel depressurized; (2) restore injection in a controlled manner; (3) inject boron if control blade damage has occurred; and (4) containment flooding to maintain core and structural debris in-vessel. Additional assessments of these strategies are proposed.

Emittance can be measured by intercepting an electron beam on a range thick plate and then observing the expansion of beamlets transmitted through small holes. The hole size is selected to minimize space charge effects. In the presence of a magnetic field the beamlets have a spiral trajectory and the usual field free formulation must be modified. To interpret emittance in the presence of a magnetic field an envelope equation is derived in the appropriate rotating frame. 1 ref.

Directly driven Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth experiments being performed on NOVA have been simulated using the computer code, LASNEX. Foils with single-wavelength imposed surface perturbations have been driven with a single beam of 0.53 {mu}m light, employing smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD). In addition to simulating foils with imposed surface perturbations, we have simulated flat foils driven by beams with time-dependent intensity modulation resulting from the NOVA implementation of SSD. These simulations show the development of large amplitude modulation of the target from residual intensity nonuniformities. Structure seeded by beam nonuniformity would overwhelm modulation resulting from imposed surface perturbations of sub-micron initial amplitude, but is predicted to develop sufficiently slowly that we expect to observe growth of perturbations with initial amplitudes of several microns. In other NOVA experiments, flat foils with an embedded brominated spectroscopic tracer layer are used in infer mass ablation rates. SSD drive is predicted to yield ablation rates in better agreement with 1-D simulations than drive from a beam with random phase plates (RPP) alone. Simulations of foils driven with RPP beams show enhanced ablation rates because modulation of the ablation front increases its surface area. Line emission from the seed is first seen at cold spots …

A substantial savings in size and cost over a linear machine may be achieved in an induction accelerator in which a heavy ion beam makes many (< {approximately} 50) passes through one or more circular induction accelerators. We examine how the requirement of high beam quality and the requirement of pulse simultaneity at the target constrain the design of such an accelerator. Some of the issues that we have considered include beam interactions with residual gas, beam-beam charge exchange, emittance growth around bends, and beam instabilities. We show some of the interplay between maximization of beam quality and recirculator efficiency, and the minimization of recirculator cost, in arriving at a recirculator design. 9 refs., 1 fig.

It may be possible to surround the region where fusion reactions are taking place with a neutronically thick liquid blanket which has penetrations that allow only a few tenths of a percent of the neutrons to leak out. Even these neutrons can be attenuated by adding an accurately placed liquid or solid near the target to shadow-shield the beam ports from line-of-sight neutrons. The logic of such designs are discussed and their evolution is described with examples applied to both magnetic and inertial fusion (HYLIFE-II). These designs with liquid protection are self healing when exposed to pulsed loading and have a number of advantages-over the usual designs with solid first walls. For example, the liquid-protected solid components will last the life of the plant, and therefore the capacity factor is estimated to be approximately 10% higher than for the non-liquid-walled blankets, because no blanket replacement shutdowns are required. The component replacement, operations, and maintenance costs might be half the usual value because no blanket change-out costs or accompanying facilities are required. These combined savings might lower the cost of electricity by 20%. Nuclear-grade construction should not be needed, largely because the liquid attenuates neutrons and results in less activation of …

The use of motor current signature analysis (CSA) has been established as a useful method for periodic monitoring of electrically driven equipment. CSA is, moreover, especially well suited as the basis for a dedicated continuous monitoring system in an industrial setting. This paper presents just such an application that has been developed and installed in the US government uranium enrichment plant at Portsmouth, Ohio. The system, which is designed to detect specific axial-flow compressor problems in 1700-hp gaseous diffusion compressors, is described in detail along with an explanation of detected fault conditions and the required signal manipulations. Amplitude demodulation and subsequent digital processing of motor signals sensed from area control room ammeter loops are used to accomplish the desired monitoring task. Using modified off-the-shelf multiplexing equipment, a 386-type personal computer, and special digital signal processing hardware, the system is presently configured to monitor ten compressors but is expandable to monitor more than 100. Within its first few days of operation in September 1992, the system detected a compressor problem that, when corrected, resulted in a cost avoidance of about $150,000, which more than paid for the hardware and software development costs. Finally, plans to expand system coverage in the coming …

In December 1992, the US Department of Energy (DOE) directed that the Plutonium-Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Plant be shut down and deactivated because it was no longer needed to support the nation`s production of weapons-grade plutonium. The PUREX/UO{sub 2} Deactivation Project will establish a safe and environmentally secure configuration for the facility and preserve that configuration for 10 years. The 10-year span is used to predict future maintenance requirements and represents the estimated time needed to define, authorize, and initiate the follow-on decontamination and decommissioning activities. Accomplishing the deactivation project involves many activities. Removing major hazards, such as excess chemicals, spent fuel, and residual plutonium are major goals of the project. The scope of the PUREX Transition Project is described within.

The European Tracer EXperiment (ETEX). The ETEX program involves two tracer experiments each comprising from distinct elements: (a) long-range atmospheric tracer release, sampling, and analysis; (b) real-time model operation and evaluation; and (c) post-release model operation and evaluation. The experiments consist of the release of a non-buoyant tracer from a location in western Europe and sampling of the atmospheric concentration by a network of about 200 stations located in 17 countries. Twenty-three institutions from 19 countries are expected to participate in the real-time modeling program including the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) of the US Department of Energy`s Savannah River Site (SRS). Notification of the release will occur only after the initiation of the release. Participants will be required to provide 60-h concentration predictions as quickly a possible (within 6 h of being notified) and updated predictions every 12 h after the notification. In 1993 two ``dry runs`` for the real-time modeling component of the program were conducted; the actual tracer release experiment is scheduled for the fall of 1994. This paper describes the modeling approach employed by SRTC and presents some of the results of the second ETEX real-time dry run.

This report is a compilation of submitted abstracts of scientific papers presented at the second Department of Energy-supported workshop on the use and applications of biomarkers held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from April 26--29, 1994. The abstracts present a synopsis of the latest scientific developments in biomarker research and how these developments meet with the practical needs of the occupational physician as well as the industrial hygienist and the health physicist. In addition to considering the practical applications and potential benefits of this promising technology, the potential ethical and legal ramifications of using biomarkers to monitor workers are discussed. The abstracts further present insights on the present benefits that can be derived from using biomarkers as well as a perspective on what further research is required to fully meet the needs of the medical community.

In polyethylene microencapsulation, low-level mixed waste (LLMW) is homogenized with molten polyethylene and extruded into containers, resulting in a lighter, lower-volume waste form than cementation and grout methods produce. Additionally, the polyethylene-based waste form solidifies by cooling, with no risk of the waste interfering with cure, as may occur with cementation and grout processes. We have demonstrated real-time monitoring of the polyethylene encapsulation process stream using a noncontact device based on transient infrared spectroscopy (TIRS). TIRS can acquire mid-infrared spectra from solid or viscous liquid process streams, such as the molten, waste-loaded polyethylene stream that exits the microencapsulation extruder. The waste loading in the stream was determined from the TIRS spectra using partial least squares techniques. The monitor has been demonstrated during the polyethylene microencapsulation of nitrate-salt LLMW and its surrogate, molten salt oxidation LLMW and its surrogate, and flyash. The monitor typically achieved a standard error of prediction for the waste loading of about 1% by weight with an analysis time under 1 minute.

During the cold war plutonium was produced in reactors in both the US and Russia. It was then separated from the residual uranium and fission products by a variety of precipitation processes, such as Bismuth Phosphate, Redox, Butex, Purex, etc. in the US and uranium acetate and Purex in Russia. After a period of time in the field, plutonium weapons were recycled and the plutonium re-purified and returned to weapons. purification was accomplished by a variety of aqueous and molten salt processes, such as nitric-hydrofluoric acid dissolution followed by anion exchange, Purex modifications, molten salt extraction, electrorefining, etc. in the US and nitric acid dissolution or sodium hydroxide fusion followed by anion exchange in Russia. At the end of the Cold War, plutonium production of weapons-grade plutonium was cut off in the US and is expected to be cut off in Russia shortly after the turn of the century. Now both countries are looking at methods to reconstitute plutonium with fission products to render it no longer useful for nuclear weapons. These methods include immobilization in a ceramic matrix and then encasement in fission product laden glass, irradiation of MOX fuel, and disposal as waste in WIPP in the US …

A recent source term analysis has shown a discrepancy between ORIGEN2 transuranic isotopic production estimates and those produced with the WIMS-E lattice physics code. Excellent agreement between relevant experimental measurements and WIMS-E was shown, thus exposing an error in the cross section library used by ORIGEN2.

In 1991, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) established an Airworthiness Assurance NDI Validation Center (AANC) at Sandia National Laboratories. Its primary mission is to support technology development, validation, and transfer to industry in order to enhance the airworthiness and improve the aircraft maintenance practices of the U.S. commercial aviation industry. The Center conducts projects in a myriad of engineering disciplines. The results are placed in the public domain so that the industry at-large can reap the benefits of FAA-funded Research and Development efforts. To support the Center's goals, the FAA/AANC has set up a hangar facility at the Albuquerque International Airport which contains a collection of transport and commuter aircraft as well as other test specimens. The facility replicates a working maintenance environment by incorporating both the physical inspection difficulties as well as the environmental factors which influence maintenance reliability.

We present a new technique for High Purity Germanium (HPGe) Compton suppression using pulse shape analysis (PSA). The novel aspect of our approach involves a complete unfolding of the charge pulse shape into a discrete sum of component y-ray interactions. Using the energy and position information obtained from such an unfolding, an algorithm is then applied which favorably rejects Compton escape events. The advantage of the current PSA approach, as compared with other recent approaches, is the potential to reject not only single-site escape events, but also multiple site escape events. Here we discuss the details of our algorithm, and present experimental results from a real-time implementation on a 5 cm X 5 cm HPGe. An experimental comparison with a standard BGO suppresser is shown. We also discuss the possible improvements to the current PSA approach that could be obtained if the HPGe could be highly segmented on the outer contact.

Development and characterizations of phosphate and borosilicate glasses for vitrifying high level waste (HLW) solutions in Russia has been extensive. The technical data generated were for low concentrations (less than 0.05% Pu) of plutonium. Limited studies have been performed with plutonium concentrations one to two orders of magnitude larger. The results of these studies are being used to plan and implement an expanded experimental program to establish the limitations and characteristics of plutonium in similar glass compositions.

Narcisse is a graphics package developed by our French colleagues at Centre d`Etudes de Limeil Valenton of the Commissariat d`Energie Atomique. Narcisse is quite comprehensive; it can do two-, three-, and four-dimensional plots (the latter meaning that the surface is colored according to the values of an arbitrary function). One can open and send plots to a Narcisse window on a distant machine. Narcisse has a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) which, once a graph has appeared, allows the user to change its characteristics interactively. This enables one to find the best appearance for a particular plot without having to graph it repeatedly from the user program. Previously created files in various formats can also be imported directly into the Narcisse GUI and manipulated from there. Narcisse runs independently, as a graphics server. The user program communicates with Narcisse via Unix sockets. This communication is quite low level and very complex. The appearance of a plot is controlled by nearly 150 parameters for determining such things as the color palette, type of shading, axis scales, curve and surface labels, titles, angle and distance of view (for three- and four-dimensional graphs), hidden line removal, etc. Most end users do not wish …

Microstructural features and magnetic behavior of epitaxially grown SmCo thin films with very high in-plane anisotropy are presented. Transmission electron microscopy was used to characterize the microstructure while magnetic measurements were performed using dc and SQUID magnetometers. Two substrate orientations were studied, i.e., MgO(100)/Cr(100)/SmCo(11{bar 2}0) and MgO(110)/Cr(211)/SmCo(1{bar 1}00). In the former, the SmCo(11{bar 2}0) film shows a bicrystalline microstructure, whereas in the latter, a uniaxial one is observed. Both microstructure consist of grains with a mixture of SmCo{sub 3} , Sm{sub 2}Co{sub 7} and SmCo{sub 3} polytypoids. A deviation from the c-axes was observed in the in-plane anisotropy of the SmCo(11{bar 2}0) thin film. A strong exchange interaction between the grains would, in principle, explain the observed deviation. On the other hand, both SmCo(11{bar 2}0) and (1{bar 1}00) thin films show very high coercivity values with pinning-type characteristics. Possible coercivity mechanisms related to intergranular exchange interactions and local variation in magnetocrystalline anisotropy constants are discussed.

Commercial spent fuel is being tested under oxidizing conditions at 90 C in drip tests with simulated groundwater to evaluate its long-term performance in a potential repository at Yucca Mountain [1-4]. The tests allow us to monitor the dissolution behavior of the spent fuel matrix and the release rates of individual radionuclides. This paper reports the U and Pu concentrations in the leachates of drip tests during 3.7 years of reaction. Changes in these concentrations are correlated with changes in the measured pH and the appearance of alteration products on the fuel surface. Although there is little thermodynamic information at 90 C for either uranyl or plutonium compounds, some data are available at 25 C [5-8]. The literature data for the U and Pu solubilities of U and Pu compounds were compared to the U and Pu concentrations in the leachates. We also compare Wilson's [9] U and Pu concentrations in semi-static tests at 85 C on spent fuel with our results.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) design incorporated a positron accumulator ring (PAR) as part of the injector chain. In order to increase reliability and accommodate other uses of the injector, APS will run with electrons, eliminating the need for the PAR, provided another method of eliminating rf bucket pollution in the APS is found. Satellite bunches captured from an up to 30-ns-long beam from the linac need to be removed in the injector synchrotron and storage ring. The bunch cleaning method considered here relies on driving a stripline kicker with an amplitude modulated (AM) carrier signal where the carrier is at a revolution harmonic sideband corresponding to the vertical tune. The envelope waveform is phased so that all bunches except a single target bunch (eventually to be injected into the storage ring) are resonated vertically into a scraper. The kicker is designed with a large enough shunt impedance to remove satellite bunches from the injection energy of 0.4 GeV up to 1 GeV. Satellite bunch removal in the storage ring relies on the single bunch current tune shift resulting from the machine impedance. Small bunches remaining after initial preparation in the synchrotron may be removed by driving the beam vertically …

The ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code provides rules for the construction of nuclear power plant components. Appendix I to Section HI of the Code specifies design fatigue curves for structural materials. However, the effects of light water reactor (LWR) coolant environments are not explicitly addressed by the Code design curves. Recent test data illustrate potentially significant effects of LWR environments on the fatigue resistance of carbon and low-alloy steels and austenitic stainless steels (SSs). Under certain loading and environmental conditions, fatigue lives of carbon and low-alloy steels can be a factor of {approx}70 lower in an LWR environment than in air. These results raise the issue of whether the design fatigue curves in Section III are appropriate for the intended purpose. This paper presents the two methods that have been proposed for incorporating the effects of LWR coolant environments into the ASME Code fatigue evaluations. The mechanisms of fatigue crack initiation in carbon and low-alloy steels and austenitic SSs in LWR environments are discussed.

As part of the US-Russia Cooperative Program of Material Protection, Control and Accounting, staff members of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) have implemented procedures for taking physical inventory of nuclear materials at many of the facilities within the IPPE site. These include both large facilities, with substantial inventories and requiring dedicated inventory equipment and computers, and small facilities, with smaller amounts of material and subject to inventory by portable equipment. The experience to date demonstrates good progress toward the goal of regular PITs for the most attractive nuclear materials at IPPE.

Discretization of optimal shape design problems leads to very large nonlinear optimization problems. For attaining maximum computational efficiency, a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm should achieve superlinear convergence while preserving sparsity and convexity of the resulting quadratic programs. Most classical SQP approaches violate at least one of the requirements. We show that, for a very large class of optimization problems, one can design SQP algorithms that satisfy all these three requirements. The improvements in computational efficiency are demonstrated for a cam design problem.

The daytime mixed layer results from mechanical and thermal turbulence processes driven by differences in air-surface temperature and moisture. As such, the height of the mixed layer (z{sub i}) is a measure of the effectiveness of energy transfer from the sun to the earth's surface and, in turn, to the lower atmosphere (Stun, 1989). Maximum daytime values for z{sub i} in the region of the Southern Great Plains (SGP) Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) vary from less than 100 m in cloudy, moist, calm, stable conditions to nearly 3 km in clear, dry, unstable conditions. The principal characteristic of the mixed layer is that scalar quantities such as moisture and temperature are mixed throughout. Thus, z{sub i} becomes one of the principal scaling parameters used to describe the structure of the lower planetary boundary layer. Normally, a stable layer (a potential temperature inversion) at the top of the mixed layer interfaces between processes in the lower atmosphere and in the free atmosphere above. The strength of this inversion limits the rate of growth of z{sub i} with time and the vertical transfer of energy and moisture. When and if z{sub i} reaches the condensation level, clouds can form; hence, cloud …