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A research effort was undertaken to determine the need for any changes to USNRC's seismic regulatory practice to reflect the move, in the earthquake engineering community, toward using expected displacement rather than force (or stress) as the basis for assessing design adequacy. The research explored the extent to which displacement based seismic design methods, such as given in FEMA 273, could be useful for reviewing nuclear power stations. Two structures common to nuclear power plants were chosen to compare the results of the analysis models used. The first structure is a four-story frame structure with shear walls providing the primary lateral load system, referred herein as the shear wall model. The second structure is the turbine building of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The models were analyzed using both displacement based (pushover) analysis and nonlinear dynamic analysis. In addition, for the shear wall model an elastic analysis with ductility factors applied was also performed. The objectives of the work were to compare the results between the analyses, and to develop insights regarding the work that would be needed before the displacement based analysis methodology could be considered applicable to facilities licensed by the NRC. A summary of the research …

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This paper presents a field modeling study characterizing fluid flow and tracer transport in the unsaturated zone of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a proposed underground repository for storing high-level radioactive waste. The 500 to 700 meter thick unsaturated zone of Yucca Mountain consists of highly heterogeneous layers of anisotropic, fractured ash flow and air fall tuffs. Characterization of fluid flow and heat transfer through such a system has been a challenge due to the heterogeneities prevalent on various scales. Quantitative evaluation of water, gas, and heat flow by means of numerical simulation is essential for design and performance assessment of the repository. A three-dimensional numerical flow and transport model will be discussed. The model has been calibrated against field-measured data and takes into account the coupled processes of unsaturated flow and tracer transport in the highly heterogeneous, unsaturated fractured porous rock. The modeling approach of the model is based on a dual-continuum formulation of coupled multiphase fluid and tracer transport through fractured porous rock. As application examples, effects of current and future climates on the unsaturated zone processes are evaluated to aid in the assessment of the proposed repository's system performance.

We report the first kinematically complete study of the four-body fragmentation of the D2 molecule following absorption of a single photon. For equal energy sharing of the two electrons and a photon energy of 75.5 eV, we observed the relaxation of one of the selection rules valid for He photo-double ionization and a strong dependence of the electron angular distribution on the orientation of the molecular axis. This effect is reproduced by a model in which a pair of photoionization amplitudes is introduced for the light polarization parallel and perpendicular to the molecular axis.

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While commodity computing and graphics hardware has increased in capacity and dropped in cost, it is still quite difficult to make effective use of such systems for general-purpose parallel visualization and graphics. We describe the results of a recent project that provides a software infrastructure suitable for general-purpose use by parallel visualization and graphics applications. Our work combines and extends two technologies: Chromium, a stream-oriented framework that implements the OpenGL programming interface; and OpenRM Scene Graph, a pipelined-parallel scene graph interface for graphics data management. Using this combination, we implement a sort-first, distributed memory, parallel volume rendering application. We describe the performance characteristics in terms of bandwidth requirements and highlight key algorithmic considerations needed to implement the sort-first system. We characterize system performance using a distributed memory parallel volume rendering application, a nd present performance gains realized by using scene specific knowledge to accelerate rendering through reduced network bandwidth. The contribution of this work is an exploration of general-purpose, sort-first architecture performance characteristics as applied to distributed memory, commodity hardware, along with a description of the algorithmic support needed to realize parallel, sort-first implementations.

Run-II at Fermilab is progressing steadily. In the Run-II scheme, 36 antiproton bunches collide with 36 proton bunches at the CDF and D0 interaction regions in the Tevatron at 980 GeV per beam. The current status and performance of the Fermilab Accelerator complex is reviewed. The plan for Run-II, accelerator upgrades and integration of the Recycler in the accelerator chain will be presented.

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Two biodegradation models are developed to represent natural attenuation of fuel-hydrocarbon contaminants as observed in a comprehensive natural-gradient tracer test in a heterogeneous aquifer on the Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. The first, a first-order mass loss model, describes the irreversible losses of BTEX and its individual components, i.e., benzene (B), toluene (T), ethyl benzene (E), and xylene (X). The second, a reactive pathway model, describes sequential degradation pathways for BTEX utilizing multiple electron acceptors, including oxygen, nitrate, iron and sulfate, and via methanogenesis. The heterogeneous aquifer is represented by multiple hydraulic conductivity (K) zones delineated on the basis of numerous flowmeter K measurements. A direct propagation artificial neural network (DPN) is used as an inverse modeling tool to estimate the biodegradation rate constants associated with each of the K zones. In both the mass loss model and the reactive pathway model, the biodegradation rate constants show an increasing trend with the hydraulic conductivity. The finding of correlation between biodegradation kinetics and hydraulic conductivity distributions is of general interest and relevance to characterization and modeling of natural attenuation of hydrocarbons in other petroleum-product contaminated sites.

Groundwater flow and transport predictions are a major component of remedial action evaluations for contaminated groundwater at the Savannah River Site. Because all groundwater modeling results are subject to uncertainty from various causes; quantification of the level of uncertainty in the modeling predictions is beneficial to project decision makers. Complex site-specific models present formidable challenges for implementing an uncertainty analysis.

We report density functional molecular dynamics simulations to determine the early chemical events of hot (T = 3000 K) and dense (1.97 g/cm{sup 3}, V/V{sub 0} = 0.68) nitromethane (CH{sub 3}NO{sub 2}). The first step in the decomposition process is an intermolecular proton abstraction mechanism that leads to the formation of CH{sub 3}NO{sub 2}H and the aci ion H{sub 2}CNO{sub 2}{sup -}, in support of evidence from static high-pressure and shock experiments. An intramolecular hydrogen transfer that transforms nitromethane into the aci acid form, CH{sub 2}NO{sub 2}H, accompanies this event. This is the first confirmation of chemical reactivity with bond selectivity for an energetic material near the condition of fully reacted specimen. We also report the decomposition mechanism followed up to the formation of H{sub 2}O as the first stable product.

We simulate quenched QCD with the overlap Dirac operator. We work with the Wilson gauge action at {beta} = 6 on an 18{sup 3} x 64 lattice. We calculate quark propagators for a single source point and quark mass ranging from am{sub 4} = 0.03 to 0.75. We present here preliminary results based on the propagators for 60 gauge field configurations.

QCDOC is a massively parallel supercomputer whose processing nodes are based on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). This ASIC was custom-designed so that crucial lattice QCD kernels achieve an overall sustained performance of 50% on machines with several 10,000 nodes. This strong scalability, together with low power consumption and a price/performance ratio of $1 per sustained MFlops, enable QCDOC to attack the most demanding lattice QCD problems. The first ASICs became available in June of 2003, and the testing performed so far has shown all systems functioning according to specification. We review the hardware and software status of QCDOC and present performance figures obtained in real hardware as well as in simulation.

We present new data on the unreacted approximate isentrope of the HMX-based explosive LX-04, measured to 170 kbar, using newly developed long pulse isentropic compression techniques at the Sandia National Laboratories Z Machine facility. This study extends in pressure by 70% the previous state of the art on unreacted LX-04 using this technique. This isentrope will give the unreacted Hugoniot from thermodynamic relations using a Gruneisen equation of state model. The unreacted Hugoniot of LX-04 is important in understanding the structure of the reaction front in the detonating explosive. We find that a Hugoniot given by U{sub s}= 2950 m/s + 1.69 u{sub p} yields for an isentrope a curve which fits our LX-04 ICE data well.