This paper reports the key security related activities associated with the FRR shipment. Starting with transportation of the SNF in the country of origin to the final destination at the INEEL. Methodology for compliance will be addressed. The graded approach and a three step system will be explained. This paper will be used as part of the planning to support the FRR Project for returning the Asia and European SNF back to the US.

Awareness of the total materials inventory and materials balance associated with differing methods for energy generation is part of present day concerns associated with disparate areas that include atmospheric emissions, resource utilization, health effects, and both current and long term hazards and risks. Nuclear energy, for a number of decades, has been the recipient of significant scrutiny concerning the materials and wastes it generates, particularly in the context of long term solutions to such issues. This paper examines the nuclear materials and waste generation for nuclear energy scenarios spanning the coming century. The paper also briefly addresses wastes (in the form of emissions) from other energy sources and examines requirements associated with backend energy system materials management. Possible future requirements pertaining to CO{sub 2} management are found to place conditions upon waste management generally similar to those for nuclear waste. One example of material flows for the case of coal generation of electricity coupled with carbon sequestration is also given.

Accurate computational simulation of the dynamic response of long- span bridges presents one of the greatest challenges facing the earthquake engineering community The size of these structures, in terms of physical dimensions and number of main load bearing members, makes computational simulation of transient response an arduous task. Discretization of a large bridge with general purpose finite element software often results in a computational model of such size that excessive computational effort is required for three dimensional nonlinear analyses. The aim of the current study was the development of efficient, computationally based methodologies for the nonlinear analysis of cable supported bridge systems which would allow accurate characterization of a bridge with a relatively small number of degrees of freedom. This work has lead to the development of a special purpose software program for the nonlinear analysis of cable supported bridges and the methodologies and software are described and illustrated in this paper.

Two irradiation test vehicles have been designed, fabricated, and inserted into the Advanced Test Reactor in Idaho. Irradiation of these experiments began in August 1997. These irradiation tests were designed to obtain irradiation performance information on a variety of potential new, high-density dispersion fuels. Each of the two irradiation vehicles contains 32 microplates. Each microplate is aluminum clad, having an aluminum matrix phase and containing one of the following compositions as the fuel phase: U-10Mo, U-8Mo, U-6Mo, U-4Mo, U-9Nb-3Zr, U-6Nb-4Zr, U-5Nb-3Zr, U-6Mo-1Pt, U-6Mo-0.6Ru, U-10Mo-0.05Sn, U{sub 2}Mo, or U{sub 3}Si{sub 2}. These experiments will be discharged at peak fuel burnups of 40% and 80%. Of particular interest is the fission gas retention/swelling characteristics of these new fuel alloys. This paper presents the design of the irradiation vehicles and the irradiation conditions.

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) has, for many years, been engaged in battery-related R and D programs for DOE and the transportation industry. In particular, from 1973 to 1995, ANL played a pioneering role in the technological development of the high-temperature (400 C) lithium-iron disulfide battery. With the emphasis of battery research moving away from high temperature systems toward ambient temperature lithium-based systems for the longer term, ANL has redirected its efforts toward the development of a lithium-polymer battery (60--80 C operation) and room temperature systems based on lithium-ion technologies. ANL`s lithium-polymer battery program is supported by the US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), 3M and Hydro-Quebec, and the lithium-ion battery R and D efforts by US industry and by DOE.

This paper describes the transportation fuel cell systems research at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). Two areas of research are discussed: the development of a catalytic partial-oxidation reformer for conventional and alternative transportation fuels, and a novel approach for the removal of carbon monoxide from reformate for use in polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The objective of the first study is to develop reformers for converting liquid fuels (gasoline, ethanol, or methanol) to hydrogen gas for use with fuel cell systems in light-duty vehicles. The second study is investigating the use of acidic cuprous chloride (or other suitable sorbent) to chemically bind and thus remove the CO from the reformate.

This paper will report on preparations being made for returning Training, Research, Isotope, General Atomics (TRIGA) foreign research reactor (FRR) spent fuel from South Korea and Indonesia to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). The roles of US Department of Energy, INEEL, and NAC International in implementing a safe shipment are provided. Special preparations necessitated by making a shipment through a west coast port of the US to the INEEL will be explained. The institutional planning and actions needed to meet the unique political and operational environment for making a shipment from Asia to INEEL will be discussed. Facility preparation at both the INEEL and the FRRs is discussed. Cask analysis needed to properly characterize the various TRIGA configurations, compositions, and enrichments is discussed. Shipping preparations will include an explanation of the integrated team of spent fuel transportation specialists, and shipping resources needed to retrieve the fuel from foreign research reactor sites and deliver it to the INEEL.

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is building a number of magnets for the insertion regions of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This paper presents the magnetic design and the expected field quality in 2-in-1 dipole magnets. A unique feature of this coldmass design is the use of an oblate-shaped yoke. This concept permits a variety of BNL-built magnets to have a similar overall design and allows the LHC main dipole cryostat, post, etc., to be used in these magnets. The proposed oblate-shaped yoke also offers a way to reduce the overall cryostat size in future magnets. The dipoles will use the same 80 mm aperture coils as used in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) dipole magnets, but will use stainless steel collars. The design presented here is still evolving and the magnets may be built differently than described here.

The petroleum industry has used hydraulic fracturing technique to stimulate low and high permeability oil and gas reservoirs to enhance their potential recoveries. Nevertheless, the design and implementation of a scientifically and economically sound fracturing job, due to the lack of knowledge of theological behavior of hydraulic fracturing fluids under field conditions, remains a challenge. Furthermore, as often the case, the current level of technical knowledge with research institutes, service companies, and operators does not translate to field applications. One of the principal reasons for this technology gap, is the lack of understanding of the theological behavior of hydraulic fracturing fluids under field conditions, which primarily relates to the limitations in scaling down the field conditions to the laboratory. The Fracturing Fluid Characterization Facility (FFCF) project was therefore, proposed with the intent of providing the industry with a better understanding of the behavior of these fracturing fluids and their proppant transport characteristics under downhole fracture condition. At the FFCF, a fully operational High Pressure Simulator (HPS), as seen in Figure 1, constitutes a vertical, variable width, parallel plate flow apparatus and is capable of operating at elevated temperatures (up to 2500F) and pressures (up to 1200 psi). The HPS simulates, …

Los Alamos scientists, working with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences have assembled a materials processing facility utilizing gyrotron based RF sources. The facility is intended to demonstrate unique features available at 30 to 84 GHz. This paper presents an overview of their quasi-optical facility and describes the microwave hardware.

Hydrocodes or more accurately, shock physics analysis packages, have been widely used in the US Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories and elsewhere around the world for over 30 years. Initial applications included weapons effects studies where the pressure levels were high enough to disregard the material strength, hence the term hydrocode. Over the last 30 years, Sandia has worked extensively to develop and apply advanced hydrocodes to armor/anti-armor interactions, warhead design, high explosive initiation, and nuclear weapon safety issues. The needs of the DOE have changed over the last 30 years, especially over the last decade. A much stronger emphasis is currently placed on the details of material deformation and high explosive initiation phenomena. The hydrocodes of 30 years ago have now evolved into sophisticated analysis tools that can replace testing in some situations and complement it in all situations. A brief history of the development of hydrocodes in the US will be given. The author also discusses and compares the four principal methods in use today for the solution of the conservation equations of mass, momentum, and energy for shock physics applications. The techniques discussed are the Eulerian methods currently employed by the Sandia multi-dimensional shock physics analysis package …

Because of its practical importance and various industrial applications, the process of subcooled flow boiling has attracted a lot of attention in the research community in the past. However, the existing models are primarily phenomenological and are based on correlating experimental data rather than on a first-principle analysis of the governing physical phenomena. Even though the mechanisms leading to critical heat flux (CHF) are very complex, the recent progress in the understanding of local phenomena of multiphase flow and heat transfer, combined with the development of mathematical models and advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods, makes analytical predictions of CHF quite feasible. Various mechanisms leading to CHF in subcooled boiling have been investigated. A new model for the predictions of the onset of CHF has been developed. This new model has been coupled with the overall boiling channel model, numerically implemented in the CFX 4 computer code, tested and validated against the experimental data of Hino and Ueda. The predicted critical heat flux for various channel operating conditions shows good agreement with the measurements using the aforementioned closure laws for the various local phenomena governing nucleation and bubble departure from the wall. The observed differences are consistent with typical uncertainties …

From previous finite-temperature, quantum, many-body perturbation theory results for the grand partition function of an electron-ion fluid through order {epsilon}{sup 4}, we compute the electron and ion fugacities in terms of the volume per ion and the temperature to that same order in perturbation theory. From these results we also give the pressure, again to the same order in perturbation theory about the values for the non-interacting fluid.

The second silicon revolution will be based on intelligent, integrated microsystems where multiple technologies (such as analog, digital, memory, sensor, micro-electro-mechanical, and communication devices) are integrated onto a single chip or within a multichip module. A necessary element for such systems is cost-effective, high-performance packaging. This paper examines many of the issues associated with the packaging of integrated microsystems, with an emphasis on the areas of packaging design, manufacturability, and reliability.