Ecosystem CO{sub 2} exchange and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) mixing are correlated diurnally and seasonally. Tracer transport models predict that these covariance signals produce a meridional gradient of annual mean CO{sub 2} concentration in the marine boundary layer that is half as strong as the signal produced by fossil fuel emissions. This rectifier effect has been predicted by many inversion models. However, observations to constrain the strength of the rectifier effect in nature are lacking. The fundamental objective of this project was to measure the strength of these covariance signals between ecosystem CO{sub 2} flux and ABL dynamics by employing ABL profiling systems at eddy flux tower sites. We found that (1) the observed diurnal and seasonal covariance between ecosystem CO{sub 2} fluxes and ABL turbulent mixing are strong; (2) the inversion model underestimates the diurnal and seasonal covariance; (3) the rectifier effect in the model appears to be too weak. However, these results are subject to significant uncertainties associated with the use of a point measurement to represent an area, fair weather bias among the data and instruments, and nonlinear transport processes between continental and marine boundary layers.

The authors compare CALE simulations with recent experimental results of a laser-induced shock traversing a spherical under-dense region (''void''). In this report the experimental results are described, as well as several numerical attempts at explaining the observed radiographs. The conclusion is that the numerical simulations at this time cannot satisfactorily explain the experiment. The simulations also indicate that the introduction of air gaps between the under-dense sphere and the surrounding foam can greatly change the behavior of the shocked sphere. Thus fabrication details may play an important role in the detailed evolution of this experiment. Regardless of the simulations, analysis of the observed time sequence indicates that reproducibility of this experiment may be a factor. To settle this issue, further experiments of this kind will be required.

Transfer factors are used in radiological risk assessments to estimate the amount of radioactivity that could be present in a food crop or organism based on the calculated concentration in the source medium (i.e., soil or animal feed). By calculating the concentration in the food, the total intake can be estimated and a dose calculated as a result of the annual intake. This report compiles transfer factors for radiological risk assessments, using common food products, including meats, eggs, and plants. Transfer factors used were most often selected from recommended values listed by national or international organizations for use in radiological food chain transport calculations. Several methods of estimation and extrapolation were used for radionuclides not listed in the primary information sources. Tables of transfer factors are listed by element and information source for beef, eggs, fish, fruit, grain, leafy vegetation, milk, poultry, and root vegetables.

This work reported here is part of the U. S. Department of Energy’s Science and Technology Initiative to develop improved conceptual models of flow and transport in the vadose zone, particularly for the Hanford Site, Washington. The National Academy of Sciences has identified significant knowledge gaps in conceptual model development as one reason for discovery of subsurface contamination in unexpected places. Inadequate conceptualizations limits, not only the understanding of long-term fate and transport, but also the selection and design of remediation technologies. Current conceptual models are limited partly because they do not account for the random heterogeneity that occurs under the extremes of very nonlinear flow behavior typical of the Hanford vadose zone. A major improvement in conceptual modeling of the Hanford vadose zone includes a better understanding and description of soil anisotropy, a property that appears to control much of the subsurface flow and transport in layered sediments at the Hanford Site.

The Business Innovation Center will fully participate as a member and support as fully as possible the goals of “The Alliance of Clean Energy Business Incubators” by: 1. Participating in NREL-sponsored Clean Energy Investor Forums, when possible Attended 15th Annual Growth Forum in Albany, NY, October 2003 2. Marketing our incubation services to Clean Energy Companies. October, 2002: Traveled to the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Economic and Community Development to make a presentation concerning the National Alliance of Clean Energy Incubators to the participants of the New South Economic Course. This course was attended by 65 Economic Developers, Small Business Development Center personel, and Chambers of Commerce personnel from 9 states around the South East U.S. These are people who have direct contact with entrepreneurs and can act as referrals to the Clean Energy Incubator and NREL online database, as specified in the Scope of Work

Industry and EPRI experience at several plants has shown on-line monitoring to be very effective in identifying out-of-calibration instrument channels or indications of equipment-degradation problems. The EPRI implementation project for on-line monitoring has demonstrated the feasability of on-line monitoring at several participating nuclear plants. The results have been very enouraging, and substantial progress is anticipated in the coming years.

New insight into the atomic segregation of copper to an aluminum grain boundary has been obtained using atomic resolution electron microscopy techniques coupled with ab-initio electronic structure calculations. We find the copper segregation to be site specific, changing the structure of the boundary by unexpectedly occupying interstitial sites. The calculated energy for segregation was found to be sufficient for essentially all of the interstitial sites to be filled. Minor elemental constituents in materials can have profound effects on their engineering performance, often through segregation to grain boundaries in the host material. One important example is the great resistance to electromigration damage in microelectronics imparted by small additions of copper to aluminum interconnects.

With the Nation's coal-burning utilities facing the possibility of tighter controls on mercury pollutants, the U.S. Department of Energy is funding projects that could offer power plant operators better ways to reduce these emissions at much lower costs. Mercury is known to have toxic effects on the nervous system of humans and wildlife. Although it exists only in trace amounts in coal, mercury is released when coal burns and can accumulate on land and in water. In water, bacteria transform the metal into methylmercury, the most hazardous form of the metal. Methylmercury can collect in fish and marine mammals in concentrations hundreds of thousands times higher than the levels in surrounding waters. One of the goals of DOE is to develop technologies by 2005 that will be capable of cutting mercury emissions 50 to 70 percent at well under one-half of today's costs. ADA Environmental Solutions (ADA-ES) is managing a project to test mercury control technologies at full scale at four different power plants from 2000-2003. The ADA-ES project is focused on those power plants that are not equipped with wet flue gas desulfurization systems. ADA-ES has developed a portable system that will be tested at four different utility power …

RESRAD-BUILD is a computer model for analyzing the radiological doses resulting from the remediation and occupancy of buildings contaminated with radioactive material. It is part of a family of codes that includes RESRAD, RESRAD-CHEM, RESRAD-RECYCLE, RESRAD-BASELINE, and RESRAD-ECORISK. The RESRAD-BUILD models were developed and codified by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL); version 1.5 of the code and the user's manual were publicly released in 1994. The original version of the code was written for the Microsoft DOS operating system. However, subsequent versions of the code were written for the Microsoft Windows operating system. The purpose of the present verification task (which includes validation as defined in the standard) is to provide an independent review of the latest version of RESRAD-BUILD under the guidance provided by ANSI/ANS-10.4 for verification and validation of existing computer programs. This approach consists of a posteriori V&V review which takes advantage of available program development products as well as user experience. The purpose, as specified in ANSI/ANS-10.4, is to determine whether the program produces valid responses when used to analyze problems within a specific domain of applications, and to document the level of verification. The culmination of these efforts is the production of this formal Verification Report. …

We provide a detailed description of a model and its computational algorithm for the secondary electron emission process. The model is based on a broad phenomenological fit to data for the secondary emission yield (SEY) and the emitted-energy spectrum. We provide two sets of values for the parameters by fitting our model to two particular data sets, one for copper and the other one for stainless steel. We also present details of the electron-cloud simulation code POSINST that are relevant to the secondary emission process. This note expands on our previously published article.

The initial density and electron temperature at the surface of a ferroelectric plasma source were deduced from floating probe measurements in an expanding plasma. The method exploits negative charging of the floating probe capacitance by fast flows before the expanding plasma reaches the probe. The temporal profiles of the plasma density can be obtained from the voltage traces of the discharge of the charged probe capacitance by the ion current from the expanding plasma. The temporal profiles of the plasma density, at two different distances from the surface of the ferroelectric plasma source, could be further fitted by using the density profiles for the expanding plasma. This gives the initial values of the plasma density and electron temperature at the surface. The method could be useful for any pulsed discharge, which is accompanied by considerable electromagnetic noise, if the initial plasma parameters might be deduced from measurements in expanding plasma.

The Toolkit for Advanced Optimization (TAO) focuses on the design and implementation of component-based optimization software for the solution of large-scale optimization applications on high-performance architectures. Their approach is motivated by the scattered support for parallel computations and lack of reuse of linear algebra software in currently available optimization software. The TAO design allows the reuse of toolkits that provide lower-level support (parallel sparse matrix data structures, preconditioners, solvers), and thus they are able to build on top of these toolkits instead of having to redevelop code. The advantages in terms of efficiency and development time are significant. The TAO design philosophy uses object-oriented techniques of data and state encapsulation, abstract classes, and limited inheritance to create a flexible optimization toolkit. This chapter provides a short introduction to the design philosophy by describing the objectives in TAO and the importance of this design. Since a major concern in the TAO project is the performance and scalability of optimization algorithms on large problems, they also present some performance results.

The task assigned to PI David London, University of Oklahoma, was to devise hydrothermal methods of synthesis that optimize the size of synthetic monocrystals of alkali feldspars, KAlSi3O8 (orthoclase) and NaAlSi3O8 (albite). The synthesis method agreed upon will utilize convention cold-seal hydrothermal reactors. This equipment and synthesis method were chosen for two reasons: (1) the method best simulates hydrothermal reactions of silicate glass waste material with groundwater, and (2) the method employs small, sealed volumes of reagents, which minimizes potential hazards when and if radionuclides are added to the system. Note that the University of Oklahoma did not approve the award for acceptance until November 20, 2001.

Ohio University, in collaboration with CONSOL Energy, Advanced Technology Systems, Inc (ATS) and Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. (AER) as subcontractors, is evaluating the impact of emissions from coal-fired power plants in the Ohio River Valley region as they relate to the transport and deposition of mercury, arsenic, and associated fine particulate matter. This evaluation will involve two interrelated areas of effort: ambient air monitoring and regional-scale modeling analysis. The scope of work for the ambient air monitoring will include the deployment of a surface air monitoring (SAM) station in southeastern Ohio. The SAM station will contain sampling equipment to collect and measure mercury (including speciated forms of mercury and wet and dry deposited mercury), arsenic, particulate matter (PM) mass, PM composition, and gaseous criteria pollutants (CO, NO{sub x}, SO{sub 2}, O{sub 3}, etc.). Laboratory analysis of time-integrated samples will be used to obtain chemical speciation of ambient PM composition and mercury in precipitation. Near-real-time measurements will be used to measure the ambient concentrations of PM mass and all gaseous species including Hg{sup 0} and RGM. Approximately of 18 months of field data will be collected at the SAM site to validate the proposed regional model simulations for episodic and …

The groundwater flow and transport model of the Faultless underground nuclear test conducted at the Central Nevada Test Area (CNTA) was accepted by the state regulator and the environmental remediation efforts at the site have progressed to the stages of model validation and long-term monitoring design. This report discusses the long-term monitoring strategy developed for CNTA. Subsurface monitoring is an expensive and time-consuming process, and the design approach should be based on a solid foundation. As such, a thorough literature review of monitoring network design is first presented. Monitoring well networks can be designed for a number of objectives including aquifer characterization, parameter estimation, compliance monitoring, detection monitoring, ambient monitoring, and research monitoring, to name a few. Design methodologies also range from simple hydrogeologic intuition-based tools to sophisticated statistical- and optimization-based tools. When designing the long-term monitoring well network for CNTA, a number of issues are carefully considered. These are the uncertainty associated with the subsurface environment and its implication for monitoring design, the cost associated with monitoring well installation and operation, the design criteria that should be used to select well locations, and the potential conflict between different objectives such as early detection versus impracticality of placing wells in …

In this study, glasses are designed or selected to assess the impacts of U3O8 and ThO2 on various glass properties of interest. More specifically, glasses were fabricated in which Th replaced U (on a molar basis) to assess the impact of ThO2 on the durability response (as measured by the Product Consistency Test ) and viscosity. Based on the measured normalized boron release values, the results indicated that the Th-enriched glasses were less durable than their Ubased counterparts. Although molar substitution of Th or U had a negative impact, all of the glasses were more durable than the Environmental Assessment glass - the highest release being 7.39 g/L as compared to 16.695 g/L as reported for EA. With respect to model predictions, THERMOTM predicts that a molar substitution of thorium for uranium should increase glass durability. However, these data suggest that the signs and/or magnitudes of the Gi values associated with U3O8 and ThO2 are inconsistent with the theory on which the current model is based for the limited number of glasses tested. It should be noted that these glasses cover a narrow compositional region. With respect to the impact on viscosity, the data suggest that there may be a …

This report summarizes the feasibility of providing spinning reserves from packaged through the wall air conditioning (PTAC) units. Spinning reserves, together with non-spinning reserves, compose the contingency reserves; the essential resources that the power system operator uses to restore the generation and load balance and maintain bulk power system reliability in the event of a major generation or transmission outage. Spinning reserves are the fastest responding and most expensive reserves. Many responsive load technologies could (and we hope will) be used to provide spinning reserve. It is also easier for many loads (including air conditioning loads) to provide the relatively shorter and less frequent interruptions required to respond to contingencies than it is for them to reduce consumption for an entire peak period. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is conducting research on obtaining spinning reserve from large pumping loads and from residential and small commercial thermostat controlled heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units. The technology selected for this project, Digi-Log's retrofit PTAC controller, offers significant advantages. To evaluate the availability of spinning reserve capacity from responsive heating and air conditioning loads, ORNL obtained data from a number of units operating over a year at a motel in the TVA …

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Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has achieved unparalleled control in the integration of semiconductors at the nanometer. These advances were made through the use of epitaxy, epitaxial stabilization, and a combination of composition-control techniques including adsorption-controlled growth and RHEED-based composition control that we have developed, understood, and utilized for the growth of oxides. Also key was extensive characterization (utilizing RHEED, four-circle x-ray diffraction, AFM, TEM, and electrical characterization techniques) in order to study growth modes, optimize growth conditions, and probe the structural, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties of the materials grown. The materials that we have successfully engineered include titanates (PbTiO3, Bi4Ti3O12), tantalates (SrBi2Ta2O9), and niobates (SrBi2Nb2O9); layered combinations of these perovskite-related materials (Bi4Ti3O12-SrTiO3 and Bi4Ti3O12-PbTiO3 Aurivillius phases and metastable PbTiO3/SrTiO3 and BaTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattices), and new metastable phases (Srn+1TinO3n+1 Ruddlesden-Popper phases). The films were grown by reactive MBE and pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Many of these materials are either new or have been synthesized with the highest perfection ever reported. The controlled synthesis of such layered oxide heterostructures offers great potential for tailoring the superconducting, ferroelectric, and dielectric properties of these materials. These properties are important for energy technologies.

This report documents results from tests conducted to evaluate the impacts of elevated levels of oxalate on operations within the SRS High-Level Waste System. These operations include sludge washing, evaporation, mixing of supernates and wash waters and pretreatment of supernates to remove strontium and actinides by monosodium titanate.

This report presents the results of the seismic structural analyses completed on the Waste Characterization Reduction and Repackaging (WCRR) Building in support of ongoing safety analyses. WCRR is designated as TA-50-69 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico. The facility has been evaluated against Department of Energy (DOE) seismic criteria for Natural Phenomena Hazards (NPH) Performance Category II (PC 2). The seismic capacities of two subsystems within the WCRR building, the material handling glove box and the lift rack immediately adjacent to the Glove Box are also documented, and the results are presented.

In order to make space in the Savannah River Site Tank farm, the Tank 48H waste must be removed. Therefore, the Tank 48H waste must be processed to reduce or eliminate levels of nitrates, nitrites, and sodium tetraphenyl borate in order to reduce impacts of these species before it is vitrified. Fluidized Bed Steam Reforming is being considered as a candidate technology for destroying the nitrates and the NaTPB prior to melting. The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory was tasked to perform a proof-of-concept steam reforming test to evaluate the technical feasibility for pretreating the Tank 48H waste. The crucible (bench scale) tests conducted at the Savannah River Technology Center were initiated to optimize and augment the parameters subsequently tested at the pilot scale at INEEL. The purposes of the current study, organic destruction and downstream processing of T48H waste slurry were fulfilled. TPB was destroyed in all 19 samples tested with the simulated FB SR process at operational temperatures 650-725 degrees Celsius. A test temperature of 650 degrees Celsius optimized NO3 destruction during the formation of an Na2CO3 FBSR product. A test temperature of 725 degrees Celsius optimized NO3 destruction during formation of a sodium silicate FBSR product. …

Interim results are presented from the project designed to characterize, quantify, and determine the commercial feasibility of Alaska North Slope (ANS) gas-hydrate and associated free-gas resources in the Prudhoe Bay Unit (PBU), Kuparuk River Unit (KRU), and Milne Point Unit (MPU) areas. This collaborative research will provide practical input to reservoir and economic models, determine the technical feasibility of gas hydrate production, and influence future exploration and field extension of this potential ANS resource. The large magnitude of unconventional in-place gas (40-100 TCF) and conventional ANS gas commercialization evaluation creates industry-DOE alignment to assess this potential resource. This region uniquely combines known gas hydrate presence and existing production infrastructure. Many technical, economical, environmental, and safety issues require resolution before enabling gas hydrate commercial production. Gas hydrate energy resource potential has been studied for nearly three decades. However, this knowledge has not been applied to practical ANS gas hydrate resource development. ANS gas hydrate and associated free gas reservoirs are being studied to determine reservoir extent, stratigraphy, structure, continuity, quality, variability, and geophysical and petrophysical property distribution. Phase 1 will characterize reservoirs, lead to recoverable reserve and commercial potential estimates, and define procedures for gas hydrate drilling, data acquisition, completion, and …

The project summarized in this report dealt with an evaluation of new microwave applicator ideas for paper preheating and drying. The technical basis for success in this project is the fact that Industrial Microwave Systems has recently identified certain previously unrecognized wave guide ''design variables'' and hardware implementation concepts that can be employed to greatly improve the uniformity of microwave energy distribution for continuous flow processes. Two applicator concepts were ultimately evaluated, a Cross-Machine Direction (CD) oriented applicator and a Machine Direction (MD) oriented applicator. The economic basis for success is the result of several factors. Since 1985, the capital expenditure required for an industrial microwave applicator system has decreased by a factor of four. The maintenance costs have decreased by a factor of 10 and the life expectancy of the magnetron has increased by more than a factor of four to in excess of 8,000 hours (nearly one year at 24 hours/day operation).