This report explores the relationship between the United States and Mexico in terms of trade, drug trafficking, and cooperative disease control and management. Specifically, the report discusses the Mérida Initiative, the trade dispute involving the implementation of NAFTA trucking provisions, Secretary of State Clinton's March 2009 visit to Mexico, and the April 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 "swine flu" virus.

The Doppler feedback mechanism is a major contributor to the passive safety of gas-cooled, graphite-moderated High Temperature Reactors that use fuel based on TRISO particles. It follows that the correct prediction of the magnitude and time-dependence of this feedback effect is essential to the conduct of safety analyses for these reactors. Since the effect is directly dependent on the actual temperature reached by the fuel during transients, the underlying phenomena of heat transfer and temperature rise must be correctly predicted. This paper presents an improved model for the TRISO particle and its thermal behavior during transients. The improved approach incorporates an explicit TRISO heat conduction model to better quantify the time dependence of the temperature in the various layers of the TRISO particle, including its fuel central zone. There follows a better treatment of the Doppler Effect within said fuel zone. The new model is based on a 1-D analytic solution for composite media using the Green’s function technique. The modeling improvement takes advantage of some of the physical behavior of TRISO fuel under irradiation and includes a distinctive look at the physics of the neutronic Doppler Effect. The new methodology has been implemented within the coupled R-Z nodal diffusion …

One of the Design Basis Accidents (DBA) for a Pebble Bed Reactor has been identified as the “Safe shutdown earthquake with core conduction cooling to passive mode of Reactor Cavity Cooling System.” A new methodology to analyze this particular DBA has been developed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). During the seismic event the reactor core experiences the densification of the pebbles, which produce small reactivity insertions due to the effective fuel densification. In addition, a decrease in the active core height results in the relative withdrawal of the control rods, which are assumed to remain stationary during the transient. The methodology relies on the dynamic re-meshing of the core during the transient to capture the local packing fraction changes and their corresponding effects on temperature and reactivity. The core re-meshing methodology is based on the velocity profiles of the pebbles in the core, which were obtained with the INL’s pebble mechanics code PEBBLES. The methodology has been added to the coupled code system CYNOD-THERMIX-KONVEK. The reactor power calculation is further improved with the use of the new advanced TRISO fuel model to better approximate the temperatures in the fuel kernels. During the transient the core is brought back to …

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We will present the results of benchmarking simulations run to test the ability of VORPAL to model multipacting processes in Superconducting Radio Frequency structures. VORPAL is an electromagnetic (FDTD) particle-in-cell simulation code originally developed for applications in plasma and beam physics. The addition of conformal boundaries and algorithms for secondary electron emission allow VORPAL to be applied to multipacting processes. We start with simulations of multipacting between parallel plates where there are well understood theoretical predictions for the frequency bands where multipacting is expected to occur. We reproduce the predicted multipacting bands and demonstrate departures from the theoretical predictions when a more sophisticated model of secondary emission is used. Simulations of existing cavity structures developed at Jefferson National Laboratories will also be presented where we compare results from VORPAL to experimental data.

In-air test fixtures for beamline elements typically utilize an X-Y positioning stage, and a wire antenna excited by an RF source. In most cases, the antenna contains a standing wave, and is useful only for coarse alignment measurements in CW mode. A surface-wave (SW) based transmission line permits RF energy to be launched on the wire, travel through the beamline component, and then be absorbed in a load. Since SW transmission lines employ travelling waves, the RF energy can be made to resemble the electron beam, limited only by ohmic losses and dispersion. Although lossy coaxial systems are also a consideration, the diameter of the coax introduces large uncertainties in centroid location. A SW wire is easily constructed out of 200 micron magnet wire, which more accurately approximates the physical profile of the electron beam. Benefits of this test fixture include accurate field mapping, absolute calibration for given beam currents, Z-axis independence, and temporal response measurements of sub-nanosecond pulse structures. Descriptions of the surface wave launching technique, transmission line, and instrumentation are presented, along with measurement data.

Geomechanical and geophysical monitoring are the techniques which can complement each other and provide enhancement in the solutions of many problems of geotechnical engineering. One of the most promising geophysical techniques is passive seismic monitoring. The essence of the technique is recording the acoustic signals produced in the subsurface, either naturally or in response to human activity. The acoustic signals are produced by mechanical displacements on the contacts of structural elements (e.g., faults, boundaries of rock blocks, natural and induced fractures). The process can be modeled by modern numerical techniques developed in geomechanics. The report discusses a study that was aimed at the unification of the passive seismic monitoring and numerical modeling for the monitoring of the hydraulic fracture propagation. The approach adopted in the study consisted of numerical modeling of the seismicity accompanying hydraulic fracture propagation and defining seismic attributes and patterns characterizing the process and fracture parameters. Numerical experiments indicated that the spatial distribution of seismic events is correlated to geometrical parameters of hydrofracture. Namely, the highest density of the events is observed along fracture contour, and projection of the events to the fracture plane makes this effect most pronounced. The numerical experiments also showed that dividing the …

Many user facilities such as synchrotron light sources and free electron lasers require accelerating structures that support electric fields of 10-100 MV/m, especially at the start of the accelerator chain where ceramic insulators are used for very high gradient DC guns. These insulators are difficult to manufacture, require long commissioning times, and have poor reliability, in part because energetic electrons bury themselves in the ceramic, creating a buildup of charge and causing eventual puncture. A novel ceramic manufacturing process is proposed. It will incorporate bulk resistivity in the region where it is needed to bleed off accumulated charge caused by highly energetic electrons. This process will be optimized to provide an appropriate gradient in bulk resistivity from the vacuum side to the air side of the HV standoff ceramic cylinder. A computer model will be used to determine the optimum cylinder dimensions and required resistivity gradient for an example RF gun application. A ceramic material example with resistivity gradient appropriate for use as a DC gun insulator will be fabricated by glazing using doping compounds and tested.

805 MHz elliptical SRF cavities have been used for SNS as the first application for protons. At LANL, an R&D started to explore a capability of getting high-gradient cavities (40-50 MV/m) at this frequency for the future applications such as proton and muon based interrogation testing facility added to the LANSCE accelerator and a power upgrade of the LANSCE accelerator for the fission and fusion material test station. Optimized cell designs for “standard”, “low-loss” and “re-entrant” shapes, cavity test results for “standard” single-cell cavities with temperature mapping as well as surface inspection results will be presented.

SLAC has developed a multi-physics simulation code TEM3P for simulating integrated effects of electromagnetic, thermal and structural loads. TEM3P shares the same software infrastructure with SLAC’s paralell finite element electromagnetic codes, thus enabling all physics simulations within a single framework. The finite-element approach allows high fidelity, high-accuracy simulations and the parallel implementation facilitates large-scale computation with fast turnaround times. In this paper, TEM3P is used to analyze thermal loading at coupler end of the JLAB SRF cavity.

2009 was an incredibly exciting year for light sources at Brookhaven. The National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) hosted more than 2,200 visiting researchers, who, along with the about 50 members of our scientific staff, produced a total of 957 publications - about 20 percent of which appeared in premier journals. Covering topics ranging from Alzheimer's disease detection to ethanol-powered fuel cells, a sampling of these findings can be found in this Activity Report. We've also seen the resurfacing of some of our long-time users hard work. I was very proud to hear that two of the three recipients of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry have ties to the NSLS. Venki Ramakrishnan, a former employee in Brookhaven's biology department and long-time user of the NSLS, now at Cambridge University, and Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University, also a long-time NSLS user, shared the prize with Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science for their work on the structure and function of the ribosome. In the late 1990s, Ramakrishnan and Steitz used protein crystallography at the NSLS to gather atomic-level images of two ribosome subunits: 30S (Ramakrishnan) and 50S (Steitz). Both laureates solved the high-resolution structures for these subunits …

Muon collider luminosity depends on the number of muons in the storage ring and on the transverse size of the beams in collision. Ionization cooling as it is currently envisioned will not cool the beam sizes sufficiently well to provide adequate luminosity without large muon intensities. Six-dimensional cooling schemes will reduce the longitudinal emittance of a muon beam so that smaller high frequency RF cavities can be used for later stages of cooling and for acceleration. However, the bunch length at collision energy is then shorter than needed to match the interaction region beta function. New ideas to shrink transverse beam dimensions by lengthening each bunch will help achieve high luminosity in muon colliders. Analytic expressions for the reverse emittance exchange mechanism were derived, including a new resonant method of beam focusing.

In this contribution, we report progress on the development of a hybrid lead/niobium superconducting RF (SRF) photoinjector. The goal of this effort is to build a Nb injector with the superconducting cathode made of lead, which demonstrated in the past superior quantum efficiency (QE) compared to Nb Three prototype hybrid devices, consisting of an all-niobium cavity with an arc-deposited spot of lead in the cathode region, have been constructed and tested. We present the cold test results of these cavities with and without lead.

I review recent progress in understanding the structure of the nucleon sea and the role of the nucleon's pion cloud. In particular, I discuss the consequences of the pion cloud for the d-bar - u-bar asymmetry in the proton, the neutron's electric form factor, and the proton's electric to magnetic form factor ratio.

This report presents the results of a study to determine if Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has the skilled staff, instrumentation, specialized equipment, and facilities required to take on work in thermochemical research, development, and demonstration currently being performed by the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative (NHI). This study outlines the beneficial collaborations between INL and other national laboratories, universities, and industries to strengthen INL's thermochemical efforts, which should be developed to achieve the goals of the NHI in the most expeditious, cost effective manner. Taking on this work supports INL's long-term strategy to maintain leadership in thermochemical cycle development. This report suggests a logical path forward to accomplish this transition.

Beam size measurement with near-field optical diffraction radiation (ODR) has been carried out successfully at CEBAF. The ODR station is installed on the Hall-A beam line after eight bending magnets. The ODR images were affected by an unexpected radiation. Some calculations for analyzing the source of the radiation will be presented. Furthermore, two schemes will be proposed to alleviate the contamination.

The Electro-polishing process is the best candidate of final surface treatment for the production of ILC cavities. Nevertheless, the broad distribution of the gradient caused by field emitters in cavities is sitll a serious problem for the EP process. Ethanole- and degreaser-rinse processes after the EP process were found to be effective to decrease the field emmitter in recent studies, however, these are not perfect yet. We tried to test the sponge cleaning as the post EP process to remove the field emitter inside the cavcity. This article describe the results of series tests with a proto-type sponge-cleaning tool for single-cell cavity at KEK.

The CEBAF accelerator at Jefferson Lab has had, since first demonstration in 1996, the ability to deliver a 5-pass electron beam to experimental halls (A, B, and C) simultaneously. This capability was provided by a set of three, room temperature 499 MHz rf separators in the 5th pass beamline. The separator was two-rod, TEM mode type resonator, which has a high shunt impedance. The maximum rf power to deflect the 6 GeV beams was about 3.4kW. The 12 GeV baseline design does not preserve the capability of separating the 5th pass, 11 GeV beam for the 3 existing halls. Several options for restoring this capability, including extension of the present room temperature system or a new superconducting design in combination with magnetic systems, are under investigation and are presented.

With the proposal of medium to high average current accelerator facilities the demand for cavities with extremely low Higher Order Mode (HOM) impedances is increasing. Modern numerical tools are still under development to more thoroughly predict impedances that need to take into account complex absorbing boundaries and lossy materials. With the usually large problem size it is preferable to utilize massive parallel computing when applicable and available. Apart from such computational issues, we have developed methods using available computer resources to enhance the information that can be extracted from a cavities? wakefield computed in time domain. In particular this is helpful for a careful assessment of the extracted RF power and the mitigation of potential beam break-up or emittance diluting effects, a figure of merit for the cavity performance. The method is described as well as an example of its implementation.