'The Plutonium Immobilization Facility will encapsulate plutonium in ceramic pucks and seal the pucks inside welded cans. Remote equipment will place these cans in magazines and the magazines in a Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) canister. The DWPF will fill the canister with glass for permanent storage. This report discusses the Plutonium Immobilization can loading conceptual design and includes a process block diagram, process description, preliminary equipment specifications, and several can loading issues. This report identifies loading pucks into cans and backfilling cans with helium as the top priority can loading development areas.'

'A series of subcritical noise measurements were performed on fresh and spent University of Missouri Research Reactor fuel assemblies. These experimental measurements were performed for the purposes of providing benchmark quality data for validating transport theory computer codes and nuclear cross-section data used to perform criticality safety analyses for highly enriched, uranium-aluminum Material Test Reactor fuel assemblies. A mechanical test rig was designed and built to hold up to four fuel assemblies and neutron detectors in a subcritical array. The rig provided researchers with the ability to evaluate the reactivity effects of variable fuel/detector spacing, fuel rotation, and insertion of metal reflector plates into the lattice.'

'The Plutonium Immobilization Facility will encapsulate plutonium in ceramic pucks and seal the pucks inside welded cans. Remote equipment will place these cans in magazines and the magazines in a Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) canister. The DWPF will fill the canister with glass for permanent storage. This report discusses the Plutonium Immobilization can loading conceptual design and includes a process block diagram, process description, preliminary equipment specifications, and several can loading issues. This report identifies loading pucks into cans and backfilling cans with helium as the top priority can loading development areas.'

'Engineers at the Savannah River Technology Center have designed, built, and installed a fully automated small field-of-view, lens-coupled, digital radiography imaging system. The system is installed in one of the Savannah River Site''s production facilities to be used for the evaluation of production components. Custom software routines developed for the system automatically acquire, enhance, and diagnostically evaluate critical geometric features of various components that have been captured radiographically. Resolution of the digital radiograms and accuracy of the acquired measurements approaches 0.001 inches. To date, there has been zero deviation in measurement repeatability. The automated image acquisition methodology will be discussed, unique enhancement algorithms will be explained, and the automated routines for measuring the critical component features will be presented. An additional feature discussed is the independent nature of the modular software components, which allows images to be automatically acquired, processed, and evaluated by the computer in the background, while the operator reviews other images on the monitor. System components were also a key in gaining the required image resolution. System factors such as scintillator selection, x-ray source energy, optical components and layout, as well as geometric unsharpness issues are considered in the paper. Finally the paper examines the numerous quality …

Thermal analysis of spent fuel storage casks has generally been based on the assumption that heat released by the fuel assemblies is transported to the cask cavity only by conduction through the walls of the basket. This conservative assumption was adopted to compensate for uncertainties in modeling heat transfer in the cavity of a spent fuel cask. During recent years, some applications have submitted safety analysis reports for spent fuel storage casks that challenge this assumption. They offer two methods which include the fuel assemblies, as well as the walls of the basket, as part of the path for heat transfer to the cask cavity. A third method, the consideration of a fuel assembly as a homogeneous log, is explored in a study described in this report.

As part of the Soviet-Designed Reactor Safety (SDRS) element of the International Nuclear Safety Program (INSP), the US Department of Energy (US DOE) is funding a plant safety evaluation (PSE) project for the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant (NvNPP). The Novovoronezh PSE Project is a multi-faceted project with participants from sixteen different international organizations from five different countries scattered across eleven time zones. The purpose of this project is to provide a thorough Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) and Deterministic Safety Analysis (DSA) for Units 3 and 4 of the NvNPP. In addition, this project provides assistance to the operation organizations in meeting their international commitments in support of safety upgrades, and their regulatory requirements for the conduct of safety analyses. Managing this project is a complex process requiring numerous management tools, constant monitoring, and effective communication skills. Employing management tools to resolve unanticipated problems one of the keys to project success. The overall scope, programmatic context, objectives, project interactions, communications, practical hindrances, and lessons learned from the challenging performance of the PSE project are summarized in this paper.

A round robin test program was conducted with a glass that was developed for use as a standard test material for acceptance testing of low-activity waste glasses made with Hanford tank wastes. The program was conducted to measure the between-laboratory reproducibility of composition analysis and durability test results. Participants were free to select the methods used to analyze the glass composition. The durability tests closely followed the Product Consistency Test (PCT) Method A, except that tests were conducted at both 40 and 90 C, and parallel tests with a reference glass were not required. Samples that had been crushed, sieved, and washed to remove fines were provided to participants for tests and analyses. The results are presented in this paper. While the results are still being analyzed, the reproducibility of both the composition and PCTs results compare favorably with the results of round robins conducted with other glasses.

The proposed Savannah River Site (SRS) Wetlands Restoration Project area is located in Barnwell County, South Carolina on the southwestern boundary of the SRS Reservation. The swamp covers about 40.5 km2 and is bounded to the west and south by the Savannah River and to the north and east by low bluffs at the edge of the Savannah River floodplain. Water levels within the swamp are determined by stage along the Savannah River, local drainage, groundwater seepage, and inflows from four tributaries, Beaver Dam Creek, Fourmile Branch, Pen Branch, and Steel Creek. Historic discharges of heated process water into these tributaries scoured the streambed, created deltas in the adjacent wetland, and killed native vegetation in the vicinity of the delta deposits. Future releases from these tributaries will be substantially smaller and closer to ambient temperatures. One component of the proposed restoration project will be to reestablish indigenous wetland vegetation on the Pen Branch delta that covers about 1.0 km2. Long-term predictions of water levels within the swamp are required to determine the characteristics of suitable plants. The objective of the study was to predict water levels at various locations within the proposed SRS Wetlands Restoration Project area for a range …

This plan presents the overall objectives, description, justification and planning for the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) project. The intent of this plan is to describe how this project will be managed and integrated with other facility stabilization and deactivation activities. This plan supplements the overall integrated plan presented in the PFP Integrated Project Management Plan (PMP), HNF-3617, Rev. 0. This project plan is the top-level definitive project management document for the PFP IAEA project. It specifies the technical, schedule, requirements and the cost baselines to manage the execution of the IAEA project. Any deviations to the document must be authorized through the appropriate change control process.

This plan presents the overall objectives, description, justification and planning for the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) Remove Special Nuclear Material (SNM) Materials. The intent of this plan is to describe how this project will be managed and integrated with other facility stabilization and deactivation activities. This plan supplements the overall integrated plan presented in the Plutonium Finishing Plant Integrated Project Management Plan (IPMP), HNF-3617, Rev. 0. This project plan is the top-level definitive project management document for PFP Remove SNM Materials project. It specifies the technical, schedule, requirements and the cost baselines to manage the execution of the Remove SNM Materials project. Any deviations to the document must be authorized through the appropriate change control process.

This Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP) describes the methodology for control of computer software developed and supported by the Systems Development and Integration (SD and I) organization of Lockheed Martin Services, Inc. (LMSI) for the Tank Monitor and Control System (TMACS). This plan controls changes to the software and configuration files used by TMACS. The controlled software includes the Gensym software package, Gensym knowledge base files developed for TMACS, C-language programs used by TMACS, the operating system on the production machine, language compilers, and all Windows NT commands and functions which affect the operating environment. The configuration files controlled include the files downloaded to the Acromag and Westronic field instruments.

This document updates the Version Description Document with the changes incorporated in the Revision 11.0 software installation on the Tank Monitor and Control System (TMACS).

Although the use of ionizing radiation for the treatment of benign lesions such as keloids has been available for nearly one hundred years, only recently have the cost effective benefits of such technology for the inhibition of arterial restenosis following controlled vessel damage from balloon angioplasty been fully realized. In particular, the use of balloons filled with solutions of beta-emitting radioisotopes for vessel irradiation provide the benefit of uniform vessel irradiation. Use of such contained ("unsealed") sources is expected to represent a new opportunity for nuclear medicine physicians working in conjunction with interventional cardiologists to provide this new approach for restenosis therapy.

Casing deformation in wells is a common problem in many geothermal fields. Casing remediation is necessary to keep wells in production and occasionally, to even enter the well for an approved plug and abandonment procedure. The costly alternative to casing remediation is to incur the expense of drilling a new well to maintain production or drilling a well to intersect a badly damaged well below the deformation for abandonment purposes. The U.S. Department of Energy and the Geothermal Drilling Organization sponsor research and development work at Sandia National Laboratories in an effort to reduce these remediation expenditures. Sandia, in cooperation with Halliburton Energy Services, has developed a low cost, commercially available, bridge-plug-type packer for use in geothermal well environments. This report documents the development and testing of this tool for use in casing remediation work.

Solar cells made from III-V materials have achieved efficiencies greater than 30%. Effectively ideal passivation plays an important role in achieving these high efficiencies. Standard modeling techniques are applied to Ga0.5In0.5P solar cells to show the effects of passivation. Accurate knowledge of the absorption coefficient is essential (see appendix). Although ultralow (<2 cm/s) interface recombination velocities have been reported, in practice, it is difficult to achieve such low recombination velocities in solar cells because the doping levels are high and because of accidental incorporation of impurities and dopant diffusion. Examples are given of how dopant diffusion can both help and hinder interface passivation, and of how incorporation of oxygen or hydrogen can cause problems.

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This sampling plan (SP) describes the selection of containers for sampling of homogeneous solids and soil/gravel and for visual examination of transuranic and mixed transuranic (collectively referred to as TRU) waste generated at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site. The activities described in this SP will be conducted under the Hanford Site TRU Waste Certification Program. This SP is designed to meet the requirements of the Transuranic Waste Characterization Quality Assurance Program Plan (CAO-94-1010) (DOE 1996a) (QAPP), site-specific implementation of which is described in the Hanford Site Transuranic Waste Characterization Program Quality Assurance Project Plan (HNF-2599) (Hanford 1998b) (QAPP). The QAPP defines the quality assurance (QA) requirements and protocols for TRU waste characterization activities at the Hanford Site. In addition, the QAPP identifies responsible organizations, describes required program activities, outlines sampling and analysis strategies, and identifies procedures for characterization activities. The QAPP identifies specific requirements for TRU waste sampling plans. Table 1-1 presents these requirements and indicates sections in this SP where these requirements are addressed.

The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of creating a new liquid surface within Waste Storage Tank 241-SY-101. This study looked at alternatives for this, as well as providing a summary of observations regarding water lancing results relative to this task.

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