As part of a study of the hazards of the inspection of nuclear waste material stored at the Hanford, WA site, the Department of Energy (DOE) and Westinghouse Hanford Company (WHC) have developed a core drilling system to sample the material in large waste storage tanks. In support of this work, the US Bureau of Mines has studied the probability of ignition while core drilling into simulated salt cake that was permeated with a flammable gas mixture. No ignitions were observed while core drilling into the saltcake with or without a purge gas and no ignitions were observed while drilling into a steel plate.

This sampling and analysis plan identifies characterization objectives pertaining to sample collection, laboratory analytical evaluation, and reporting requirements in accordance with the Tank Safety Screening Data Quality Objective. This quality objective is part of the tank characterization plan for tank 241-B-106. This report also identifies procedures and requirements for collecting and characterizing samples form tank 241-B-106 by the push mode core sampling method.

This report presents the details of the tank characterization plan for waste tank 241-B-106. Topics discussed include: data quality objectives, historical information and tank status.

Two auger samples from tank 241-C-201 (C-201) were received by the 222-S Laboratories and underwent safety screening analysis, consisting of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and total alpha activity. Analytical results for the DSC analyses of both samples exceeded the notification limit of 481 J/g (dry weight basis). As well, the TGA analyses for both samples were less than the safety screening notification limit (notification is made if the sample is analyzed at less than 17 percent water). Notification of both of these occurrences was made on May,15, 1995, and secondary analysis of total organic carbon (TOC) was initiated. These TOC analysis results are also included in this report.

The present a conceptual design of a diode-pumped solid-state-laser (DPSSL) driver for an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant based on the maximized cost of electricity (COE) as determined in a comprehensive systems study. This study contained extensive detail for all significant DPSSL physics and costs, plus published scaling relationships for the costs of the target chamber and the balance of plant (BOP). Our DPSSL design offers low development cost because it is modular, can be fully tested functionally at reduced scale, and is based on mature solid-state-laser technology. Most of the parameter values that we used are being verified by experiments now in progress. Future experiments will address the few issues that remain. As a consequence, the economic and technical risk of our DPSSL driver concept is becoming rather low. Baseline performance at 1 GW{sub e} using a new gain medium [Yb{sup 3+}-doped Sr{sub 5}(PO{sub 4}){sub 3}F or Yb:S-FAP] includes a product of laser efficiency and target gain of {eta}G = 7, and a COE of 8.6 cents/kW{center_dot}h, although values of {eta}G {ge} 11 and COEs {le}6.6 cents/kW{center_dot}h are possible at double the assumed target gain of 76 at 3.7 MJ. We present a summary of our results, discuss …

This project investigated a suitable catalyst system for the direct NO decomposition for post-combustion NO{sub x} control. The studied process does not use a reductant, such as ammonia in the case of Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) process for catalytic reduction of NO{sub x} to nitrogen. This is a simplified process basically involving passing the flue gas through a catalytic converter, thus avoiding problems generally associated with the commercial SCR process, namely high operating cost, ammonia slip, and potential N{sub 2}O emissions. The main results from this research project are summarized in the following: Cu-ZSM-5 and M/Cu-ZSM-5 were synthesized by incorporating metal cations into ZSM-5 zeolite supports by optimized ion exchange procedures. It was found that (1) the catalytic activity of Cu-ZSM-5 only increased with copper loading when the Cu-ZSM-5 was prepared in an aqueous copper acetate solution with pH lower than 5.74; (2) high pH of the solution led not only to ion-exchanged Cu{sup 2+}, but also copper deposition on the zeolite surface forming inactive CuO particles as identified by STEM/EDX and XRD; (3) the sequence of metal ion exchange first, followed by copper ion exchange to synthesize M/Cu-ZSM-5, where M represents any metal ion but copper, was important for …

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Conditions which seed the self focussing of high-power broadband laser beams are determined by examining growth rates for plane-wave perturbations on a strong pump field as a function of frequency and angle. Measurements verifying predictions of growth based on the linearized stability analysis of Bespalov and Talanov extended to broadband fields are reported.