This report summarizes the well installation, plugging and abandonment, and redevelopment activities conducted during the federal fiscal year (FY) 1998 at the Y-12 Plant, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Five new groundwater monitoring wells were installed at the Y-12 Plant under the FY 1998 drilling program. Two of the wells are located in west Bear Creek Valley, one is in the eastern Y-12 Plant area near Lake Reality, and two are located near the Oil Landfarm Waste Management Area, which were installed by Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC (Bechtel Jacobs) as part of a site characterization activity for the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) Disposal Cell. Also, two existing wells were upgraded and nine temporary piezometers were installed to characterize hydrogeologic conditions at the Disposal Cell site. In addition, 40 temporary piezometers were installed in the Boneyard/Bumyard area of Bear Creek Valley by Bechtel Jacobs as part of the accelerated remedial actions conducted by the Environmental Restoration Program. Ten monitoring wells at the Y-12 Plant were decommissioned in FY 1998. Two existing monitoring wells were redeveloped during FY 1998 (of these, GW-732 was redeveloped tsvice). All well installation and development (including redevelopment) was conducted following industry-standard methods and approved procedures from the Environmental Surveillance …

The Tanks Focus Area (TFA) serves as the DOE`s Office of Environmental Management`s national technology and solution development program for radioactive waste tank remediation. Its technical scope covers the major functions that comprise a complete tank remediation system: waste retrieval, waste pretreatment, waste immobilization, tank closure, and characterization of both the waste and tank with safety integrated into all the functions. In total, 17 technologies and technical solutions were selected for review. The purpose of each review was to understand the state of development of each technology selected for review and to identify issues to be resolved before the technology or technical solution progressed to the next level of maturity. The reviewers provided detailed technical and programmatic recommendations and comments. The disposition of these recommendations and comments and their impact on the program is documented in this report.

The Low-Activity Waste Process Technology Program at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) anticipates that large volumes of low-level/low-activity wastes will need to be grouted prior to near-surface disposal. During fiscal year 1998, three grout formulations were studied for low-activity wastes derived from INTEC liquid sodium-bearing waste. Compressive strength and leach results are presented for phosphate bonding cement, acidic grout, and alkaline grout formulations. In an additional study, grout formulations are recommended for stabilization of the INTEC underground storage tank residual heels.

Previously, the proposers have delivered to ARM a documented algorithm, that is now applied operationally, and which derives water vapor profiles from combined remote sensor measurements of water vapor radiometers, cloud-base ceilometers, and radio acoustic sounding systems (RASS). With the expanded deployment of a Raman lidar at the CART Central Facility, high quality, high vertical-resolution, water vapor profiles will be provided during nighttime clear conditions, and during clear daytime conditions, to somewhat lower altitudes. The object of this effort is to use Kalman Filtering, previously applied to the combination of nighttime Raman lidar and microwave radiometer data, to derive high-quality water vapor profiles, during non-precipitating conditions, from data routinely available at the CART site. Input data to the algorithm would include: Raman lidar data, highly quality-controlled data of integrated moisture from microwave radiometers and GPS, RASS, and radiosondes. The focus of this years activities has been on the intercomparison of data obtained during the Water Vapor Intensive Operating Period'97 at the SGP CART site in central Oklahoma.

This report summarizes waste shipments to the Nevada Test Site Radioactive Waste Management Sites at Area 3 and Area 5 during fiscal year 1998. In addition this report provides a summary evaluation of each shipping campaign by source (waste generator) which identifies observable incidents, if any, associated with the actual waste shipments.

This describes a comprehensive, integrated approach for the development of HTS (high-temperature superconductivity) technology for cost-effective use in electric power applications. This approach supports the program`s mission: to develop the technology that could lead to industrial commercialization of HTS electric power applications, such as fault-current limiters, motors, generators, transmission cables, superinductors, and superconducting energy storage. The vision is that, by 2010, the US power systems equipment industry will regain a major share of the global market by offering superconducting products that outperform the competition; and in US, the power grid will gain increased efficiency and stability by incorporating many kinds of HTS devices. After an overview and a discussion of the program plan (wires, systems technology, partnership initiative), this document discusses technology status, stakeholders, and the role of US DOE.

Alcator C-Mod is the high-field, high-density divertor tokamak in the world fusion program. It is one of five divertor experiments capable of plasma currents exceeding one megamp. Because of its compact dimensions, Alcator C-Mod investigates an essential area in parameter space, which complements the world`s larger experiments, in establishing the tokamak physics database. Three key areas of investigation have been called out in which Alcator C-Mod has a vital role to play: (1) divertor research on C-Mod takes advantage of the advanced divertor shaping, the very high scrap-off-layer power density, unique abilities in impurity diagnosis, and the High-Z metal wall, to advance the physics understanding of this critical topic; (2) in transport studies, C-Mod is making critical tests of both empirical scalings and theoretically based interpretations of tokamak transport, at dimensional parameters that are unique but dimensionless parameters often comparable to those in much larger experiments; (3) in the area of Advanced Tokamak research, so important to concept optimization, the high-field design of the device also provides long pulse length, compared to resistive skin time, which provides an outstanding opportunity to investigate the extent to which enhanced confinement and stability can be sustained in steady-state, using active profile control. In …

This report presents the details of the mission and strategic plan for Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory during the fiscal years of 1995--2000. It presents summaries of current programs and potential changes; critical success factors such as human resources; management practices; budgetary allowances; and technical and administrative initiatives.

As a way to bootstrap the DISCOM(2) Distance Computing Program the SP2 Pilot Project was launched in March 1998. The Pilot was directed towards creating an environment to allow Sandia users to run their applications on the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative's (ASCI) Blue Pacific computation platform, the unclassified IBM SP2 platform at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The DISCOM(2) Pilot leverages the ASCI PSE (Problem solving Environment) efforts in networking and services to baseline the performance of the current system. Efforts in the following areas of the pilot are documented: applications, services, networking, visualization, and the system model. It details not only the running of two Sandia codes CTH and COYOTE on the Blue Pacific platform, but also the buildong of the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) proxy environment of the RS6000 platforms to support the Sandia users.

Two new failure analysis techniques have been developed for backside and front side localization of open and shorted interconnections on ICs. These scanning optical microscopy techniques take advantage of the interactions between IC defects and localized heating using a focused infrared laser ({lambda} = 1,340 nm). Images are produced by monitoring the voltage changes across a constant current supply used to power the IC as the laser beam is scanned across the sample. The methods utilize the Seebeck Effect to localize open interconnections and Thermally-Induced Voltage Alteration (TIVA) to detect shorts. Initial investigations demonstrated the feasibility of TIVA and Seebeck Effect Imaging (SEI). Subsequent improvements have greatly increased the sensitivity of the TIVA/SEI system, reducing the acquisition times by more than 20X and localizing previously unobserved defects. The interaction physics describing the signal generation process and several examples demonstrating the localization of opens and shorts are described. Operational guidelines and limitations are also discussed. The system improvements, non-linear response of IC defects to heating, modeling of laser heating and examples using the improved system for failure analysis are presented.