This report describes a model Transport Processes Investigation (TPI) where field-scale vadose zone flow and transport processes are identified and verified through a systematic field investigation at a contaminated DOE site. The objective of the TPI is to help with formulating accurate conceptual models and aid in implementing rational and cost effective site specific characterization strategies at contaminated sites with diverse hydrogeologic settings. Central to the TPI are Transport Processes Characterization (TPC) tests that incorporate field surveys and large-scale infiltration experiments. Hypotheses are formulated based on observed pedogenic and hydrogeologic features as well as information provided by literature searches. The field and literature information is then used to optimize the design of one or more infiltration experiments to field test the hypothesis. Findings from the field surveys and infiltration experiments are then synthesized to formulate accurate flow and transport conceptual models. Here we document a TPI implemented in the glacial till vadose zone at the Fernald Environmental Management Project (FEMP) in Fernald, Ohio, a US Department of Energy (DOE) uranium processing site. As a result of this TPI, the flow and transport mechanisms were identified through visualization of dye stain within extensive macro pore and fracture networks which provided the …

In 2005 the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) proposed that the PATTON Alliance provide assistance in evaluating and obtaining the Integrated Gazetteer Database (IGDB), developed for the Naval Space Warfare Command Research group (SPAWAR) under Advance Research and Development Activity (ARDA) funds by MITRE Inc., fielded to the text-based search tool GeoLocator, currently in use by NGIC. We met with the developers of GeoLocator and identified their requirements for a better gazetteer. We then validated those requirements by reviewing the technical literature, meeting with other members of the intelligence community (IC), and talking with both the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), the authoritative sources for official geographic name information. We thus identified 12 high-level requirements from users and the broader intelligence community. The IGDB satisfies many of these requirements. We identified gaps and proposed ways of closing these gaps. Three important needs have not been addressed but are critical future needs for the broader intelligence community. These needs include standardization of gazetteer data, a web feature service for gazetteer information that is maintained by NGA and USGS but accessible to users, and a common forum that brings together IC stakeholders and federal agency …

Current industry and NRC guidance documents such as IEEE 7-4.3.2, Reg. Guide 1.152, and IEEE 603 do not sufficiently define a level of detail for evaluating interdivisional communications independence. The NRC seeks to establish criteria for safety systems communications that can be uniformly applied in evaluation of a variety of safety system designs. This report focuses strictly on communication issues related to data sent between safety systems and between safety and nonsafety systems. Further, the report does not provide design guidance for communication systems nor present detailed failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) results for existing designs. This letter report describes communications between safety and nonsafety systems in nuclear power plants outside the United States. A limited study of international nuclear power plants was conducted to ascertain important communication implementations that might have bearing on systems proposed for licensing in the United States. This report provides that following information: 1.communications types and structures used in a representative set of international nuclear power reactors, and 2.communications issues derived from standards and other source documents relevant to safety and nonsafety communications. Topics that are discussed include the following: communication among redundant safety divisions, communications between safety divisions and nonsafety systems, control of …

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) supports the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in assessing the impact of using intermediate ethanol blends (E10 to E30) in the legacy fleet of vehicles in the U.S. fleet. The purpose of this report is to: (1) identify the issues associated with intermediate ethanol blends with an emphasis on the end-use or vehicle impacts of increased ethanol levels; (2) assess the likely severity of the issues and whether they will become more severe with higher ethanol blend levels, or identify where the issue is most severe; (3) identify where gaps in knowledge exist and what might be required to fill those knowledge gaps; and (4) compile a current and complete bibliography of key references on intermediate ethanol blends. This effort is chiefly a critical review and assessment of available studies. Subject matter experts (authors and selected expert contacts) were consulted to help with interpretation and assessment. The scope of this report is limited to technical issues. Additional issues associated with consumer, vehicle manufacturer, and regulatory acceptance of ethanol blends greater than E10 are not considered. The key findings from this study are given.

A principal measure of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image quality is the manifestation in the SAR image of a spatial impulse, that is, the SAR's Impulse Response (IPR). IPR requirements direct certain design decisions in a SAR. Anomalies in the IPR can point to specific anomalous behavior in the radar's hardware and/or software.

Upon examination we have concluded that none of the alarms indicate the presence of a real threat. A brief history and results from our examination of the NYCT ASP occupancy data sets dated from 2007-05-14 19:11:07 to 2007-06-20 15:46:15 are presented in this letter report. When the ASP data collection campaign at NYCT was completed, rather than being shut down, the Canberra ASP annunciator box was unplugged leaving the data acquisition system running. By the time it was discovered that the ASP was still acquiring data about 15,000 occupancies had been recorded. Among these were about 500 alarms (classified by the ASP analysis system as either Threat Alarms or Suspect Alarms). At your request, these alarms have been investigated. Our conclusion is that none of the alarm data sets indicate the presence of a real threat (within statistics). The data sets (ICD1 and ICD2 files with concurrent JPEG pictures) were delivered to LLNL on a removable hard drive labeled FOUO. The contents of the data disk amounted to 53.39 GB of data requiring over two days for the standard LLNL virus checking software to scan before work could really get started. Our first step was to walk through the directory …

Safe and efficient hydrogen storage is a significant challenge inhibiting the use of hydrogen as a primary energy carrier. Although energy storage performance properties are critical to the success of solid-state hydrogen storage systems, operator and user safety is of highest importance when designing and implementing consumer products. As researchers are now integrating high energy density solid materials into hydrogen storage systems, quantification of the hazards associated with the operation and handling of these materials becomes imperative. The experimental effort presented in this paper focuses on identifying the hazards associated with producing, storing, and handling sodium alanates, and thus allowing for the development and implementation of hazard mitigation procedures. The chemical changes of sodium alanates associated with exposure to oxygen and water vapor have been characterized by thermal decomposition analysis using simultaneous thermogravimetric modulated beam mass spectrometry (STMBMS) and X-ray diffraction methods. Partial oxidation of sodium alanates, an alkali metal complex hydride, results in destabilization of the remaining hydrogen-containing material. At temperatures below 70 C, reaction of sodium alanate with water generates potentially combustible mixtures of H{sub 2} and O{sub 2}. In addition to identifying the reaction hazards associated with the oxidation of alkali-metal containing complex hydrides, potential treatment methods …

This report addresses the data center energy benchmarking.

Two data centers in this study were within a co-location facility located on the sixth floor of a multi-story building in downtown Los Angeles, California. The facility had 37,758 gross square feet floor area with 2-foot raised-floors in the data services area. The two data centers were designated as the west data center (DC No.18) and the east data center (DC No.19). The study found that 56% of the overall electric power was consumed by sixth floor critical loads in both data centers, 33% of the power was consumed by HVAC systems, 3% of the power was consumed by UPS units, 3% of the power was for generator losses, and the remaining 5% was used by lighting and miscellaneous loads in the building. The power density of installed computer loads (rack load) in the two data centers was 20 W/ft{sup 2} and 56 W/ft{sup 2}, respectively. The power density was relatively lower in DC No.18 compared to other data centers previously studied. In addition, HVAC to IT power demand ratio was 0.6 in DC No.18 in this study, and was 0.4 in DC No.19. Two out of three chillers were running at a low partial load, making the operation very …

Work was performed to develop a prototype Particle Size Analyzer (PSA) for application to coated particle fuel characterization. This system was based on a light obscuration method and targeted towards high throughput analysis. Although never matured to the point of replacing existing lower throughput optical microscopy shadowgraph methods, the system was successfully applied to automating the counting of large particle samples for increased accuracy in calculating mean particle properties based on measurements of multiparticle samples. The measurement of particle size with the PSA was compared to current shadowgraph techniques and found to result in considerably greater throughput at the cost of larger measurement uncertainty. The current algorithm used by the PSA is more sensitive to particle shape and this is a likely cause of the greater uncertainty when attempting to measure average particle diameter. The use of the PSA to measure particle shape will require further development. Particle transport through the PSA and stability of the light source/detector are key elements in the successful application of this technique. A number of system pitfalls were studied and addressed.

An infiltration and dye transport experiment was conducted to visualize flow and transport processes in a heterogeneous, layered, sandy-gravelly fluvial deposit adjacent to Rio Bravo Boulevard in Albuquerque, NM. Water containing red dye followed by blue-green dye was ponded in a small horizontal zone ({approx}0.5 m x 0.5 m) above a vertical outcrop ({approx}4 m x 2.5 m). The red dye lagged behind the wetting front due to slight adsorption thus allowing both the wetting front and dye fronts to be observed in time at the outcrop face. After infiltration, vertical slices were excavated to the midpoint of the infiltrometer exposing the wetting front and dye distribution in a quasi three-dimensional manner. At small-scale, wetting front advancement was influenced by the multitude of local capillary barriers within the deposit. However at the scale of the experiment, the wetting front appeared smooth with significant lateral spreading {approx} twice that in the vertical, indicating a strong anisotropy due to the pronounced horizontal layering. The dye fronts exhibited appreciably more irregularity than the wetting front, as well as the influence of preferential flow features (a fracture) that moved the dye directly to the front, bypassing the fresh water between.

We are writing this letter to express our interest in pursuing an experiment at Fermilab to search for neutrinoless conversion of muons into electrons in the field of a nucleus, which is a lepton flavor-violating (LFV) reaction. The sensitivity goal of this experiment, improving on existing limits for this process by more than a factor of 10000, is very similar to that of previous experiments that have been proposed but never built. It would provide the most sensitive test of LFV, a unique and essential window on new physics unavailable at the high energy frontier. We present a conceptual scheme that would exploit the existing Accumulator and Debuncher rings to generate the required characteristics of the primary proton beam. The proposal requires only modest modifications to the accelerator complex after including those already planned for the NOvA experiment, with which this experiment would be fully compatible. The search for lepton flavor violation (LFV) has long played an important role in the evolution of our understanding of electroweak interactions. The neutrinoless conversion of a muon to an electron in the field of a nucleus is a particularly interesting example of an LFV process involving charged leptons. In the Standard Model, such …

INL has developed polymeric membrane-based chemical separations to enable the thermochemical production of hydrogen. Major activities included studies of sulfuric acid concentration membranes, hydriodic acid concentration membranes, SO2/O2 separation membranes, potential applications of a catalyst reactor system for the decomposition of HI, and evaluation of the chemical separation needs for alternate thermochemical cycles. Membranes for the concentration of sulfuric acid were studied using pervaporation. The goal of this task was to offer the sulfur-iodine (S-I) and the hybrid sulfur (HyS) cycles a method to concentrate the sulfuric acid containing effluent from the decomposer without boiling. In this work, sulfuric acid decomposer effluent needs to be concentrated from ~50 % acid to 80 %. This task continued FY 2006 efforts to characterize water selective membranes for use in sulfuric acid concentration. In FY 2007, experiments were conducted to provide specific information, including transmembrane fluxes, separation factors, and membrane durability, necessary for proper decision making on the potential inclusion of this process into the S-I or HyS Integrated Laboratory Scale demonstration.

To determine whether a component is meeting its reliability requirement during production, acceptance sampling is employed in which selected units coming off the production line are subjected to additional environmental and/or destructive tests that are within the normal environment space to which the component is expected to be exposed throughout its life in the Stockpile. This report describes what these tests are and how they are scored for reliability purposes. The roles of screens, Engineering Use Only tests, and next assembly product acceptance testing are also discussed, along with both the advantages and disadvantages of environmental and destructive testing.

The data center in this study had a total floor area of 8,580 square feet (ft{sup 2}) with one-foot raised-floors. It was a rack lab with 440 racks, and was located in a 208,240 ft{sup 2} multi-story office building in San Jose, California. Since the data center was used only for testing equipment, it was not configured as a critical facility in terms of electrical and cooling supply. It did not have a dedicated chiller system but served by the main building chiller plant and make-up air system. Additionally, it was served by a single electrical supply with no provision for backup power. The data center operated on a 24 hour per day, year-round cycle, and users had all hour full access to the data center facility. The study found that data center computer load accounted for 23% of the overall building electrical load, while the total power consumption attributable to the data center including allocated cooling load and lighting was 30% of the total facility load. The density of installed computer loads (rack load) in the data center was 63 W/ft{sup 2}. Power consumption density for all data center allocated load (including cooling and lighting) was 84 W/ft{sup 2}, …

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Sandia networks consist of nearly nine hundred routers and switches and nearly one million lines of command code, and each line ideally contributes to the capabilities of the network to convey information from one location to another. Sandia's Cyber Infrastructure Development and Deployment organizations recognize that it is therefore essential to standardize network configurations and enforce conformance to industry best business practices and documented internal configuration standards to provide a network that is agile, adaptable, and highly available. This is especially important in times of constrained budgets as members of the workforce are called upon to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and customer focus. Best business practices recommend using the standardized configurations in the enforcement process so that when root cause analysis results in recommended configuration changes, subsequent configuration auditing will improve compliance to the standard. Ultimately, this minimizes mean time to repair, maintains the network security posture, improves network availability, and enables efficient transition to new technologies. Network standardization brings improved network agility, which in turn enables enterprise agility, because the network touches all facets of corporate business. Improved network agility improves the business enterprise as a whole.

While China's 11th Five Year Plan called for a reduction of energy intensity by 2010, whether and how the energy consumption trend can be changed in a short time has been hotly debated. This research intends to evaluate the impact of a variety of scenarios of GDP growth, energy elasticity and energy efficiency improvement on energy consumption in commercial buildings in China using a detailed China End-use Energy Model. China's official energy statistics have limited information on energy demand by end use. This is a particularly pertinent issue for building energy consumption. The authors have applied reasoned judgments, based on experience of working on Chinese efficiency standards and energy related programs, to present a realistic interpretation of the current energy data. The bottom-up approach allows detailed consideration of end use intensity, equipment efficiency, etc., thus facilitating assessment of potential impacts of specific policy and technology changes on building energy use. The results suggest that: (1) commercial energy consumption in China's current statistics is underestimated by about 44%, and the fuel mix is misleading; (2) energy efficiency improvements will not be sufficient to offset the strong increase in end-use penetration and intensity in commercial buildings; (3) energy intensity (particularly electricity) in …

The Nevada Test Site–Directed Research and Development (SDRD) program completed its fifth successful year of research and development activities in FY 2006. Forty new projects were selected for funding this year, and ten FY 2005 projects were brought to conclusion. The total funds expended by the SDRD program were $6 million, for an average per-project cost of $120 thousand. Beginning in May, 2006 programmatic burden rates were applied to SDRD project costs. An external audit conducted in September 2006 verified that appropriate accounting practices were applied to the SDRD program. Highlights for the year included: the filing of 27 invention disclosures for intellectual property generated by FY 2006 projects; programmatic adoption of four FY 2005 SDRD-developed technologies; participation in the tri-Lab Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) and SDRD program review that was broadly attended by NTS, NNSA, LDRD, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security representatives; peer reviews of all FY 2006 projects; and the successful completion of 50 R&D projects, as presented in this report.

Constitutive modeling is an important aspect of computational solid mechanics. Sandia National Laboratories has always had a considerable effort in the development of constitutive models for complex material behavior. However, for this development to be of use the models need to be implemented in our solid mechanics application codes. In support of this important role, the Library of Advanced Materials for Engineering (LAME) has been developed in Engineering Sciences. The library allows for simple implementation of constitutive models by model developers and access to these models by application codes. The library is written in C++ and has a very simple object oriented programming structure. This report summarizes the current status of LAME.

Performance evaluation of electric motors is a major function of the Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Center (PEEMRC). Normally these motors have a fixed wire-wound stator and a rotating rotor, which may have conductors embedded in a ferromagnetic core (induction motors), magnets mounted on the surface of the ferromagnetic core with a thin metal or composite cylinder or ring to hold them in place, or magnets embedded in the ferromagnetic core. Most of the work currently involves the last two permanent magnet (PM) configurations. Although the stator of a radial-gap motor can absorb energy from many of the fragments ejected from the rotor during operation, the stator of an axial-gap motor is not positioned to provide significant protection. The housing of each motor can also absorb some of the energy. The most conservative approach, however, is to assume that all fragments from the rotor must be contained by a protective enclosure. An ideal enclosure is transparent. Manufacturers of such plastics as Lexan, Tuffak, and Cyrolon sell different variations of transparent enclosure material. Lexan is a polycarbonate sheet. Lexgard{reg_sign} is a penetration resistant material made by layering polycarbonate material between pieces of ordinary glass. A fragment striking a sheet of …

An atmospheric pressure approach to growth of bulk group III-nitrides is outlined. Native III-nitride substrates for optoelectronic and high power, high frequency electronics are desirable to enhance performance and reliability of these devices; currently, these materials are available in research quantities only for GaN, and are unavailable in the case of InN. The thermodynamics and kinetics of the reactions associated with traditional crystal growth techniques place these activities on the extreme edges of experimental physics. The novel techniques described herein rely on the production of the nitride precursor (N{sup 3-}) by chemical and/or electrochemical methods in a molten halide salt. This nitride ion is then reacted with group III metals in such a manner as to form the bulk nitride material. The work performed during the period of funding (February 2006-September 2006) focused on establishing that mass transport of GaN occurs in molten LiCl, the construction of a larger diameter electrochemical cell, the design, modification, and installation of a made-to-order glove box (required for handling very hygroscopic LiCl), and the feasibility of using room temperature molten salts to perform nitride chemistry experiments.

Numerous events have or could have resulted in the inadvertent uptake of radionuclides by fairly large populations. Should a population receive an uptake, valuable information could be obtained by using liquid scintillation counting (LSC) techniques to quickly screen urine from a sample of the affected population. This study investigates such LSC parameters as discrimination, quench, volume, and count time to yield guidelines for analyzing urine in an emergency situation. Through analyzing variations of the volume and their relationships to the minimum detectable activity (MDA), the optimum ratio of sample size to scintillating chemical cocktail was found to be 1:3. Using this optimum volume size, the alpha MDA varied from 2100 pCi/L for a 30-second count time to 35 pCi/L for a 1000-minute count time. The typical count time used by the Sandia National Laboratories Radiation Protection Sample Diagnostics program is 30 minutes, which yields an alpha MDA of 200 pCi/L. Because MDA is inversely proportional to the square root of the count time, count time can be reduced in an emergency situation to achieve the desired MDA or response time. Note that approximately 25% of the response time is used to prepare the samples and complete the associated paperwork. It …

Final report for DE-FG02-05ER15717