The goal of this evaluation report is to provide the information necessary to improve the effectiveness of the ITC provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency Member States. This report examines ITC-20 training content, delivery methods, scheduling, and logistics. Ultimately, this report evaluates whether the course provides the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the participants needs in the protection of nuclear materials and facilities.

A new benchmarking concept is presented for verifying the PEBBED 3D multigroup finite difference/nodal diffusion code with application to pebble bed modular reactors (PBMRs). The key idea is to perform convergence acceleration, also called extrapolation to zero discretization, of a basic finite difference numerical algorithm to give extremely high accuracy. The method is first demonstrated on a 1D cylindrical shell and then on an r,8 wedge where the order of the second order finite difference scheme is confirmed to four places.

The purpose of this report is to provide a concise but comprehensive overview of Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility instrumentation status. The report is divided into the following five sections: (1) new instrumentation in the process of being acquired and deployed, (2) field campaigns, (3) existing instrumentation and progress on improvements or upgrades, (4) proposed future instrumentation, and (5) Small Business Innovation Research instrument development.

Document summarizes the compliance activity of EPAct-covered state and alternative fuel provider fleets.

The following is an addendum to the Streamlined Approach for Environmental Restoration Plan for Corrective Action Unit 134: Aboveground Storage Tanks, Nevada Test Site, Nevada, DOE/NV--1275, dated May 2008. This addendum expands upon information provided in the May 2008 plan. It provides specific details regarding samples to be collected at Corrective Action Sites 15-01-05 and 29-01-01. It also provides discussion and rationale for establishing the spatial boundaries of Corrective Action Sites.

Development of 3D silicon radiation sensors employing electrodes fabricated perpendicular to the sensor surfaces to improve fabrication yields and increasing pulse speeds.

An irradiation test device has been developed to support testing of prototypic scale plate type fuels in the Advanced Test Reactor. The experiment hardware and operating conditions were optimized to provide the irradiation conditions necessary to conduct performance and qualification tests on research reactor type fuels for the RERTR program. The device was designed to allow disassembly and reassembly in the ATR spent fuel canal so that interim inspections could be performed on the fuel plates. An ultrasonic scanner was developed to perform dimensional and transmission inspections during these interim investigations. Example results from the AFIP-2 experiment are presented.

The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) is one of the world’s premiere test reactors for performing long term, high flux, and/or large volume irradiation test programs. The ATR is a very versatile facility with a wide variety of experimental test capabilities for providing the environment needed in an irradiation experiment. These capabilities include simple capsule experiments, instrumented and/or temperature-controlled experiments, and pressurized water loop experiment facilities. Monitoring systems have also been utilized to monitor different parameters such as fission gases for fuel experiments, to measure specimen performance during irradiation. ATR’s control system provides a stable axial flux profile throughout each reactor operating cycle, and allows the thermal and fast neutron fluxes to be controlled separately in different sections of the core. The ATR irradiation positions vary in diameter from 16 mm to 127 mm over an active core height of 1.2 m. This paper discusses the different irradiation capabilities with examples of different experiments and the cost/benefit issues related to each capability. The recent designation of ATR as a national scientific user facility will make the ATR much more accessible at very low to no cost for research by universities and possibly commercial entities.

Describes NREL's work on next-generation vehicle cooling technologies (jets, sprays, microchannels) and novel packaging topologies to reduce costs and increase performance and reliability.

The charter goal of the Agile Machining and Inspection Thrust Area Team is to identify technical requirements, within the nuclear weapons complex (NWC), for Agile Machining and Inspection capabilities. During FY 2008, the team identified Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) Pro/CMM as a software tool for use in off-line programming of probing routines--used for measurement--for machining and turning centers. The probing routine would be used for in-process verification of part geometry. The same Pro/CMM program used on the machine tool could also be employed for program validation / part verification using a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). Funding was provided to determine the compatibility of the Pro/CMM probing program with CMM software (Zeiss DMISEngine).

One of the hallmarks of linear coupling is the resonant exchange of oscillation amplitude between the horizontal and vertical planes when the difference between the unperturbed tunes is close to an integer. The standard derivation of this phenomenon (known as the difference resonance) can be found, for example, in the classic papers of Guignard [1, 2]. One starts with an uncoupled lattice and adds a linear perturbation that couples the two planes. The equations of motion are expressed in hamiltonian form. As the difference between the unperturbed tunes approaches an integer, one finds that the perturbing terms in the hamiltonian can be divided into terms that oscillate slowly and ones that oscillate rapidly. The rapidly oscillating terms are discarded or transformed to higher order with an appropriate canonical transformation. The resulting approximate hamiltonian gives equations of motion that clearly exhibit the exchange of oscillation amplitude between the two planes. If, instead of the hamiltonian, one is given the four-by-four matrix for one turn around a synchrotron, then one has the complete solution for the turn-by-turn (TBT) motion. However, the conditions for the phenomenon of amplitude exchange are not obvious from a casual inspection of the matrix. These conditions and those …

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The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) has been in operation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 1966. To upgrade and enhance capabilities for neutron science research at the reactor, a larger HB-2 beam tube was installed in April of 2002. To assess, experimentally, the impact of this larger beam tube on radiation damage rates [i.e., displacement-per-atom (dpa) rates] used in vessel life extension studies, dosimetry experiments were performed from April to August 2004 during fuel cycles 400 and 401. This report documents the analysis of the dosimetry experiments and the determination of best-estimate dpa rates. These dpa rates are obtained by performing a least-squares adjustment of calculated neutron and gamma-ray fluxes and the measured responses of radiometric monitors and beryllium helium accumulation fluence monitors. The best-estimate dpa rates provided here will be used to update HFIR pressure vessel life extension studies, which determine the pressure/temperature limits for reactor operation and the HFIR pressure vessel's remaining life. All irradiation parameters given in this report correspond to a reactor power of 85 MW.

The assembly of the BDYE detector requires the attachment of sixteen silicon (Si) processor dice (eight on the top side; eight on the bottom side) onto a low-temperature, co-fired ceramic (LTCC) substrate using 63Sn-37Pb (wt.%, Sn-Pb) in a double-reflow soldering process (nitrogen). There are 132 solder joints per die. The bond pads were gold-platinum-palladium (71Au-26Pt-3Pd, wt.%) thick film layers fired onto the LTCC in a post-process sequence. The pull strength and failure modes provided the quality metrics for the Sn-Pb solder joints. Pull strengths were measured in both the as-fabricated condition and after exposure to thermal cycling (-55/125 C; 15 min hold times; 20 cycles). Extremely low pull strengths--referred to as the low pull strength phenomenon--were observed intermittently throughout the product build, resulting in added program costs, schedule delays, and a long-term reliability concern for the detector. There was no statistically significant correlation between the low pull strength phenomenon and (1) the LTCC 'sub-floor' lot; (2) grit blasting the LTCC surfaces prior to the post-process steps; (3) the post-process parameters; (4) the conductor pad height (thickness); (5) the dice soldering assembly sequence; or (5) the dice pull test sequence. Formation of an intermetallic compound (IMC)/LTCC interface caused by thick film …

We measure the production cross section of t{bar t} events in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. The data was collected by the CDF experiment in Run 2 of the Tevatron accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory between 2002 and 2007. 1.7 fb{sup -1} of data was recorded during this time period. We reconstruct t{bar t} events in the lepton+jets channel, whereby one W boson - resulting from the decay of the top quark pairs - decays leptonically and the other hadronically. The dominant background to this process is the production of W bosons in association with multiple jets. To distinguish t{bar t} from background, we identify soft electrons from the semileptonic decay of heavy flavor jets produced in t{bar t} events. We measure a cross section of {sigma}{sub p{bar p}} = 7.8 {+-} 2.4(stat) {+-} 1.6(syst) {+-} 0.5(lumi).

A near-term vented fuel pin concept as a back-up option for the gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR) system was evaluated. This work explored the feasibility of using mixed carbide fuel (U0.85P0.15)C with off-the-shelf monolithic SiC clad in order to meet requirements for GFR fuel with an average burnup of 10%. The stress loading on the SiC cladding due to fuel swelling and thermal stress due to temperature gradient were estimated based on the data from the development of carbide fuels in the 1970’s-1980’s and the materials properties for SiC tubes. The fuel swelling at the goal burnup (10%) is expected to produce a hoop stress of approximately 32 MPa in cladding, approaching the estimated maximum allowable hoop stress (~33 MPa) for a SiC cladding reliability of 99.99%. The estimated tensile thermal stress component (~121 MPa) near the outer surface of a monolithic SiC cladding is likely to limit its application at high temperatures.

Recent developments in evaluation of dose-response models in light of uncertain dose data (Stram and Kopecky 2003; Schafer and Gilbert 2006) have highlighted the importance of different types of uncertainties in the development of individual dose estimates. These include uncertain parameters that may be either shared or unshared within the dosimetric cohort, and also the nature of the type of uncertainty as either classical or Berkson. This report is an initial attempt to identify the nature of the various input parameters and calculational methods incorporated in the Techa River Dosimetry System (based on the TRDS-2000 implementation as a starting point, with additions for recently-developed capabilities). This report reviews the database, equations, and input parameters, and then identifies the author's interpretations of their general nature. It closes with some questions for the users of the data (epidemiologists and biostatisticians), so that the next implantation of the TRDS will provide the most useful information.

We present the latest measurements on production, spectroscopy, lifetimes and branching fractions for b-mesons, b-baryons and quarkonia. We also discuss recent results on B{sub s}{sup 0} mixing as well as on CP violation for the B{sub s}{sup 0} meson and for b-baryons. These results were obtained by analyzing data collected by the CDF II detector at Fermilab.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The Neutrino Factory has been proposed as a facility to provide an intense source of neutrinos suitable for the measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters and a possible CP violating phase to unprecedented precision. In the Neutrino Factory, neutrinos are produced by the decay of a muon beam with 20-50 GeV per muon. Initially, the muon beam occupies a large volume in phase space, which must be reduced before the beam can be accelerated. The proposed method to achieve this is to use a solenoidal ionisation colling channel.

This work provides a comprehensive uncertainty technique to evaluate uncertainty, resulting in a more realistic evaluation of PI, thereby requiring fewer resources to address scenarios and allowing resources to be used across more scenarios. For a given set of dversary resources, two types of uncertainty are associated with PI for a scenario: (1) aleatory (random) uncertainty for detection probabilities and time delays and (2) epistemic (state of knowledge) uncertainty for the adversary resources applied during an attack. Adversary esources consist of attributes (such as equipment and training) and knowledge about the security system; to date, most evaluations have assumed an adversary with very high resources, adding to the conservatism in the evaluation of PI. The aleatory uncertainty in PI is ddressed by assigning probability distributions to detection probabilities and time delays. A numerical sampling technique is used to evaluate PI, addressing the repeated variable dependence in the equation for PI.

In this paper, we use the method of rapid oscillating field to solve the equation of ion motion in an RF gun. We apply the method to the BNL 1/2-cell SRF photogun and demonstrate that a significant portion of ions produced in the gun can reach the cathode if no special precautions are taken. Also, the paper proposes a simple mitigation recipe that can reduce the rate of ion bombardment.

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A CFD modeling and simulation process for large-scale problems using an arbitrary fast reactor fuel assembly design was evaluated. Three dimensional flow distributions of sodium for several fast reactor fuel assembly pin spacing configurations were simulated on high performance computers using commercial CFD software. This research focused on 19-pin fuel assembly “benchmark” geometry, similar in design to the Advanced Burner Test Reactor, where each pin is separated by helical wire-wrap spacers. Several two-equation turbulence models including the k-e and SST (Menter) k-? were evaluated. Considerable effort was taken to resolve the momentum boundary layer, so as to eliminate the need for wall functions and reduce computational uncertainty. High performance computers were required to generate the hybrid meshes needed to predict secondary flows created by the wire-wrap spacers; computational meshes ranging from 65 to 85 million elements were common. A general validation methodology was followed, including mesh refinement and comparison of numerical results with empirical correlations. Predictions for velocity, temperature, and pressure distribution are shown. The uncertainty of numerical models, importance of high fidelity experimental data, and the challenges associated with simulating and validating large production-type problems are presented.