NUCLEAR POWER PLANT PERSONNEL PLAY A VITAL ROLE IN THE PRODUCTIVE, EFFICIENT, AND SAFE GENERATION OF ELECTRIC POWER, WHETHER FOR CONVENTIONAL LIGHT WATER REACTORS OR NEW ADVANCED REACTORS. IT IS WIDELY RECOGNIZED THAT HUMAN ACTIONS THAT DEPART FROM OR FAIL TO ACHIEVE WHAT SHOULD BE DONE CAN BE IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTORS TO THE RISK ASSOCIATED WITH THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. ADVANCED REACTORS ARE EXPECTED TO PRESENT A CONCEPT OF OPERATI...

The effective extraction of Cs+ and Sr2+ into a relatively new and heretofore untested hydrophobic ionic liquid, tri-n-butylmethylammonium bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide was demonstrated with calix[4]arene-bis(tert-octylbenzo-crown-6) and dicyclohexano-18-crown-6, respectively. The coordinated Cs+ and Sr2+ were subsequently removed from the ionic liquid extraction solvent by an electrochemical reduction process carried out at mercury electrodes. This process is non-destructive, permitting the ionic liquid and ionophores to be recycled. Although the process is based on mercury electrodes, this is a benefit rather than a detriment because the liquid mercury containing the Cs and Sr can be easily transported to another electrochemical cell where the Cs and Sr could be electrochemically recovered from the mercury amalgam and concentrated into a minimum volume of water or some other inexpensive solvent. This should facilitate the development of a suitable waste form for the extracted Cs+ and Sr2+. Thus, the feasibility of the proposed ionic liquid-based extraction cycle for the removal of 137Cs+ and 90Sr2+ from simulated aqueous tank waste was demonstrated.

This paper presents two new strategies to speed up connectedcomponent labeling algorithms. The first strategy employs a decisiontreeto minimize the work performed in the scanning phase of connectedcomponent labeling algorithms. The second strategy uses a simplifiedunion-find data structure to represent the equivalence information amongthe labels. For 8-connected components in atwo-dimensional (2D) image,the first strategy reduces the number of neighboring pixels visited from4 to7/3 on average. In various tests, using a decision tree decreases thescanning time by a factor of about 2. The second strategy uses a compactrepresentation of the union-find data structure. This strategysignificantly speeds up the labeling algorithms. We prove analyticallythat a labeling algorithm with our simplified union-find structure hasthe same optimal theoretical time complexity as do the best labelingalgorithms. By extensive experimental measurements, we confirm theexpected performance characteristics of the new labeling algorithms anddemonstrate that they are faster than other optimal labelingalgorithms.