Molten Salt Oxidation (MSO) is a promising alternative to incineration for the treatment of a variety of organic wastes. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has prepared a facility in which an integrated pilot-scale MSO treatment system is being tested and demonstrated. The system consists of a MSO vessel with a dedicated off-gas treatment system, a salt recycle system, feed preparation equipment, and a ceramic final waste forms immobilization system. This integrated system was designed and engineered based on operational experience with an engineering-scale reactor unit and extensive laboratory development on salt recycle and final forms preparation. The MSO/off-gas system has been operational since December 1997. The salt recycle system and the ceramic final forms immobilization became operational in May and August, 1998, respectively. We have tested the MSO facility with various organic feeds, including chlorinated solvents, tributyl phosphate/kerosene, PCB-contaminated waste oils & solvents, booties, plastic pellets, ion exchanged resins, activated carbon, radioactive-spiked organics, and well-characterized low-level liquid mixed wastes. MSO is shown to be a versatile technology for hazardous waste treatment and may be a solution to many waste disposal problems in DOE sites. This report presents the results obtained from operation of the integrated pilot-scale MSO treatment system through …

The re-baseline of the Expedited Technology Demonstration Project (Revised Mixed Waste Facility Project) is designated as Project Baseline Revision 4.0. The last approved baseline was identified as Project Baseline Revision 3.0 and was issued in October 1996. Project Baseline Revision 4.0 does not depart from the formal DOE guidance followed by, and contained in, Revision 3.0. This revised baseline document describes the MSO and Final Forms testing activities that will occur during FY98, the final year of the ETD Project. The cost estimate for work during FY98 continues to be $2.OM as published in Revision 3.0. However, the funds will be all CENRTC rather than the OPEX/CENTRC split previously anticipated. LLNL has waived overhead charges on ETD Project CENRTC funds since the beginning of project activities. By requesting the $2.OM as all CENTRC a more aggressive approach to staffing and testing can be taken. Due to a cost under- run condition during FY97 procurements were made and work was accomplished, with the knowledge of DOE, in the Feed Preparation and Final Forms areas that were not in the scope of Revision 3.0. Feed preparation activities for FY98 have been expanded to include the drum opening station/enclosure previously deleted.

In 1984, Congress and the Department of Energy (DOE) established the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program to enable the director of a national laboratory to foster and expedite innovative research and development (R and D) in mission areas. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) continually examines these mission areas through strategic planning and shapes the LDRD Program to meet its long-term vision. The goal of the LDRD Program is to spur development of new scientific and technical capabilities that enable LLNL to respond to the challenges within its evolving mission areas. In addition, the LDRD Program provides LLNL with the flexibility to nurture and enrich essential scientific and technical competencies and enables the Laboratory to attract the most qualified scientists and engineers. The FY98 LDRD portfolio described in this annual report has been carefully structured to continue the tradition of vigorously supporting DOE and LLNL strategic vision and evolving mission areas. The projects selected for LDRD funding undergo stringent review and selection processes, which emphasize strategic relevance and require technical peer reviews of proposals by external and internal experts. These FY98 projects emphasize the Laboratory's national security needs: stewardship of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, responsibility for the …

The scope of the Mercury Laser project encompasses the research, development, and engineering required to build a new generation of diode-pumped solid-state lasers for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). The Mercury Laser will be the first integrated demonstration of laser diodes, crystals, and gas cooling within a scalable laser architecture. This report is intended to summarize the progress accomplished during the first three years of the project. Due to the technological challenges associated with production of 900 nm diode-bars, heatsinks, and high optical-quality Yb:S-FAP crystals, the initial focus of the project was primarily centered on the R&D in these three areas. During the third year of the project, the R&D continued in parallel with the development of computer codes, partial activation of the laser, component testing, and code validation where appropriate.

The scope of the Mercury Laser project encompasses the research, development, and engineering required to build a new generation of diode-pumped solid-state lasers for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF). The Mercury Laser will be the first integrated demonstration of laser diodes, crystals, and gas cooling within a scalable laser architecture. This report is intended to summarize the progress accomplished during the first three years of the project. Due to the technological challenges associated with production of 900 nm diode-bars, heatsinks, and high optical-quality Yb:S-FAP crystals, the initial focus of the project was primarily centered on the R&D in these three areas. During the third year of the project, the R&D continued in parallel with the development of computer codes, partial activation of the laser, component testing, and code validation where appropriate.

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.

The Kolsky-Hopkinson Bar Dynamic Test Facility in Building PF-4 at TA-55 recently became operational and the first series of plutonium samples from a baseline alloy were successfully tested on December 8, 1997 through the dedicated efforts of a large number of people in groups NMT-9, NMT-11, MST-8, NMT-5, and JCI. The Enhanced Surveillance Program provided the necessary support for this achievement. The Kolsky-Hopkinson bar is an instrument designed to measure the uniaxial compression stress-strain characteristics of special nuclear materials (SNM) in a glovebox environment at intermediate strain rates (typically 500 s{sup {minus}1} to 10,000 s{sup {minus}1}), over a wide temperature range (cryogenic up to near-melting temperatures), and up to strains of about 50% per test. Due to radiation contamination hazards, SNM samples are contained within a specially designed glovebox with only a small portion of the bar system. The uniaxial high-strain-rate deformation behavior of SNM materials is revealed by stress-strain-strain rate curves calculated from strain signals acquired by gauges on the pressure bars. The compressive stress-strain mechanical behavior of a range of weapons-relevant SNM materials (both baseline and stockpile-aged plutonium and enriched uranium), measured over a wide range of strain rates and temperatures, is necessary to support the development of …

The UCSD/TEXTOR collaboration has achieved the completion of three major tasks this year: (1) pump limiter studies; (2) RI-mode turbulence studies; and (3) velocity shear stabilization of turbulence. Brief summaries of progress in each area are given.

OAK (B204) Task III: UCSD/DIII-D/Textor FY-97-98 Accomplishments. A comprehensive report on the physics of pump limiters and particularly, the characterization of ALT-II, was published in Nuclear Fusion, bringing the project to a closure. The performance of the toroidal pump limiter was characterized under full auxiliary heating of 7 MW of NBI and ICRH and full pumping, as stated in the project milestones. Relevant highlights are: (1) Pumping with ALT-II allows for density control. (2) The achieved exhaust efficiency is 4% during NBI operation and near 2% during OH or ICRH operation. (3) We have shown that an exhaust efficiency of 2% is sufficient to satisfy the ash removal requirements of fusion reactors. (4) The plasma particle efflux and the pumped flux both increase with density and heating power. (5) The particle confinement time is less than the energy confinement time by a factor of 4. In summary, pumped belt limiters could provide the density control and ash exhaust requirements of fusion reactors.

The CORBA-based Simulator was a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project that applied simulation techniques to explore critical questions about distributed control architecture. The simulator project used a three-prong approach comprised of a study of object-oriented distribution tools, computer network modeling, and simulation of key control system scenarios. This summary report highlights the findings of the team and provides the architectural context of the study. For the last several years LLNL has been developing the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS), which is an abstract object-oriented software framework for constructing distributed systems. The framework is capable of implementing large event-driven control systems for mission-critical facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Tools developed in this project were applied to the NIF example architecture in order to gain experience with a complex system and derive immediate benefits from this LDRD. The ICCS integrates data acquisition and control hardware with a supervisory system, and reduces the amount of new coding and testing necessary by providing prebuilt components that can be reused and extended to accommodate specific additional requirements. The framework integrates control point hardware with a supervisory system by providing the services needed for distributed control such as database persistence, system …

The Yucca Mountain Project is considering some type of backfill, possibly emplaced as a capillary barrier, for inclusion in the Engineering Barrier System (EBS) at the potential Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository site. The performance of capillary barriers in isothermal, low- temperature, environments has been studied extensively (e.g., Ho and Webb, 1998; OZdenburg and Pruess, 1993; Ross, 1990). The performance of capillary barriers in an non-isothermal, high temperature environment, such as during the thermal pulse phase of a nuclear waste repository, has received much less attention. One concern is that the backfill materials may be altered from that of the as-placed material by the hydrothermal regime imposed by the emplacement of waste in the repository, changing hydrologic properties in a way that degrades the performance of the EBS system. This report is a status report on our efforts to address this concern. The work was initiated by SCR #98-76-041 and was authorized to begin at LLNL in summer 1998. This report is organized as follows. In the first part, we discuss our understanding of the relevant issues of backfill performance based on thermal hydrology. We focus here on changes to hydrologic properties, but we recognize that changes to thermal, mechanical …

Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico, conducts the Energy Storage Systems Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Power Technologies. The goal of this program is to collaborate with industry in developing cost-effective electric energy storage systems for many high-value stationary applications. Sandia National Laboratories is responsible for the engineering analyses, contracted development and testing of energy storage components and systems. This report details the technical achievements realized during fiscal year 1998.

IDWP is a software application that was developed to identify the groundwater monitoring wells at SRS that require containerization and treatment for purge water generated during sampling. Created by the Statistical Consulting Section of SRTC, IDWP is a SAS application that retrieves the necessary data for wells selected by the user from the Site's extensive groundwater database on a remote machine. The program then applies an algorithm, derived by the Environmental Protection Department from the SRS Investigation-Derived Waste (IDW) Management Plan, to the analytical results to determine whether containerization is required for the specified wells. IDWP produces output files that designate the containerization status of each of the selected wells, provide statistics to support the treatment facilities' permits, and assist with controlling and scheduling the handling of the managed purge water. The SRS Aqueous IDW Administrator in the Environmental Restoration Division (ERD) uses IDWP in conjunction with knowledge of new wells to produce quarterly reports that specify which groundwater monitoring wells require purge water containerization for each treatment facility. Special reports supply other groundwater information of interest to ERD, such as analytical concentration plots and groundwater data gathering. Benefits include the timely generation of containerization lists for each treatment facility; …

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.

Of the several thermal, mechanical and hydrological measurements being used to monitor the rockmass response in the Single Heater Test, electrical resistance tomography (ERT) is being used to monitor the movement of liquid water with a special interest in the movement of condensate out of the system. Images of resistivity change were calculated using data collected before, during and after the heating episode. This report will concentrate on the results obtained after heating ceased; previous reports discuss the results obtained during the heating phase. The changes recovered show a region of increasing resistivity approximately centered around the heater as the rock mass cooled. The size of this region grows with time and the resistivity increases become stronger. The increases in resistivity are caused by both temperature and saturation changes. The Waxman Smits model has been used to calculate rock saturation after accounting for temperature effects. The saturation estimates suggest that during the heating phase, a region of drying forms around the heater. During the cooling phase, the dry region has remained relatively stable. Wetter rock regions which developed below the heater during the heating phase, are slowly becoming smaller in size during the cooling phase. The last set of images …

The U.S. Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) sponsored this research project to support the development of new self-assembled monolayer fiber coatings. These coatings can greatly increase the bond strength between the fiber and the resin matrix of a composite material. Composite ammunition components molded from such materials will exhibit higher strength than current materials, and will provide a major improvement in the performance of composites in military applications. Use of composite materials in military applications is desirable because of the lighter weight of the materials and their high strengths. The FY97 project investigated initial interfacial chemical control for enhancement of composite material strength. The core of the project was to modify the covalent interface of glass fibers (or other reinforcing fibers) to induce strong, uniform, defect-free adhesion between the fibers' surfaces and the polymer matrix. Installing a self-assembled monolayer tailored to the specific matrix resin accomplished this. Simply, the self-assembled monolayer modifies the fiber to make it appear to have the same chemical composition as the resin matrix. The self-assembled monolayer creates a receptive, hydrophobic interface that the thermoset resin (or polymer precursors) would wet more effectively, leading to a higher contact surface area and more efficient …

Dissolution experiments were performed on actual samples of NWCF Run H-4 radioactive calcine in fiscal years 1998 and 1999. Run H-4 is an aluminum/sodium blend calcine. Typical dissolution data indicates that between 90-95 wt% of H-4 calcine can be dissolved using 1gram of calcine per 10 mLs of 5-8M nitric acid at boiling temperature. Two liquid raffinate solutions composed of a WM-188/aluminum nitrate blend and a WM-185/aluminum nitrate blend were converted into calcine at the NWCF. Calcine made from each blend was collected and transferred to RAL for dissolution studies. The WM-188/aluminum nitrate blend calcine was dissolved with resultant solutions used as feed material for separation treatment experimentation. The WM-185/aluminum nitrate blend calcine dissolution testing was performed to determine compositional analyses of the dissolved solution and generate UDS for solid/liquid separation experiments. Analytical fusion techniques were then used to determine compositions of the solid calcine and UDS from dissolution. The results from each of these analyses were used to calculate elemental material balances around the dissolution process, validating the experimental data. This report contains all experimental data from dissolution experiments performed using both calcine blends.

The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL or Berkeley Lab) Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program FY 1998 report is compiled from annual reports submitted by principal investigators following the close of the fiscal year. This report describes the supported projects and summarizes their accomplishments. It constitutes a part of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program planning and documentation process that includes an annual planning cycle, projection selection, implementation, and review. The LBNL LDRD program is a critical tool for directing the Laboratory's forefront scientific research capabilities toward vital, excellent, and emerging scientific challenges. The program provides the resources for LBNL scientists to make rapid and significant contributions to critical national science and technology problems. The LDRD program also advances LBNL's core competencies, foundations, and scientific capability, and permits exploration of exciting new opportunities. All projects are work in forefront areas of science and technology. Areas eligible for support include the following: Advanced study of hypotheses, concepts, or innovative approaches to scientific or technical problems; Experiments and analyses directed toward ''proof of principle'' or early determination of the utility of new scientific ideas, technical concepts, or devices; and Conception and preliminary technical analyses of experimental facilities or …

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.

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.

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.

Drilling activities were conducted in FY97 and FY98 in the A/M Area to further identify areas of pure phase DNAPL below the water table. The purpose of the work was to further understand the subsurface contaminant distribution and to identify locations below the water table where aggressive DNAPL remediation technologies should be pursued.

The purpose of LDRD #2349, Characterize and Model Final Waste Formulations and Offgas Solids from Thermal Treatment Processes, was to develop a set of tools that would allow the user to, based on the chemical composition of a waste stream to be immobilized, predict the durability (leach behavior) of the final waste form and the phase assemblages present in the final waste form. The objectives of the project were: • investigation, testing and selection of thermochemical code • development of auxiliary thermochemical database • synthesis of materials for leach testing • collection of leach data • using leach data for leach model development • thermochemical modeling The progress toward completion of these objectives and a discussion of work that needs to be completed to arrive at a logical finishing point for this project will be presented.

A method for calculating the redistribution of resonance radiation in hot, dense plasmas is developed by extending the Frequency Fluctuation Model (FFM). This paper is devoted to a brief review of lineshape theory in the linear response approximation, and an introduction to the FFM approach to the modeling of lineshapes in plasmas. This discussion begins with a consideration of the spectral lines emitted by complex ions in plasmas. As is well known, the lineshape is determined by the time- dependent coupling of the ion with the plasma environment. This plasma-emitter interaction, leads to Stark broadening of the spectral lines, and traditionally has been considered in the approximation which treats the ef&@ of the electrons on the emitting ion in the impact limit while the ionic perturbation is� taken to be quasi-static. In this approximation, the time dependence of the perturbation has been eliminated, resulting in a spectral line shape that has purely homogeneous and inhomogeneous contributions and that is described by a simple sum of independent electron imp� act broadened static components. In order to clarify the concepts presented, examples of radiative redistribution functions for simple cases are presented. Included is an example of an X-ray laser pumped system which …