Article on the History Engine Project, an online archive consisting of thousands of narratives written and contributed by undergraduates.

Poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) capped platinum and rhodium nanoparticles (7-12 nm) have been studied with UV-VIS, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. The absorption bands in the region 190-900 nm are shown to be sensitive to the electronic structure of surface Rh and Pt atoms as well as to the aggregation of the nanoparticles. In-situ FTIR-DRIFT spectroscopy of the thermal decay of PVP stabilized Rh and Pt nanoparticles in H{sub 2} and O{sub 2} atmospheres in temperatures ranging from 30 C-350 C reveal that decomposition of PVP above 200 C, PVP transforms into a 'polyamidpolyene' - like material that is in turn converted into a thin layer of amorphous carbon above 300 C. Adsorbed carbon monoxide was used as a probing molecule to monitor changes of electronic structure of surface Rh and Pt atoms and accessible surface area. The behavior of surface Rh and Pt atoms with ligated CO and amide groups of pyrrolidones resemble that of surface coordination compounds.

The US Department of Energy, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) conducted a Research Needs Workshop, referred to as ReNeW, in June 2009. The information developed at this workshop will help OFES develop a plan for US fusion research during the ITER era, roughly the next two decades. The workshop was organized in five Themes, one of which was Harnessing Fusion Power (or Fusion Power for short). The top level goal of the Fusion Power Theme was to identify the research needed to develop the knowledge to design and build, with high confidence, robust and reliable systems that can convert fusion products to useful forms of energy in a reactor environment, including a self-sufficient supply of tritium fuel. Each Theme was subsequently subdivided into Panels to address specific topics. The Fusion Power Panel topics were: fusion fuel cycle; power extraction; materials science; safety and environment; and reliability, availability, maintainability and inspectability (RAMI). Here we present the key findings of the Fusion Power Theme.

In the past years, energetic vacuum deposition methods have been developed in different laboratories to improve Nb/Cu technology for superconducting cavities. Jefferson Lab is pursuing energetic condensation deposition via Electron Cyclotron Resonance. As part of this study, the influence of the deposition energy on the material and RF properties of the Nb thin film is investigated. The film surface and structure analyses are conducted with various techniques like X-ray diffraction, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Auger Electron Spectroscopy and RHEED. The microwave properties of the films are characterized on 50 mm disk samples with a 7.5 GHz surface impedance characterization system. This paper presents surface impedance measurements in correlation with surface and material characterization for Nb films produced on copper substrates with different bias voltages and also highlights emerging opportunities for developing multilayer SRF films with a new deposition system.

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The Surrogate Ratio Method (SRM) was employed in the first experimental determination of the 231Th(n,f) cross section, relative to the 235U(n,f) cross section, over an equivalent neutron energy range of 360 keV to 10 MeV. The 230Th(n,f) cross section was also deduced using the SRM, relative to the 234U(n,f) cross section, over an equivalent neutron energy range of 220 keV to 25 MeV. The desired compound nuclei were populated using (3He,3He) and (3He) reactions on targets of 232Th and 236U and relative fission decay probabilities were measured. The surrogate 230,231Th(n,f) cross sections were compared to cross section evaluations and directly-measured experimental data, where available.

The variability of radiation responses in ovarian tumors and tumor-derived cell lines is poorly understood. Since both DNA repair capacity and p53 status can significantly alter radiation sensitivity, we evaluated these factors along with radiation sensitivity in a panel of sporadic human ovarian carcinoma cell lines. We observed a gradation of radiation sensitivity among these sixteen lines, with a five-fold difference in the LD50 between the most radiosensitive and the most radioresistant cells. The DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) is essential for the repair of radiation induced DNA double-strand breaks in human somatic cells. Therefore, we measured gene copy number, expression levels, protein abundance, genomic copy and kinase activity for DNA-PK in all of our cell lines. While there were detectable differences in DNA-PK between the cell lines, there was no clear correlation with any of these differences and radiation sensitivity. In contrast, p53 function as determined by two independent methods, correlated well with radiation sensitivity, indicating p53 mutant ovarian cancer cells are typically radioresistant relative to p53 wild-type lines. These data suggest that the activity of regulatory molecules such as p53 may be better indicators of radiation sensitivity than DNA repair enzymes such as DNAPK in ovarian cancer.

Neutron Imaging is a key diagnostic for use in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments, and has been fielded on experiments at Omega and Z. It will also be a key diagnostics at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and eventually at the Laser Megajoule in France. Most systems are based on a neutron pinhole array placed at the target chamber while it is imaged by a scintillating fiber block. The light output of this scintillator is coupled via a reducer to a fiber bundle which transports the image to a CCD camera. Alternatively some systems use optical lens assemblies to focus the light onto a camera.For ICF applications the neutron imaging systems will primarily look at 14.2 MeV neutrons. However, 2.2 MeV and 20+ MeV neutrons will also be present and will potentially provide key information.

A number of technical requirements and performance criteria can drive stellarator costs, e.g., tight tolerances, accurate coil positioning, low aspect ratio (compactness), choice of assembly strategy, metrology, and complexity of the stellarator coil geometry. With the completion of a seven-year design and construction effort of the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) it is useful to interject the NCSX experience along with the collective experiences of the NCSX stellarator community to improving the stellarator configuration. Can improvements in maintenance be achieved by altering the stellarator magnet configuration with changes in the coil shape or with the combination of trim coils? Can a mechanical configuration be identified that incorporates a partial set of shaped fixed stellarator coils along with some removable coil set to enhance the overall machine maintenance? Are there other approaches that will simplify the concepts, improve access for maintenance, reduce overall cost and improve the reliability of a stellarator based power plant? Using ARIES-CS and NCSX as reference cases, alternative approaches have been studied and developed to show how these modifications would favorably impact the stellarator power plant and experimental projects. The current status of the alternate stellarator configurations being developed will be described and a comparison made to …

Decommissioning of nuclear power plants and other nuclear fuel cycle facilities has been an imperative issue lately. There exist significant experience and generally accepted recommendations on remediation of lands with residual radioactive contamination; however, there are hardly any such recommendations on remediation of cooling ponds that, in most cases, are fairly large water reservoirs. The literature only describes remediation of minor reservoirs containing radioactive silt (a complete closure followed by preservation) or small water reservoirs resulting in reestablishing natural water flows. Problems associated with remediation of river reservoirs resulting in flooding of vast agricultural areas also have been described. In addition, the severity of environmental and economic problems related to the remedial activities is shown to exceed any potential benefits of these activities. One of the large, highly contaminated water reservoirs that require either remediation or closure is Karachay Lake near the MAYAK Production Association in the Chelyabinsk Region of Russia where liquid radioactive waste had been deep well injected for a long period of time. Backfilling of Karachay Lake is currently in progress. It should be noted that secondary environmental problems associated with its closure are considered to be of less importance since sustaining Karachay Lake would have presented …

Experiments and calculations were conducted with a 0.13 mm fine wire thermocouple within a naturally-aspirated Gill radiation shield to assess and improve the accuracy of air temperature measurements without the use of mechanical aspiration, wind speed or radiation measurements. It was found that this thermocouple measured the air temperature with root-mean-square errors of 0.35 K within the Gill shield without correction. A linear temperature correction was evaluated based on the difference between the interior plate and thermocouple temperatures. This correction was found to be relatively insensitive to shield design and yielded an error of 0.16 K for combined day and night observations. The correction was reliable in the daytime when the wind speed usually exceeds 1 m s{sup -1} but occasionally performed poorly at night during very light winds. Inspection of the standard deviation in the thermocouple wire temperature identified these periods but did not unambiguously locate the most serious events. However, estimates of sensor accuracy during these periods is complicated by the much larger sampling volume of the mechanically-aspirated sensor compared with the naturally-aspirated sensor and the presence of significant near surface temperature gradients. The root-mean-square errors therefore are upper limits to the aspiration error since they include intrinsic …

We present particle-in-cell simulations, using the VORPAL framework, of 10 GeV laser plasma wakefield accelerator stages. Scaling of the physical parameters with the plasma density allows us to perform these simulations at reasonable cost and to design high performance stages. In particular we show that, by choosing to operate in the quasi-linear regime, we can use higher order laser modes to tailor the focusing forces. This makes it possible to increase the matched electron beam radius and hence the total charge in the bunch while preserving the low bunch emittance required for applications.

The quantum anomaly that breaks the U(1) axial symmetry of massless multi-flavored QCD leaves behind a discrete flavor-singlet chiral invariance. With massive quarks, this residual symmetry has a close connection with the strong CP-violating parameter theta. One result is that if the lightest quarks are degenerate, then a first order transition will occur when theta passes through pi. The resulting framework helps clarify when the rooting prescription for extrapolating in the number of flavors is valid.

Slurries of inorganic solids, containing both stable and radioactive elements, were produced during the cold war as by-products of the production of plutonium and enriched uranium and stored in large tanks at the Savannah River Site. Some of this high level waste is being processed into a stable glass waste form today. Waste processing involves various large scale operations such as tank mixing, inter-tank transfers, washing, gravity settling and decanting, chemical adjustment, and vitrification. The rheological properties of waste slurries are of particular interest. Methods for modeling flow curve data and predicting the properties of slurry blends are particularly important during certain operational phases. Several methods have been evaluated to predict the rheological properties of sludge slurry blends from the data on the individual slurries. These have been relatively successful.

We discuss the properties of an analytical solution for waves in radiating fluids, with a view towards its implementation as a quantitative test of radiation hydrodynamics codes. A homogeneous radiating fluid in local thermodynamic equilibrium is periodically driven at the boundary of a one-dimensional domain, and the solution describes the propagation of the waves thus excited. Two modes are excited for a given driving frequency, generally referred to as a radiative acoustic wave and a radiative diffusion wave. While the analytical solution is well known, several features are highlighted here that require care during its numerical implementation. We compare the solution in a wide range of parameter space to a numerical integration with a Lagrangian radiation hydrodynamics code. Our most significant observation is that flux-limited diffusion does not preserve causality for waves on a homogeneous background.

We present an upgrade plan for the CMS HCAL detector. The HCAL upgrade is required for the increased luminosity (3 * 10E34) of SLHC Phase I which is targeted for 2014. A key aspect of the HCAL upgrade is to add longitudinal segmentation to improve background rejection, energy resolution, and electron isolation at the L1 trigger. The increased segmentation is achieved by replacing the hybrid photodiodes (HPDs) with silicon PMTs (SIPMs). We plan to instrument each fiber of the calorimeter with an SIPM (103,000 total). We will then electrically sum outputs from selected SIPMs to form the longitudinal readout segments. In addition to having more longitudinal information, the upgrade plans include a new custom ADC with matched sensitivity and timing information. The increased data volume requires higher speed transmitters and the additional power dissipation for the readout electronics requires better thermal design, since much of the on-detector infrastructure (front-end electronics crates, cooling pipes, optical fiber plant, etc.) will remain the same. We will report on the preliminary designs for these upgraded systems, along with performance requirements and initial design studies.

A search for squarks and gluinos is performed in the topology of multijet events accompanied by large missing transverse energy in 2.1fb{sup -1} of p{bar p} collision data collected using the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV. About half of this dataset is specifically analyzed for events involving at least one tau lepton decaying hadronically in addition. No deviation from the Standard Model expectation is observed and the analyses are combined to set limits on the squark and gluino masses and on parameters of minimal supergravity.

Fast Reactor Fuel Type and Reactor Safety Performance R. Wigeland , Idaho National Laboratory J. Cahalan, Argonne National Laboratory The sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor is currently being evaluated for the efficient transmutation of the highly-hazardous, long-lived, transuranic elements that are present in spent nuclear fuel. One of the fundamental choices that will be made is the selection of the fuel type for the fast reactor, whether oxide, metal, carbide, nitride, etc. It is likely that a decision on the fuel type will need to be made before many of the related technologies and facilities can be selected, from fuel fabrication to spent fuel reprocessing. A decision on fuel type should consider all impacts on the fast reactor system, including safety. Past work has demonstrated that the choice of fuel type may have a significant impact on the severity of consequences arising from accidents, especially for severe accidents of low probability. In this paper, the response of sodium-cooled fast reactors is discussed for both oxide and metal fuel types, highlighting the similarities and differences in reactor response and accident consequences. Any fast reactor facility must be designed to be able to successfully prevent, mitigate, or accommodate all consequences of potential events, …

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Single crystal, high purity synthetic diamond is used as photoabsorption and carrier transport medium in x-ray photodiodes. While the thermal / mechanical robustness and high x-ray transmission of diamond make such devices attractive for synchrotron instrumentation, state-of-the-art quality material and electrical interfaces further make such detectors feasible. The present work develops methodology for attaining calculable responsivity (photocurrent yield) over a wide range of photon energies (0.2 to 28 keV) to within 5% accuracy. These methods achieve linear response for up to 0.2 W absorbed x-ray power and response time as low as 1 ns. Details of contact formation / robustness and bias configuration are explored.

The cross section for jets from b quarks produced simultaneously with a W boson has been measured in p{bar p} collision data from 1.9 fb{sup -1} of integrated luminosity recorded by the CDF II detector at the Tevatron. Jets consistent with the decay of long-lived hadrons are selected by identifying a displaced decay vertex. The invariant mass of the charged particle tracks associated with the vertex is sensitive to the flavor of the decaying hadron and is used to determine the fraction of jets from b-quark production. We measure a b-jet cross section of 2.74 {+-} 0.27(stat.) {+-} 0.42(syst.) pb in association with one flavor of leptonic W boson decay over a limited kinematic phase space.

The National Compact Stellarator Experiment's (NCSX) modular coils presented a number of engineering and manufacturing challenges due to their complex shapes, requirements for high dimensional accuracy and high current density requirements due to space constraints. Being the first of their kind, these coils required the implementation of many new manufacturing and measuring techniques and procedures. This was the first time that these manufacturing techniques and methods were applied in the production of coils at the laboratory. This resulted in a steep learning curve for the first several coils. Through the effective use of procedures, tooling modifications, involvement and ownership by the manufacturing workforce, and an emphasis on safety, the assembly team was able to reduce the manufacturing times and improve upon the manufacturing methods. This paper will discuss the learning curve and steps that were taken to improve the manufacturing efficiency and reduce the manufacturing times for the modular coils without forfeiting quality.

Subcritical experiments using californium source-driven noise analysis (CSDNA) and Feynman variance-to-mean methods were performed with an alpha-phase plutonium sphere reflected by nickel shells, up to a maximum thickness of 7.62 cm. Both methods provide means of determining the subcritical multiplication of a system containing nuclear material. A benchmark analysis of the experiments was performed for inclusion in the 2010 edition of the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments. Benchmark models have been developed that represent these subcritical experiments. An analysis of the computed eigenvalues and the uncertainty in the experiment and methods was performed. The eigenvalues computed using the CSDNA method were very close to those calculated using MCNP5; however, computed eigenvalues are used in the analysis of the CSDNA method. Independent calculations using KENO-VI provided similar eigenvalues to those determined using the CSDNA method and MCNP5. A slight trend with increasing nickel-reflector thickness was seen when comparing MCNP5 and KENO-VI results. For the 1.27-cm-thick configuration the MCNP eigenvalue was approximately 300 pcm greater. The calculated KENO eigenvalue was about 300 pcm greater for the 7.62-cm-thick configuration. The calculated results were approximately the same for a 5-cm-thick shell. The eigenvalues determined using the Feynman method are up to …

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is managing two large regional wind integration studies on behalf of the United States Department of Energy. These two studies are believed to be the largest ever undertaken in the United States.