An overview of present operations concerned with the management of Hanford-generated high-level radioactive wastes is presented. Interim storage, leak experience, costs, and program operations are discussed. (LK)

A synopsis is given of the detailed characterization of the existing environment at Hanford. The following aspects are covered: demography, land use, meteorology, geology, hydrology, and seismology. It is concluded that Hanford is one of the most extensively characterized nuclear sites. 16 figures. (DLC)

Instrumentation has been developed at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for measuring subkilovolt x-rays from laser-produced plasmas. This information is needed to do a complete energy balance on laser fusion experiments. The instruments must have thin windows and yet discriminate against the severe environment of other intense target emissions such as ions, electrons, and scattered laser light. Low energy x-ray measurements down to 0.1 keV will be presented using these absolutely calibrated detectors on laser target shots with the LLL Terawatt laser facility, Cyclops. Precautions in using these detectors in a laser fusion target chamber will be enumerated from our experience in using these instruments on hundreds of laser shots.

Switching and power supply problems of neutral atom beam injection systems and superconducting magnets are briefly discussed. Typical power supplies for both systems are described.

Some new experiments designed to accurately determine the time interval required to produce a reactive event in confined explosives subjected to temperatures which will cause decomposition are described. Geometry and boundary conditions were both well defined so that these experiments on the rapid thermal decomposition of HE are amenable to predictive modelling. Experiments have been carried out on TNT, TATB and on two plastic-bonded HMX-based high explosives, LX-04 and LX-10. When the results of these experiments are plotted as the logarithm of the time to explosion versus 1/T K (Arrhenius plot), the curves produced are remarkably linear. This is in contradiction to the results obtained by an iterative solution of the Laplace equation for a system with a first order rate heat source. Such calculations produce plots which display considerable curvature. The experiments have also shown that the time to explosion is strongly influenced by the void volume in the containment vessel. Results of the experiments with calculations based on the heat flow equations coupled with first-order models of chemical decomposition are compared. The comparisons demonstrate the need for a more realistic reaction model.

The presence of hydrodynamic fluid instability at the ablation surface puts constraints on the kinds of targets, surface finish, and energy sources that one can use for thermonuclear micro-implosions. If Taylor-like modes grow at near the classical value, one is limited to low aspect ratio shells and surface finishes of 10-100 A. These surface finish requirements can be reduced by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude by exploiting density gradient modification techniques to obtain a shallow density gradient at the ablation surface. For laser driven targets, the gradient is achieved by utilizing suprathermal electrons with a high energy ''get lost'' region to eliminate severe preheat problems. For charged particle sources, the reduction is achieved by introducing an energy spread on the driving source.

The Kalman filtering method is extended to two-dimensions. The resulting computational load is found to be excessive. The reduced update Kalman filter is derived. It is shown to be optimum in that it minimizes the post update mean square error (mse) under the constraint of updating only the nearby previously processed neighbors. The resulting filter is a stable, nonsymmetric half-plane recursive filter. This method is proposed as a solution of the 2-D filter design problem for stochastic dynamical models.

The practices which are currently used for handling radioactive waste are outlined. These include burial of solid waste, scrubbing of off gas streams, and routing liquid effluents (mostly cooling water) to open ponds where the water percolates to the water table. (LK)

In recent years several techniques have become available to characterize the structure and chemical composition of surfaces of ceramic materials. These techniques utilize electron scattering and scattering of ions from surfaces. Low-energy electron diffraction is used to determine the surface structure, Auger electron spectroscopy and other techniques of electron spectroscopy (ultraviolet and photoelectron spectroscopies) are employed to determine the composition of the surface. In addition the oxidation state of surface atoms may be determined using these techniques. Ion scattering mass spectrometry and secondary ion mass spectrometry are also useful in characterizing surfaces and their reactions. These techniques, their applications and the results of recent studies are discussed. 12 figures, 52 references, 2 tables.

Dielectrophoretic filtration experiments were conducted on glass, polyester, dacron, Teflon, wool, acrylic and polypropylene filter media. A polydispersed (sigma g = 2.0, ammd = 0.95 ..mu.. m) sodium chloride particle was used as a test aerosol. All materials exhibited significant increases in efficiency with increasing field strengths. Efficiencies of greater than 99 percent could be obtained from glass fiber mats using a 13 kV/cm electric field at 16.3 cm/s face velocity.

A conceptual drawing of the MX experiment is given. The central feature of the MX is a large superconducting magnet. The magnet parameters and conductor parameters are listed. The electrical and engineering design of the magnet is given.

The energy carried by particles and low energy x-rays resulting from irradiation of targets with .5 to 1 TW, 1.06 ..mu..m lasers has been measured. The energy distributions were obtained from measurements at discrete locations using calorimeters and work is in progress to obtain them over a hemisphere with a thermal imaging system. Azimuthal symmetry and polar distributions for different focusing schemes have been determined. The data have been integrated to obtain the absorbed energy and these values compared to box calorimetry and optical energy balance. The relative emission of low energy x-rays from different Z materials can be obtained by comparing these data to charge collector data. Such comparisons also showed that the effective ion charge can be as low as a factor of two below the completely ionized state. The existence of low charge state ions has since been confirmed with high resolutions spectrometers.

An overview of the Hanford Long-Term High-Level Waste Management Program is presented. Four topics are discussed: first, the kinds and quantities of waste that will exist and are included in this program; second, how the plan is structured to solve this problem; third, the alternative waste management methods being considered; and fourth, the technology program that is in progress to carry out this plan. (LK)