Some aspects of a simple strategy for testing the validity of QCD perturbation theory are examined. The importance of explicit evaluation of higher-order contributions is illustrated by considering Z/sub 0/ decays. The recent progress toward understanding exclusive processes in QCD is discussed and some simple examples are given of how to isolate and test the separate components of the perturbation expansion in a hypothetical series of jet experiments.

A new laboratory building is being constructed adjacent to the Shiva laser to house the Phase I $137M ten-beam Nova laser and a target chamber designed for twenty beams. The first ten beams will be operational in early 1980. Following Phase I, it is planned that the Shiva laser will be shut down and upgraded into ten Nova laser beams. These beams will then be combined with Nova Phase I beams to provide the full twenty beams having a minimum output energy of 300 kJ in a 3 nc pulse, or a power capability of 300 terawatts (10/sup 12/ watts) in a 100 ps pulse. This paper will describe the Phase I engineering project.

Completion of the macropermeability experiment will provide: (i) a direct, in situ measurement of the permeability of 10/sup 5/ to 10/sup 6/ m/sup 3/ of rock; (ii) a potential method for confirming the analysis of a series of small scale permeability tests performed in surface and underground boreholes; (iii) a better understanding of the effect to open borehole zone length on pressure measurement; (iv) increased volume in fractured rock; (v) a basis for evaluating the ventilation technique for flow measurement in large scale testing of low permeability rocks.

Leach rates for /sup 237/Np and /sup 239/Pu are investigated with a single-pass leaching system. The factorial experimental design uses several combinations of solution composition and flow rate, and two temperatures, 25 and 75/sup 0/C. The 25/sup 0/C results are compared with those from a modified IAEA procedure. At 25/sup 0/C, leach rates decrease with time. Agreement between results from the single-pass and modified IAEA methods is fair with WIPP brine leachant, good with NaHCO/sub 3/, and good with distilled H/sub 2/O. Leach rates are approximately independent of flow rates at room temperature, but increase with flow rates at high temperature. Rates for /sup 237/Np increase with temperature, but those for /sup 239/Pu either decrease or do not change with temperature. 7 figures.

Measurements of surface segregation have been carried out on two austenitic stainless steels: Fe-21Cr-6Ni-9Mn and JBK-75. Highly polished polycrystalline samples of each material have been heated in-situ in an ultra-high vacuum system to temperatures ranging from 400/sup 0/ to 800/sup 0/C and examined at temperature using scanning Auger spectroscopy. The results for 21-6-9 show that segregation is strongly heterogeneous with isolated regions enriched in either nitrogen, sulfur or tin. Above approximately 700/sup 0/C the surface composition becomes strongly enhanced in both nitrogen and boron. For JBK-75 the surface is seen to be enriched in both titanium and nickel. Co-segregation effects and the relationship between surface and bulk composition resulting from exposure to elevated temperature are presented.

The work described in this paper is part of a leaching study being conducted for the Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory's Waste Isolation Safety Assessment Program. Simulated high-level reactor waste glass was leached with three solutions, one of which was a saturated-salt brine. Because chemical separation of Np and Pu using organic extraction or anionic exchange is not effective for the brine samples, a procedure has been developed to first separate neptunium and plutonium from high concentrations of brine before proceeding with an extraction of neptunium from plutonium. Samples were equilibrated with tracers, Np and Pu were co-precipitated with La(OH)/sub 3/, and interfering ions were removed by washing the hydroxide precipitate with water. Pu and Np were separated by reducing Pu to Pu/sup 3 +/ and extracting the Np/sup 4 +/ into thenoyltrifluoroacetone; control of oxidation states and contaminant concentration is critical.

Solar ponds offer perhaps the simplest technique for conversion of solar energy to thermal energy, which can be used for industrial process heat. It is unique in its capability in acting both as collector and storage. Further, the cost of solar pond per unit area is less than any active collectors available today. Combination of these economic and technical factors make solar ponds attractive as a fuel saver in IPH applications. Detailed calculations are given for solar ponds in two specific applications: providing hot water for aluminum can washing in a manufacturing plant and hot water for washing in a large commercial laundry. With the help of computer codes developed at SERI for other solar IPH systems, it is shown that solar ponds are far more cost effective than any other solar IPH technology for these applications.

The 168/E is a SLAC developed microprocessor which emulates the IBM 360/370 computers with an execution speed of about one half of a IBM 370/168. These processors are used in parallel for the track finding and geometry programs of the LASS spectrometer. The system is controlled by a PDP-11 minicomputer via a three port interface which we call the Bermuda Triangle. The tape handling and downloading is controlled by one of SLAC's IBM computers via a SLAC built interface between the PDP-11 and an IBM channel. Initially, there will be a system of 6 168/E's which should be able to give six times the production capacity than can be attained by running production jobs on the SLAC Triplex system. The cost of the system, including the channel interface, is $120,000 and yet it yields the equivalent computer power of 3 IBM 370/168's. Hence, this system is an extremely cost-effective method for off-line data analysis.

This paper presents the status of the Borehole Plugging Program underway for the plugging of drill holes on and near the proposed Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico. This program will provide the technology for plugging wellbores when required at repository decommissioning.

The geologic history of the Pasco Basin is sketched. Study of the stratigraphy of the area involved a number of techniques including major-element chemistry, paleomagnetic investigations, borehole logging, and other geophysical survey methods. Grande Ronde basalt accumulation in the Pasco Basin is described. An illustrative log response is shown. 1 figure. (RWR)

A discussion is presented of the operator/instrumentation interactions which had an effect on the course of the incident at the Three Mile Island-2 Nuclear Power Plant. A brief review of the sequence of occurrences at TMI-2 over the first 16 hours of the incident is given with particular emphasis on operator/instrumentation interactions. A breakdown of the six major items that seemed to have contributed to the characteristics of the incident is then given and also an outline of some of the currently proposed operator/instrumentation improvements. The six major items involve water level indication in the reactor, electromatic relief valve operation, auxiliary feed-water flow indication, containment isolation, extended range instrumentation, and computer readout.

An automated system for the performance of ion-exchange chromatography with corrosive solvents has been built. It is LSI-II microcomputer controlled and is capable of selecting six sample/solvents and collecting six separate fractions. Preliminary results on the separation of plutonium from 8M HNO/sub 3/ solutions indicate that the system can achieve chemical yields, analytical accuracy, and precision fully comparable to manual column operation at a considerable savings of operator time.

Natural convection in a full length GCFR fuel assembly was investigated by experiment and analysis. Non-convecting analysis is shown to be in substantial disagreement with experiment. A new natural convection model using the SCORIA code for GCFR fuel assemblies and the COBRA-IV model for natural convection is presented. The SCORIA/COBRA analytic predictions agree much better with the experiment. The remaining differences are qualitatively explainable.

Recent studies of the effects of irradiation at 5 K on organic insulators for fusion reactors have extended the irradiation dose from 2 x 10/sup 9/ to 1 x 10/sup 10/ rads and have looked for changes due to fast neutrons. For radiation conditions in this experiment the latter had little effect upon electrical and mechanical properties. At a dose of 1 x 10/sup 10/ rads, particle-filled epoxies are at ''end of life'' in terms of mechanical strength, while fiberglass-cloth-filled epoxies retain sufficient strength for use. Electrical-resistivity and voltage-breakdown vaues are reduced in some materials but remain in a usable range. Two sheet-type materials show excellent stability in their electrical properties.

Inventories of plutonium radionuclides greatly in excess of global fallout levels persists in the benthic environments of Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls. It now appears that the atolls have reached a chemical steadystate condition with respect to the partitioning of /sup 239 +240/Pu between solution and solid phases of the environment. The mobilized /sup 239 +240/Pu has solute-like characteristics, passes rapidly and readily through dialysis membranes, has adsorption characteristics similar to those of fallout plutonium in the open ocean, and exists in solution primarily as some oxidized +5 or +6 chemical species. Water-column profiles of /sup 239 +240/Pu taken outside the atolls show a plutonium excess in the deep water mass. This remobilized /sup 239 +240/Pu possibly originates from the contaminated sediments previously deposited on the outer slopes of the atolls and surrounding basins.

Four in-vessel molten fuel containment concepts for the GCFR were compared, namely, (1) a ceramic crucible, (2) a borax bath, (3) a heavy metal bath, and (4) a steel bath. The ceramic crucible is the simplest but depends on substantial upward heat removal. The borax bath and the heavy metal bath concepts offer better performance but would require design changes and an increased experimental effort. The steel bath concept is a good compromise and has potential for further improvement by combining it with the essential features of other concepts, i.e., the crucible or the heavy metal bath. It is concluded that several concepts could potentially exploit the normally provided cooled liner barrier in the PCRV cavity for post-accident fuel containment.

To provide a point of departure for the ETF conceptual design, the ORNL TNS design was adopted. This device was designed as an ignited, D-T burning, long pulse, air core tokamak. It has a D-shaped plasma with a major radius of 5 m, a minor radius of 1.2 m, and an elongation ratio of 1.6. The fusion power is 1140 MW during burn, and with exothermic reactions a total thermal power of 1450 MW is produced in the first wall and shield. Some reactor components are described.

Results are presented from an ongoing study of single photon detectors for use in a ring-imaging Cerenkov counter. New results on the operation of parallel plate avalanche gaps are presented.

The optical testing part of the program requires characterizing index homogeneity of large blanks of fluorophosphate glass, optical surface figure and quality of large polished optics and performance of optical coatings such as antireflection, high reflectors and polarizing beam-splitters. For this purpose, a large effort is being expended to upgrade the optical test facilities at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in preparation for the NOVA optics procurement. (MOW)

A new electronics system for time-of-flight measurements has been developed to meet the performance requirements of the Mark II Detector for operation at the PEP Storage Ring of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This system incorporated high resolution time measurements with the capability to correct systemic errors from the scintillator and photomultiplier tubes. The correction technique involves making three measurements on each photomultiplier signal every storage ring beam interaction. Two timing measurements are made relative to the beam interaction time with different discriminator threshold level settings. The charge integral of each photomultiplier pulse is also recorded.

The functional characteristics of a programmable, synchronous serial communications CAMAC module with buffering in block format are described. Both bit and byte oriented protocols can be handled in full duplex depending on the program implemented. The main elements of the module are a Signetics 2652 Multi-Protocol Communications Controller, a Zilog Z-808 8 bit microprocessor with PROM and RAM, and FIFOs for buffering. (FS)

Structural faults and phase transformations in R/sub 2/-Co/sub 17/ magnets are studied using transmission electron microscopy. The magnetization mechanism in a step aged Sm (Co, Fe, Cu, Zr) alloy is determined to be by domain wall pinning in the 1:5 phase of the cellular microstructure. Limitations of the electron metallography technique to study these materials are pointed out.

Current plans for nuclear waste disposal include placing the waste in a canister to isolate it from the repository environment for 1000 years. Corrosion prediction techniques are currently inadequate to quarantee the canister performance over this length of time. We are attempting to better predict the corrosion process with the help of computer modeling. We developed a program to calculate anodic and cathodic polarization curves using Tafel slopes, equilibrium exchange current densities, and other electrochemical parameters obtained from the experimental corrosion literature. The model generates and displays polarization curves for different values of environmetal parameters such as temperature, pH, and concentrations of pertinent species in the vicinity of the canister material. For the case of uniform corrosion in acidic media, our model predicts corrosion rates in fair agreement with literature values.

Case studies of industrial process heat (IPH) have been performed by the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) on selected plants in metal processing, oil production, beverage container manufacturing, commercial laundering, paint (resin manufacturing), and food industries. For each plant, the application of solar energy to processes requiring hot water, hot air, or steam was examined, after energy conservation measures were included. A life-cycle economic analysis was performed for the solar system compared to the conventional energy system. The studies of the oil production facility (oil/water separation process) indicate that it could economically employ a solar hot water system immediately. The studies of solar energy applied to the beverage container process (solar air preheat system with partial recycle of oven exhaust gases) indicate a 7.5-yr payback period, based on a solar system installation in 1985.