In December 1992, the US Department of Energy (DOE) directed that the Plutonium-Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Plant be shut down and deactivated because it was no longer needed to support the nation`s production of weapons-grade plutonium. The PUREX/UO{sub 2} Deactivation Project will establish a safe and environmentally secure configuration for the facility and preserve that configuration for 10 years. The 10-year span is used to predict future maintenance requirements and represents the estimated time needed to define, authorize, and initiate the follow-on decontamination and decommissioning activities. Accomplishing the deactivation project involves many activities. Removing major hazards, such as excess chemicals, spent fuel, and residual plutonium are major goals of the project. The scope of the PUREX Transition Project is described within.

Press information, on the Annenberg Foundation, announcing their latest series of grants towards arts education. A $4.3 million challenge grant to six regional institutes to show how the arts can boost student academic achievements. The foundation is working with the Getty Center for Education and their consortia which includes, North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts.

A news release report, on North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts, one of the six recipients nationally of a $4.3 million challenge grant announced by the Annenberg Foundation. The grant goal is to reform public schools using a bold program of arts education. The grant will provide $1.43 million for UNT"s North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts to demonstrate how education in the arts can improve students.

A meteorological database has been developed to aid in the prediction of indoor radon concentrations in the United States. The database contains predicted typical monthly meteorological statistics at the county level derived from hourly meteorological data from 208 (234 for precipitation) geographically distinct monitoring stations. Interpolation and extrapolation techniques were used to predict statistics for counties not containing a meteorological monitoring site. The LBNL database includes statistics for meteorological variables including dry-bulb temperature, dew-point temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, hours of precipitation, precipitation, and derived infiltration degree-days. The database consists of individual files of derived statistics for each weather variable and is potentially useful for indoor radon modeling as well as for other purposes. Each file contains data values for all 12 months and an aggregation of the 12 months up to a yearly statistic for all county centroids. A test was conducted to assess the quality of interpolated values. Examples showing the use of the database for mapping infiltration degree-days and an application of the database to a statistical correlation analysis attempting to find meteorological factors influencing indoor radon levels in the United States is discussed.

Obtaining and maintaining funding is important for individuals, groups, institutions, and fields. This challenge is easier during times of abundant and growing resources than it is now, when funding is tight and shrinking. Thus, to obtain and maintain funding will require: maintaining healthy funding levels for all of science; maintaining healthy funding levels for the field(s) you work in; and competing successfully for the available funds. Everyone should pay attention to the overall prospects for science funding and dedicate some effort to working with others to grow the constituency for science. Public support is likely an important prerequisite for keeping future science budgets high. In this context, researchers should share with society at large the benefits of their research, so that taxpayers can see and appreciate some return from the federal investment in science. Assuming this effort is successful, and there continue to be government and private organizations with substantial resources to invest in research, what can the individual investigator do to improve her chances? She can be clear about her goal(s) and carefully plan her effort to make maximum progress for minimum resources, especially early in her career while she is establishing a solid professional reputation. Specific useful strategies …

This study investigates the effect of solid and liquid lubrication on friction and wear performance of silicon nitride (Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}) and cast iron. The solid lubricant was a thin silver film ({approx}2 {mu}m thick) produced on Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} by ion-beam-assisted deposition. A high-temperature polyol-ester-base synthetic oil served as the liquid lubricant. Friction and wear tests were performed with pin-on-disk and oscillating-slider wear test machines at temperatures up to 300{degrees}C. Without the silver films, the friction coefficients of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}/Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} test pairs were 0.05 to 0.14, and the average wear rates of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} pins were {approx}5 x 10{sup -8} mm{sup 3} N{sup -1}. The friction coefficients of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}/cast iron test pairs ranged from 0.08 to 0.11, depending on test temperature. The average specific wear rates of cast iron pins were {approx}3 x 10{sup -7} mm{sup 3} N{sup -1} m{sup -1}. However, simultaneous use of the solid-lubricant silver and synthetic oil on the sliding surfaces reduced friction coefficients to 0.02 to 0.08. Moreover, the wear of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} pins and silver-coated Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} disks was so low that it was difficult to assess by a surface profilometer. The wear rates of …

The X-band rf source development at SLAC can be considered a qualified success. A total of twelve klystrons were built. Six of them are still in use. The latest tube, XL4, produced 75 MW at an efficiency of 47.5 percent. However, victory cannot be declared as yet, since an NLC prototype has not been fully designed and the decision between permanent magnet focusing and a super-conducting solenoid has not been formally made. Daryl Sprehn`s paper will present the status of the PPM klystron development. The authors believe that a PPM X-band source will work, at 50 as well as at 75 megawatts. But they are prepared to adapt the XL4 design to a super-conducting solenoid, should the PPM klystron develop unexpected problems. The SLAC program is now in its seventh year. It may well be the longest and most expensive microwave tube development on record, in a government laboratory or in industry. Direct and related costs for the total effort are probably of the order of $10 million. In these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that it has been possible to produce a klystron with the performance of XL4. At the same time, it must be said that the …

Baryonic matter, in the form of Machos (Massive Compact Halo Objects), might be a significant constituent of the dark matter that dominates the Milky Way. This article describes the experimental searches for Machos that exploit the gravitational microlens magnification of extragalactic stars. These surveys monitor millions of stars, in some cases every night, looking for magnification events. The early results from the surveys have yielded some spectacular events, and pose a significant new puzzle for galactic structure: toward the Large Magellanic Cloud we see fewer events than anticipated for a standard dark halo dominated by Machos, but toward the galactic bulge, the event rate is much higher than anticipated. This is a field of research that is ripe with opportunities for beginning (and senior) scientists.

A computer code ICRKFLO was used to simulate the multiphase reacting flow of fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) riser reactors. The simulation provided a fundamental understanding of the hydrodynamics and heat transfer processes in an FCC riser reactor, critical to the development of a new high performance unit. The code was able to make predictions that are in good agreement with available pilot-scale test data. Computational results indicate that the heat transfer and droplet evaporation processes have a significant impact on the performance of a pilot-scale FCC unit. The impact could become even greater on scale-up units.

This report contains viewgraphs of papers from the proceedings of the Erotic Nuclei Symposium.

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Multi-phase reacting flows of a bent fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) reactor have been simulated using the ICRKFLO code. A new sectional coupling approach has been developed to handle the complex geometry, which divides the bent reactor into two sections and computations are performed for the two sections successively. The computational results show that the ICRKFLO incorporated with the new sectional coupling approach can predict product yields very well compared with experimental data and can be used to identify critical processes and parameters which may be modified to improve the quality and quantity of the FCC products.

We have investigated the structures of U(VI) oxides precipitated from room temperature aqueous solutions at low ionic strength as a function of pH. Using the uranium L{sub III} - edge extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) as a probe of the local structure around the uranium, a trend is observed whereby the axial oxygen bond lengths from the uranyl groups increase from 1.80 {Angstrom} at pH=7 to 1.86 {Angstrom} at pH=11. A concomitant decrease in the equatorial oxygen and nearest-neighbor uranium bond lengths also occurs with increasing pH. Expansion of the linear O=U=O group is seen directly at the L{sub III} absorption edge where multiple scattering resonances systematically shift in energy. EXAFS curve-fitting analysis on these precipitates and a sample of synthetic schoepite indicate that the structure of the species formed at pH=7 is similar to the structure of schoepite. At pH=11, the precipitate structure is similar to that of a uranate.

An electrostatically-actuated polyimide microvalve is developed with sub-micron gaps between the electrodes to provide high force with low power consumption (< 1 mW). Built-in residual stress results in a curled bimorph cantilever which allows for a n-Licroactuator with large displacement. This microactuator is used to open and close a fluid path hole etched in silicon for a microvalve. The microactuator can be actuated with 25V for a displacement of 200 {mu}m. The cantilever actuator is mainly composed of polyimide, which is flexible enough to conform over the flow hole, thereby eliminating the need for the design of a valve seat.

Contribution of aerosols to climate change results from two effects: clear-sky and cloudy-sky forcing. The clear-sky climate forcing by carbonaceous aerosols from biomass burning and fossil fuel burning depends on the relative contribution of scattering and absorption by the aerosols which in turn depends on the fraction of aerosol mass associated with black carbon and its size distribution. This paper reviews estimates for the emission of carbonaceous aerosols, placing these estimates in the context of estimates for the emissions of anthropogenic and natural sulfate aerosols and natural sources of organic particulate matter. The cloudy-sky forcing from carbonaceous aerosols is difficult to estimate because, among other factors, it depends on the amount of absorption by the aerosols in the cloud. It is also highly sensitive to the assumed pre-existing, natural aerosol abundance. An upper limit for this cloudy-sky forcing is -4.4 W/m{sup 2}, but may range as low as -2.4 W/m{sup 2}, depending on background aerosol concentrations. These estimates do not yet account for absorption of radiation by black carbon associated with cloud or the presence of pre-existing dust particles.

A recent source term analysis has shown a discrepancy between ORIGEN2 transuranic isotopic production estimates and those produced with the WIMS-E lattice physics code. Excellent agreement between relevant experimental measurements and WIMS-E was shown, thus exposing an error in the cross section library used by ORIGEN2.

We review the differences in first order phase transition of single and multi-component systems, and then discuss the crystalline structure expected to exist in the mixed confined deconfined phase of hadronic matter. The particular context of neutron stars is chosen for illustration. The qualitative results are general and apply for example to the vapor-liquid transition in subsaturated asymmetric nuclear matter.

We argue that the principal features of the plastic flow behavior of Ta can be described a model that incorporates a two-component Peierls-type mechanism and an ``obstacle`` mechanism in series. We compare results of calculations based on such a model with flow data for unalloyed Ta before and after shock loading to 45 GPa for 1.8 {mu}s. Our data suggest that the shock loading changes only structural parameters.

The deposition profile of a cathodic arc plasma source with and without magnetic macroparticle filter has been measured using a deposition probe technique. It has been found that the profile is close to a Gaussian and that the width of the profile depends on the cathode material. It was found that the dependence on the cathode material leads to a considerable radial variation of the elemental composition of the film when an alloy cathode is used. A magnetic multicusp field (magnetic bucket) near the exit of the plasma source or the magnetic filter was applied to flatten and homogenize the deposition profile.

The Hanford Site was founded in early 1943 for the top secret government mission of producing plutonium for the world`s first atomic weapons. A great deal of land was needed, both to separate various Site facilities from each other, and to provide buffer zones for safety and security purposes. In total, 640 square miles were occupied by the original Hanford Site and its buffer zones. Much of this land had been earmarked for inclusion in the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project (CBP). After World War II ended, a series of national decisions led to a long-term mission for the Hanford Site, and area residents learned that the Site lands they had hoped to farm would be withheld from agricultural production for the foreseeable future. A long set of negotiations commenced between the federal management agency responsible for Hanford (the Atomic Energy Commission -- AEC), and the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), Department of the Interior that managed the CBP. Some lands were turned back to agriculture, and other compromises made, in the Site`s far northern buffer lands known as the Wahluke Slope, during the 1950s. In the mid-1960s, further negotiations were about to allow farming on lands just north of the Columbia …

The theory and experimental approach for a new technique used to determine the Poisson`s ratio of thin films are presented. The method involves taking the ratio of curvatures of cantilever beams and plates micromachined out of the film of interest. Curvature is induced by a through-thickness variation in residual stress, or by depositing a thin film under residual stress onto the beams and plates. This approach is made practical by the fact that the two curvatures air, the only required experimental parameters, and small calibration errors cancel when the ratio is taken. To confirm the accuracy of the technique, it was tested on a 2.5 {mu}m thick film of single crystal silicon. Micromachined beams 1 mm long by 100 {mu} wide and plates 700 {mu}m by 700 {mu}m were coated with 35 nm of gold and the curvatures were measured with a scanning optical profilometer. For the orientation tested ([100] film normal, [011] beam axis, [0{bar 1}1] contraction direction) silicon`s Poisson`s ratio is 0.064, and the measured result was 0.066 {+-} 0.043. The uncertainty in this technique is due primarily to variation in the measured curvatures, and should range from {+-} 0.02 to 0.04 with proper measurement technique.

Molecular dynamics computer simulations are used to study the effect of substrate temperature on microstructure of deposited amorphous hydrogenated carbon (a:CH) films. A transition from dense diamond- like films to porous graphite-like films is observed between substrate temperatures of 400 and 600 K for a deposition energy of 20 eV. The dense a:CH film grown at 300 K and 20 eV has a hardness ({similar_to}50 GPa) about half that of a pure carbon (a:C) film grown under the same conditions.

Effects of biaxial loading on shallow-flaw fracture toughness were studied to determine potential impact on structural integrity assessment of a reactor pressure vessel (RPV) under pressurized thermal shock (PTS) transient loading and pressure-temperature (PT) loading produced by reactor heatup and cooldown transients. Biaxial shallow-flaw fracture-toughness tests results were also used to determine the parameter controlling fracture in the transition temperature range, and to develop a related dual-parameter fracture-toughness correlation. Shallow-flaw and biaxial loading effects were found to reduce the conditional probability of crack initiation by a factor of nine when the shallow-flaw fracture-toughness K{sub Jc} data set, with biaxial-loading effects adjustments, was substituted in place of ASME Code K{sub Ic} data set in PTS analyses. Biaxial loading was found to reduce the shallow-flaw fracture toughness of RPV steel such that the lower-bound curve was located between ASME K{sub Ic} and K{sub IR} curves. This is relevant to future development of P-T curve analysis procedures. Fracture in shallow-flaw biaxial samples tested in the lower transition temperature range was shown to be strain controlled. A strain-based dual-parameter fracture-toughness correlation was developed and shown to be capable of predicting the effect of crack-tip constraint on fracture toughness for strain-controlled fracture.

We present a simple model of some high {Tc} cuprates based upon superconducting (S) and normal (N) layers, which quantitatively fits the data of Bonn et al. for the low-temperature T dependence of the penetration depths {lambda}{sub a,b,c} in untwinned YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7-{delta}}, assuming s-wave intralyer pairing. This SN model also leads to anisotropic surface states, which complicate analysis of photoemission and tunneling measurements.