A prototype Compton scatter camera for imaging gamma rays has been built and tested. This camera addresses unique aspects of gamma-ray imaging at nuclear industrial sites, including gamma-ray energies in the 0.5 to 3.0 MeV range and polychromatic fields. Analytic models of camera efficiency, resolution and contaminating events are developed. The response of the camera bears strong similarity to emission computed tomography devices used in nuclear medicine. A direct Fourier based algorithm is developed to reconstruct two-dimensional images of measured gamma-ray fields. Iterative ART and MLE algorithms are also investigated. The point response of the camera to gamma rays of energies from 0.5 to 2.8 MeV is measured and compared to the analytic models. The direct reconstruction algorithm is at least ten times more efficient than the iterative algorithms are also investigated. The point response of the camera to gamma rays energies from 0.5 to 2.8 MeV is measured and compared to the analytic models. The direct reconstruction algorithm is at least ten times more efficient than the iterative algorithms and produces images that are, in general, of the same quality. Measured images of several phantoms are shown. Important results include angular resolutions as low as 4.4{degrees}, reproduction of phantom …

Two-phase cross flow over heat exchanger tubes creates vibrations which contribute greatly to the wear on the tubes. Fluidelastic instability is a major mechanism by which tubes can fail. In this work, the fluidelastic instability of a tube placed in an array subjected to two-phase cross flow has been studied. For the determination of fluidelastic instability, a triangular tube array was used. The tubes were made of acrylic and were 2.2 cm or 2.37 cm in diameter and 20 cm in length. Eighteen tubes and 4 half tubes formed 5 rows with a pitch to diameter ratio of 1.4. All of the tubes except the test tube were rigidly supported at the text section wall. The test tube was flexibly supported with two cantilever beams. By installing cantilever beams horizontally and vertically, drag and lift direction tube vibration were studied. Parameters of tube mass, structural stiffness, natural frequency, and pitch to diameter ratio were varied. The drag coefficients on a rigidly held tube in an array subjected to two-phase cross flow were measured. The tube in an array was located at displaced positions as well as at the normal position in order to study the variation of fluid force as …

Numerical computation is used to investigate resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) fluctuations in the reversed-field pinch (RFP) and in tokamak-like configurations driven solely by direct current (DC) helicity injection. A Lundquist number (S) scan of RFP turbulence without plasma pressure produces the weak scaling of S{sup -0.18} for the root-mean-square magnetic fluctuation level for 2.5x10{sup 3}{le}S{le}4x10{sup 4}. The temporal behavior of fluctuations and the reversal parameter becomes more regular as S is increased, acquiring a {open_quotes}sawtooth{close_quotes} shape at the largest value of S. Simulations with plasma pressure and anisotropic thermal conduction demonstrate energy transport resulting from parallel heat fluctuations. To investigate means of improving RFP energy confinement, three forms of current profile modification are tested. Radio frequency (RF) current drive is modeled with an auxiliary electron force, and linear stability calculations are used.

A review of spectroscopic imaging issues, applications, and technology is presented. Compton cameras based on solid state semiconductor detectors stands out as the best system for the nondestructive assay of special nuclear materials. A camera for this application has been designed based on an efficient specific purpose Monte Carlo code developed for this project. Preliminary experiments have been performed which demonstrate the validity of the Compton camera concept and the accuracy of the code. Based on these results, a portable prototype system is in development. Proposed future work is addressed.

A discussion of the origins and interpretation of various previously proposed models for the terms in the incompressible Reynolds-stress equation is given. It is hoped that the interpretations will provoke thoughts that will help in the future modeling of Reynolds-stress transport equations. Different forms of the closed Reynolds-stress equation have been solved numerically for the given mean velocity field of the wake flow behind a flat plate at a Reynolds number of 1000. A finite-difference/finite-volume collocation scheme was used to approximate the spatial derivatives, which were implemented in a time-marching scheme. The numerical time integration produced values for the six independent Reynolds-stress components, the turbulent kinetic energy decay rate, and the turbulent length scale for each of the models tried. The results of the different cases were compared and some conclusions were drawn on the effects of the various investigated modeled terms.

Two-phase crossflow over heat exchanger tubes induces vibrations which contribute greatly to the wear on the tubes. Of the three mechanisms leading to two-phase flow-induced vibrations which have been identified, fluid-elastic instability has been recognized as that which leads to the vibrations with the largest amplitude. The mass damping parameter is used to predict the onset of fluid-elastic instability, and the mean drag coefficient is used to calculate the mass damping parameter. In this thesis, the drag coefficient measured over single tubes and tubes within array, in single-phase and two-phase flow at various Reynolds numbers, is discussed. The drag coefficient was measured by two methods. For flexibly mounted tubes, strain gages were mounted on cantilever beams which held the tube in place and allowed it to vibrate in the direction parallel to the flow only. For both rigidly and flexibly mounted tubes, pressure distributions were measured around the perimeter of the tube. Forces, and then the drag coefficient, could be calculated from this information. The drag coefficient was not found to depend upon the flexibility of the tube mounting. As the void fraction of the flow increases, the drag coefficient over the tube increases. This effect was found to be …

Flow induced vibrations cause by instability is the subject of this investigation. The bulk of the work performed is theoretical in nature, the comparison with some of existing experimental data is given for each of four models described. First model encompasses the effects of prescribed motion on the cylinder. Such circumstances occur in the case of vortex shedding initiated instability. The reduced velocity within the cylinder array is low and there is no coupling between the adjacent cylinders. Second model assumes certain form of vibration and corresponding behavior of the perturbed velocity field in temporal and one of spatial coordinates thus transforming partial differential equations into ordinary differential equations and takes into account the motion of the neighboring cylinder. This corresponds to fluid elastic controlled instabilities. The resulting equations are solved analytically. The model is used for better understanding of the equations of cylinder motion as well as for quick estimates of threshold of instability. Third model relaxes an assumption about the form of vibration in spatial direction and uses the vorticity formulation of equation of fluid motion to account for fluid-solid interaction. This model analysis is of two phase (air-water mixture) flow. The void fraction distribution is found to …

In this dissertation, a measurement of the partial decay width of the process Z{sup 0} {r_arrow} {tau}{sup +}{tau}{sup {minus}} using data collected during 1993 and 1994 at the OPAL detector at CERN is described. The cross sections of this process at three center-of-mass energies near the Z{sup 0} resonance were determined, and from a fit to those cross sections, the mass of the Z{sup 0}, its total decay width and its partial decay width into {tau}{sup +}{tau}{sup {minus}} final states were determined as M{sub Z} = 91.183 {+-} 0.020 GeV, {Lambda}{sub tot} = 2.514 {+-} 0.018 GeV and {Lambda}{sub {tau}{tau}} = 84.54 {+-} 0.59 MeV. Using published results for M{sub Z}, and {Lambda}{sub tot} with higher accuracy, a value for the partial decay width of {Lambda}{sub {tau}{tau}} = 84.02 {+-} 0.20 MeV was obtained. Further using published results for the decay width of the Z{sup 0} into quark pair final states, the invisible decay width of the Z{sup 0} was determined as {Lambda}{sub inv} = 496.9 {+-} 4.1 MeV, and the number of neutrino generations was determined as N{sub {nu}} = 2.974 {+-} 0.025(exp) {+-} 0.007 (m{sub top}, M{sub Higgs}). All results were found to be in good agreement with …

The purpose of this study is to find aluminum alloys that are effective for use as wire vacuum seals in the 800MeV particle accelerator located at the Louis Anderson Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF) in Los Alamos, NM. Three alloys, Al 1100, Al 3003, and Al 6061, are investigated under uniaxial compression to determine stresses for a given height reduction from 0 to 70 percent, and to find plastic flow and surface interaction effects. Right-circular cylindrical specimens are compressed on-end (cylindrically) and radially (for modeling as compressed wire). Aluminum 1100 and 3003 alloys are compared for length to diameter ratios of 1 and 2 for both compression types, and are then compared to results of radial compression of annealed small diameter Al 1100 wire currently used at LAMPE. The specimens are also compressed between three different platen surfaces, polished steel, etched steel, and aluminum 6061-T6, to determine effects of friction. The Al 3003 alloy exhibits 20 to 25% lower stresses at all height reductions than Al 1100 for both cylindrical and radial compression.

The flow of granular materials is common to many industrial processes. This dissertation suggests and validates image processing algorithms applied to high speed digital images to measure the dynamics (velocity, temperature and volume fraction) of dry granular solids flowing down an inclined chute under the action of gravity. Glass and acrylic particles have been used as granular solids in the experiment. One technique utilizes block matching for spatially averaged velocity measurements of the glass particles. This technique is compared with the velocity measurement using an optic probe which is a conventional granular flow velocity measurement device. The other technique for measuring the velocities of individual acrylic particles is developed with correspondence using a Hopfield network. This technique first locates the positions of particles with pattern recognition techniques, followed by a clustering technique, which produces point patterns. Also, several techniques are compared for particle recognition: synthetic discriminant function (SDF), minimum average correlation energy (MACE) filter, modified minimum average correlation energy (MMACE) filter and variance normalized correlation. The author proposes an MMACE filter which improves generalization of the MACE filter by adjusting the amount of averaged spectrum of training images in the spectrum whitening stages of the MACE filter. Variance normalized correlation …

Two methods determine the speed of 3 m glass spheres using optical reflective sensors embedded in a micro-processor system. The first method, which will be referred to as the one pulse method, is sensitive to particle size and shape. The pulse width of a detected particle is measured and normalized by a shape correction factor resulting in a speed estimate. Three models are developed to correct for effects due to particle shape and light scattering inhomogeneities. The second method, which will be referred to as the two pulse method, measures individual particle velocity components independent of size and shape with two detectors spaced a known distance apart. This distance is divided by the delay between the two detector output pulses to determine speed. A by-product of both methods is a localized particle flux. The microprocessor subsystem automates the pulse detection, timing, velocity calculation and display which are accomplished by the micro-processor subsystem. In the laboratory, a chute is used to generate particle flows with different characteristics. The detection system is tested in the chute for two different flows. A mechanical speed measurement is used for comparison to the one pulse method. The one pulse method is used for comparison to …

Silicon-containing polymers have been a focus of synthesis and study in Dr. Barton`s group because of their chemistry and properties which are not offered by other systems or materials. For example, the polymer -[-SiMe{sub 2}C{triple_bond}C-]{sub n}-can be easily processed to films or fibers from melt or solution, and thermally converted to a SiC-containing ceramic in high yield at high temperature. In recent years, carbosilane dendritic polymers have been of great interests in many research groups. However, no synthesis of carbosilane dendrimers with functionalties both inside and outside the dendrimer has been reported. Functionality is very important in the synthesis of preceramic polymers. This thesis will be devoted to exploring several new organosilicon polymer systems.

Molecular oxygen in the atmosphere is coupled tightly to the terrestrial carbon cycle by the processes of photosynthesis, respiration, and burning. This dissertation examines different aspects of this coupling in four chapters. Chapter 1 explores the feasibility of using air from sand dunes to reconstruct atmospheric O{sub 2} composition centuries ago. Such a record would reveal changes in the mass of the terrestrial biosphere, after correction for known fossil fuel combustion, and constrain the fate of anthropogenic CO{sub 2}.

Objectives of this field experiment were: (1) determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the radon concentrations of samples collected by EPA`s standard method, using a syringe, and an alternative, slow-flow method; (2) determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the measured radon concentrations of samples mailed vs samples not mailed; and (3) determine whether there was a temporal variation of water radon concentration over a 7-month period. The field experiment was conducted at 9 sites, 5 private wells, and 4 public wells, at various locations in North Carolina. Results showed that a syringe is not necessary for sample collection, there was generally no significant radon loss due to mailing samples, and there was statistically significant evidence of temporal variations in water radon concentrations.

A composite model of atmospheric, unsaturated and groundwater transport is developed to evaluate the processes determining the distribution of atmospherically derived contaminants in groundwater systems and to test the sensitivity of simulated contaminant concentrations to input parameters and model linkages. One application is to screen specific atmospheric emissions for their potential in determining groundwater age. Temporal changes in atmospheric emissions could provide a recognizable pattern in the groundwater system. The model also provides a way for quantifying the significance of uncertainties in the tracer source term and transport parameters on the contaminant distribution in the groundwater system, an essential step in using the distribution of contaminants from local, point source atmospheric emissions to examine conceptual models of groundwater flow and transport.

The West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) is preparing to upgrade their low-level radioactive waste (LLW) characterization and classification program. This thesis describes a survey study of three other DOE sites conducted in support of this effort. The LLW characterization/classification programs of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Savannah River Site, and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory were critically evaluated. The evaluation was accomplished through tours of each site facility and personnel interviews. Comparative evaluation of the individual characterization/classification programs suggests the WVDP should purchase a real-time radiography unit and a passive/active neutron detection system, make additional mechanical modifications to the segmented gamma spectroscopy assay system, provide a separate building to house characterization equipment and perform assays away from waste storage, develop and document a new LLW characterization/classification methodology, and make use of the supercompactor owned by WVDP.

A powerful computational tool, called MagRad, has been developed which optimizes magnet design for operation in radiation fields. Specifically, MagRad has been used for the analysis and design modification of the cable-in-conduit conductors of the TF magnet systems in fusion reactor designs. Since the TF magnets must operate in a radiation environment which damages the material components of the conductor and degrades their performance, the optimization of conductor design must account not only for start-up magnet performance, but also shut-down performance. The degradation in performance consists primarily of three effects: reduced stability margin of the conductor; a transition out of the well-cooled operating regime; and an increased maximum quench temperature attained in the conductor. Full analysis of the magnet performance over the lifetime of the reactor includes: radiation damage to the conductor, stability, protection, steady state heat removal, shielding effectiveness, optimal annealing schedules, and finally costing of the magnet and reactor. Free variables include primary and secondary conductor geometric and compositional parameters, as well as fusion reactor parameters. A means of dealing with the radiation damage to the conductor, namely high temperature superconductor anneals, is proposed, examined, and demonstrated to be both technically feasible and cost effective. Additionally, two relevant …

This technical study reviews the methodology for calculating offsite dose estimates as described in the offsite dose calculation manual (ODCM) for Pennsylvania Power and Light - Susquehanna Steam Electric Station (SSES). An evaluation of the SSES ODCM dose assessment methodology indicates that it conforms with methodology accepted by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Using 1993 SSES effluent data, dose estimates are calculated according to SSES ODCM methodology and compared to the dose estimates calculated according to SSES ODCM and the computer model used to produce the reported 1993 dose estimates. The 1993 SSES dose estimates are based on the axioms of Publication 2 of the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP). SSES Dose estimates based on the axioms of ICRP Publication 26 and 30 reveal the total body estimates to be the most affected.

Studies were performed to evaluate the accuracy of open-path Fourier Transform Infrared (OP-FTIR) spectrometers using a 35 foot outdoor exposure chamber in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Results obtained with the OP-FTIR spectrometer were compared to results obtained with a reference method (a gas chromatograph equipped with a flame ionization detector, GC-FID). Concentration results were evaluated in terms of the mathematical methods and spectral libraries used for quantification. In addition, the research investigated the effect on quantification of using different backgrounds obtained at various times during the day. The chemicals used in this study were toluene, cyclohexane, and methanol; and these were evaluated over the concentration range of 5-30 ppm.

Microdosimetry was used to investigate three issues at the neutron therapy facility (NTF) at Fermilab. Firstly, the conversion factor from absorbed dose in A-150 tissue equivalent plastic to absorbed dose in ICRU tissue was determined. For this, the effective neutron kerma factor ratios, i.e. oxygen tissue equivalent plastic and carbon to A-150 tissue equivalent plastic, were measured in the neutron beam. An A-150 tissue equivalent plastic to ICRU tissue absorbed dose conversion factor of 0.92 {+-} 0.04 determined. Secondly, variations in the radiobiological effectiveness (RBE) in the beam were mapped by determining variations in two related quantities, e{sup *} and R, with field size and depth in tissue. Maximal variation in e{sup *} and R of 9% and 15% respectively were determined. Lastly, the feasibility of utilizing the boron neutron capture reaction on boron-10 to selectively enhance the tumor dose in the NTF beam was investigated. In the unmodified beam, a negligible enhancement for a 50 ppm boron loading was measured. To boost the boron dose enhancement to 3% it was necessary to change the primary proton energy from 66 MeV and to filter the beam by 90 mm of tungsten.

This report contains a general introduction, the experimental section, general conclusions, and two appendices: using projection operators to construct the basis functions and the magnetic transition of bulk pyrrhotite samples in the low-temperature range. Four chapters have been removed for separate processing. They are: From pyrrhotite to troilite: An application of the Landau theory of phase transitions; Phase transition in near stoichiometric iron sulfide; A ordering, incommensuration and phase transitions in pyrrhotite. Part 1: A TEM study of Fe{sub 7}S{sub 8}; and Part 2: A high-temperature X-ray powder diffraction and thermomagnetic study.

This doctoral dissertation is presented as three self-contained papers. An introductory chapter considers traditional spatio-temporal statistical methods used in the atmospheric sciences from a statistical perspective. Although this section is primarily a review, many of the statistical issues considered have not been considered in the context of these methods and several open questions are posed. The first paper attempts to determine a means of characterizing the semiannual oscillation (SAO) spatial variation in the northern hemisphere extratropical height field. It was discovered that the midlatitude SAO in 500hPa geopotential height could be explained almost entirely as a result of spatial and temporal asymmetries in the annual variation of stationary eddies. It was concluded that the mechanism for the SAO in the northern hemisphere is a result of land-sea contrasts. The second paper examines the seasonal variability of mixed Rossby-gravity waves (MRGW) in lower stratospheric over the equatorial Pacific. Advanced cyclostationary time series techniques were used for analysis. It was found that there are significant twice-yearly peaks in MRGW activity. Analyses also suggested a convergence of horizontal momentum flux associated with these waves. In the third paper, a new spatio-temporal statistical model is proposed that attempts to consider the influence of both …

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for radon-222 in public drinking water supplies of 300 pCi/L. Proposed monitoring requirements include collecting quarterly grab samples for the first year, then annual samples for the remainder of the compliance cycle provided first year quarterly samples average below the MCL. The focus of this research was to study the temporal variation of groundwater radon concentrations to investigate how reliably one can predict an annual average radon concentration based on the results of grab samples. Using a {open_quotes}slow-flow{close_quotes} collection method and liquid scintillation analysis, biweekly water samples were taken from ten public water supply wells in North Carolina (6 month - 11 month sampling periods). Based on study results, temporal variations exist in groundwater radon concentrations. Statistical analysis performed on the data indicates that grab samples taken from each of the ten wells during the study period would exhibit groundwater radon concentrations within 30% of their average radon concentration.

The yearly environmental dose equivalent likely to result at the closest site boundary from the Advanced Light Source was determined by generating multiple linear regressions. The independent variables comprised quantified accelerator operating parameters and measurements from synchronized, in-close (outside shielding prior to significant atmospheric scattering), state-of-the-art neutron remmeters and photon G-M tubes. Neutron regression models were more successful than photon models due to lower relative background radiation and redundant detectors at the site boundary. As expected, Storage Ring Beam Fill and Beam Crashes produced radiation at a higher rate than gradual Beam Decay; however, only the latter did not include zero in its 95% confidence interval. By summing for all three accelerator operating modes, a combined yearly DE of 4.3 mRem/yr with a 90% CI of (0.04-8.63) was obtained. These results fall below the DOE reporting level of 10 mRem/yr and suggest repeating the study with improved experimental conditions.