A common process in the chemical industry employs the leaching of a desirable component from an insoluble substrate, followed by filtration to produce a clarified solution of the desirable component and a discardable residue. The work described here involved evaluating sintered metal filter media for separating dissolved plutonium from undissolved residues generated at various locations owned by the Department of Energy throughout the United States. The work was performed during a six-week assignment at the Savannah River Laboratory as part of a high school science enrichment program conducted in the summer of 1989. The leach step used included dissolving the plutonium-containing solids in a solution of nitric-hydrofluoric acid. To simulate the partial solubility of the actual plutonium-containing residues, a non-radioactive power plant flyash was used. 6 refs., 14 figs., 1 tab.

This report summarizes research conducted by ITI to evaluate the commercialization potential of EG G Mound Applied Technologies' heat treatment process of high strength materials. The remainder of the report describes the nature of demand for maraging steel, extent of demand, competitors, environmental trends, technology life cycle, industry structure, and conclusion. (JL)

The principal goal of this study was to provide analysis of and recommendations on the need for and feasibility of a geothermal reservoir insurance program. Five major tasks are reported: perception of risk by major market sectors, status of private sector insurance programs, analysis of reservoir risks, alternative government roles, and recommendations.

A human factors engineering design review of the Palo Verde control room simulator was performed at the site on September 15 through September 17, 1981. Observed human factors design discrepancies were given priority ratings. This report summarizes the team's observations of the control room design and layout and of the control room operators' interface with the control room environment. A list of the human factors strengths observed in the Palo Verde control room simulator is given.

This memorandum is an introduction to thermal imaging systems and their use. Emission of infrared radiation from ideal and real materials is described, as are methods of detection in modern thermal imaging systems. Typical specifications and features of commercially available thermal imaging systems are described, and uses of thermal imaging are discussed. At the Savannah River Site (SRS), thermal imaging has been used extensively to measure the temperature of surface water that carries heat from the reactors to the Savannah River. Other uses at SRS have been surveying roof insulation and moisture, evaluating insulation of prototype glass melters at the TNX facility, and locating leaks in the Concentrate Transfer System. Future recommended programs include evaluating thermal imaging for general monitoring of plant facilities, especially electrical conduits, processes occurring at elevated temperature, and radioactive storage areas that generate significant amounts of waste heat. Research on the resistance weld techniques used in tritium reservoir handling (pinch welding and reclamation welding) may profit from high speed thermal image monitoring of heat generated during welding, and other Process Development activities may also benefit from high-speed thermal image monitoring. 12 refs., 1 fig.

The purpose of this program is to provide employees with the motivation, knowledge and skills necessary to maintain ideal body weight throughout life. The target audience for this program, which is conducted in an industrial setting, is the employee 40 years of age or younger who is at or near his/her ideal body weight.

A method of fabricating an electrode for use in a metal chloride battery and an electrode are provided. The electrode has relatively larger and more uniform pores than those found in typical electrodes. The fabrication method includes the steps of mixing sodium chloride particles selected from a predetermined size range with metal particles selected from a predetermined size range, and then rigidifying the mixture. The electrode exhibits lower resistivity values of approximately 0.5 {Omega}cm{sup 2} than those resistivity values of approximately 1.0--1.5 {Omega}cm{sup 2} exhibited by currently available electrodes.

This paper describes the present design and future capability of the high-voltage test stand for neutral-beam sources at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The stand's immediate use will be for testing the full-scale sources (120 kV, 65 A) for the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor. It will then be used to test parts of the sustaining source system (80 kV, 85 A) being designed for the Magnetic Fusion Test Facility. Following that will be an intensive effort to develop beams of up to 200 kV at 20 A by accelerating negative ions. The design of the test stand features a 5-MVA power supply feeding a vacuum tetrode that is used as a switch and regulator. The 500-kW arc supply and the 100-kW filament supply for the neutral-beam source are battery powered, thus eliminating one or two costly isolation transformers.

An introduction to methods of digital image analysis is presented. Modern commercially available digital image analysis systems are described, along with applications that may be useful to programs at the Savannah River Site (SRS). Systems to aid inspection of tritium reservoir fill stems and a system to enhance inspection of radiographs of pinch weld closures of tritium reservoirs have already been developed at SRS. Modern digital analysis systems based on personal computers have been and are being procured for use in Savannah River Laboratory (SRL) programs, and are finding immediate application in several programs requiring quantitative metallography. It is argued that x-ray computed tomographic imaging, digitally-enhanced ultrasonic testing and acoustic microscopy are three techniques that would enhance not only the research and development efforts at SRL, but also may be applicable in production (for example, in pinch and reclamation welding of tritium reservoirs, and in reactor component inspection) as quality assurance and documentation tools. 21 refs.

The two DOE-owned facilities at Hanford, the Fuels and Materials Examination Facility (FMEF), and the Fusion Materials Irradiation Test Facility (FMIT), are described. The performance measurement systems used at these two facilities are next described. (DLC)

This project is a detailed analysis of the lithology, stratigraphy, and structure of the New Albany Group in Illinois to determine those characteristics of lithology, thickness, regional distribution, vertical and lateral variability, and deformation that are most relevant to the occurrence of hydrocarbons.

We have systematically studied the thermodynamic stabilities of various phases of the nitrides of the platinum metal elements using density functional theory. We show that for the nitrides of Rh, Pd, Ir and Pt two new crystal structures, in which the metal ions occupy simple tetragonal lattice sites, have lower formation enthalpies at ambient conditions than any previously proposed structures. The region of stability can extend up to 17 GPa for PtN{sub 2}. Furthermore, we show that according to calculations using the local density approximation, these new compounds are also thermodynamically stable at ambient pressure and thus may be the ground state phases for these materials. We further discuss the fact that the local density and generalized gradient approximations predict different values of the absolute formation enthalpies as well different relative stabilities between simple tetragonal and the pyrite or marcasite structures.

In July of 2002, a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) was undertaken between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Caterpillar, Inc. (Caterpillar Technical Center) to develop and commercialize new cast stainless steels invented and initially tested on a prior CRADA. This CRADA is a direct follow-on project to CRADA ORNL-99-0533 for diesel engine exhaust component and gas turbine engine structural component applications. The goal of this new CRADA was to develop and commercialize the newly discovered cast stainless steels (primarily CF8C-Plus) with improved performance and reliability, as lower-cost upgrade alternatives to more costly cast Ni-based superalloys.

Simulations of the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) Chemical Processing Cell (CPC) vessels were performed as part of the ongoing investigation into catalytic hydrogen generation. Rhodium, ruthenium, and mercury have been identified as the principal elemental factors affecting the peak hydrogen generation rate in the DWPF Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) for a given acid addition. The primary goal of this study is to identify any significant interactions between the three factors. Noble metal concentrations were similar to recent sludge batches. Rh ranged from 0.0026-0.013% and Ru ranged from 0.010-0.050% in the dried sludge solids, while initial Hg ranged from 0.5-2.5 wt%. An experimental matrix was developed to ensure that the existence of statistically significant two-way interactions could be determined without confounding of the main effects with the two-way interaction effects. The nominal matrix design consisted of twelve SRAT cycles. Testing included: a three factor (Rh, Ru, and Hg) study at two levels per factor (eight runs), two duplicate midpoint runs, and two additional replicate runs to assess reproducibility away from the midpoint. Midpoint testing can identify potential quadratic effects from the three factors. A single sludge simulant was used for all tests. Acid addition was kept effectively constant …

Evaluating spatial and temporal trends in contaminant residues in Puget Sound fish and macroinvertebrates are the objectives of the Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program (PSAMP). In a cooperative effort between the ENVironmental inVESTment group (ENVVEST) and Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, additional biota samples were collected during the 2007 PSAMP biota survey and analyzed for chemical residues and stable isotopes of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N). Approximately three specimens of each species collected from Sinclair Inlet, Georgia Basin, and reference locations in Puget Sound were selected for whole body chemical analysis. The muscle tissue of specimens selected for chemical analyses were also analyzed for δ13C and δ15N to provide information on relative trophic level and food sources. This data report summarizes the chemical residues for the 2007 PSAMP fish and macro-invertebrate samples. In addition, six Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) samples were necropsied to evaluate chemical residue of various parts of the fish (digestive tract, liver, embryo, muscle tissue), as well as, a weight proportional whole body composite (WBWC). Whole organisms were homogenized and analyzed for silver, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, mercury, 19 polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners, PCB homologues, percent moisture, percent lipids, δ13C, and δ15N.

The objective of this report was to create a low-cost, modest-power RF coupler for a SRF spoke cavity beam test of electrons test to be done at LANL. Developing the design for this magnetically-coupled SRF spoke cavity testing coupler was basically straightforward since the cavity coupling port needed to be one of the 1.22-inch ID ports, and the power level was limited by the available RF to less than 400 W TW power. In addition, the coupler would be immersed in bath cryostat filled with liquid helium, and ultimately used in a pulsed mode to accelerate beam, thereby significantly relaxing the thermal loads on the coupler. Combining the above considerations with the level of resources available for this task, emphasis was placed on rapidly developing a robust, reliable design that would use commercially-available components as available to save design, engineering, and fabrication costs. Analysis was also kept to a minimum. As such, the design incorporates the following features: (1) Use of a commercially-available Type-N ceramic feedthrough. For the power and frequency range of the test, with the feedthrough immersed in LHe, it was felt the Type-N feedthrough would provide a robust, low-cost vacuum window solution. (2) The coupler outer conductors …

A typical optical fabrication process involves a series of basic process steps including: (1) shaping, (2) grinding, (3) polishing, and sometimes (4) sub-aperture tool finishing. With significant innovation and development over the years in both the front end (shaping using CNC machines) and the back end (sup-aperture tool polishing), these processes have become much more deterministic. However, the intermediate stages (full aperture grinding/polishing) in the process, which can be very time consuming, still have much reliance on the optician's insight to get to the desired surface figure. Such processes are not presently very deterministic (i.e. require multiple iterations to get desired figure). The ability to deterministically finish an optical surface using a full aperture grinding/polishing will aid optical glass fabricators to achieve desired figure in a more repeatable, less iterative, and more economical manner. Developing a scientific understanding of the material removal rate is a critical step in accomplishing this. In the present study, the surface figure and material removal rate of a fused silica workpiece is measured as a function of polishing time using Ceria based slurry on a polyurethane pad or pitch lap under a variety of kinematic conditions (motion of the workpiece and lap) and loading configurations. …

In this lecture we presented a methodology to obtain free energies from empirical potentials and applied it to the study of the phase diagram of FeCr. Subsequently, we used Metropolis Monte Carlo to analyze homogeneous and heterogeneous precipitation of the Cr rich solid solution {alpha}{prime}. These examples are part of our work in the area of steels for nuclear applications and can be found in several publications of our group cited as References.

A micromechanical model is developed for grain bridging inmonolithic ceramics. Specifically, bridge formation of a single,non-equiaxed grain spanning adjacent grains is addressed. A cohesive zoneframework enables crack initiation and propagation along grainboundaries. The evolution of the bridge is investigated through avariance in both grain angle and aspect ratio. We propose that thebridging process can be partitioned into five distinct regimes ofresistance: propagate, kink, arrest, stall, and bridge. Although crackpropagation and kinking are well understood, crack arrest and subsequent"stall" have been largely overlooked. Resistance during the stall regimeexposes large volumes of microstructure to stresses well in excess of thegrain boundary strength. Bridging can occur through continued propagationor reinitiation ahead of the stalled crack tip. The driving forcerequired to reinitiate is substantially greater than the driving forcerequired to kink. In addition, the critical driving force to reinitiateis sensitive to grain aspect ratio but relatively insensitive to grainangle. The marked increase in crack resistance occurs prior to bridgeformation and provides an interpretation for the rapidly risingresistance curves which govern the strength of many brittle materials atrealistically small flaw sizes.

We will provide a review of some of the physics which can be addressed by studying fluctuations and correlations in heavy ion collisions. We will discuss Lattice QCD results on fluctuations and correlations and will put them into context with observables which have been measured in heavy-ion collisions. Special attention will be given to the QCD critical point and the first order co-existence region, and we will discuss how the measurement of fluctuations and correlations can help in an experimental search for non-trivial structures in the QCD phase diagram.

If the collisional time scale for Coulomb collisions is comparable to the characteristic time scales for a plasma, then simulation of Coulomb collisions may be important for computation of kinetic plasma dynamics. This can be a computational bottleneck because of the large number of simulated particles and collisions (or phase-space resolution requirements in continuum algorithms), as well as the wide range of collision rates over the velocity distribution function. This paper considers Monte Carlo simulation of Coulomb collisions using the binary collision models of Takizuka & Abe and Nanbu. It presents a hybrid method for accelerating the computation of Coulomb collisions. The hybrid method represents the velocity distribution function as a combination of a thermal component (a Maxwellian distribution) and a kinetic component (a set of discrete particles). Collisions between particles from the thermal component preserve the Maxwellian; collisions between particles from the kinetic component are performed using the method of or Nanbu. Collisions between the kinetic and thermal components are performed by sampling a particle from the thermal component and selecting a particle from the kinetic component. Particles are also transferred between the two components according to thermalization and dethermalization probabilities, which are functions of phase space.

In work for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is developing an assessment procedure to evaluate the effectiveness of a potential nuclear facility licensee's material control (MC) system. The purpose of an MC system is to prevent the theft of special nuclear material such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The key in the assessment procedure is the generation and analysis of the adversary event sets by a directed graph and fault-tree methodology.

C++ is the first object-oriented programming language which produces sufficiently efficient code for consideration in computation-intensive physics and engineering applications. In addition, the increasing availability of massively parallel architectures requires novel programming techniques which may prove to be relatively easy to implement in C++. For these reasons, Division 1541 at Sandia National Laboratories is devoting considerable resources to the development of C++ libraries. This document describes the first of these libraries to be released, PHYSLIB, which defines classes representing Cartesian vectors and (second-order) tensors. This library consists of the header file physlib.h, the inline code file physlib.inl, and the source file physlib.C. The library is applicable to both three-dimensional and two-dimensional problems; the user selects the 2-D version of the library by defining the symbol TWO D in the header file physlib.h and recompiling physlib.C and his own code. Alternately, system managers may wish to provide duplicate header and object modules of each dimensionality. This code was produced under the auspices of Sandia National Laboratories, a federally-funded research center administered for the United States Department of Energy on a non-profit basis by AT T. This code is available to US citizens, and institutions under research, government use and/or commercial license …

A conceptual design study of a large 12-T yin-yang pair of coils, typical of the plug coils envisioned for a tandem-mirror facility to follow MFTF, has been completed. Because of its larger size and field strength, the magnetic forces are much greater than those experienced on MFTF. The main purpose of this study, therefore, is to assess the feasibility of such a device, paying particular attention to mechanical stress and conductor strain. The conductor proposed operates at 15.6 kA and consists of a rectangular half-hard copper stabilizer with a Nb-Ti insert in the low-field regions and Nb/sub 3/Sn in the high field. The coil is divided into four sections in the longitudinal direction, with steel substructure to limit the winding stress to an acceptable level. The conductor is cryostatically stabilized in superfluid He at 1.8K and 1.2 atm, with an operating heat flux of 0.8 W.cm/sup -2/.