The unique characteristics of the energy situation in developing countries imposes a unique set of requirements on analytical techniques used for energy planning. The urgency of the situation requires the rapid development and use of simplified models which make maximum use of available data but which can reflect the international energy context. Those techniques must also be able to deal with central energy/development issues such as energy equity or the energy implication of social equity policies, centralized vs. decentralized development, and urbanization.

Three types of thermonuclear fusion devices currently under development are reviewed for an electric utilities management audience. Overall design features of laser fusion, tokamak, and magnetic mirror type reactors are described and illustrated. Thrusts and trends in current research on these devices that promise to improve performance are briefly reviewed. Twenty photographs and drawings are included. (RME)

The special kinds of demands placed on ERDA weapons and reactors require them to have very reliable welds. Process control is critical in achieving this reliability. ERDA has a number of advanced process control projects underway with much of the emphasis being on electron beam welding. These include projects on voltage measurement, beam-current control, beam focusing, beam spot tracking, spike suppression, and computer control. A general discussion of process control in welding is followed by specific examples of some of the advanced joining process control projects in ERDA.

The accurate measurement of transuranic elements deposited in the lung is a complex task. One of the problems is measuring uranium-L x-rays associated with plutonium passing through the chest of an accidentally exposed subject. Because the normal human chest-wall thickness varies from about 1 to 4.5 cm, it is important that an accurate determination be made for every person counted for plutonium or for other heavy elements with similar emissions. An ultrasonic B-scanning system (brightness modulated time-base) was developed for defining the structure within the body. Computer programs were written to determine the distance between the lung and chest-wall interface and the outer surface of the chest wall at several points on each scan. These points are exponentially averaged to obtain an average chest-wall thickness that is used, with other information, to derive a calibration factor for plutonium in the subject. It is also combined with the counting data to obtain the plutonium lung burden. Since photon transmission characteristics differ in fat and soft tissue, assessing the fat content is important and can provide a correction factor for counter sensitivity when viewing various organs. The main advantage of the B-scanning and three-dimensional systems are discussed.

Two numerical models used for studying collisional multispecies plasmas are described. The mathematical model is the Boltzmann kinetic equation with Fokker-Planck collision terms. A one-dimensional code and a two-dimensional code, used for the solution of the time-dependent Fokker-Planck equations for ion and electron distribution functions in velocity space, are described. The required equations and boundary conditions are derived and numerical techniques for their solution are given.