In an effort to understand the expected performance of snubbers, a survey of current design methods was performed. Questionnaires were sent to the major snubber manufacturers requesting information on important phases of snubber analysis, testing, shipping, and handling. The elements of design considered in the questionnaire were derived from an evaluation of snubber failure histories and the performance requirements of snubber users.

A case study of the French CEREN system is provided. The foundation of the system is outlined, that is, the concepts that ensure the systems comprehensiveness, detail, and manageability. The implementation of the system is emphasized, in particular, the data collection and data processing methodology. Applications of the CEREN energy information system are reviewed for analyzing energy use, cross-industry impacts, and social, and economic impacts of changing energy-use patterns. (MHR)

This report evaluates the performance of the vital MG sets during a worst case load transfer. Evaluation of test data showed: (1) The Vital MG Set withstood the extreme loading; (2) The load can be sustained well in excess of the required time limit; and (3) The transfer perturbation caused the frequency to exceed the limits set by the SDD. The follow up evaluations of the equipment powered by the MG sets demonstrated that the equipment function will not be degraded.

A system for providing a means of remote ejection and examination of sodium bonded shroud encapsulated fuels has been in use at LASL for over a year. The system is remotely capable of precise machining for clad separation and splitting at specified areas. Controlled heating and constant temperature monitoring is incorporated for sodium melting. The system provides for numerous operations such as: visual examinations, measurements, photography, and sodium dissolution.

The Closed Loop In-Reactor Assembly (CLIRA) is a test vehicle for in-core material and fuel experiments in the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF). The FFTF is a fast flux nuclear test reactor operated for the Department of Energy (DOE) by Westinghouse Hanford Company in Richland, Washington. The CLIRA is a removable/replaceable part of the Closed Loop System (CLS) which is a sodium coolant system providing flow and temperature control independent of the reactor coolant system. The primary purpose of the CLIRA is to provide a test vehicle which will permit testing of nuclear fuels and materials at conditions more severe than exist in the FTR core, and to isolate these materials from the reactor core.

The objective of this project is the development of a preliminary design for a full-sized, closed cycle, ammonia power system module for the 100 MWe OTEC Demonstration Plant. In turn, this Demonstration Plant is to demonstrate, by 1984, the operation and performance of an ocean thermal power plant having sufficiently advanced heat exchanger design to project economic viability for commercial utilization in the late 1980's and beyond. Included in this power system development are the preliminary designs for a proof-of-concept pilot plant and test article heat exchangers which are scaled in such a manner as to support a logically sequential, relatively low-cost development of the full-scale power system module. The conceptual designs are presented for the Demonstration Plant power module, the proof-of-concept pilot plant, and for a pair of test article heat exchangers. Costs associated with the design, development, fabrication, checkout, delivery, installation, and operation are included. The accompanying design and producibility studies on the full-scale power system module project the performance/economics for the commercial plant. This section of the report describes the full-size power system module, and summarizes the design parameters and associated costs for the Demonstration Plant module (prototype) and projects costs for commercial plants in production. The …

Progress in developing foil bearings for a miniature isotope-fueled Brayton cycle power system rotating unit (BRU) for space vehicles is reviewed with charts, tables, and diagrams of the program plan and schedule; performance testing; fabrication and inspection; and materials development. (LCL)

The LOFT Primary System Motor Generator Set was analyzed for sliding and overturning during a seismic event. The assembly is located in TAN 650, Room B239, and is satisfactory against seismic loading.

A control system utilizing a microcomputer has been developed that controls the power supplies driving the Tandem Mirror Experiment (TMX) magnet set and monitors magnet coil operation. The magnet set consists of 18 magnet coils that are driven by 26 dc power supplies. There are two possible modes of operation with this system: a pulse mode where the coils are pulsed on for several seconds with a dc power consumption of 16 MW; and a continuous mode where the coils can run steady state at 10 percent of maximum current ratings. The processor has been given an active control role and serves as an interface between the operator and electronic circuitry that controls the magnet power supplies. This microcomputer also collects and processes data from many analog singal monitors in the coil circuits and numerous status signals from the supplies. Placing the microcomputer in an active control role has yielded a compact, cost effective system that simplifies the magnet system operation and has proven to be very reliable. This paper will describe the TMX magnet control sytem and discuss its development.

The goals of the present program are to develop successful die and container materials for handling liquid silicon while it is being formed into photovoltaic cell material. These goals will hopefully be accomplished by exploring various materials configurations for their reactivity with molten silicon. The combination of unique coating structures combined with control of oxygen partial pressures may yield some previously unsuspected set of conditions which are useful for cost effective die growth or containing silicon melts. Successful experimental configurations will be scaled up into prototype dies and containers as appropriate during the third and fourth quarters of calendar 1978. Economics for large scale production of such prototypes will be defined as part of the program. Die and container material development efforts under the current program are shared among three organizations. Miami Research Laboratories (MRL)--Ceramic process development and overall program management, University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) (Prof. P.D. Ownby)--silicon sessile drop studies with characterization of reaction products and emphasis on atmospheric effects, Chemetal Corp., Pacoima, Calif. (R. Holzl, president)--special coatings to be applied to test coupons, die shapes and containers provided by MRL and tested/characterized by UMR. MRL has hot pressed three different substrate materials for coating at Chemetal Corp. Chemetal …

Preliminary fusion reactor designs have been developed based on the tandem mirror confinement concept. These have included a 1000 MWe fusion power reactor and a nearer term fusion-fission hybrid reactor with reduced plasma confinement and technology requirements. Brief descriptions are given.

A plan for the continuation of the Energy Conservation Program for State and Local Code officials is presented. The program is action-oriented, e.g., develop the enforcement tools, train the personnel in their use, and assist in the field use of these tools. Achievements to date include: the Model Code for Energy Conservation in New Building Construction has been developed and published; the basic training materials for the model code have been developed and tested in prototype field courses in 4 states; implementation activities have been proceeding, at times even before publication of final documents; the Model Code Groups are conducting courses for their members; and coordination and field awareness of the program has been achieved using many mechanisms. The management structure, constraints, and the milestone plan and management report are described. Data on the manpower, cost, and travel plans are included.

The reactor design is a multicell arrangement wherein a series of field-reversed plasma layers are arranged along the axis of a long superconducting solenoid which provides the background magnetic field. Normal copper mirror coils and Ioffe bars placed at the first wall radius provide shallow axial and radial magnetic wells for each plasma layer. Each of 11 plasma layers requires the injection of 3.6 MW of 200 keV deuterium and tritium and produces 20 MW of fusion power. The reactor has a net electric output of 74 MWe and an estimated direct capital cost of $1200/kWe.

This paper assesses a method for extracting tritium from liquid lithium for specific application to the conceptual laser fusion reactor that uses a continuous lithium ''waterfall.'' The tritium diffuses through a refractory metal that contains a getter and is then stored in a hydride-forming alloy. There are various uncertainties with this method including helium-4 extraction, unknown impurities that may accumulate in liquid lithium, the effects of these impurities on tritium separation, and the maintenance of tritium-contaminated equipment. Our study indicates that major tritium losses will occur during equipment maintenance rather than as a result of permeation losses through the primary vessel.

The project objective is a basic evaluation of the technical performance and economic feasibility of providing low temperature heating by Forces Geoheat Recovery (FGR) from suitable geological structures including both thin sheet conductors with predominantly fracture flow and porous slab conductors with intergranular flow. Simple, heat-pump assisted and multi-source combined heating systems will be evaluated. Building and industrial heating applications with effective power requirements ranging upward from one MWt will be considered, with thermal water supply temperatures in the range of 25 C to 100+ C. Emphasis is being placed on the adaption of the FGR technology to the user system, including both short and long term variations in the user system demand.

Particle removal procedures such as plasma cleaning, ultrasonic agitation of solvents, detergents, solvent wiping, mild abrasives, vapor degreasing, high pressure solvent spraying and others have been evaluated and the results are reported here. Wiping with a lens tissue wetted with an organic solvent and high pressure fluid spraying are the only methods by which particles as small as 5 ..mu..m can be effectively removed. All of the other methods tested were found to be at least two orders of magnitude less effective at removing small insoluble particles. An additional and as yet unresolved problem is the development of a reliable method for evaluating particulate surface cleanliness. Without such a reproducible monitoring technique, the large diversity of cleaning methods currently available cannot be quantitatively evaluated.

The simple mirror configuration, consisting of a long solenoid with increased field strength at the ends (magnetic mirrors), proved to be an unstable plasma container and was replaced by the minimum absolute value of B mirror configuration. The Yin-Yang minimum absolute value of B coil was chosen for the Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF) experiment and recent conceptual designs of standard mirror reactors. For the multicell field-reversed mirror reactor concept we returned to the long solenoid configuration, augmented by normal copper mirror coils and Ioffe bars placed at the first wall radius to provide a shallow magnetic well for each field-reversed plasma layer. The central cell of the tandem mirror is also a long solenoid while the end plug cells require a minimum absolute value of B configuration.

For the past two years Alan Swain and Henry E. Guttmann, of the Statistics, Computing, and Human Factors Division, Sandia Laboratories, have been developing a handbook to aid qualified persons to evaluate the effect of human error on the availability of engineered safety systems and features in nuclear power plants. The handbook includes a mathematical model, procedures, derived human failure data, and principles of human behavior and ergonomics. The handbook is expanding the human error analyses which were presented in WASH--1400. The work, under the sponsorship of Probabilistic Analysis Staff, NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research (Dr. M.C. Cullingford, NRC Program Manager), is about half completed. An outline of the handbook contents is given in copies of vugraphs (attached), followed by copies of human performance model abstractors (also attached). A first draft of the handbook is scheduled for NRC review by July 1, 1979.

A brief review of the basics of fusion power is given. Both inertial confinement and magnetic confinement fusion are discussed.

Line 2''-IA-295-AB outside containment penetration S-2A was analyzed to ASME Section III, Subsection NC (Class 2) criteria. The line is part of the Containment Isolation System. The model considered the line from the penetration outward through the first isolation valve. Results of the analysis show that this section of the line meets Class 2 requirements without modification.

92,000 BeO--UO/sub 2/ fuel elements were fabricated for the upgrading of the Sandia Annular Core Pulse Reactor. The toxicity of BeO and the radioactivity of /sup 235/U necessitated special handling procedures and equipment. This document describes the materials, specifications, and fabrication process. (DLC)

Some of the studies in progress are: distribution of deposited energy around heavy-ion tracks; effect of trapping on the thermalization of electrons in hydrocarbon liquids; effect of field-dependent mobility on escape probability; kinetics of electron scavenging reactions; second-order optical properties of solvated electrons; model molecular orbital studies of the chemisorption of atomic hydrogen and oxygen on aluminum surfaces; calculation of sum rule moments for H/sub 2/O; early events in pulse-irradiated polar liquids; radiation chemical studies of reactions of SO/sub 4//sup -/ radicals with organic compounds; reactions of the phosphate and sulfate radicals with inorganic compounds; pulse radiolysis studies of antioxidants in fatty acid soap aggregates; spectrophotometric pulse radiolytic study of the radicals produced by reduction of cis- and trans-azobenzene; correlation of singlet energies of aromatic hydrocarbons with the rates of protonation of their anion radicals; the association rate of sodium laurylsulfate micelle-monomer equilibrium; transfer of an organic molecule between micelles in an aqueous environment; in-situ photolysis ESR study of some reactions of phosphate radicals; photochemistry of sydnones; differentiation of triplet state and biradical reactions; photoenolization of aromatic ketones; and studies of Ni(III) macrocyclic ligand complexes. (LK)

A stress analysis was performed on the 2''-IA-299-AB pipe system inside containment penetration S-5B. Deadweight, thermal expansion and seismic loads were considered. The results indicate that this piping will meet ASME Section III, Class 2 requirements.

A stress analysis of the LOFT Diesel Generator ''A'' Exhaust Stack was performed to determine its reaction to Safe-Shutdown Earthquake loads. The exhaust stack silencer and supporting foundation was found to be inadequate for the postulated seismic accelerations. Lateral support is required to prevent overturning of the silencer pedestal and reinforcement of the 4'' x 0.5'' silencer base straps is necessary. Basic requirements for this additional support are discussed.