This annual report provides details on the research conducted at EMSL--the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory in Fiscal Year 2008.

Failure occurs when one or more of the intended functions of a product are no longer fulfilled to the customer's satisfaction. The most critical product failures are those that escape design reviews and in-house quality inspection and are found by the customer. The product may work for a while until its performance degrades to an unacceptable level or it may have not worked even before customer took possession of the product. The end results of failures which may lead to unsafe conditions or major losses of the main function are rated high in severity. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a tool widely used in the automotive, aerospace, and electronics industries to identify, prioritize, and eliminate known potential failures, problems, and errors from systems under design, before the product is released (Stamatis, 1997). Several industrial FMEA standards such as those published by the Society of Automotive Engineers, US Department of Defense, and the Automotive Industry Action Group employ the Risk Priority Number (RPN) to measure risk and severity of failures. The Risk Priority Number (RPN) is a product of 3 indices: Occurrence (O), Severity (S), and Detection (D). In a traditional FMEA process design engineers typically analyze the 'root …

This multi-investigator project was concerned with the development and application of new methods and computer codes that would allow realistic modeling of nanosystems. Carter's part in this team effort involved two method/algorithm/code development projects during the first 14 months of this grant. Carter's group has been advancing theory and applications of the orbital-free density functional theory (OF-DFT), the only DFT method that exhibits linear scaling for metals. Such a method offers the possibility of simulating large numbers of atoms with quantum mechanics, such that properties of metallic nanostructures (e.g. nanowires of realistic dimensions) could be investigated. In addition, her group has been developing and applying an embedded correlated wavefunction theory for treating localized excited states in condensed matter (including metals). The application of interest here is spin manipulation at the nanoscale, i.e., spintronics, in which local electron excitations interact with the surrounding material. Her embedded correlation method is ideal for studying such problems.

This document summarizes the performance of the groundwater restoration systems installed by the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) at the former CCC/USDA grain storage facility in Utica, Nebraska, during the fourth year of system operation, from December 1, 2007, until November 30, 2008. Performance in earlier years was reported previously (Argonne 2005, 2006, 2008). In the project at Utica, the CCC/USDA is cooperating with multiple state and federal agencies to remove carbon tetrachloride contamination from a shallow aquifer underlying the town and to provide supplemental treated groundwater for use in the restoration of a nearby wetlands area. Argonne National Laboratory assisted the CCC/USDA by providing technical oversight for the aquifer restoration effort and facilities during this review period. This document presents overviews of the aquifer restoration facilities (Section 2) and system operations (Section 3). The report then describes groundwater production results (Section 4); groundwater treatment results (Section 5); and associated maintenance, system modifications, and costs during the review period (Section 6). Section 7 summarizes the present year of operation.

A system for collecting solid, post-explosion debris samples from the NIF chamber and their subsequent radiochemical analysis is currently under development. If the debris that condenses out of the plasma can be collected and analyzed, the number and type of nuclear reactions that occurred in the capsule material can be determined. this has applications both for radiochemical diagnostics of NIF capsule performance as well as radiochemical measurements relevant to basic science and stockpile stewardship. Several design prototypes have been studied and a prioritized list of radiochemical measurements that could be performed on NIF is under development based on interactions with capsule design, fabrication, and WCI design divisions.

We study effects of energy chirp on echo-enabled harmonic generation (EEHG). Analytical expressions are compared with numerical simulations for both harmonic and bunching factors. We also discuss the EEHG free-electron laser bandwidth increase due to an energy-modulated beam and its pulse length dependence on the electron energy chirp.

The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab or LBNL) is a multi-program national research facility operated by the University of California for the Department of Energy (DOE). As an integral element of DOE's National Laboratory System, Berkeley Lab supports DOE's missions in fundamental science, energy resources, and environmental quality. Berkeley Lab programs advance four distinct goals for DOE and the nation: (1) To perform leading multidisciplinary research in the computing sciences, physical sciences, energy sciences, biosciences, and general sciences in a manner that ensures employee and public safety and protection of the environment. (2) To develop and operate unique national experimental facilities for qualified investigators. (3) To educate and train future generations of scientists and engineers to promote national science and education goals. (4) To transfer knowledge and technological innovations and to foster productive relationships among Berkeley Lab's research programs, universities, and industry in order to promote national economic competitiveness. Berkeley Lab's research and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program support DOE's Strategic Themes that are codified in DOE's 2006 Strategic Plan (DOE/CF-0010), with a primary focus on Scientific Discovery and Innovation. For that strategic theme, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 LDRD projects support each one …

This report describes the installation, testing, and acceptance of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) procured laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (LA-ICP-AES) system for remotely analyzing high-level waste (HLW) samples in a hot cell environment. The work was completed by the Analytical Process Development (APD) group in accordance with Task Order 2005-003; ATS MP 1027, Management Plan for Waste Treatment Plant Project Work Performed by Analytical Technical Services. The APD group at the 222-S Laboratory demonstrated acceptable turnaround time (TAT) and provide sufficient data to assess sensitivity, accuracy, and precision of the LA-ICP-AES method.

The results of a comparison of Multifaceted Asymmetric Radiation From the Edge (MARFE) theory with experiment in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) are presented. A variety of MARFE behavior was observed using a fast-framing camera. A basic MARFE theory was applied to NSTX Multi-Pulse Thomson scattering (MPTS) and charge-exchange recombination spectroscopy (CHERS) data. MARFE theory showed some limited agreement with experiment, but uncertainty in the separatrix location constrained the analysis. A method based on shifting iso-Te flux surfaces was used to estimate the separatrix location. The movements of MARFEs in NSTX are interpreted to result from diamagnetic heat flux driven drifts relative to the background plasma velocity and imply slowing edge poloidal rotation and/or changing edge profiles before a large ELM.

ZPR-6 Assembly 7 (ZPR-6/7) encompasses a series of experiments performed at the ZPR-6 facility at Argonne National Laboratory in 1970 and 1971 as part of the Demonstration Reactor Benchmark Program (Reference 1). Assembly 7 simulated a large sodium-cooled LMFBR with mixed oxide fuel, depleted uranium radial and axial blankets, and a core H/D near unity. ZPR-6/7 was designed to test fast reactor physics data and methods, so configurations in the Assembly 7 program were as simple as possible in terms of geometry and composition. ZPR-6/7 had a very uniform core assembled from small plates of depleted uranium, sodium, iron oxide, U{sub 3}O{sub 8} and Pu-U-Mo alloy loaded into stainless steel drawers. The steel drawers were placed in square stainless steel tubes in the two halves of a split table machine. ZPR-6/7 had a simple, symmetric core unit cell whose neutronic characteristics were dominated by plutonium and {sup 238}U. The core was surrounded by thick radial and axial regions of depleted uranium to simulate radial and axial blankets and to isolate the core from the surrounding room. The ZPR-6/7 program encompassed 139 separate core loadings which include the initial approach to critical and all subsequent core loading changes required to perform …

The IAEA Nuclear Data Section convened the 18th meeting of the International Network of Nuclear Structure and Decay Data Evaluators at the IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, 23 to 27 March 2009. This meeting was attended by 22 scientists from 14 Member States, plus IAEA staff, concerned with the compilation, evaluation and dissemination of nuclear structure and decay data. A summary of the meeting, recommendations/conclusions, data centre reports, and various proposals considered, modified and agreed by the participants are contained within this document. The International Network of Nuclear Structure and Decay Data (NSDD) Evaluators holds biennial meetings under the auspices of the IAEA, and consists of evaluation groups and data service centres in several countries. This network has the objective of providing up-to-date nuclear structure and decay data for all known nuclides by evaluating all existing experimental data. Data resulting from this international evaluation collaboration is included in the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF) and published in the journals Nuclear Physics A and Nuclear Data Sheets (NDS).

Hot forming processes such as forging, die casting and glass forming require tooling that is subjected to high temperatures during the manufacturing of components. Current tooling is adversely affected by prolonged exposure at high temperatures. Initial studies were conducted to determine the root cause of tool failures in a number of applications. Results show that tool failures vary and depend on the operating environment under which they are used. Major root cause failures include (1) thermal softening, (2) fatigue and (3) tool erosion, all of which are affected by process boundary conditions such as lubrication, cooling, process speed, etc. While thermal management is a key to addressing tooling failures, it was clear that new tooling materials with superior high temperature strength could provide improved manufacturing efficiencies. These efficiencies are based on the use of functionally graded materials (FGM), a new subset of hybrid tools with customizable properties that can be fabricated using advanced powder metallurgy manufacturing technologies. Modeling studies of the various hot forming processes helped identify the effect of key variables such as stress, temperature and cooling rate and aid in the selection of tooling materials for specific applications. To address the problem of high temperature strength, several advanced …

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Carpenter Technology Corporation (CarTech) participated in an in-kind cost share cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) effort under the auspices of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Technology Maturation program to explore the feasibility for scale up of developmental ORNL alumina-forming austenitic (AFA) stainless steels by conventional casting and rolling techniques. CarTech successfully vacuum melted 30lb heats of four AFA alloy compositions in the range of Fe-(20-25)Ni-(12-14)Cr-(3-4)Al-(1-2.5)Nb wt.% base. Conventional hot/cold rolling was used to produce 0.5-inch thick plate and 0.1-inch thick sheet product. ORNL subsequently successfully rolled the 0.1-inch sheet to 4 mil thick foil. Long-term oxidation studies of the plate form material were initiated at 650, 700, and 800 C in air with 10 volume percent water vapor. Preliminary results indicated that the alloys exhibit comparable (good) oxidation resistance to ORNL laboratory scale AFA alloy arc casting previously evaluated. The sheet and foil material will be used in ongoing evaluation efforts for oxidation and creep resistance under related CRADAs with two gas turbine engine manufacturers. This work will be directed to evaluation of AFA alloys for use in gas turbine recuperators to permit higher-temperature operating conditions for improved efficiencies and reduced …

The role of mathematics in a complex system such as the Internet has yet to be deeply explored. In this paper, we summarize some of the important and pressing problems in cyber security from the viewpoint of open science environments. We start by posing the question 'What fundamental problems exist within cyber security research that can be helped by advanced mathematics and statistics'? Our first and most important assumption is that access to real-world data is necessary to understand large and complex systems like the Internet. Our second assumption is that many proposed cyber security solutions could critically damage both the openness and the productivity of scientific research. After examining a range of cyber security problems, we come to the conclusion that the field of cyber security poses a rich set of new and exciting research opportunities for the mathematical and statistical sciences.

This transmittal is a response to your request of January 22, 2009, for a letter work plan outlining a program of annual groundwater and surface water monitoring at Everest, Kansas. Once yearly, they propose to conduct surface water sampling at the 5 locations shown in Figure 1 and groundwater sampling in the 16 wells identified in Figure 2. The wells will be sampled according to the low-flow procedure. The next sampling event is planned for April 2009. The surface water and groundwater samples collected will be preserved, shipped, and analyzed for volatile organic compounds as in previous work at Everest. Results will be reported to the KDHE. This monitoring program will continue until identified plume conditions at the site indicate a technical justification to change the monitoring program.

Intense beams of heavy ions offer a very attractive tool for fundamental research in high energy density physics and inertial fusion energy science. These applications build on the significant recent advances in the generation, compression and focusing of intense heavy ion beams in the presence of a neutralizing background plasma. Such beams can provide uniform volumetric heating of the target during a time-scale shorter than the hydrodynamic response time, thereby enabling a significant suite of experiments that will elucidate the underlying physics of dense, strongly-coupled plasma states, which have been heretofore poorly understood and inadequately diagnosed, particularly in the warm dense matter regime. The innovations, fundamental knowledge, and experimental capabilities developed in this basic research program is also expected to provide new research opportunities to study the physics of directly-driven ion targets, which can dramatically reduce the size of heavy ion beam drivers for inertial fusion energy applications. Experiments examining the behavior of thin target foils heated to the warm dense matter regime began at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2008, using the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment - I (NDCX-I) facility, and its associated target chamber and diagnostics. The upgrade of this facility, called NDCX-II, will enable an exciting …

A Saltstone waste form was prepared in the Savannah River National Laboratory from a Tank 50H sample and Z-Area premix material for the second quarter of calendar year 2008 (2QCY08). After the prescribed 28 day cure, samples of the saltstone were collected, and the waste form was shown to meet the South Carolina Hazardous Waste Management Regulations (SCHWMR) R.61-79.261.24 and R.61-79.268.48(a) requirements for a nonhazardous waste form with respect to RCRA metals and underlying hazardous constituents. These analyses met all quality assurance specifications of USEPA SW-846. The Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) receives waste from Tank 50H for treatment. In the second quarter of the 2008 calendar year (2QCY08), Tank 50 accepted transfers of approximately 21 kgal from the Effluent Treatment Project (ETP) waste, approximately 3 kgal from Tank 710--the H-Canyon General Purpose Evaporator, and approximately 23 kgal form the Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) Decontaminated Salt Solution Hold Tank (DSS-HT). The Saltstone Grout Sampling plan provides the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) with the chemical and physical characterization strategy for the salt solution which is to be disposed of in the Z-Area Solid Waste Landfill (ISWLF). During operation, samples were collected from Tank 50H …

We have been developing a high throughput 454 library construction process at the Joint Genome Institute to meet the needs of de novo sequencing a large number of microbial and eukaryote genomes, EST, and metagenome projects. We have been focusing efforts in three areas: (1) modifying the current process to allow the construction of 454 standard libraries on a 96-well format; (2) developing a robotic platform to perform the 454 library construction; and (3) designing molecular barcodes to allow pooling and sorting of many different samples. In the development of a high throughput process to scale up the number of libraries by adapting the process to a 96-well plate format, the key process change involves the replacement of gel electrophoresis for size selection with Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization (SPRI) beads. Although the standard deviation of the insert sizes increases, the overall quality sequence and distribution of the reads in the genome has not changed. The manual process of constructing 454 shotgun libraries on 96-well plates is a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and ergonomically hazardous process; we have been experimenting to program a BioMek robot to perform the library construction. This will not only enable library construction to be completed in a single …

This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding plasma turbulence in astrophysical plasmas. It is motivated by observations of electromagnetic and density fluctuations in the solar wind, interstellar medium and galaxy clusters, as well as by models of particle heating in accretion disks. All of these plasmas and many others have turbulentmotions at weakly collisional and collisionless scales. The paper focuses on turbulence in a strong mean magnetic field. The key assumptions are that the turbulent fluctuations are small compared to the mean field, spatially anisotropic with respect to it and that their frequency is low compared to the ion cyclotron frequency. The turbulence is assumed to be forced at some system-specific outer scale. The energy injected at this scale has to be dissipated into heat, which ultimately cannot be accomplished without collisions. A kinetic cascade develops that brings the energy to collisional scales both in space and velocity. The nature of the kinetic cascade in various scale ranges depends on the physics of plasma fluctuations that exist there. There are four special scales that separate physically distinct regimes: the electron and ion gyroscales, the mean free path and the electron diffusion scale. In each of the scale ranges separated …

Individual raw data streams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Climate Research Facility (ACRF) fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real-time. Raw and processed data are then sent daily to the ACRF Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual data stream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) requires national user facilities to report time-based operating data. The requirements concern the actual hours of operation (ACTUAL); the estimated maximum operation or uptime goal (OPSMAX), which accounts for planned downtime; and the VARIANCE [1 - (ACTUAL/OPSMAX)], which accounts for unplanned downtime. The OPSMAX time for the second quarter of FY 2009 for the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site is 2,052.00 hours (0.95 x 2,160 hours this quarter). The OPSMAX for the North Slope Alaska (NSA) locale is 1,944.00 hours …

Isotopes are vital to the science and technology base of the US economy. Isotopes, both stable and radioactive, are essential tools in the growing science, technology, engineering, and health enterprises of the 21st century. The scientific discoveries and associated advances made as a result of the availability of isotopes today span widely from medicine to biology, physics, chemistry, and a broad range of applications in environmental and material sciences. Isotope issues have become crucial aspects of homeland security. Isotopes are utilized in new resource development, in energy from bio-fuels, petrochemical and nuclear fuels, in drug discovery, health care therapies and diagnostics, in nutrition, in agriculture, and in many other areas. The development and production of isotope products unavailable or difficult to get commercially have been most recently the responsibility of the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy program. The President's FY09 Budget request proposed the transfer of the Isotope Production program to the Department of Energy's Office of Science in Nuclear Physics and to rename it the National Isotope Production and Application program (NIPA). The transfer has now taken place with the signing of the 2009 appropriations bill. In preparation for this, the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) was requested to …

A general polarization density which consists of classical and neoclassical parts is system-atically derived via modern gyrokinetics and bounce-kinetics by employing a phase-space Lagrangian Lie-transform perturbation method. The origins of polarization density are further elucidated. Extending the work on neoclassical polarization for long wavelength compared to ion banana width [M. N. Rosenbluth and F. L. Hinton, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 724 (1998)], an analytical formula for the generalized neoclassical polarization including both finite-banana-width (FBW) and finite-Larmor-radius (FLR) effects for arbitrary radial wavelength in comparison to banana width and gyroradius is derived. In additional to the contribution from trapped particles, the contribution of passing particles to the neoclassical polarization is also explicitly calculated. Our analytic expression agrees very well with the previous numerical results for a wide range of radial wavelength.

Geological sequestration has the potential capacity and longevity to significantly decrease the amount of anthropogenic CO2 introduced into the atmosphere by combustion of fossil fuels such as coal. Effective sequestration, however, requires the ability to verify the integrity of the reservoir and ensure that potential leakage rates are kept to a minimum. Moreover, understanding the pathways by which CO2 migrates to the surface is critical to assessing the risks and developing remediation approaches. Field experiments, such as those conducted at the Zero Emissions Research and Technology (ZERT) project test site in Bozeman, Montana, require a flexible CO2 monitoring system that can accurately and continuously measure soil-surface CO2 fluxes for multiple sampling points at concentrations ranging from background levels to several tens of percent. To meet this need, PNNL is developing a multi-port battery-operated system capable of both spatial and temporal monitoring of CO2 at concentrations from ambient to at least 150,000 ppmv. This report describes the system components (sampling chambers, measurement and control system, and power supply) and the results of a field test at the ZERT site during the late summer and fall of 2008. While the system performed well overall during the field test, several improvements to the …

The nature of plasma equilibrium in a magnetic field with stochastic regions is examined. It is shown that the magnetic differential equation that determines the equilibrium Pfirsch-Schluter currents can be cast in a form similar to various nonlinear equations for a turbulent plasma, allowing application of the mathematical methods of statistical turbulence theory. An analytically tractable model, previously studied in the context of resonance-broadening theory, is applied with particular attention paid to the periodicity constraints required in toroidal configurations. It is shown that even a very weak radial diffusion of the magnetic field lines can have a significant effect on the equilibrium in the neighborhood of the rational surfaces, strongly modifying the near-resonant Pfirsch-Schluter currents. Implications for the numerical calculation of 3D equilibria are discussed