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

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.

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.

An updated deterministic version of the Techa River Dosimetry System (TRDS-2009D) has been developed to estimate individual doses from external exposure and intake of radionuclides for residents living on the Techa River contaminated as a result of radioactive releases from the Mayak plutonium facility in 1949–1956. The TRDS-2009D is designed as a flexible system that uses, depending on the input data for an individual, various elements of system databases to provide the dosimetric variables requested by the user. Several phases are included in the computation schedule. The first phase includes calculations with use of a common protocol for all cohort members based on village-average-intake functions and external dose rates; individual data on age, gender and history of residence are included in the first phase. This phase results in dose estimates similar to those obtained with system TRDS-2000 used previously to derive risks of health effects in the Techa River Cohort. The second phase includes refinement of individual internal doses for those persons who have had body-burden measurements or exposure parameters specific to the household where he/she lived on the Techa River. The third phase includes summation of individual doses from environmental exposure and from radiological examinations. The results of TRDS-2009D …

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).

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 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 …

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was tasked by Bechtel National Inc. (BNI) on the River Protection Project, Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (RPP-WTP) project to conduct testing to demonstrate the performance of the WTP Pretreatment Facility (PTF) leaching and ultrafiltration processes at an engineering-scale. In addition to the demonstration, the testing was to address specific technical issues identified in Issue Response Plan for Implementation of External Flowsheet Review Team (EFRT) Recommendations - M12, Undemonstrated Leaching Processes.( ) Testing was conducted in a 1/4.5-scale mock-up of the PTF ultrafiltration system, the Pretreatment Engineering Platform (PEP). Parallel laboratory testing was conducted in various PNNL laboratories to allow direct comparison of process performance at an engineering-scale and a laboratory-scale. This report presents and discusses the results of those tests.

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

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 …

Eaton has developed an advanced energy management solution that has been deployed to several Industries of the Future (IoF) sites. This demonstrated energy savings and reduced unscheduled downtime through an improved means for performing predictive diagnostics and energy efficiency estimation. Eaton has developed a suite of online, continuous, and inferential algorithms that utilize motor current signature analysis (MCSA) and motor power signature analysis (MPSA) techniques to detect and predict the health condition and energy usage condition of motors and their connect loads. Eaton has also developed a hardware and software platform that provided a means to develop and test these advanced algorithms in the field. Results from lab validation and field trials have demonstrated that the developed advanced algorithms are able to detect motor and load inefficiency and performance degradation. Eaton investigated the performance of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) within various industrial facilities to understand concerns about topology and environmental conditions that have precluded broad adoption by the industry to date. A Wireless Link Assessment System (WLAS), was used to validate wireless performance under a variety of conditions. Results demonstrated that wireless networks can provide adequate performance in most facilities when properly specified and deployed. Customers from various IoF expressed …

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 …

With increased application of MOX fuels and longer burnup times for conventional fuels, higher concentrations of the transplutonium actinides Am and Cm (and even heavier species like Bk and Cf) will be produced. The half-lives of the Am isotopes are significantly longer than those of the most important long-lived, high specific activity lanthanides or the most common Cm, Bk and Cf isotopes, thus the greatest concern as regards long-term radiotoxicity. With the removal and transmutation of Am isotopes, radiation levels of high level wastes are reduced to near uranium mineral levels within less than 1000 years as opposed to the time-fram if they remain in the wastes.

Final report for the Columbia Non-neutral Torus. This details the results from the design, construction and initial operation of the Columbia Non-neutral Torus.

In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service completed the sixteenth year of a study to estimate survival and travel time of juvenile salmonids Oncorhynchus spp. passing through dams and reservoirs on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. All estimates were derived from detections of fish tagged with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags. We PIT tagged and released a total of 18,565 hatchery steelhead O. mykiss, 15,991 wild steelhead, and 9,714 wild yearling Chinook salmon O. tshawytscha at Lower Granite Dam in the Snake River. In addition, we utilized fish PIT tagged by other agencies at traps and hatcheries upstream from the hydropower system and at sites within the hydropower system in both the Snake and Columbia Rivers. These included 122,061 yearling Chinook salmon tagged at Lower Granite Dam for evaluation of latent mortality related to passage through Snake River dams. PIT-tagged smolts were detected at interrogation facilities at Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, Ice Harbor, McNary, John Day, and Bonneville Dams and in the PIT-tag detector trawl operated in the Columbia River estuary. Survival estimates were calculated using a statistical model for tag-recapture data from single release groups (the single-release model). Primary research objectives in 2008 were to: (1) estimate …

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.

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 …

This report examines the hydrologic test results for both local vertical profile characterization and large-scale hydrologic tests associated with a new extraction well (well 299-W15-225) that was constructed during FY2009 for inclusion within the future 200-West Area Groundwater Treatment System that is scheduled to go on-line at the end of FY2011. To facilitate the analysis of the large-scale hydrologic test performed at newly constructed extraction well 299-W15-225 (C7017; also referred to as EW-1 in some planning documents), the existing 200-ZP-1 interim pump-and-treat system was completely shut-down ~1 month before the performance of the large-scale hydrologic test. Specifically, this report 1) applies recently developed methods for removing barometric pressure fluctuations from well water-level measurements to enhance the detection of hydrologic test and pump-and-treat system effects at selected monitor wells, 2) analyzes the barometric-corrected well water-level responses for a preliminary determination of large-scale hydraulic properties, and 3) provides an assessment of the vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivity in the vicinity of newly constructed extraction well 299-W15-225. The hydrologic characterization approach presented in this report is expected to have universal application for meeting the characterization needs at other remedial action sites located within unconfined and confined aquifer systems.

Particle in cell (PIC) methods are effective in computing Vlasov-Poisson system of equations used in simulations of magnetic fusion plasmas. PIC methods use grid based computations, for solving Poisson’s equation or more generally Maxwell’s equations, as well as Monte-Carlo type methods to sample the Vlasov equation. The presence of two types of discretizations, deterministic field solves and Monte-Carlo methods for the Vlasov equation, pose challenges in understanding and optimizing performance on today large scale computers which require high levels of concurrency. These challenges arises from the need to optimize two very different types of processes and the interactions between them. Modern cache based high-end computers have very deep memory hierarchies and high degrees of concurrency which must be utilized effectively to achieve good performance. The effective use of these machines requires maximizing concurrency by eliminating serial or redundant work and minimizing global communication. A related issue is minimizing the memory traffic between levels of the memory hierarchy because performance is often limited by the bandwidths and latencies of the memory system. This paper discusses some of the performance issues, particularly in regard to parallelism, of PIC methods. The gyrokinetic toroidal code (GTC) is used for these studies and a new …

This document develops a proposal for removal of 2-Californium sources from the 222-S Laboratory. Included in this document are assessments of shipping packages and decay calculations.

Environmental monitoring data were collected at and around the Area 3 and Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Sites (RWMSs) at the Nevada Test Site. These data are associated with radiation exposure, air, groundwater, meteorology, vadose zone, subsidence, and biota. This report summarizes the 2008 environmental data to provide an overall evaluation of RWMS performance and to support environmental compliance and performance assessment (PA) activities.

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.

Radiation portal monitors used for interdiction of illicit materials at borders include highly sensitive neutron detection systems. The main reason for having neutron detection capability is to detect fission neutrons from plutonium. The currently deployed radiation portal monitors (RPMs) from Ludlum and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) use neutron detectors based upon 3He-filled gas proportional counters, which are the most common large neutron detector. There is a declining supply of 3He in the world, and thus, methods to reduce the use of this gas in RPMs with minimal changes to the current system designs and sensitivity to cargo-borne neutrons are being investigated. Reported here are the results of tests of the 6Li/ZnS(Ag)-coated non-scintillating plastic fibers option. This testing measured the required performance for neutron detection efficiency and gamma ray rejection capabilities of a system manufactured by Innovative American Technology (IAT).