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In view of the looming energy crisis facing our planet, attention increasingly focuses on materials potentially useful as a basis for energy saving technologies. The discovery of giant magnetocaloric (GMC) compounds - materials that exhibit especially large changes in temperature as the externally applied magnetic field is varied - is one such compound 1. These materials have potential for use in solid state cooling technology as a viable alternative to existing gas based refrigeration technologies that use choro-fluoro - and hydro-fluoro-carbon chemicals known to have a severe detrimental effect on human health and environment 2,3. Examples of GMC compounds include Gd5(SiGe)4 4, MnFeP1-xAsx 5 and Ni-Mn-Ga shape memory alloy based compounds 6-8. Here we explain how the properties of one of these compounds (Ni2MnGa) can be tuned as a function of temperature by adding dopants. By altering the free energy such that the structural and magnetic transitions coincide, a GMC compound that operates at just the right temperature for human requirements can be obtained 9. We show how Cu, substituted for Mn, pulls the magnetic transition downwards in temperature and also, counterintuitively, increases the delocalization of the Mn magnetism. At the same time, this reinforces the Ni-Ga chemical bond, raising …

The goal of this project was to perform simulations of beam transport in linear colliders, with an emphasis on emittance dilution, spin polarization transport, and development and testing of beam based tuning algorithms. Our simulations are based on an existing object-oriented particle-tracking library, Bmad. To facilitate the efficient development of simulations, an accelerator design and analysis program based on Bmad has been developed called Tao (Tool for Accelerator Optics). The three beam-based alignment algorithms, Dispersion Free Steering, Ballistic Alignment (BA), and the Kubo Method have been implemented in Tao. We have studied the effects of magnet misalignments, BPM resolution, beam jitter, stray fields, BPM and steering magnet failure and the effects of various cavity shape wakefields. A parametric study has been conducted in the presence of the above types of errors for all three alignment algorithms. We find that BPM resolution has only modest impact on the effectiveness of beam based alignment. The DFS correction algorithm was found to be very robust in situations where there were BPM and/or steering magnet failures. The wakefields in the main linac are very weak and cause negligible emittance growth. Spin tracking was extended to study all accelerator components between the damping ring and …

The South endcap calorimeter vessel was moved into Lab A on Sept. 18, 1990. A cooldown of the pressure vessel with liquid nitrogen was performed on Sept. 26 to check the vessel's integrity. With the pressure vessel cold, the insulating vacuum was monitored for leaks. Through out the testing, the insulating vacuum remained good and the vessel passed the test. The cold test was carried out per the procedures of D-Zero engineering note 3740.220-EN-250. The test was very similar to the cold test performed on the Central Calorimeter in October of 1987. The test of the ECS was performed in the same manner using the same equipment as the ECN cold test. Reference D-Zero engineering notes 3740.210-EN-122, 3740.000-EN-I07, and 3740.210-EN-II0 for information about the CC cold test. Reference EN-260 for the results of the ECN cold test. The insulating vacuum space was pumped on while equipment was being connected to the pressure vessel. Two hours after starting to pump with the blower the vacuum space pressure was at about 40 microns. The pumping continued overnight (another 16 hours). In the morning the pressure was 11.5 microns. A rate of rise test was performed. With the pump valved off, the pressure …

We report precision measurements of the Feynman-x (x{sub F}) dependence, and first measurements of the transverse momentum (p{sub T}) dependence, of transverse single spin asymmetries for the production of {pi}{sup 0} mesons from polarized proton collisions at {radical}s = 200 GeV. The x{sub F} dependence of the results are in fair agreement with perturbative QCD (pQCD) model calculations that identify orbital motion of quarks and gluons within the proton as the origin of the spin effects. Results for the p{sub T} dependence at fixed x{sub F} are not consistent with these same pQCD-based calculations.

Design criteria and operating experience with the aluminum oxide bearing and journal combination as installed in canned rotor pumps in in-pile loops are described. No pump failures occurred in 8 pumps with A1/sub 2/0/sub 3/ bearings over a cumulative period of l0,000 hours due to wear or corrosion. Five failures due to slippage and/or electrical breakdown of the stator insulation are reported. (T.R.H.)

The Health Council is closely involved in establishing the scientific foundation of exposure limits for substances and radiation in order to protect public health. Through the years, the Council has contributed to the formulation of principles and procedures, both for carcinogenic and for noncarcinogenic agents. As a rule, the discussion with regard to the derivation of health-based recommended exposure limits centers around the appropriateness of extrapolation methods (What can be inferred from data on high exposure levels and on experimental animals?). Generally speaking, there is a lack of direct information on the health effects of low levels of exposure. Effects at these levels cannot usually be detected by means of traditional animal experiments or epidemiological research. The capacity of these analytical instruments to distinguish between ''signal'' and ''noise'' is inadequate in most cases. Annex B of this report contains a brief outline of the difficulties and the established methods for tackling this problem. In spite of this, the hope exists that the posited weak signals, if they are indeed present, can be detected by other means. The search will have to take place on a deeper level. In other words, effort must be made to discover what occurs at underlying …

When the field of modern publishing was on a collision course with telecommunications, publishing organizations had to come up to speed in fields that were, heretofore, completely foreign and technologically forbidding to them. For generations, the technology of publishing centered on offset lithography, typesetting, and photography--fields that saw evolutionary and incremental change from the time of Guttenberg. But publishing now includes making information available over the World Wide Web--Internet publishing--with its ever-accelerating rate of technological change and dependence on computers and networks. Clearly, we need a methodology to help anyone in the field of Internet publishing plan for the future, and there is a well-known, well-tested technique for just this purpose--Scenario Planning. Scenario Planning is an excellent tool to help organizations make better decisions in the present based on what they identify as possible and plausible scenarios of the future. Never was decision making more difficult or more crucial than during the years of this study, 1996-1999. This thesis takes the position that, by applying Scenario Planning, the Technical Information Department at LLNL, a large government laboratory (and organizations similar to it), could be confident that moving into the telecommunications business of Internet publishing stood a very good chance of …

The objective of this study was to measure the leaching and adsorption characteristics of uranium in six near-surface sediment samples collected from the 300 Area of the Hanford Site. Scanning electron micrographs of the samples showed that the uranium contamination in the sediments is most likely present as co-precipitates and/or discrete uranium particles. Molecular probe techniques also confirm the presence of crystalline discrete uranium bearing phases. In all cases, the uranium is present as oxidized uranium (uranyl [U(VI)]). Results from the column leach tests showed that uranium leaching did not follow a constant solubility paradigm. Four of the five contaminated sediments showed a large near instantaneous release of a few percent of the total uranium followed by a slower continual release. Steady-state uranium leachate concentrations were never measured and leaching characteristics and trends were not consistent among the samples. Dissolution kinetics were slow, and the measured leach curves most likely represent a slow kinetically controlled desorption or dissolution paradigm. Batch adsorption experiments were performed to investigate the effect of pH and uranium and carbonate solution concentrations on uranium adsorption onto the uncontaminated sediment. Uranium adsorption Kd values ranged from 0 to > 100 ml/g depending on which solution parameter was …

The search for new particles, such as the top quark, charged Higgs boson, heavy gauge bosons and supersymmetric particles, at the CERN and Fermilab proton-antiproton colliders is reviewed. A preliminary result by the CDF experiment of a reconstructed B meson mass peak from the decays B{sup {plus minus}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {plus minus}} and B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi}K*{sup 0} is also presented. 22 refs., 13 figs.

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High-average-current linear electron accelerators require photoinjectors capable of delivering tens to hundreds of mA average current, with peak currents of hundreds of amps. Standard photocathodes face significant challenges in meeting these requirements, and often have short operational lifetimes in an accelerator environment. We report on recent progress toward development of secondary emission amplifiers for photocathodes, which are intended to increase the achievable average current while protecting the cathode from the accelerator. The amplifier is a thin diamond wafer which converts energetic (few keV) primary electrons into hundreds of electron-hole pairs via secondary electron emission. The electrons drift through the diamond under an external bias and are emitted into vacuum via a hydrogen-terminated surface with negative electron affinity (NEA). Secondary emission gain of over 200 has been achieved. Two methods of patterning diamond, laser ablation and reactive-ion etching (RIE), are being developed to produce the required geometry. A variety of diagnostic techniques, including FTIR, SEM and AFM, have been used to characterize the diamonds.

This report describes earthquake activity within approximately 65 km of Yucca Mountain site during the October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2006 time period (FY05-06). The FY05-06 earthquake activity will be compared with the historical and more recent period of seismic activity in the Yucca Mountain region. The relationship between the distribution of seismicity and active faults, historical patterns of activity, and rates of earthquakes (number of events and their magnitudes) are important components in the assessment of the seismic hazard for the Yucca Mountain site. Since October 1992 the University of Nevada has compiled a catalog of earthquakes in the Yucca Mountain area. Seismicity reports have identified notable earthquake activity, provided interpretations of the seismotectonics of the region, and documented changes in the character of earthquake activity based on nearly 30 years of site-characterization monitoring. Data from stations in the seismic network in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain is collected and managed at the Nevada Seismological Laboratory (NSL) at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR). Earthquake events are systematically identified and cataloged under Implementing Procedures developed in compliance with the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) Quality Assurance Program. The earthquake catalog for FY05-06 in the Yucca Mountain region …

Transport mirrors within the National Ignition Facility, a 192-beam 4-MJ fusion laser at 1053 nm, will be exposed to backscattered light from plasmas created from fusion targets and backlighters. This backscattered light covers the UV and visible spectrum from 351-600 nm. The transport mirror BK7 substrates will be intentionally solarized to absorb >95% of the backscattered light to prevent damage to the metallic mechanical support hardware. Solarization has minimal impact on the 351- and 1053-nm laser-induced damage threshold or the reflected wavefront of the multilayer hafnia silica coating. Radiation sources of various energies were examined for BK7 darkening efficiency within the UV and visible region with 1.1 MeV gamma rays from a Cobalt 60 source ultimately being selected. Finally, bleaching rates were measured at elevated temperatures to generate a model for predicting the lifetime at ambient conditions (20 C), before solarized BK7 substrates exceed 5% transmission in the UV and visible region. Over a 30-mm thickness, BK7 glass will bleach in 10 years to 5% transmission at 600 nm, the most transmissive wavelengths over the 351-600 nm regions.

The HELIOS (High Energy Lepton and Ion Spectrometer) experiment, installed at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron, proposes to examine in detail the physical properties of a state of high energy created in nuclei by ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions. It is generally believed that, at high densities or temperatures, a phase transition to a plasma of quark and gluons will occur. The dynamic of the expansion of such a plasma and its subsequent condensation into a hadron gas should markedly affect the composition and momentum distribution of the emerging particles and photons. The HELIOS experimental setup therefore combines 4..pi.. calorimetric coverage with measurements of inclusive particle spectra, two particle correlations, low and high mass lepton pairs and photons. The emphasis is placed on transverse energy flow (E/sub /tau//) measurements with good energy resolution, and the ability to trigger the acquisition of data in a variety of E/sub /tau// ranges, thereby selecting the impact parameter or the violence of the collisions. This short note presents HELIOS results, for the most part still preliminary, on /sup 16/O--nucleus collisions at the incident energies of 60 and 200 GeV per nucleon. The E /sub /tau// distributions from Al, Ag and W targets are discussed and compared …

The thermal decomposition of ferric nitrate nonahydrate, chromium nitrate nonahydrate, aluminum nitrate nonahydrate, and nickel nitrate hexahydrate as well as the mw- tures of these compounds in the proportions produced in the dissolution of Nichrome and stainless steel alloys was investigated. The experiments were conducted in air at two heating rates, approximately 1.1 deg C and 2.6 deg C per minute. The intermediate producte and final products were analyzed by x-ray diffraction and chemically where it was appropriate. (auth)

This Separations and Waste Forms Campaign Implementation Plan provides summary level detail describing how the Campaign will achieve the objectives set-forth by the Fuel Cycle Reasearch and Development (FCRD) Program. This implementation plan will be maintained as a living document and will be updated as needed in response to changes or progress in separations and waste forms research and the FCRD Program priorities.

The process sumps in H-Canyon at the Savannah River Site (SRS) collect leaks from process tanks and jumpers. To prevent build-up of fissile material the sumps are frequently flushed which generates liquid waste and is prone to human error. The development of inserts filled with a neutron poison will allow a reduction in the frequency of flushing. Due to concrete deterioration and deformation of the sump liners the current dimensions of the sumps are unknown. Knowledge of these dimensions is necessary for development of the inserts. To solve this problem a remote Sump Measurement System was designed, fabricated, and tested to aid development of the sump inserts.

Tank 5 at the Savannah River Site has been used to store high level waste and is currently undergoing waste removal processes in preparation for tank closure. Samples were taken from two locations to determine the contents in support of Documented Safety Analysis (DSA) development for chemical cleaning. These samples were obtained through the use of the Drop Core Sampler and the Snowbank Sampler developed by the Engineered Equipment & Systems (EES) group of the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL).

Electronic structure of disordered semiconducting conjugated polymers was studied. Atomic structure was found from a classical molecular dynamics simulation and the charge patching method was used to calculate the electronic structure with the accuracy similar to the one of density functional theory in local density approximation. The total density of states, the local density of states at different points in the system and the wavefunctions of several states around the gap were calculated in the case of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and polythiophene (PT) systems to gain insight into the origin of disorder in the system, the degree of carrier localization and the role of chain interactions. The results indicated that disorder in the electronic structure of alkyl substituted polythiophenes comes from disorder in the conformation of individualchains, while in the case of polythiophene there is an additional contribution due to disorder in the electronic coupling between the chains. Each of the first several wavefunctions in the conduction and valence band of P3HT is localized over several rings of a single chain. It was shown that the localization can be caused in principle both by ring torsions and chain bending, however the effect of ring torsions is much stronger. PT wavefunctions are …

In this study, sediments collected from boreholes drilled in 2010 and 2011 as part of a remedial investigation/feasibility study were characterized. The wells, located within or around two process ponds and one process trench waste site, were characterized in terms of total uranium concentration, mobile fraction of uranium, particle size, and moisture content along the borehole depth. In general, the gravel-dominated sediments of the vadose zone Hanford formation in all investigated boreholes had low moisture contents. Based on total uranium content, a total of 48 vadose zone and periodically rewetted zone sediment samples were selected for more detailed characterization, including measuring the concentration of uranium extracted with 8 M nitric acid, and leached using bicarbonate mixed solutions to determine the liable uranium (U(VI)) contents. In addition, water extraction was conducted on 17 selected sediments. Results from the sediment acid and bicarbonate extractions indicated the total concentrations of anthropogenic labile uranium in the sediments varied among the investigated boreholes. The peak uranium concentration (114.84 µg/g, acid extract) in <2-mm size fractions was found in borehole 399 1-55, which was drilled directly in the southwest corner of the North Process Pond. Lower uranium concentrations (~0.3–2.5 µg/g, acid extract) in <2-mm size fractions …

Fluor Hanford (FH) is designing and assessing the performance of engineered barriers for final closure of 200-UW-1 waste sites. Engineered barriers must minimize the intrusion and water, plants and animals into the underlying waste to provide protection for human health and the environment. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) developed Subsurface Transport Over Multiple Phases (STOMP) simulator is being used to optimize the performance of candidate barriers. Simulating barrier performance involves computation of mass and energy transfer within a soil-atmosphere-vegetation continuum and requires a variety of input parameters, some of which are more readily available than others. Required input includes parameter values for the geotechnical, physical, hydraulic, and thermal properties of the materials comprising the barrier and the structural fill on which it will be constructed as well as parameters to allow simulation of plant effects. This report provides a data package of the required parameters as well as the technical basis, rationale and methodology used to obtain the parameter values.

OAK B204 The objective of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of using full-scale virtual reality simulation in the design, construction, and maintenance of future nuclear power plants. Specifically, this project will test the suitability of Immersive Projection Display (IPD) technology to aid engineers in the design of the next generation nuclear power plant and to evaluate potential cost reductions that can be realized by optimization of installation and construction sequences. The intent is to see if this type of information technology can be used in capacities similar to those currently filled by full-scale physical mockups.