This report discusses the management and security of nuclear weapons in the post-cold war United States. The definition of what constitutes security is clearly changing in the US. It is now a much more integrated view that includes defense and the economy. The author tries to bring some semblance of order to these themes in this brief adaptation of a presentation.

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This U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Program Review starts with two interesting pieces on industries outlook about market conditions. Dr. Allan Jelacics introductory talk includes the statistics on the impacts of the Industry Coupled Drilling Program (late-1970's) on geothermal power projects in Nevada and Utah (about 140 MWe of power stimulated). Most of the papers in these Proceedings are in a technical report format, with results. Sessions included: Exploration, The Geysers, Reservoir Engineering, Drilling, Energy Conversion (including demonstration of a BiPhase Turbine Separator), Energy Partnerships (including the Lake County effluent pipeline to The Geysers), and Technology Transfer (Biochemical processing of brines, modeling of chemistry, HDR, the OIT low-temperature assessment of collocation of resources with population, and geothermal heat pumps). There were no industry reviews at this meeting.

The characteristics of the ultrashort pulse laser (USPL, < 1 ps) ablation of biological tissues are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Effective USPL parameters for minimal damage and high ablation rates are discussed.

This paper reports the status and details of the costs of construction of niobium superconducting resonant cavities for a linear accelerator, presently being built as a booster for the 15 UD tandem Pelletron accelerator at the Nuclear Science Centre, New Delhi. The linear accelerator will have three cryostat modules, each holding eight quarter-wave resonators. Construction of a batch of ten resonators for the linac started at Argonne National Laboratory in May 1997. For production, all fabrication and all electron beam welding is being done through commercial vendors. Details of construction and present status of the project are presented.

We have been working for many years to develop better methods for predicting the lifetimes of polymer materials. Because of the recent interest in extending the lifetimes of nuclear weapons and the importance of environmental seals (o-rings, gaskets) for protecting weapon interiors against oxygen and water vapor, we have recently turned our attention to seal materials. Perhaps the most important environmental o-ring material is butyl rubber, used in various military applications. Although it is the optimum choice from a water permeability perspective, butyl can be marginal from an aging point-of-view. The purpose of the present work was to derive better methods for predicting seal lifetimes and applying these methods to an important butyl material, Parker compound B6 12-70.

The Container Analysis Fire Environment computer code (CAFE) is intended to provide Type B package designers with an enhanced engulfing fire boundary condition when combined with the PATRAN/P-Thermal commercial code. Historically an engulfing fire boundary condition has been modeled as {sigma}T{sup 4} where {sigma} is the Stefan-Boltzman constant, and T is the fire temperature. The CAFE code includes the necessary chemistry, thermal radiation, and fluid mechanics to model an engulfing fire. Effects included are the local cooling of gases that form a protective boundary layer that reduces the incoming radiant heat flux to values lower than expected from a simple {sigma}T{sup 4} model. In addition, the effect of object shape on mixing that may increase the local fire temperature is included. Both high and low temperature regions that depend upon the local availability of oxygen are also calculated. Thus the competing effects that can both increase and decrease the local values of radiant heat flux are included in a reamer that is not predictable a-priori. The CAFE package consists of a group of computer subroutines that can be linked to workstation-based thermal analysis codes in order to predict package performance during regulatory and other accident fire scenarios.

The spheromak could be extended into the high beta regime by supporting the pressure on flux-conserving walls, allowing the plasma to be in a Taylor state with zero pressure gradient and thus stable to ideal and resistive MHD. The concept yields a potentially attractive, pulsed reactor which would require no external magnets. The flux conserver would be shaped to be stable to the tilt and shift instabilities. We envision a plasma which is ohmically ignited at low beta, with the kinetic pressure growing to beta > 1 by fueling from the edge. The flux conserver would be designed such that the magnetic decay time = the fusion burn time. The thermal capacity of the flux conserver and blanket would exceed the fusion yield per discharge, so that they can be cooled steadily. Ignition is estimated to require minimum technology: 30-100 MJ of pulsed power applied at a 0.5 GW rate generates an estimated bum yield > 1 GJ. The concept thus provides an alternate route to a fusion plasma that is MHD stable at high beta, yielding a reactor that is simple and cheap. The major confinement issue is transport due to grad(T), e.g. driven by high beta modes related …

Many types of integrated and discrete microelectronic devices exist in the enduring stockpile. In the past, most of these devices have used conventional ceramic hermetic packaging (CHP) technology. Sometime in the future, plastic encapsulated microelectronic (PEM) devices will almost certainly enter the inventory. In the presence of moisture, several of the aluminum-containing metallization features common to both types of packaging become susceptible to atmospheric corrosion (Figure 1). A breach in hermeticity (e.g., due to a crack in the ceramic body or lid seal) could allow moisture and/or contamination to enter the interior of a CHP device. For PEM components, the epoxy encapsulant material is inherently permeable to moisture. A multi-year project is now underway at Sandia to develop the knowledge base and analytical tools needed to quantitatively predict the effect of corrosion on microelectronic performance and reliability. The issue of corrosion-induced failure surfaced twice during the past year because cracks were found in their ceramic bodies of two different CHP devices: the SA371 1/3712 MOSFET and the SA3935 ASIC (acronym for A Simple Integrated Circuit). Because of our inability to perform a model-based prediction at that time, the decision was made to determine the validity of the corrosion concern for …

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) projection systems are designed with mild aspheres so that the mirrors can be tested at the center of curvature without null optics. The elimination of the null optics improves the fundamental accuracy of the test. However, this test configuration is not stiginatic, and the rays from the test wavefront and reference wavefront will not trace the same optical path through the viewing system. Effectively, the test and reference wavefront are sheared in the exit pupil of the viewing system. This shear leads to an OPD contribution from the viewing system that we label the mapping error. For visible light metrology, this induced OPD error can be a significant fraction of the EUV wavelength. The origin of this OPD error is demonstrated using simple ray optics. Examples are presented illustrating the nature and magnitude of this error for off-axis aspheric sections. Methods for mininiizing this OPD error are suggested.

In this study, the authors are providing an experimental test bed for validating features of the ALEGRA code over a broad range of strain rates with overlapping diagnostics that encompass the multiple responses. A unique feature of the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian Grid for Research Applications (ALEGRA) code is that it allows simultaneous computational treatment, within one code, of a wide range of strain-rates varying from hydrodynamic to structural conditions. This range encompasses strain rates characteristic of shock-wave propagation (10{sup 7}/s) and those characteristic of structural response (10{sup 2}/s). Most previous code validation experimental studies, however, have been restricted to simulating or investigating a single strain-rate regime. What is new and different in this investigation is that the authors have performed well-instrumented experiments which capture features relevant to both hydrodynamic and structural response in a single experiment. Aluminum was chosen for use in this study because it is a well characterized material--its EOS and constitutive material properties are well defined over a wide range of loading rates. The current experiments span strain rate regimes of over 10{sup 7}/s to less than 10{sup 2}/s in a single experiment. The input conditions are extremely well defined. Velocity interferometers are used to record the …

The quantum confined Stark effect was found to result in a strong quantum well width dependence of threshold current density in strained group-III nitride quantum well lasers. For an In{sub 0.2}Ga{sub 0.8}N/GaN structure with quantum well width in the neighborhood of 3.5nm, our analysis shows that the reduction in spontaneous emission loss by the electron-hole spatial separation outweighs the corresponding reduction in gain to produce a threshold current density minimum.

The evolution of the scrape-off layer (SOL) during a disruption in the DIII-D tokamak is modeled using the 2-D UEDGE transport code. The focus is on the thermal quench phase when most of the energy content of the discharge is rapidly transported across the magnetic separatrix where it then flows to material surfaces or is radiated. Comparisons between the simulation and an experiment on the DIII-D tokamak are made with the heat flux to the divertor plate, and temperature and density profiles at the SOL midplane. The temporal response of the separate electron and ion heat-flux components to the divertor plate is calculated. The sensitivity of the solution to assumptions of electron heat-flux models and impurity radiation is investigated.

Microscopic calculations of the absorption/gain and luminescence spectra are presented for wide bandgap Ga{sub 1{minus}x}In{sub x}N/GaN quantum well systems. Whereas structures with narrow well widths exhibit the usual excitation dependent bleaching of the exciton resonance without shifting spectral position, a significant blue shift of the exciton peak is obtained for wider quantum wells. This blue shift, which is also present in the excitation dependent luminescence spectra, is attributed to the interplay between the screening of a strain induced piezoelectric field and the density dependence of many-body Coulomb effects. The calculations also show an over two orders of magnitude increase in the spontaneous electron-hole-pair lifetime with well width: due to the reduction of the electron-hole wavefunction overlap in the wider wells. The resulting decrease in spontaneous emission loss is predicted to lead to improved threshold properties in wide quantum well lasers.

Low-temperature, co-fired ceramics (LTCC) are the substrate material-of-choice for a growing number of multi-chip module (MCM) applications. Unlike the longer-standing hybrid microcircuit technology based upon alumina substrates, the manufacturability and reliability of thick film solder joints on LTCC substrates have not been widely studied. An investigation was undertaken to fully characterize such solder joints. A surface mount test vehicle with Daisy chain electrical connections was designed and built with Dupont{trademark} 951 tape. The Dupont{trademark} 4569 thick film ink (Au76-Pt21 -Pd3 wt.%) was used to establish the surface conductor pattern. The conductor pattern was fired onto the LTCC substrate in a matrix of process conditions that included: (1) double versus triple prints, (2) dielectric frame versus no frame, and (3) three firing temperatures (800 C, 875 C and 950 C). Pads were examined from the test vehicles. The porosity of the thick film layers was measured using quantitative image analysis in both the transverse and short transverse directions. A significant dependence on firing temperature was recorded for porosity. Solder paste comprised of Sn63-Pb37 powder with an RMA flux was screen printed onto the circuit boards. The appropriate components, which included chip capacitors of sizes 0805 up to 2225 and 50 mil …

A GaN/AlGaN heterojunction bipolar transistor structure with Mg doping in the base and Si Doping in the emitter and collector regions was grown by Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition in c-axis Al(2)O(3). Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry measurements showed no increase in the O concentration (2-3x10(18) cm(-3)) in the AlGaN emitter and fairly low levels of C (~4-5x10(17) cm (-3)) throughout the structure. Due to the non-ohmic behavior of the base contact at room temperature, the current gain of large area (~90 um diameter) devices was <3. Increasing the device operating temperature led to higher ionization fractions of the mg acceptors in the base, and current gains of ~10 were obtained at 300 degree C.