The Westinghouse Savannah River Technology Center was requested by it`s sister site, West Valley Nuclear Service (WVNS), to develop a remote inspection system to gather wall thickness readings of their High Level Waste Tanks. WVNS management chose to take a proactive approach to gain current information on two tanks t hat had been in service since the early 70`s. The tanks contain high level waste, are buried underground, and have only two access ports to an annular space between the tank and the secondary concrete vault. A specialized remote system was proposed to provide both a visual surveillance and ultrasonic thickness measurements of the tank walls. A magnetic wheeled crawler was the basis for the remote delivery system integrated with an off-the-shelf Ultrasonic Data Acquisition System. A development program was initiated for Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) to design, fabricate, and test a remote system based on the Crawler. The system was completed and involved three crawlers to perform the needed tasks, an Ultrasonic Crawler, a Camera Crawler, and a Surface Prep Crawler. The crawlers were computer controlled so that their operation could be done remotely and their position on the wall could be tracked. The Ultrasonic Crawler controls were …

We could become convinced that a particular theory of very-high-energy physics is correct if (1) it has a tightly constrained structure and is linked strongly enough with observed particle interactions, or (2) it predicts new physics beyond the standard model which is discovered. The author makes the case that experiments of this decade and the next allow the possibility that we might become convinced that grand unification, a candidate theory of the second type, is correct.

Increasing the content limits of radioactive material packagings can save money and increase transportation safety by decreasing the total number of shipments required to transport large quantities of material. The contents of drum packages can be limited by unacceptable containment vessel pressures and temperatures due to the thermal properties of the insulation. The purpose of this work is to understand and predict the effects of insulation properties on containment system performance.

This project was supported through ERDA to demonstrate that the temporal distribution of tritium can be documented by the analysis of bound hydrogen in annual tree-ring samples. The project focuses on two sample locations at the Savannah River Site (SRS), a nuclear material production facility located in Aiken, SC. The SRS provided samples of cross-sections from a single tree that were to be pooled together for analysis. Annual tree-rings were identified in each cross-section sample and separated for the period 1954 to 1993. These annual samples were ground and chemically treated to separate the hollocellulose fraction of the wood, then subsequently combusted and the resulting water counting using low-level liquid scintillation counting equipment. Additionally, the ground annual tree-rings were gamma-counted to determine any temporal variation in radionuclide activity and analyzed with x-ray fluorescence to find any temporal variation in trace-element concentrations. This report presents the results and is intended to be a compilation of the work.

The Aegis system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is being developed to provide a real-time emergency response management capability for a diverse range of environmental monitoring applications. The Aegis system is designed to integrate a variety of environmental, emergency, and process monitoring sensor systems using a flexible, modular architecture that can be readily configured for any number of industrial, commercial, or government sites. Several unique LLNL technologies are being integrated via this effort that will provide tracking of environmental contaminants, real-time identification of potentially unacceptable conditions, and facilitation of emergency or measured response management operations. Potential areas of application include: monitoring-surface/ground water, air, radiation; waste effluent & storm/drain line; water quality (water storage, treatment, and distribution); fixed processes, safety systems; critical facilities; hazardous spill management; rapid environmental monitoring deployment; watershed protection; ecosystem management and restoration; enforcement and compliance.

The purpose of this guide is to describe each of the documents and record series pertaining to the production, release, and disposal of radioactive barium-lanthanum (RaLa), iodine-131, and cesium-137 at the Department of Energy`s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. History Associates Incorporated (HAI) prepared this guide as part of DOE`s Epidemiologic Records Inventory Project, which seeks to verify and conduct inventories of epidemiologic and health-related records at various DOE and DOE contractor sites. This introduction briefly describes the Epidemiologic Records Inventory Project and HAI`s role. It provides information on the history of the DOE-Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), particularly ORNL. Specific attention is given to the production of RaLa and the fission products iodine-131 and cesium-137. This introduction also describes the methodologies HAI used in the selection and inventorying of documents and record series pertaining to RaLa, iodine-131, and cesium-137, and in the production of this guide. Concluding paragraphs describe the arrangement of the record series, explain the information contained in the record series descriptions, and indicate restrictions on access to the records.