The Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) includes many activities required to remediate the radioactive waste stored in underground waste storage tanks. These activities include routine monitoring of the waste, facilities maintenance, upgrades to existing equipment, and installation of new equipment necessary to manage, retrieve, process, and dispose of the waste. In order to ensure that these multiple activities are integrated, cost effective, and necessary, a sound technical baseline is required from which all activities can be traced and measured. The process by which this technical baseline is developed will consist of the identification of functions, requirements, architecture, and test (FRAT) methodology. This process must be completed for TWRS to a level that provides the technical basis for all facility/system/component maintenance, upgrades, or new equipment installation.

Tensile creep-rupture of a commercial gas pressure sintered Si3N4 and a sintered SiC is examined at 1038, 1150, and 1350 C. These 2 ceramics are candidates for nozzles and combustor tiles that are to be retrofitted in land-based gas turbine engines, and there is interest in their high temperature performance over service times {ge} 10,000 h (14 months). For this long lifetime, a static tensile stress of 300 MPa at 1038/1150 C and 125 Mpa at 1350 C cannot be exceeded for Si3N4; for SiC, the corresponding numbers are 300 Mpa at 1038 C, 250 MPa at 1150 C, and 180 MPa at 1350 C. Creep-stress exponents for Si3N4 are 33, 17, and 8 for 1038, 1150, 1350 C; fatigue- stress exponents are equivalent to creep exponents, suggesting that the fatigue mechanism causing fracture is related to the creep mechanism. Little success was obtained in producing failure in SiC after several decades of time through exposure to appropriate tensile stress; if failure did not occur on loading, then the SiC specimens most often did not creep-rupture. Creep-stress exponents for the SiC were determined to be 57, 27, and 11 for 1038, 1150, and 1350 C. For SiC, the fatigue-stress exponents …

The coupled equations of motion for a circular ring or circular ring segment are developed for the case where the ring is rotating about an axis in its plane and subjected to an angular velocity as well as an angular acceleration. Coupling results from bending in and out of the plane of the ring as well as from extension and torsion of the ring. These equations are then applied to special cases to determine the coupled equations of motion for a ring, beam and cable rotating at a constant angular speed. Coupled equations of motion for a non-rotating circular ring or circular ring segment are developed for the cases of extensional motion and inextensional motion. These equations are subsequently linearized and uncoupled for extensional and inextensional motion in the plane of the ring as well as for uncoupled motion out of the plane of the ring. The critical angular speed for lateral dynamic instability is determined for a rotating circular shaft which supports several rotating circular ring segments.

With the coming changes in the electrical industry, there is a broad need to understand the impacts of restructuring on customers, existing utilities, and other stakeholders. Retail wheeling; performance-based regulation; unbundling of generation, transmission, and distribution; and the impact of stranded commitments are all key issues in the discussions of the future of the industry. To quantify these issues, financial and production cost models are required. The authors have created a smaller and faster finance and operations model call the Oak Ridge Financial Model (ORFIN) to help analyze the ramifications of the issues identified above. It combines detailed pricing and financial analysis with an economic dispatch model over a multi-year period. Several types of ratemaking are modeled, as well as the wholesale market and retail wheeling. Multiple plants and purchased power contracts are modeled for economic dispatch, and separate financial accounts are kept for each. Transmission, distribution, and other functions are also broken out. Regulatory assets such as deferred tax credits and demand-side management (DSM) programs are also included in the income statement and balance sheet. This report describes some of the key features of the model. Examples of the financial reports are shown, with a description of their formulation. …

The ability to rapidly command multi-robot behavior is crucial for the acceptance and effective utilization of multiple robot control. To achieve this, a modular- multiple robot control solution is being, pursued using the SMART modular control architecture. This paper investigates the development of a new dual-arm kinematics module (DUAL-KLN) which allows multiple robots, previously controlled as separate stand-alone systems, to be controlled as a coordinated multi-robot system. The DUAL-KIN module maps velocity and force information from a center point of interest on a grasped object to the tool centers of each grasping robot. Three-port network equations are used and mapped into the scattering operator domain in a computationally efficient form. Application examples of the DUAL-KLN module in multi-robot coordinated control are given.

Produced water from oil and gas operations, or brine as it is typically referred, may be characterized as being highly saline, with total dissolved solids greater than 100 g/L. If these bribes are disposed improperly there may be severe adverse environmental effects. Thus, it is important that brine be disposed using environmentally sound methods. Unfortunately, costs for the disposal of brine water are a significant burden to oil and gas producers in New York State. These costs and the relatively low market price of oil and natural gas have contributed to the decline in gas and oil production in New York State during the past 10 years. The objectives of this study were to evaluate new and existing options for brine disposal in New York State, examine the technical and economic merits of these options, and assess environmental impacts associated with each option. Two new disposal options investigated for New York State oil and gas producers included construction of a regional brine treatment facility to treat brine prior to discharge into a receiving water and a salt production facility that utilizes produced water as a feed stock. Both options are technically feasible; however, their economic viability depends on facility size …

The ambient atmosphere between the laser transmitter and the target can affect CO{sub 2} differential absorption lidar (DIAL) measurement sensitivity through a number of different processes. In this work, we will address two of the sources of atmospheric interference with CO{sub 2} DIAL measurements: effects due to beam propagation through atmospheric turbulence and extinction due to absorption by atmospheric gases. Measurements of atmospheric extinction under different atmospheric conditions are presented and compared to a standard atmospheric transmission model (FASCODE). We have also investigated the effects of atmospheric turbulence on system performance. Measurements of the effective beam size after propagation are compared to model predictions using simultaneous measurements of atmospheric turbulence as input to the model. These results are also discussed in the context of the overall effect of beam propagation through atmospheric turbulence on the sensitivity of DIAL measurements.

The purpose of this report is to provide a broad understanding of water-related issues of agriculture and drainage on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. To this end, an attempt is made to review available literature on land and water resources of the San Joaquin Valley and to generate a process-oriented framework within which the various physical-, chemical-, biological- and economic components of the system and their interactions are placed in mutual perspective.

Currently, the Morgantown Energy Technology Center, is actively investigating alternative hot fuel gas desulfurization sorbents for application to the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC). A sorbent must be highly active towards sulfur at high temperatures and pressure`s, and under varying degrees of reducing atmospheres. Thus, high conversion of the metal oxide and low hydrogen sulfide exit partial pressures. Also, it must regenerate nearly ideally to maintain activity over numerous cycles. Furthermore, regeneration must yield a sulfur product which is economically recoverable directly or indirectly. This cyclic process requires a holistic approach as any one criteria may eliminate a candidate sorbent from further consideration. Over fifty induration campaigns have been conducted among the fifteens Mn-based sorbent formulations. All indurated sorbents has been tested for crush strength and chemical analysis. Also, fifteen sorbent formulations have been tested in a TGA for at least on e induration condition. Subsequently described are the three main groups of formulations tested. They are the MnCO{sub 3} supported with TiO{sub 2} (with or without bentonite), MnCO{sub 3} supported with Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} (with or without porosity enhancers), and MnO{sub 2} ore supported with alundum (with and without bentonite).

This report describes work done during FY 95 that was sponsored by the Department of Energy, Office of Nonproliferation and National Security, Knowledge Fusion Project. The project team selected satellite sensor data to use as the one main example for the application of its analysis algorithms. The specific sensor-fusion problem has many generic features, which make it a worthwhile problem to attempt to solve in a general way. The generic problem is to recognize events of interest from multiple time series that define a possibly noisy background. By implementing a suite of time series modeling and forecasting methods and using well-chosen alarm criteria, we reduce the number of false alarms. We then further reduce the number of false alarms by analyzing all suspicious sections of data, as judged by the alarm criteria, with pattern recognition methods. An accompanying report (Ref 1) describes the implementation and application of this 2-step process for separating events from unusual background and applies a suite of forecasting methods followed by a suite of pattern recognition methods. This report goes into more detail about one of the forecasting methods and one of the pattern recognition methods and is applied to the same kind of satellite-sensor data …

The Tank Waste Remediation System is selecting a reference melter system for the Hanford High-Level Waste vitrification plant. A melter evaluation was conducted in FY 1994 to narrow down the long list of potential melter technologies to a few for testing. A formal evaluation was performed by a Melter Selection Working Group (MSWG), which met in June and August 1994. At the June meeting, MSWG evaluated 15 technologies and selected six for more thorough evaluation at the Aug. meeting. All 6 were variations of joule-heated or induction-heated melters. Between the June and August meetings, Hanford site staff and consultants compiled data packages for each of the six melter technologies as well as variants of the baseline technologies. Information was solicited from melter candidate vendors to supplement existing information. This document contains the data packages compiled to provide background information to MSWG in support of the evaluation of the six technologies. (A separate evaluation was performed by Fluor Daniel, Inc. to identify balance of plant impacts if a given melter system was selected.)

The authors have used a heat-pipe target in an X-ray beam to obtain photoabsorption spectra of potassium at the K- and KM-edges, in the photon energy range 3,600 to 3,650 eV. Preliminary identifications of most of the peaks observed are made using Dirac Hartree-Fock calculations. They compare these results with those obtained previously in closed-shell rare gas absorption spectra.

This monthly publication contains descriptions of the information received and generated by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This information includes (1) docketed material associated with civilian nuclear power plants and other uses of radioactive materials and (2) nondocketed material received and generated by NRC pertinent to its role as a regulatory agency. As used here, docketed refers to the system by which NRC maintains its regulatory records. This series of documents is indexed by a Personal Author Index, a Corporate Source Index, and a Report Number Index. Some of the topics relate to: low-level radioactive disposal sites, source material, production and utilization facilities, special nuclear material, packaging and transport and spent fuel storage.

Unique shock compression experiments have been developed and pursued which provide material equation of state data for dynamic strength, pore crush, shock Hugoniot and adiabatic decompression. Experimental data have been obtained on an aggregate concrete to Hugoniot pressures of 25 GPa. New analytic methods were developed to extract equation-of-state properties from dynamic test data. Unexpected residual strain results are compared with expected thermal expansion and dilatancy properties of concrete.

Quantitative hazard assessments (QHAs) are being used to support the US Department of Energy (DOE) Integrated Safety Process (SS-21), Nuclear Explosive Safety Studies (NESS), and Environmental Safety and Health (ES&H) initiatives. The QHAs are used to identify hazards associated with DOE nuclear explosive operations. In 1994, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and the Pantex Plant participated in a joint effort to demonstrate the utility of performing hazard assessments (HAs) concurrently with process design and development efforts. Early identification of high risk operations allow for process modifications before final process design is completed. This demonstration effort, which used an integrated design process (SS-21), resulted in the redesign of the dismantlement process for the B61 center case. The SS-21 program integrates environment, safety, and health (ES&H) and nuclear explosive safety requirements. QHAs are used to identify accidents that have the potential for worker injury or public health or environmental impact. The HA is to evaluate the likelihood of accident sequences that have the potential for worker or public injury or environmental damage; identify safety critical tooling and procedural steps; identify operational safety controls; identify safety-class/significant systems, structures and components; identify dominant accident sequences; demonstrate that the facility Safety Analysis Report …

During the past several years a range of spectroscopies, including fluorescence and elastic-scatter spectroscopy, have been investigated for optically based detection of cancer and other tissue pathologies. Both elastic-scatter and fluorescence signals depend, in part, on scattering and absorption properties of the cells in the tissue. Therefore an understanding of the scattering and absorption properties of cells is a necessary prerequisite for understanding and developing these techniques. Cell suspensions provide a simple model with which to begin studying the absorption and scattering properties of cells. In this study we have made preliminary measurements of the scattering and absorption properties of suspensions of mouse mammary carcinoma cells (EMT6) over a broad wavelength range (380 nm to 800 nm).

Premature failures have occurred in melters at Japan`s Tokai Mockup Facility and at the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) PAMELA plant during processing of feeds with high levels of noble metals. Melter failure was due to the accumulation of an electrically conductive, noble metals-containing precipitates in the glass, that then resulted in short circuiting of the electrodes. A comparison was made of the anticipated Hanford Waste Vitrification Plant (HWVP) feed with the feeds processed in the FRG and Japanese melters. The evaluation showed that comparable levels of noble metals and other potential precipitate-forming components (e.g. Cr/Fe/Ni-spinels) exist in the HWVP feed. As a result, the HWVP project made a decision to modify the present reference melter design to include features to prevent the precipitation and accumulation or otherwise accommodate precipitated phases on a routine basis without loss of production capacity.

Automotive alternators are designed to supply power for automobile engine ignition systems as well as charge the storage battery. This product is used in a large market where consumers are concerned with acoustic noise and vibration that comes from the unit. as well as overall quality and dependability. Alternators and generators in general are used in industries other than automotive, such as transportation and airline industries and in military applications. Their manufacturers are interested in pursuing state-of-the-art methods to achieve higher quality and reduced costs. Preliminary investigations of non-intrusive diagnostic techniques utilizing the inherent voltage signals of alternators have been performed with promising results. These techniques are based on time and frequency domain analyses of specially conditioned signals taken from several alternators under various test conditions. This paper discusses investigations that show correlations of the alternator output voltage to airborne noise production. In addition these signals provide insight into internal magnetic characteristics that relate to design and/or assembly problems.

The preparation of Co(II) ion exchanged zeolites was described in the previous quarterly progress report, and NO adsorption/desorption studies with these zeolites have now been carried out, especially with ZSM-5 and erionite zeolites. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was utilized to monitor the spectral changes that occurred during adsorption of NO on the Co(II) cations, which was observed to occur after dehydration treatments at 350{degrees}C and 525{degrees}C. Absorption bands in the charge transfer spectral region of NO-Co intrazeolitic complexes depended mainly on Co siting in the zeolites. Catalytic testing of NO decomposition and NO reduction by methane was carried out. It was observed that Co-mordenite and Co-A zeolite exhibited low, but stable, activity in NO decomposition. For NO reduction by methane in the presence of excess oxygen, Co-mordenite and Co-ferrierite exhibited the highest %NO converted to products and selectivity toward N{sub 2} formation, but Co-A zeolite and Co-erionite yielded the highest selectivities to NO{sub 2} formation. Co-ZSM-5 zeolite exhibited an intermediate behavior.

In its Dec. 5, 1989 letter to DOE-Richland (DOE-RL) Operations, the Washington State Dept. of Ecology requested that DOE-RL prepare ``a plant evaluating alternatives for storage and/or treatment of hazardous waste in the 300 Area...``. This document, prepared in response to that letter, presents the proposed approach to compliance of the 300 Area with the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Washington State`s Chapter 173-303 WAC, Dangerous Waste Regulations. It also contains 10 appendices which were developed as bases for preparing the compliance plan approach. It refers to the Radioactive Liquid Waste System facilities and to the radioactive mixed waste.

The disposal of mixed low-level waste has become an issue for the U.S. Department of Energy and the States since the inception of the Federal Facilities Compliance Act in 1992. Fifteen sites, including Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), have been evaluated to estimate their technical capabilities for disposal of this type of waste after it has been subjected to treatment processes. The analyses were designed to quantify the maximum permissible concentrations of radioactive and hazardous constituents in mixed low-level waste that could potentially be disposed of in a facility at one of the fifteen sites and meet regulatory requirements. The evaluations provided several major insights about the disposal of mixed low-level waste. All of the fifteen sites have the technical capability for disposal of some waste. Maximum permissible concentrations for the radioactive component of the waste at and sites such as SNL and LANL are almost exclusively determined by pathways other than through groundwater. In general, for the hazardous component of the waste, travel times through groundwater to a point 100 meters from the disposal facility are on the order of thousands of years. The results of the evaluations will be compared to actual treated …

To overcome the extreme difficulties encountered in the experimental decay studies of proton drip line nuclei, several techniques have been utilized, including a helium-jet transport system, particle identification detectors and mass separation. Improvements to the ion source/extraction region of the He-jet coupled on-line Recoil Atom Mass Analyzer (RAMA) and its target/ion source coupling resulted in significant increases in RAMA efficiencies and its mass resolution, as well as reductions in the overall transit time. At the 88-Inch Cyclotron at LBNL, the decays of {sup 31}Cl, {sup 27}P and {sup 28}P, with half-lives of 150 msec, 260 msec and 270.3 msec, respectively, were examined using a he-jet and low-energy gas {Delta}E-gas {Delta}E-silicon E detector telescopes. Total beta-delayed proton branches of 0.3% and 0.07% in {sup 31}Cl and {sub 27}P, respectively, were estimated. Several proton peaks that had been previously assigned to the decay of {sup 31}Cl were shown to be from the decay of {sup 25}Si. In {sup 27}P, two proton groups at 459 {+-} 14 keV and 610 {+-} 11 keV, with intensities of 7 {+-} 3% and 92 {+-} 4% relative to the main (100%) group were discovered. The Gamow-Teller component of the preceding beta-decay of each observed proton transition …

This project has used a multi-disciplinary approach employing geology, geophysics, and engineering to conduct advanced reservoir characterization and management activities to design and implement an optimized infill drilling program at the North Robertson Unit. The activities during the first Budget Period, which is now complete, consisted of developing an integrated reservoir description from geological, engineering, and geostatistical studies, and using this description for reservoir flow simulation. Specific reservoir management activities have been identified and tested. The geologically targeted infill drilling program to be implemented during Budget Period II is a result of this work.

A simplified two field nonlinear model for collisionless trapped-ion-mode turbulence has been derived from nonlinear bounce-averaged drift kinetic equations. The renormalized thermal diffusivity obtained from this analysis exhibits a Bohm-like scaling. A new nonlinearity associated with the neoclassical polarization density is found to introduce an isotope-dependent modification to this Bohm-like diffusivity. The asymptotic balance between the equilibrium variation and the finite banana width induced reduction of the fluctuation potential leads to the result that the radial correlation length decreases with increasing plasma current. Other important conclusions from the present analysis include the predictions that (i) the relative density fluctuation level {delta}n/n{sub 0} is lower than the conventional mixing length estimate, {Delta}r/L{sub n} (ii) the ion temperature fluctuation level {delta}T{sub i}/T{sub i} significantly exceeds the density fluctuation level {delta}n/n{sub 0}; and (iii) the parallel ion velocity fluctuation level {delta}v{sub i}{sub {parallel}}/v{sub Ti} is expected to be negligible.