Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) researchers modeled ion exchange removal of cesium from dissolved salt waste solutions. The results assist in evaluating proposed configurations for an ion exchange process to remove residual cesium from low curie waste streams. A process for polishing (i.e., removing small amounts) of cesium may prove useful should supernate draining fail to meet the Low Curie Salt (LCS) target limit of 0.1 Ci of Cs-137 per gallon of salt solution. Cesium loading isotherms and column breakthrough curves for Low Curie dissolved salt solutions were computed to provide performance predictions for various column designs.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The Yucca Mountain site has a dry climate and deep water table, with the repository located in the middle of an unsaturated zone approximately 600 m thick. Radionuclide transport processes from the repository to the water table are sensitive to the unsaturated zone flow field, as well as to sorption, matrix diffusion, radioactive decay, and colloid transport mechanisms. The unsaturated zone flow and transport models are calibrated against both physical and chemical data, including pneumatic pressure, liquid saturation, water potential, temperature, chloride, and calcite. The transport model predictions are further compared with testing specific to unsaturated zone transport: at Alcove 1 in the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF), at Alcove 8 and Niche 3 of the ESF, and at the Busted Butte site. The models are applied to predict the breakthroughs at the water table for nonsorbing and sorbing radionuclides, with faults shown as the important paths for radionuclide transport. Daughter products of some important radionuclides, such as {sup 239}Pu and {sup 241}Am, have faster transport than the parents and must be considered in the unsaturated zone transport model. Colloid transport is significantly affected by colloid size, but only negligibly affected by lunetic declogging (reverse filtering) mechanisms. Unsaturated zone model uncertainties …

Daily newspaper from Sapulpa, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Perry, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The successful commercialization of fuel cells will depend on the achievement of competitive system costs and efficiencies. System cost directly impacts the capital equipment component of cost of electricity (COE) and is a major contributor to the O and M component. The replacement costs for equipment (also heavily influenced by stack life) is generally a major contributor to O and M costs. In this project, they worked with the SECA industrial teams to estimate the impact of general manufacturing issues of interest on stack cost using an activities-based cost model for anode-supported planar SOFC stacks with metallic interconnects. An earlier model developed for NETL for anode supported planar SOFCs was enhanced by a linkage to a performance/thermal/mechanical model, by addition of Quality Control steps to the process flow with specific characterization methods, and by assessment of economies of scale. The 3-dimensional adiabatic performance model was used to calculate the average power density for the assumed geometry and operating conditions (i.e., inlet and exhaust temperatures, utilization, and fuel composition) based on publicly available polarizations curves. The SECA team provided guidance on what manufacturing and design issues should be assessed in this Phase I demonstration of cost modeling capabilities. They considered the …

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Laser peening is an emerging modern process that impresses a compressive stress into the surface of metals or alloys. This treatment can reduce the rate of intergranular stress corrosion cracking and fatigue cracking in structural metals or Alloy 600 needed for nuclear power plants.

This report provides Congress with a broad overview of significant congressional and presidential regulatory reform efforts within the past 20 to 30 years.

I would like to determine how accurately a variety of neutron transport code packages (code and cross section libraries) can calculate simple integral parameters, such as K{sub eff}, for systems that are sensitive to thermal neutron scattering. Since we will only consider theoretical systems, we cannot really determine absolute accuracy compared to any real system. Therefore rather than accuracy, it would be more precise to say that I would like to determine the spread in answers that we obtain from a variety of code packages. This spread should serve as an excellent indicator of how accurately we can really model and calculate such systems today. Hopefully, eventually this will lead to improvements in both our codes and the thermal scattering models that they use in the future. In order to accomplish this I propose a number of extremely simple systems that involve thermal neutron scattering that can be easily modeled and calculated by a variety of neutron transport codes. These are theoretical systems designed to emphasize the effects of thermal scattering, since that is what we are interested in studying. I have attempted to keep these systems very simple, and yet at the same time they include most, if not …

A printed webpage article from Air Force Print News discussing the Arnold Air Society's adoption of the Wings Across American WASP Museum project.

Audio information stored in the undulations of grooves in a medium such as a phonograph disc record or cylinder may be reconstructed, without contact, by measuring the groove shape using precision optical metrology methods and digital image processing. The viability of this approach was recently demonstrated on a 78 rpm shellac disc using two dimensional image acquisition and analysis methods. The present work reports the first three dimensional reconstruction of mechanically recorded sound. The source material, a celluloid cylinder, was scanned using color coded confocal microscopy techniques and resulted in a faithful playback of the recorded information.

A novel, but general, arrangement of parallel sets of gratings is presented that can effectively increase the dispersion of pulse compressors and expanders by over an order of magnitude. These arrangements will dramatically reduce the footprint of the pulse compressors and expanders used in CPA.

Semiweekly newspaper from Sealy, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The outer can welder (OCW) in the FB-Line Facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) is a Gas Tungsten Arc Weld (GTAW) system used to create outer canisters compliant with the Department of Energy 3013 Standard, DOE-STD-3013-2000, Stabilization, Packaging, and Storage of Plutonium-Bearing Materials. The key welding parameters controlled and monitored on the outer can welder Data Acquisition System (DAS) are weld amperage, weld voltage, and weld rotational speed. Inner 3013 canisters from the Bagless Transfer System that contain plutonium metal or plutonium oxide are placed inside an outer 3013 canister. The canister is back-filled with helium and welded using the outer can welder. The completed weld is screened to determine if it is satisfactory by reviewing the OCW DAS key welding parameters, performing a helium leak check, performing a visual examination by a qualified weld inspector, and performing digital radiography of the completed weld. Canisters with unsatisfactory welds are cut open and repackaged. Canisters with satisfactory welds are deemed compliant with the 3013 standard for long-term storage.

Weekly newspaper from Emory, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This document summarizes the activities performed and progress made in FY-03. Various approaches for automating the particle fuel production QC process using on-line nondestructive methods for higher reliability were evaluated. In this first-year of a three-year project, surrogate fuel particles made available for testing included leftovers from initial coater development runs. These particles had a high defect fraction and the particle properties spanned a wide range, providing the opportunity to examine worst-case conditions before refining the inspection methods to detect more subtle coating features. Particles specifically designed to evaluate the NDE methods being investigated under this project will be specified and fabricated at ORNL early next reporting period. The literature was reviewed for existing inspection technology and to identify many of the fuel particle conditions thought to degrade its performance. A modeling study, including the electromagnetic and techniques, showed that the in-line electromagnetic methods should provide measurable responses to missing layers, kernel diameter, and changes in coating layer thickness, with reasonable assumptions made for material conductivities. The modeling study for the ultrasonic methods provided the resonant frequencies that should be measured using the resonant ultrasound technique, and the results from these calculations were published in the proceedings for two conferences. …

The Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) has been requested to perform sulfur (S) analysis on digested radioactive sludge and supernatant samples by Inductively Coupled Plasma Emission Spectrometry (ICP-ES). The amount of sulfur is a concern because there are sulfur limits for the incoming feed, due to glass melter, process vessel, and off-gas line corrosion concerns and limited sulfur solubility in the glass wasteform. Recent changes in the washing strategy and stream additions change the amount of sulfur in the sludge. Increasing the sulfur concentration in the sludge challenges the current limits, so accurately determining the amount of sulfur present in a sludge batch is paramount. There are two important figures of merit that need to be evaluated for this analysis. The first is the detection limit (LOD), the smallest concentration of an element that can be detected with a defined certainty. This issue is important since the sulfur concentration in these process streams is l ow. Another critical analytical parameter is the effect on the S quantitation from potential spectral interferences. Spectral interferences are caused by background emission from plasma recombination events, scattered and stray light from the line emission of high concentration elements, or molecular band emission and from …

OAK-B135 Rate-Controlling Mechanisms in Five-Power-Law Creep. The initial grant emphasized the rate-controlling processes for five power-law creep. The effort has six aspects: (1) Theory of Taylor hardening from the Frank dislocation network in five power law substructures. (2) The dual dynamical and hardening nature of dislocations in five power law substructures. (3) Determination of the existence of long-range internal stress in five-power law creep dislocation substructures. (4) Dynamic recovery mechanisms associated with dislocation heterogeneities during five power law creep. (5) Versatility of five power law creep concept to other (hcp) crystal structures. (6) Writing of a book on ''Fundamental of Creep in Metals and Alloys'' by M.E. Kassner and Maria-Teresa Perez-Frado (postdoctoral scholar, funded by this project) Elsevier Press, 2004, in press. These areas are consistent with the original goals of this project as delineated in the original proposal to Basic Energy Sciences. The progress in each of these areas will be discussed separately and there will be an attempt to tie each aspect together so as to allow a summary regarding the conclusions with respect to the rate-controlling mechanisms of five power-law creep.

Student newspaper of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.

The international traffic in illicit drugs contributes to terrorist risk through at least five mechanisms: supplying cash, creating chaos and instability, supporting corruption, providing “cover” and sustaining common infrastructures for illicit activity, and competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. Of these, cash and chaos are likely to be the two most important.

We have successfully developed a practical approach to predicting the location of skin surface dose at potential biopsy sites that receive 1 cGy and 10 cGy, respectively, in support of in vivo biologic dosimetry in humans. This represents a significant technical challenge as the sites lie on the patient surface out side the radiation fields. The PEREGRINE Monte Carlo simulation system was used to model radiation dose delivery and TLDs were used for validation on a phantom and confirmation during patient treatment. In the developmental studies the Monte Carlo simulations consistently underestimated the dose at the biopsy site by approximately 15% for a realistic treatment configuration, most likely due to lack of detail in the simulation of the linear accelerator outside the main beam line. Using a single, thickness-independent correction factor for the clinical calculations, the average of 36 measurements for the predicted 1 cGy point was 0.985 cGy (standard deviation: 0.110 cGy) despite patient breathing motion and other real world challenges. Since the 10 cGy point is situated in the region of high dose gradient at the edge of the field, patient motion had a greater effect and the six measured points averaged 5.90 cGy (standard deviation: 1.01 cGy), …