The physical vulnerability system for evaluating probable damage from a nuclear blast has received wide acceptance because it is a simple but general system applicable to a wide variety of target classes. A series of hand-calculator programs using this system that permit equally accurate but faster calculations than the conventional handbook method are described. The programs cover various interrelationships among peak overpressures, peak dynamic pressures, vulnerability numbers, weapons radii, and kill probability. The use of a programmable calculator greatly reduces the chance of operator error by eliminating individual hand calculations and graphical determinations of parameter values.

The purpose of this work is to demonstrate whether there is a cost benefit to Pacific Gas and Electric Company in replacing the present iron catalyst/caustic/peroxide system used in the direct contact condenser units versus an alternative approach using surface condensers and the Stretford System.

We are investigating a retropulse shutter to protect fusion lasers from target reflected light. It is required to project a plasma of 10/sup 21//cm/sup 3/ across a vacuum spatial filter pinhole with a velocity of at least 2 cm/..mu..s. The plasma is produced from a foil which is resistively heated to sublimation, superheated, and magnetically driven across the optical beam path. This paper describes these plasma production processes. A technique has been developed to couple the drive circuit to the foil to enhance the plasma velocity. A nozzle controls the solid angle into which the plasma is projected. Using diagnostics of circuit monitors, witness plates, Faraday cups, streak camera, and probe lasers, we determine the space-time evolution of the plasma. Using a self consistent numerical model, we analyze the plasma behavior. With these methods, we correlate and contrast data and numerical results for two specific cases in which the foil sublimes at or well before the current maximum.

Seismic monitoring of the northern section of the Imperial Valley region in Southern California has been underway since 1973, in order to study in detail the relationship between geothermal areas and earthquakes. A description of the 22-station network and a list of preliminary data on earthquakes recorded by the network from January 1977 through March 1977 are presented.

Seven different fluorophosphate glass compositions were doped with cerium and terbium. Initial results indicated that these glasses, as they stood, had only a limited ability to dissolve the rare earth ions. A series of melt modifications was attempted to improve the solubility. (MHR)

A set of coupled rate equations for densities and energies in a tandem mirror machine have been incorporated into a fast-running code. The code is suitable for parameter-searching and studying time-dependent processes. The code has been used to study buildup of thermalized alphas in a tandem mirror reactor, and cyclic schemes for limiting the alpha population. The principal findings are: Q/sub av/ is drastically reduced as alphas build up from a steady-state in which alphas were artificially eliminated; running in a pulsed mode to clean out alphas improves the time-averaged Q significantly, but not enough; elimination of 80% of the alphas by nonadiabatic loss and running in pulsed mode allows a reasonable time-averaged Q.

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