A loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a boiling-water-reactor (BWR) power plant has never occurred. However, because this type of accident could be particularly severe, it is used as a principal theoretical basis for design. A series of consistent, versatile, and accurate air-water tests that simulate LOCA conditions has been completed on a /sup 1///sub 5/-scale Mark I BWR pressure-suppression system. Results from these tests are used to quantify the vertical-loading function and to study the associated fluid dynamics phenomena. Detailed histories of vertical loads on the wetwell are shown. In particular, variation of hydrodynamic-generated vertical loads with changes in drywell-pressurization rate, downcomer submergence, and the vent-line loss coefficient are established. Initial drywell overpressure, which partially preclears the downcomers of water, substantially reduces the peak vertical loads. Scaling relationships, developed from dimensional analysis and verified by bench-top experiments, allow the /sup 1///sub 5/-scale results to be applied to a full-scale BWR power plant. This analysis leads to dimensionless groupings that are invariant. These groupings show that, if water is used as the working fluid, the magnitude of the forces in a scaled facility is reduced by the cube of the scale factor and occurs in a time reduced by the square root …

There are substantial production rates of heavy quarks from ep collisions at HERA. The center of mass energy of about 300 GeV is well above any b-quark threshold effects, and for b/bar b/ production, the cross section is estimated to be 3.3 nb per event, leading to rates approaching 10/sup 6/ b mesons per year. The rates for c/bar c/ production are about two orders of magnitude greater. Two major detectors are under construction and a program of heavy quark physics will start in 1990. 3 refs., 4 figs.

Three points are emphasized: that the solar flare is that particular astrophysical phenomenon that is the extremum of reconnection, no other phenomenon demands as rapid magnetic flux annihilation as is seen in the solar flare; that plasma physics experiments can and should be performed in the laboratory that model reconnection as we observe it in astrophysics; and that stochastic field lines derived from something similar to Alfven wave turbulence are a necessary part of reconnection.

The chemistry of Br species associated with sea salt ice and aerosols has been implicated in the episodes of ozone depletion reported at Arctic sunrise. However, Br{sup -} is only a minor component in sea salt, which has a Br{sup -}/Cl{sup -} molar ratio of {approx}0.0015. Sea salt is a complex mixture of many different species, with NaCl as the primary component. In recent years experimental and theoretical studies have reported enhancement of the large, more polarizable halide ion at the liquid/vapor interface of corresponding aqueous alkali halide solutions. The proposed enhancement is likely to influence the availability of sea salt Br{sup -} for heterogeneous reactions such as those involved in the ozone depletion episodes. We report here ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies and molecular dynamics simulations showing direct evidence of Br{sup -} enhancement at the interface of an aqueous NaCl solution doped with bromide. The experiments were carried out on samples with Br{sup -}/Cl{sup -} ratios in the range 0.1% to 10%, the latter being also the ratio for which simulations were carried out. This is the first direct measurement of interfacial enhancement of Br{sup -} in a multi-component solution with particular relevance to sea salt chemistry.

Plasma density gradients in a gas jet were used to control the wake phase velocity and trapping threshold in a laser wakefield accelerator, producing stable electron bunches with longitudinal and transverse momentum spreads more than ten times lower than in previous experiments (0.17 and 0.02 MeV/c FWHM, respectively) and with central momenta of 0.76 +- 0.02 MeV/c. Transition radiation measurements combined with simulations indicated that the bunches can be used as a wakefield accelerator injector to produce stable beams with 0.2 MeV/c-class momentum spread at high energies.

The non-equilibrium dynamics of mixing, oscillations and equilibration is studied in a field theory of flavored neutral mesons that effectively models two flavors of mixed neutrinos, in interaction with other mesons that represent a thermal bath of hadrons or quarks and charged leptons. This model describes the general features of neutrino mixing and relaxation via charged currents in a medium. The reduced density matrix and the non-equilibrium effective action that describes the propagation of neutrinos is obtained by integrating out the bath degrees of freedom. We obtain the dispersion relations, mixing angles and relaxation rates of ``neutrino'' quasiparticles. The dispersion relations and mixing angles are of the same form as those of neutrinos in the medium, and the relaxation rates are given by $\Gamma_1(k) = \Gamma_{ee}(k) \cos^2\theta_m(k)+\Gamma_{\mu\mu}(k)\sin^2\theta_m(k); \Gamma_2(k)= \Gamma_{\mu\mu}(k) \cos^2\theta_m(k)+\Gamma_{ee}(k)\sin^2\theta_m(k) $ where $\Gamma_{\alpha\alpha}(k)$ are the relaxation rates of the flavor fields in \emph{absence} of mixing, and $\theta_m(k)$ is the mixing angle in the medium. A Weisskopf-Wigner approximation that describes the asymptotic time evolution in terms of a non-hermitian Hamiltonian is derived. At long time $>>\Gamma^{-1}_{1,2}$ ``neutrinos'' equilibrate with the bath. The equilibrium density matrix is nearly diagonal in the basis of eigenstates of an \emph{effective Hamiltonian that includes self-energy corrections …

Detailed models for hydrogen storage systems provide essential design information about flow and temperature distributions, as well as, the utilization of a hydrogen storage media. However, before constructing a detailed model it is necessary to know the geometry and length scales of the system, along with its heat transfer requirements, which depend on the limiting reaction kinetics. More fundamentally, before committing significant time and resources to the development of a detailed model, it is necessary to know whether a conceptual storage system design is viable. For this reason, a hierarchical system of models progressing from scoping models to detailed analyses was developed. This paper, which discusses the scoping models, is the first in a two part series that presents a collection of hierarchical models for the design and evaluation of hydrogen storage systems.

There is significant interest in hydrogen storage systems that employ a media which either adsorbs, absorbs or reacts with hydrogen in a nearly reversible manner. In any media based storage system the rate of hydrogen uptake and the system capacity is governed by a number of complex, coupled physical processes. To design and evaluate such storage systems, a comprehensive methodology was developed, consisting of a hierarchical sequence of models that range from scoping calculations to numerical models that couple reaction kinetics with heat and mass transfer for both the hydrogen charging and discharging phases. The scoping models were presented in Part I [1] of this two part series of papers. This paper describes a detailed numerical model that integrates the phenomena occurring when hydrogen is charged and discharged. A specific application of the methodology is made to a system using NaAlH{sub 4} as the storage media.

Uranium-lead ratios (commonly represented as {sup 238}U/{sup 204}Pb = {mu}) calculated for the sources of martian basalts preserve a record of petrogenetic processes that operated during early planetary differentiation and formation of martian geochemical reservoirs. To better define the range of {mu} values represented by the source regions of martian basalts, we completed U-Pb elemental and isotopic analyses on whole rock, mineral and leachate fractions from the martian meteorite Queen Alexandra Range 94201 (QUE 94201). The whole rock and silicate mineral fractions have unradiogenic Pb isotopic compositions that define a narrow range ({sup 206}Pb/{sup 204}Pb = 11.16-11.61). In contrast, the Pb isotopic compositions of weak HCl leachates are more variable and radiogenic. The intersection of the QUE 94201 data array with terrestrial Pb in {sup 206}Pb/{sup 204}Pb-{sup 207}Pb/{sup 204}Pb-{sup 208}Pb/{sup 204}Pb compositional space is consistent with varying amounts of terrestrial contamination in these fractions. We calculate that only 1-7% contamination is present in the purified silicate mineral and whole rock fractions, whereas the HCl leachates contain up to 86% terrestrial contamination. Despite the contamination, we are able to use the U-Pb data to determine the initial {sup 206}Pb/{sup 204}Pb of QUE 94201 (11.086 {+-} 0.008) and calculate the {mu} value …

A series of experiments were performed in which liquid droplets were caused to collide. Impact velocities to several meters per second and droplet diameters up to 600 micrometers were used. The impact parameters in the collisions vary from zero to greater than the sum of the droplet radii. Photographs of the collisions were taken with a high speed framing camera in order to study the impacts and subsequent behavior of the droplets. The experiments will be discussed and a short movie film presentation of some of the impacts will be shown.

The following topics are discussed: route of administration; carrier effects and complexed or ionic tracers; membrane permeability, extracellular and intracellular concentrations; enzyme and hormonal stimulation or depression and the metabolic state; neoplasia and transport; and carrier for radiopharmaceutical binding to membrane or protein sites. Some radioisotopes considered are /sup 99m/Tc, /sup 65/Zn, /sup 62/Zn, /sup 14/C and /sup 111/In. (HLW)

The computer code FLOWTRAN-TF is used to analyze hypothetical hydraulic accidents for the nuclear reactor at the Savannah River Site. During a hypothetical Large Break Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA), reactor assemblies would contain a two-phase mixture of air and water which flows downward. Reactor assemblies consist of nested, ribbed annuli. Longitudinal ribs divide each annulus into four subchannels. For accident conditions, air and water can flow past ribs from one subchannel to another. For FLOWTRAN-TF to compute the size of those flows, it is necessary to know the local void fraction in the region of the rib. Measurements have previously been made of length-average void fraction in a ribbed annulus. However, no direct measurements were available of local void fraction. Due to the lack of data, a test was designed to measure local void fraction at the rib. One question addressed by the test was whether void fraction at the rib is solely a function of azimuthal-average void fraction or a function of additional variables such as pressure boundary conditions. This report provides a discussion of this test.

The performance of parallel Monte Carlo transport calculations which use both spatial and particle parallelism is increased by dynamically assigning processors to the most worked domains. Since the particle work load varies over the course of the simulation, this algorithm determines each cycle if dynamic load balancing would speed up the calculation. If load balancing is required, a small number of particle communications are initiated in order to achieve load balance. This method has decreased the parallel run time by more than a factor of three for certain criticality calculations.

Absolute line emission cross sections are presented for 1 keV/amu charge exchange collisions of multiply charged solar wind ions with H{sub 2}O, H, O, CO{sub 2}, and CO cometary targets. The present calculations are contrasted with available laboratory data. A parameter-free model is used to successfully predict the recently observed x-ray spectra of comet C/LINEAR 1999 S4. We show that the resulting spectrum is extremely sensitive to the time variations of the solar wind composition. Our results suggest that orbiting x-ray satellites may be a viable way to predict the solar wind intensities and composition on the Earth many hours before the ions reach the earth.

We present a new spatial discretization of the discrete-ordinates transport equation in two-dimensional Cartesian (X-Y) geometry for arbitrary polygonal meshes. The discretization is a discontinuous finite element method (DFEM) that utilizes piecewise bi-linear (PWBL) basis functions, which are formally introduced in this paper. We also present a series of numerical results on quadrilateral and polygonal grids and compare these results to a variety of other spatial discretizations that have been shown to be successful on these grid types. Finally, we note that the properties of the PWBL basis functions are such that the leading-order piecewise bi-linear discontinuous finite element (PWBLD) solution will satisfy a reasonably accurate diffusion discretization in the thick diffusion limit, making the PWBLD method a viable candidate for many different classes of transport problems.

Ablative targets for the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) have been fabricated by sputter coating spherical mandrels made of glow discharge polymer (GDP) with graded copper doped beryllium (Be) layers. The inner mandrel must be completely removed to meet specific ignition design requirements. The process of removing the mandrel requires elevated temperature in the presence of oxygen. However, elevating the temperature in air also oxidizes the Be and can cause blistering on the inner surface of the Be shell. This paper will discuss a refined technique, which removes the GDP mandrel without compromising the integrity of the inner Be surface. The oxygen gradient that develops during the mandrel removal and the impact of its presence will also be discussed.

We report on recent developments with the Purgatorio code, a new implementation of Liberman's Inferno model. This fully relativistic average atom code uses phase shift tracking and an efficient refinement scheme to provide an accurate description of continuum states. The resulting equations of state accurately represent the atomic shell-related features which are absent in Thomas-Fermi-based approaches. We discuss various representations of the exchange potential and some of the ambiguities in the choice of the effective charge Z* in average atom models, both of which affect predictions of electrical conductivities and radiative properties.

Current fluctuations of cathodic arcs were recorded withhigh analog bandwidth (up to 1 GHz) and fast digital sampling (up to 5Gsamples/sec). The power spectral density of the arc current wasdetermined by fast Fourier transform clearly showing material dependent,non-linear features in the frequency domain. These features can beassociated with the non-linear impedance of the conducting channelbetween cathode and anode, driven by the explosive nature of electronemission and plasma formation. The characteristic times of less than 100ns can be associated with individual explosive processes, "ectons," andtherefore represent the short-time physical cutoff for the fractal modelof cathodic arcs.

Soft x-ray lasers in 10-30nm range are now routinely produced in hot plasmas generated either by a laser from a solid target or by an electrical discharge in a capillary. Such an x-ray laser is a convenient tool for future applications, such as probing dense plasmas of interest for fusion experiments. Their short wavelength enables plasma diagnosis beyond the capabilities of optical lasers, because the high critical plasma density ({approx}{lambda}{sup 2}) limits the optical beam propagation. In our paper, we present analytical and numerical ray tracing of an x-ray laser in dense amplifying plasmas. A general analytical formula for a beam propagation has been developed for a gradient plasma. The simplified analytical formulaes enable better understanding of processes involved. They also simplify optimization of the beam propagation and ''mapping'' the parameter space for further studies by numerical codes. We discuss implications for a transient x-ray laser that is produced from a slab target by a (sub-)picosecond laser pulse.

Recent attention has focused on the effect of spherical convergence on the nonlinear phase of Rayleigh-Taylor growth. For instability growth on spherically converging interfaces, modifications to the predictions of the Layzer model for the secular growth of a single, nonlinear mode have been reported [D. S. Clark and M. Tabak, Phys. Rev. E 72, 0056308 (2005).]. However, this model is limited in assuming a self-similar background implosion history as well as only addressing growth from a perturbation of already nonlinearly large amplitude. Additionally, only the case of single-mode growth was considered and not the multimode growth of interest in applications. Here, these deficiencies are remedied. First, the connection of the recent nonlinear results including convergence to the well-known results for the linear regime of growth is demonstrated. Second, the applicability of the model to more general implosion histories (i.e., not self-similar) is shown. Finally, to address the case of multimode growth with convergence, the recent nonlinear single mode results are combined with the Haan model formulation for weakly nonlinear multimode growth. Remarkably, convergence in the nonlinear regime is found not to modify substantially the multimode predictions of Haan's original model.

Fluidized Bed Steam Reforming (FBSR) is being considered as an alternative technology for the immobilization of a wide variety of aqueous high sodium containing radioactive wastes at various DOE facilities in the United States. The addition of clay, charcoal, and a catalyst as co-reactants converts aqueous Low Activity Wastes (LAW) to a granular or ''mineralized'' waste form while converting organic components to CO{sub 2} and steam, and nitrate/nitrite components, if any, to N{sub 2}. The waste form produced is a multiphase mineral assemblage of Na-Al-Si (NAS) feldspathoid minerals with cage-like structures that atomically bond radionuclides like Tc-99 and anions such as SO{sub 4}, I, F, and Cl. The granular product has been shown to be as durable as LAW glass. Shallow land burial requires that the mineralized waste form be able to sustain the weight of soil overburden and potential intrusion by future generations. The strength requirement necessitates binding the granular product into a monolith. FBSR mineral products were formulated into a variety of monoliths including various cements, Ceramicrete, and hydroceramics. All but one of the nine monoliths tested met the <2g/m{sup 2} durability specification for Na and Re (simulant for Tc-99) when tested using the Product Consistency Test (PCT; …

We present the results of a series of experiments studying how visualization software scales to massive data sets. Although several paradigms exist for processing large data, we focus on pure parallelism, the dominant approach for production software. These experiments utilized multiple visualization algorithms and were run on multiple architectures. Two types of experiments were performed. For the first, we examined performance at massive scale: 16,000 or more cores and one trillion or more cells. For the second, we studied weak scaling performance. These experiments were performed on the largest data set sizes published to date in visualization literature, and the findings on scaling characteristics and bottlenecks contribute to understanding of how pure parallelism will perform at high levels of concurrency and with very large data sets.

The rate coefficient for the reaction of the ethynyl radical (C{sub 2}H) with 1-butyne (H-C{triple_bond}C-CH{sub 2}-CH{sub 3}) is measured in a pulsed Laval nozzle apparatus. Ethynyl radicals are formed by laser photolysis of acetylene (C{sub 2}H{sub 2}) at 193 nm and detected via chemiluminescence (C{sub 2}H + O{sub 2} {yields} CH (A{sup 2}{Delta}) + CO{sub 2}). The rate coefficients are measured over the temperature range of 74-295 K. The C{sub 2}H + 1-butyne reaction exhibits no barrier and occurs with rate constants close to the collision limit. The temperature dependent rate coefficients can be fit within experimental uncertainties by the expression k = (2.4 {+-} 0.5) x 10{sup -10} (T/295 K)-(0.04 {+-} 0.03) cm{sup 3} molecule{sup -1}s{sup -1}. Reaction products are detected at room temperature (295 K) and 533 Pa using a Multiplexed Photoionization Mass Spectrometer (MPIMS) coupled to the tunable VUV synchrotron radiation from the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Two product channels are identified for this reaction: m/z = 64 (C{sub 5}H{sub 4}) and m/z = 78 (C{sub 6}H{sub 6}) corresponding to the CH{sub 3}- and H-loss channels, respectively. Photoionization efficiency (PIE) curves are used to analyze the isomeric composition of both product channels. …

Laser modulated scattering (LMS) is introduced as a non-destructive evaluation tool for defect inspection and characterization of optical surfaces and thin film coatings. This technique is a scatter sensitive version of the well-known photothermal microscopy (PTM) technique. It allows simultaneous measurement of the DC and AC scattering signals of a probe laser beam from an optical surface. By comparison between the DC and AC scattering signals, one can differentiate absorptive defects from non-absorptive ones. This paper describes the principle of the LMS technique and the experimental setup, and illustrates examples on using LMS as a tool for nondestructive evaluation of high quality optics.