"In recent years, the increasing sophistication of transmission electron microscope (TEM) studies of materials has necessitated more exacting methods of specimen preparation. The present report describes improved equipment and techniques for electropolishing and chemically polishing a wide variety of specimens. Many of the specimens used in developing or improving the techniques to be described were irradiated with heavy ions such as nickel or vanadium to study radiation damage. The high cost of these specimens increased the need for reproducible methods of initial preparation, postirradiaton processing, and final thinning for TEM examination. A technique was also developed to salvage specimens that had previously been thinned but were unusable for various reasons. Jet polishing is, in general, the method of choice for surface polishing, sectioning, and thinning. The older beaker electropolishing method is included in this report because it is inexpensive and simple, and gives some insight into how the more recent methods were developed. 29 figures, 8 tables. (ERA citation 07:004650)."--NTIS abstract.

The neutron and gamma fluxes at the center of a moderator and their average energies have been estimated for the IPNS-I configuration (5 x 10¹²/ ppp, 500 MeV, 30 Hz with uranium-238 target). The gamma decay factor, the ratio of gamma intensity when proton beam is on to that of just-after-beam-off, has been calculated. The heat deposition rate in the moderator and the temperature rise without heat flow are estimated to be 41.1 mW/cc and 1.13 K/min respectively, for a polyethylene moderator. Estimates for liquid hydrogen moderators give 17.3 mW/cc and 2.1 K/min respectively. Estimates are also made for the heat deposition rates in the boron and cadmium decouplers. Some consideration was given to the thermal characteristics (cooling constant, etc.) of various materials in conjunction with the ZING-P' measurements. The possible temperature difference between moderator and a thermocouple was estimated and found to be very small. Measurements on the ZING-P' beams and the comparison with these estimates are given in a separate report.

This report assesses the development of the electronic power-factor control technology as it applies to use with alternating-current induction motors and to identify the potential market of this device and the potential savings this device could produce in the United States energy economy. Included are a status report of the Interagency Agreement between NASA and DOE and the recommendations regarding future efforts of the DOE in the demonstration and commercialization of the power-factor control technology.

DISPL is a software package for solving systems of nonlinear partial differential equations of initial value type over a two-dimensional spatial domain. This report described an extension of the approximation procedure to include spatial domains described by polar geometry. More generally the extension includes problems for which there is periodicity in one of the spatial directions.

This report covers the processing and analysis of the fuel-bearing section (M-5138) of an irradiated experimental Light Water Breeder Reactor fuel rod, GRIP-II rod No. 79-453; this section has been designated the Validation Rod. Process steps included precision shearing of the rod into eight comminuted segments, dissolution of the segments, and chemical and radiometric analyses of the resulting solutions. The shearing and dissolution were carried out fully remotely in an existing pilot-scale facility installed in a shielded cell. Data are provided on physical parameters of the rod section and segments, uranium assays and isotopic abundances, and selected fission products. An error analysis of the individual measurements and analyses is included.

Necessary and sufficient conditions are given so that the Sobolev-type partial differential equations generate a contraction semigroup. It is shown that any nonlinear contraction from L/sup 1/(R) to itself that preserves the integral and commutes with translations satisfies maximum and minimum principles. This lemma is applied to the solution operator S/sub t/ to give necessary and sufficient conditions that S/t/ satisfy a maximum principle, despite the dispersive nature. Sufficient conditions are given so that the solutions converge, as nu and beta tend to zero, to the entropy solution of the conservation law. A larger class of monotone finite-difference schemes for the numerical solution of the conservation law motivated by finite-difference discretizations of the Sobolev equations, is introduced, and convergence results are proved for methods in this class. The methods analyzed include some that were previously used to approximate the solution of a linear waterflood problem in petroleum engineering.

The effects of curvature on steady states of chemical catalytic reactions are investigated by studying the cases of the catalytic particle being a spherical or cylindrical shell. Existence and stability of solutions are studied. It is shown that the solutions converge to the solutions for the catalytic slab when the curvature goes to 0 in each case.

A neutronic analysis has been made with respect to the ex-core neutron detector response during the TMI-2 incident. A series of transport theory calculations quantified the impact upon the detector count rate of various core and down-comer conditions. In particular, various combinations of coolant void content and spatial distributions were investigated to yield the resulting transmission of the photo-neutron source to the detector. The impact of a hypothetical distributed source within the down-comer region was also examined in order to simulate the potential effect of the release of neutron producing fission products into the coolant. These results are then offered as potential explanations for the anomalous behavior of the detector during the period of approx. 20 minutes through approx. 3 hours following the reactor scram.

On October 5, 1979, the Lithium Processing Test Loop (LPTL) developed a lithium leak in the electromagnetic (EM) pump channel, which damaged the pump, its surrounding support structure, and the underlying floor pan. A thorough analysis of the causes and consequences of the pump failure was conducted by personnel from CEN and several other ANL divisions. Metallurgical analyses of the elliptical pump channel and adjacent piping revealed that there was a significant buildup of iron-rich crystallites and other solid material in the region of the current-carrying bus bars (region of high magnetic field), which may have resulted in a flow restriction that contributed to the deterioration of the channel walls. The location of the failure was in a region of high residual stress (due to cold work produced during channel fabrication); this failure is typical of other cold work/stress-related failures encountered in components operated in forced-circulation lithium loops. Another important result was the isolation of crystals of a compound characterized as Li/sub x/CrN/sub y/. Compounds of this type are believed to be responsible for much of the Fe, Cr, and Ni mass transfer encountered in lithium loops constructed of stainless steel. The importance of nitrogen in the mass-transfer mechanism has …

The deformation of a thin elastic plate which is initially wrinkled when the plate is subjected to a constant compressive end thrust is considered. The singularly perturbed bifurcation theory of Reiss and Matkowsky is used. It is found that the initial deformation (imperfection) of the plate leads to solutions which explain the experimentally observed decrease in the buckling load from that predicted by bifurcation theory and the smooth transition to a buckled solution.

A previously developed perturbation method is used to obtain a new class of periodic motions for the nonlinear vibrations of rectangular, elastic plates. The dynamic von Karman plate theory is used in the analysis. The new solutions arise by secondary bifurcation from the periodic solutions that bifurcate from the natural frequencies of free vibrations of the linearized plate theory. The new motions are a linear combination of two modes of the linearized theory.

A comprehensive methodology for characterizing the results of impact fracture of brittle waste forms is presented, and its use illustrated by application to available particle-size data obtained in impact tests of various materials. The respirable-size fraction and the total surface area of the fracture particulates are the major criteria for characterization. Particle-size distributions were all found to be characterized approximately by the two parameters of the lognormal probability function (the geometric mean diameter D/sub g/ and the geometric standard deviation sigma/sub g/). These results are explained in terms of the brittle-fracture process as it is described in the technical literature. The methodology appears promising both for standardized evaluation of the impact strength of various solid-waste compositions, either vitreous or crystalline, and for studying the deformation of canistered waste forms in scale-model tests.

An algorithm is proposed for the problem of minimizing a quadratic function subject to an ellipsoidal constraint which is guaranteed to produce a nearly optimal solution in a finite number of iterations. A robust and efficient algorithm for this problem is required to compute the step between iterates in trust region methods for optimization problems. We also consider the use of our algorithm in a trust region Newton's method. In particular, we prove that under reasonable assumptions the sequence (X/sub k/) generated by Newton's method has a limit point X* which satisfies the first and second order necessary conditions for a minimizer of the objective function f. Numerical results for GQTPAR, which is a Fortran implementation of our algorithm, show that GQTPAR is quite successful in a trust region method. In our tests a call to GQTPAR only required 1.6 iterations on the average.

The general objective of the study is to perform a diversion analysis and an assessment of the available safeguards methods and systems for verifying inventory and flow of nuclear material in accessible and inaccessible areas of liquid-metal fast breeder reactor, LMFBR, systems. The study focuses primarily on the assembly-handling operations, assembly storage facilities, and reactor operations facilities relating to existing and/or near-term planned experimental, demonstration and prototypal reactor plants. The safeguards systems and methods presented are considered to be feasible for development and for implementation within the resource limitation of the IAEA and are considered to be consistent with the objectives, requirements, and constraints of the IAEA as outlined in the IAEA documents INFCIRC/153 and INFCIRC/66-Rev-2.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of isotope correlation techniques (ICT) to the Light Water Reactor (LWR) and the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) fuel cycles for nuclear material accountancy and safeguards surveillance. The isotopic measurement of the inventory input to the reprocessing phase of the fuel cycle is the primary direct determination that an anomaly may exist in the fuel management of nuclear material. The nuclear materials accountancy gap which exists between the fabrication plant output and the input to the reprocessing plant can be minimized by using ICT at the dissolver stage of the reprocessing plant. The ICT allows a level of verification of the fabricator's fuel content specifications, the irradiation history, the fuel and blanket assemblies management and scheduling within the reactor, and the subsequent spent fuel assembly flows to the reprocessing plant. The investigation indicates that there exist relationships between isotopic concentration which have predictable, functional behavior over a range of burnup. Several cross-correlations serve to establish the initial core assembly-averaged composition. The selection of the more effective functionals will depend not only on the level of reliability of ICT for verification, but also on the capability, accuracy and difficulty of …

This report reviews the research activities of the Applied Mathematical Sciences Section for the period April 1, 1980, through March 31, 1981. The body of the report discusses various projects carried out in three major areas of research: applied analysis, computational mathematics, and software engineering. Information on section staff, visitors, workshops, and seminars is found in the appendices.

Quarterly report discussing fuel cell research and development work at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). This report describes efforts directed toward (1) investigating alternative concepts for components of molten carbonate fuel cell stacks and (2) improving our understanding of component behavior.

The construction and operation of a low energy electron bombardment machine designed to study the effects of extremely high doses and dose rates of ionization on materials is described.

This project was conducted to evaluate the practicality of using laboratory groundwater stream experiments to model a hydraulic breach of a nuclear waste repository located deep in a bedded salt environment. A test plan is included in this report that gives details of the apparatus, rocks, solutions, and analyses to be used in a groundwater stream experiment. Preliminary experiments revealed the essential impermeability of halite; only a small concentration of water (about 75 ppm) moved in halite by diffusion, with a coefficient of 2.0 x 10⁻⁷/ cm sq./s. From work completed in this program, groundwater stream experiments appear to be a practical method of establishing the chemical interactions that would occur in a breached repository in bedded salt.

Quarterly report of the Argonne National Laboratory Chemical Engineering Division regarding activities related to properties and handling of radioactive materials, operation of nuclear reactors, and other relevant research.

Quarterly report of the Argonne National Laboratory Chemical Engineering Division regarding activities related to properties and handling of radioactive materials, operation of nuclear reactors, and other relevant research.

Quarterly report of the Argonne National Laboratory Chemical Engineering Division regarding activities related to properties and handling of radioactive materials, operation of nuclear reactors, and other relevant research.

Response-surface techniques have been developed for obtaining probability distributions of the consequences of postulated nuclear reactor accidents. In these techniques, probability distributions are assigned to the system and model parameters of the accident analysis. A limited number of parameter values (called knot points) are selected and input to a deterministic accident-analysis code. The results of the deterministic analyses are used to generate analytical functions (called response surfaces) that approximate the accident consequences in terms of selected system and model parameters. The response-surface methodology of this report includes both systematical and random knot-point selection schemes, second- and third-degree response surfaces, functional transformations of both input parameters and consequence variables, smooth synthesis of region-wise response surfaces and the treatment of random conditions for conditional distributions. The computer code PROSA-2 developed for implementing these techniques is independent of the deterministic accident-analysis codes.

Mechanisms that were developed for the Argonne National Laboratory - Northern Illinois University theorem proving system are discussed. By defining special input clauses and demodulators, it is possible to simulate mathematical processes such as canonicalization of polynomials with no special programming. The mechanisms presented resulted from a study of the X³ = X problem in ring theory. The use of the mechanisms allowed this problem to the solved for the first time by the automated theorem proving system.