The evolution of texture in thin sheets of metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 301 is affected by external conditions such as loading rate and temperature, by inhomogeneous deformation phenomena such as twinning and shear band formation, and by the concurent strain induced phase transformation of the retained austenitc ({gamma}) into martensite ({alpha}). The present paper describes texture measurements on different gauges of AISI 301 prior and after uniaxial stretching under different conditions.

Dispersion is effectively reduced in a 1550-nm subcarrier-multiplexed fiber link by using optical pre-filtering at the receiver. Recent experimental results demonstrate transmission of two 2.5 Gbit/s data channels over 220 km of ordinary single-mode fiber.

Article proposing a model in which phosphorylation of sites 1 and 2 occurs sequentially. The model proposes that trypsin treatment of the inactive holoenzyme removes an inhibitory rac-binding domain which blocks MgATP access to the catalytic site. The pseudosubstrate domain at site 1 is autophosphorylated and subsequent bimolecular autophosphorylation at site 2 fully opens the catalytic site.

Intense pulsed ion beams (500 keV, 30 kA, 0.5 {mu}s) are being investigated for materials processing. Demonstrated and potential applications include film deposition, glazing and joining, alloying and mixing, cleaning and polishing, corrosion improvement, polymer surface treatments, and nanophase powder synthesis. Initial experiments at Los Alamos have emphasized thin-film formation by depositing beam ablated target material on substrates. We have deposited films with complex stoichiometry such as YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7-x}, and formed diamond-like-carbon films. Instantaneous deposition rates of 1 mm/sec have been achieved because of the short ion range (typically 1{mu}m), excellent target coupling, and the inherently high energy of these beams. Currently the beams are produced in single shot uncomplicated diodes with good electrical efficiency. High-voltage modulator technology and diodes capable of repetitive firing, needed for commercial application, are being developed.

The North Tank Farm (NTF) and the South Tank Farm (STF) located at ORNL contains 8 underground waste storage tanks which were built around 1943. The tanks were used to collect and store the liquid portion of the radioactive and/or hazardous chemical wastes produced as part of normal facility operations at ORNL, but are no longer part of the active Low Level Liquid Waste system of the Laboratory. The tanks were constructed of gunite. The six STF tanks are 50 ft in diameter, and have a 12 ft sidewall, and an arched dome rising another 6.25 ft. The sidewall are 6 in. thick and have an additional 1.5 in. gunite liner on the inside. There is a thickened ring at the wall-dome juncture. The dome consists of two 5 in. layers of gunite. The two tanks in the NTF are similar, but smaller, having a 25 ft diameter, no inner liner, and a dome thickness of 3.5 in. Both sets of tanks have welded wire mesh and vertical rebars in the walls, welded wire mesh in the domes, and horizontal reinforcing hoop bars pre-tensioned to 35 to 40 ksi stress in the walls and thickened ring. The eight tanks are …

This paper discusses advantages and disadvantages of different locations of co-wound voltage sensors for quench detection in tokamak magnets with a cable-in-conduit conductor. The voltage sensor locations are analyzed and estimates of the anticipated noise vs. dB/dt are derived for transverse, parallel, and self fields. The LLNL Noise Rejection Experiment, also described here, is designed to verify theoretical expectations on a copper cable exposed to these fields that will simulate the tokamak field environment.

The issue of what to do with excess fissile materials from dismantled nuclear weapons has been discussed for a number of years. The options or alternatives commanding the most attention were identified by the American National Academy of Sciences. For plutonium these options are: (1) the fabrication and use of mixed-oxide (MOX) reactor fuel followed by the disposal of the spent fuel, or (2) vitrification (immobilization) of plutonium combined with highly radioactive material followed by direct disposal. The Academy report also identified the alternative of disposal in a deep borehole as requiring further study before being eliminated or accepted. The report emphasized security of nuclear materials as a principal factor in considering management and disposition decisions. Security of materials is particularly important in the near term-now-long before ultimate disposition can be accomplished. The MOX option was the subject of a NATO workshop held at Obninsk, Russia in October 1994. Hence this paper does not deal with the MOX alternative in detail. It deals with the following: materials protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) for immobilization and disposal; the immobilization vs MOX alternatives; the security of disposed plutonium; the need to demonstrate MTC&A for plutonium disposition; and, finally, a recommended investment to …

A Concept of Operations has been developed for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the potential geologic repository at Yucca Mountain. The Concept of Operations has been developed to document a cormion understanding of how the repository is to be operated. It is based on the repository architecture identified in the Initial Summary Report for Repository/Waste Package Advanced Conceptual Design and describes the operation of the repository from the initial receipt of waste through repository closure. Also described are operations for waste retrieval.

Probabilistic forecasting techniques have been used in many risk assessment and performance assessment applications on radioactive waste disposal projects such as Yucca Mountain and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Probabilistic techniques such as Monte Carlo and Latin Hypercube sampling methods are routinely used to treat uncertainties in physical parameters important in simulating radionuclide transport in a coupled geohydrologic system and assessing the ability of that system to comply with regulatory release limits. However, the use of probabilistic techniques in the treatment of uncertainties in the cost and duration of programmatic alternatives on risk and performance assessment projects is less common. Where significant uncertainties exist and where programmatic decisions must be made despite existing uncertainties, probabilistic techniques may yield important insights into decision options, especially when used in a decision analysis framework and when properly balanced with deterministic analyses. For relatively simple evaluations, these types of probabilistic evaluations can be made using personal computer-based software.

Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) has been used to non-destructively examine the interior of reinforced concrete pillars in the laboratory during a water infiltration experiment. ERT is a technique for determining the electrical resistivity distribution within a volume from measurement of injected currents and the resulting electrical potential distribution on the surface. The transfer resistance (ratio of potential to injected current) data are inverted using an algorithm based on a finite element forward solution which is iteratively adjusted in a least squares sense until the measured and calculated transfer resistances agree to within some predetermined value. Laboratory specimens of concrete pillars, 61.0 cm (24 in) in length and 20.3 cm (8 in) on a side, were prepared with various combinations of steel reinforcing bars and voids (1.27 cm diameter) which ran along the length of the pillars. An array of electrodes was placed around the pillar to allow for injecting current and measuring the resulting potentials. After the baseline resistivity distribution was determined, water was added to a void near one comer of the pillar. ERT was used to determine the resistivity distribution of the pillar at regular time intervals as water was added. The ERT images show very clearly that …

A prototype adaptive optics system has been installed and tested on the 3 m Shane telescope at Lick Observatory. The adaptive optics system performance, using bright natural guide stars, is consistent with expectations based on theory. A sodium-layer laser guide star system has also been installed and tested on the Shane telescope. Operating at 15 W, the laser system produces a 9th magnitude guide star with seeing-limited size at 589 nm. Using the laser guide star, the adaptive optics system has reduced the wavefront phase variance on scales above 50 cm by a factor of 4. These results represent the first continuous wavefront phase correction using a sodium-layer laser guide star. Assuming tip-tilt is removed using a natural guide star, the measured control loop performance should produce images with a Strehl ratio of 0.4 at 2.2 {mu}m in 1 arc second seeing. Additional calibration procedures must be implemented in order to achieve these results with the prototype Lick adaptive optics system.

Those conducting waste management studies to reduce the potential for a nuclear criticality accident in a future geological repository must examine the quantities and distribution of fissile isotopes that are present in discharged boiling-water reactor (BWR) and pressurized-water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) scheduled for disposition. The major fissile isotopes present in LWR fuels that impact criticality safety are the nuclides, {sup 235}U, {sup 239}Pu, and {sup 24l}Pu. The sum of the quantities of these three nuclides, expressed as a percentage of the total amount of all U and Pu isotopes present in a batch of discharged fuel, determines the final enrichment of the fuel batch under consideration. The final enrichment provides an approximate measure of the nuclear criticality potential. As the final enrichment increases, the mass, geometry, or administrative controls that must be in place to prevent nuclear criticality become more stringent. Below an enrichment of about 0.7%, however, criticality is no longer a concern because the infinite multiplication factor for any heterogeneous or homogeneous mixture of fuel and water, even under conditions of optimum moderation, is less than unity. The current study examines the distribution of the final enrichment of the LWR SNF which was discharged through …

This document presents the methodology and results of the Delphi survey. The viewgraphs depict the surveyed population in detail and the surveyed vehicles attributes such as range, recharging time, velocity, acceleration, etc. These opinions are given for forecast years 2000, 2010, and 2020.

Many who speak of the end of the Cold War emphasize the improvement in international relations when they speak of the momentous consequences of this event. According to this image, the half century since Trinity has been a period of sparse international communication during which the Eastern and Western blocs hibernated in their isolated dens of security alliances. The emphasis in the phrase ``Cold War`` was on the word ``cold,`` and relations with the former Communist regimes are now ``warm`` by comparison. It is equally valid to consider what has happened to the word ``was` in this highly descriptive phrase. While meaningful international dialogue was in a state of relative lethargy during much of the last fifty years, the military establishments of the Great Powers were actively engaged in using as much force as possible in their efforts to control world affairs, short of triggering a nuclear holocaust. Out of these military postures a tense peace ironically emerged, but the terms by which decisions were made about controlling weapons of mass destruction (i.e., nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons) were the terms of war. The thesis of this paper is that the end of the Cold War marks a shift away …

It has been discovered that the addition of a small amount of oxygen to the CH{sub 4} and H{sub 2} feed gas permits HFCVD of diamond at significantly lower filament and substrate temperatures. The effective O/C ratio here is much lower than that used in most studies of the oxygen effect. Careful control of the O/C and C/H ratios were found to be crucial to success. The effects of substrate and filament temperatures on growth rate and film quality were studied. Optimum conditions were found that gave reasonable growth rates ( {approximately}0.5 {mu}m/h ) with high film quality at filament temperatures below 1750{degrees}C and substrate temperatures below 600C. As a result, low temperature deposition has been realized. Power consumption can be reduced 50%, and the filament lifetime is extended indefinitely.

The laminar ethylene-air diffusion fame in a simple laboratory burner was simulated with the COYOTE reactive flow program. This program predicts the flow field, transport, and chemistry for the purposes of code validation and providing physical understanding of the processes occurring in the flame. We show the results of numerical experiments to test the importance of several physical effects, including gravity, radiation, and differential diffusion. The computational results compare favorably with the experimental measurements.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and EG&G ORTEC have jointly developed a portable ambient-temperature detection system that can be used in a number of application scenarios. The detection system uses a planar cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detector with custom-designed detector support electronics developed at LLNL and is based on the recently released MicroNOMAD multichannel analyzer (MCA) produced by ORTEC. Spectral analysis is performed using software developed at LLNL that was originally designed for use with high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector systems. In one application, the CZT detection system determines uranium enrichments ranging from less than 3% to over 75% to within accuracies of 20%. The analysis was performed using sample sizes of 200 g or larger and acquisition times of 30 min. The authors have demonstrated the capabilities of this system by analyzing the spectra gathered by the CZT detection system from uranium sources of several enrichments. These experiments demonstrate that current CZT detectors can, in some cases, approach performance criteria that were previously the exclusive domain of larger HPGe detector systems.

Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) was used to image spatial moisture distribution and movement in pavement sections during an infiltration test. ERT is a technique for determining the electrical resistivity distribution within a volume from measurement of injected currents and the resulting electrical potential distribution on the surface. The transfer resistance (ratio of potential to injected current) data are inverted using an algorithm based on a finite element forward solution which is iteratively adjusted in a least squares sense until the measured and calculated transfer resistances agree to within some predetermined value. Four arrays of ERT electrodes were installed in vertical drill holes 1.22 m (4 ft) placed at the comers of a square 61 cm (2 ft) on a side into a pavement section which is used for a truck scale ramp on U.S. Highway 99 just north of Sacramento, CA. Water was introduced slowly into the pavement through a shallow hole in the center of this pattern and ERT data were collected in various planes as the water infiltrated into the pavement and subgrade materials over a period of several hours. The ERT data were inverted, and the resulting images show (1) the basic structure of the pavement section …