Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) has favorable characteristics as a vehicular fuel, in terms of fuel economy as well as emissions. Using CNG as a fuel in a series hybrid vehicle has the potential of resulting in very high fuel economy (between 26 and 30 km/liter, 60 to 70 mpg) and very low emissions (substantially lower than Federal Tier II or CARB ULEV). This paper uses a vehicle evaluation code and an optimizer to find a set of vehicle parameters that result in optimum vehicle fuel economy. The vehicle evaluation code used in this analysis estimates vehicle power performance, including engine efficiency and power, generator efficiency, energy storage device efficiency and state-of-charge, and motor and transmission efficiencies. Eight vehicle parameters are selected as free variables for the optimization. The optimum vehicle must also meet two perfect requirements: accelerate to 97 km/h in less than 10 s, and climb an infinitely long hill with a 6% slope at 97 km/h with a 272 kg (600 lb.) payload. The optimizer used in this work was originally developed in the magnetic fusion energy program, and has been used to optimize complex systems, such as magnetic and inertial fusion devices, neutron sources, and mil guns. …

A consortium (Los Alamos, Sandia, OR, Livermore) have been collaborating under the GONII project to generate a synthetic seismic data base. Two deliverables were a common code that would run on the various site machines, and the use of these codes to generate parts of the final data base. The data base consists of a large number of shots applied to two geographic models developed by another part of GONII, the salt model and the overthrust model,s which were supplied as large files containing propagation velocity on a 3-D grid. Los Alamos was supplied with the source code of a seismic propagation code written by the French Petroleum Institute. A decision was made to port a subset of the code to Fortran on a node. Part of this contract was spent verifying/debugging the Fortran on a node code; a port of the code was made to run on the Cray. A total of 846 shots were run on the CM5. It was found that files on the SDA are not safe from corruption and the model velocity file may change.

At the Fernald Environmental Restoration Management Corporation (FERMCO), our product is a clean site. We measure productivity by our progress in taking down buildings and dispositioning hazardous waste. To those ends, Quality and Safety work together to ensure that productivity is gained in the safest way possible. The Plant 7 deconstruction is an example of how this teamwork has increased productivity at the site.

We report the status of a high-statistics Monte Carlo simulation of non-self-avoiding crystalline surfaces with extrinsic curvature on lattices of size up to 128{sup 2} nodes. We impose free boundary conditions. The free energy is a gaussian spring tethering potential together with a normal-normal bending energy. Particular emphasis is given to the behavior of the model in the cold phase where we measure the decay of the normal-normal correlation function.

Over the past couple of decades, the Standard Model of high energy particle physics has clearly established itself as an invaluable tool in the analysis of high energy particle phenomenon. However, from a field theorists point of view, there are many dissatisfying aspects to the model. One of these, is the large number of free parameters in the theory arising from the Yukawa couplings of the Higgs doublet. In this thesis, we examine various issues relating to the Yukawa coupeng structure of high energy particle field theories. We begin by examining extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics which contain additional scalar fields. By appealing to the flavor structure observed in the fermion mass and Kobayashi-Maskawa matrices, we propose a reasonable phenomenological parameterization of the new Yukawa couplings based on the concept of approximate flavor symmetries. It is shown that such a parameterization eliminates the need for discrete symmetries which limit the allowed couplings of the new scalars. New scalar particles which can mediate exotic flavor changing reactions can have masses as low as the weak scale. Next, we turn to the issue of neutrino mass matrices, where we examine a particular texture which leads to matter independent neutrino …

We present a comprehensive performance evaluation of our molecular dynamics code SPaSM on the CM-5 in order to devise optimization strategies for the CM-5, T3D, and RISC workstations. In this analysis, we focus on the effective use of the SPARC microprocessor by performing measurements of instruction set utilization, cache effects, memory access patterns, and pipeline stall cycles. We then show that we can account for more than 99% of observed execution time of our program. Optimization strategies are devised and we show that our highly optimized ANSI C program running only on the SPARC microprocessor of the CM-5 is only twice as slow as our Gordon-Bell prize winning code that utilized the CM-5 vector units. On the CM-5E, we show that this optimized code run faster than the vector unit version. We then apply these techniques to the Cray T3D and measure resulting speedups. Finally, we show that simple optimization strategies are effective on a wide variety of high performance RISC workstations.

This test report summarizes testing activities and documents the results of the load tests performed on-site and off-site to structural qualify the 52-inch equipment containers designed and fabricated under Project W-320.

Under this contract members of the MSU high energy physics group constructed a full-scale Pressurized Drift Tube Chamber intended for the GEM muon system at the SSC. They achieved a position resolution of <90 {mu} over the full 5 m{sup 2} area of the detector. This resolution satisfied the GEM resolution requirements of <100 {mu} by a comfortable margin. Based on their SSC work they developed a new technique for creating wire supports in drift tubes with an overall placement accuracy of <20 {mu}. This technique requires only simple jigging and can be duplicated and operated at low cost. Also, they participated in the design and testing of a hadron calorimeter prototype for GEM. This work lead the authors to develop a semi-automatic welding machine to fuse together two plastic optical fibers. Copies of this machine are currently in use in the CDF endplug upgrade at Fermilab and additional copies are used widely in calorimeter and fiber-tracker construction.

A model-based approach is proposed to solve the oceanic internal wave signal processing problem that is based on state-space representations of the normal-mode vertical velocity and plane wave horizontal velocity propagation models. It is shown that these representations can be utilized to spatially propagate the modal (depth) vertical velocity functions given the basic parameters (wave numbers, Brunt-Vaisala frequency profile etc.) developed from the solution of the associated boundary value problem as well as the horizontal velocity components. These models are then generalized to the stochastic case where an approximate Gauss-Markov theory applies. The resulting Gauss-Markov representation, in principle, allows the inclusion of stochastic phenomena such as noise and modeling errors in a consistent manner. Based on this framework, investigations are made of model-based solutions to the signal enhancement problem for internal waves. In particular, a processor is designed that allows in situ recursive estimation of the required velocity functions. Finally, it is shown that the associated residual or so-called innovation sequence that ensues from the recursive nature of this formulation can be employed to monitor the model`s fit to the data.

This document presents sampling data resulting from the March 23, 1995, sampling of SST 241-SX-103 using the vapor sampling system.

We report tests of a refuelable zinc/air battery of modular, bipolar-cell design, intended for fleet electric busses and vans. The stack consists of twelve 250-cm{sup 2} cells built of two units: (1) a copper-clad glass-reinforced epoxy board supporting anode and cathode current collectors, and (2) polymer frame providing for air- and electrolyte distribution and zinc fuel storage. The stack was refueled in 4 min. by a hydraulic transfer of zinc particles entrained in solution flow.

Lithium metal can be electrolytically refined from aqueous solutions of its compounds by partial reduction to form a lithium amalgam, followed by reduction of the amalgam to liquid lithium in a molten salt cell at 225 C. A bipolar cell (with a continuous, amalgam electrode circulating between the aqueous and salt cells) was designed, constructed and successfully tested on the bench scale, as a proof of principle of an efficient, safe and low-temperature alternative to existing processes.

This study evaluates alternatives for high-level waste forms, containers, container processing systems, and onsite interim storage. Glass waste forms considered are cullet, marbles, gems, and monolithic glass. Small and large containers configured with several combinations of overpack confinement and shield casks are evaluated for these waste forms. Onsite interim storage concepts including canister storage building, bore holes, and storage pad were configured with various glass forms and canister alternatives. All favorable options include the monolithic glass production process as the waste form. Of the favorable options the unshielded 4- and 7-canister overpack options have the greatest technical assurance associated with their design concepts due to their process packaging and storage methods. These canisters are 0.68 m and 0.54 m in diameter respectively and 4.57 m tall. Life-cycle costs are not a discriminating factor in most cases, varying typically less than 15 percent.

A method for managing safety in a research and development environment is described which involves both the subject matter experts and the researchers in development of safety policy and implementation planning. This method has been used effectively at LLNL to maximize safety benefits while minimizing the costs of the safety program and aggravation to the researcher. A product of this effort is the establishment of an effective safety culture as the line organizations work with the subject matter experts to develop and implement the safety program.

Surface measurements of solar irradiance of the atmosphere were made by a multipurpose computer-controlled scanning photometer at the Rattlesnake Mountain Observatory. The observatory is located at 46.4{degrees}N, 119.6{degrees}W at an elevation of 1088 m above mean sea level. The photometer measures the attenuation of direct solar radiation for different wavelengths using 12 filters. Five of these filters (ie., at 428 nm, 486 nm, 535 nm, 785 nm, and 1010 nm, with respective half-power widths of 2, 2, 3, 18, and 28 nm) are suitable for monitoring variations in the total optical depth of the atmosphere. Total optical depths for the five wavelength bands were derived from solar irradiance measurements taken at the observatory from August 5, 1979, to September 2, 1994; these total optical depth data are distributed with this numeric data package (NDP). To determine the contribution of atmospheric aerosols to the total optical depths, the effects of Rayleigh scattering and ozone absorption were subtracted (other molecular scattering was minimal for the five filters) to obtain total column aerosol optical depths. The total aerosol optical depths were further decomposed into tropospheric and stratospheric components by calculating a robustly smoothed mean background optical depth (tropospheric component) for each wavelength using …

The Hanford Site Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project was formed to manage the SNF at Hanford. Specifically, the mission of the SNF Project on the Hanford Site is to ``provide safe, economic, environmentally sound management of Hanford SNF in a manner which stages it for final disposition.`` The current mission of the Fuel Fabrication Facilities Transition Project (FFFTP) is to transition the 308 Building for turn over to the Environmental Restoration Contractor for decontamination and decommissioning.

Previous papers have described a general method for visualizing vector fields that involves drawing many small ``glyphs`` to represent the field. This paper shows how to improve the speed of the algorithm by utilizing hardware support for line drawing and extends the technique from regular to unstructured grids. The new approach can be used to visualize vector fields at arbitrary surfaces within regular and unstructured grids. Applications of the algorithm include interactive visualization of transient electromagnetic fields and visualization of velocity fields in fluid flow problems.

Three-dimensional transient finite element analysis is performed on unstructured grids. A trend toward running larger analysis problems, combined with a desire for interactive animation of analysis results, demands efficient visualization techniques. This paper discusses a set of data structures and algorithms for visualizing transient analysis results on unstructured grids and introduces some modifications in order to better support large grids. In particular, an element grouping approach is used to reduce the amount of memory needed for external surface determination and to speed up ``point in element`` tests. The techniques described lend themselves to visualization of analyses carried out in parallel on a massively parallel computer (MPC).

This document describes the Quality Assurance Program Plan (QAPP) for the Spent Nuclear Fuels (SNF) Canister Storage Building (CSB) Project. The purpose of this QAPP is to control project activities ensuring achievement of the project mission in a safe, consistent and reliable manner.

The purpose of this paper is to document the seismic design criteria to be used on the Title 11 design of the underground double-shell waste storage tanks and appurtenant facilities of the Multi-Function Waste Tank Facility (MWTF) project, and to provide the history and methodologies for determining the recommended Design Basis Earthquake (DBE) Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) anchors for site-specific seismic response spectra curves. Response spectra curves for use in design are provided in Appendix A.

Process wastewater and sludges were accumulated on site in solar evaporation ponds during operations at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats Plant (DOE/RF). Because of the extensive use of nitric acid in the processing of actinide metals, the process wastewater has high concentrations of nitrate. Solar pond waters at DOE/RF contain 300-60,000 mg NO{sub 3}{sup {minus}}/L. Additionally, the pond waters contain varying concentrations of many other aqueous constituents, including heavy metals, alkali salts, carbonates, and low level radioactivity. Solids, both from chemical precipitation and soil material deposition, are also present. Options for ultimate disposal of the pond waters are currently being evaluated and include stabilization and solidification (S/S) by cementation. Removal of nitrates can enhance a wastes amenability to S/S, or can be a unit operation in another treatment scheme. Nitrate removal is also a concern for other sources of pollution at DOE/RF, including contaminated groundwater collected by interceptor trench systems. Finally, nitrate pollution is a problem at many other DOE facilities where actinide metals were processed. The primary objective of this investigation was to optimize biological denitrification of solar pond waters with nitrate concentrations of 300--2,100 mg NO{sub 3}{sup {minus}}/L to below the drinking water standard of 45 mg …

The US Department of Energy has established the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) program to safely manage wastes currently stored in underground tank at the Hanford Site. A TWRS testing and development strategy was recently developed to define long-range TWRS testing plans. The testing and development strategy considered four alternatives. The primary variable in the alternatives is the level of pilot-scale testing involving actual waste. This study evaluates the cost benefit and risks associated with the four alternatives. Four types of risk were evaluated: programmatic schedule risk, process mishap risk, worker risk, and public health risk. The structure of this report is as follows: Section 1 introduces the report subject; Section 2 describes the test strategy alternative evaluation; Section 3 describes the approach used in this study to assess risk and cost benefit; Section 4 describes the assessment methodologies for costs and risks; Section 5 describes the bases and assumptions used to estimate the costs and risks; Section 6 presents the detailed costs and risks; and Section 7 describes the results of the cost benefit analysis and presents conclusions.

This first volume of the five volume set begins with a CPDR overview and then details the PF magnet system, manufacturing R&D, Westinghouse R&D, the central solenoid, the PF 5 ring coil, the PF 6/7 ring coil, quality assurance, and the system design description.

The ultimate goal of this project is to develop novel processes for making the conversion of coal into distillable liquids competitive to that of petroleum products in the range of $25/bbl. The objectives of Phase 1 were to determine the utility of new precursors to highly dispersed catalysts for use of syngas atmospheres in coal liquefaction, and to estimate the effect of such implementation on the cost of the final product. The project is divided into three technical tasks. Tasks 1 and 2 are the analyses and liquefaction experiments, respectively, and Task 3 deals with the economic effects of using these methods during coal liquefaction. Results are presented on the following: Analytical Support--screening tests and second-stage conversions; Laboratory-Scale Operations--catalysts, coal conversion in synthetic solvents, Black Thunder screening studies, and two-stage liquefaction experiments; and Technical and economic Assessment--commercial liquefaction plant description, liquefaction plant cost; and economic analysis.