As photovoltaic systems become larger and more numerous, improved methods are needed for testing and modeling their performance. Test methods that successfully separate the interacting, time-of-day dependent influences of solar irradiance, operating temperature, solar spectrum, and solar angle-of-incidence have now been developed. These test methods have resulted in a new array performance model that is reasonably simple, yet accurately predicts performance for all operating conditions. This paper describes the new model, outdoor tests required to implement it, results of field tests for five arrays of different technologies, and the evolution of the model into a numerical tool for designing and sizing photovoltaic arrays based on annual energy production.

The Institute of Gas Technology (IGT) is developing gas processing technology that will reduce gas processing costs for current production and allow subquality gas to be economically produced that would have been otherwise, not produced. The experimental program has primarily focused on the evaluation of N-Formyl Morpholine (NFM) as a physical solvent for the cost-effective upgrading of subquality natural gas to pipeline quality. The selection of NFM for this program was based on previous work conducted by IGT in the selective removal of hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide from coal gasifier effluents. That work showed that the use of NFM resulted in a significant cost advantage over 107 other solvents for that application. The project approach for the development of NFM process has been divided into following main categories: obtain vapor-liquid equilibrium, physical properties and additional published literature data; obtain mass-transfer coefficients using 2 inch absorber/stripper apparatus and calculate equation of state parameters and binary interaction parameters using VLE data; develop a gas processing model using Aspen Plus simulation program and evaluate economic advantages of the NFM process compared to commercial physical solvent; and design a pilot plant skid mounted field test unit and conduct field test experiments.

On April 9--11, 1997, the Department of Energy`s Office of Worker and Community Transition convened its fifth National Stakeholder Workshop. The workshop addressed a wide range of work force restructuring and community transition issues critical to the future success of the Department. Two important elements of the meeting were: (1) reviewing progress made on the challenges identified during the March 1996f stakeholder`s meeting in Atlanta, Georgia; and (2) identifying areas that needed priority attention during the early months of the second Clinton Administration. The format of the Workshop included several plenary sessions and a number of small group discussion sessions. The small group sessions focused on topics related to labor issues, work force restructuring, work force planning, community transition, and employee concerns. The sessions provided a wide range of views on worker and community transition issues. The workshop included presentations on the following topics: Welcome and introductions; Opening remarks; Community reuse organizations: recent accomplishments; Privatization: policy, practice and potential pitfalls; Department of Energy`s integrated training initiatives; Congressional perspective on work force restructuring; and, Privatization and the Ten Year Plan.

Transmission electron microscopy of otoliths from the inner ear of arctic charr and pike has revealed the presence of fine banding on the scale of several nanometers. The thickness of the bands was observed to vary in different portions of the sample, and some areas were not banded. EDS analysis could not detect chemical differences within the bands, but electron diffraction showed that the crystallographic orientation of the bands is related by a lattice mismatch. Previously, banding on the scale of 50 to 100 microns was observed by SEM in otoliths from arctic charr and was attributed to seasonal variations in growth. The fine-scale banding observed in this study, however, is unlikely to represent a daily variation. Electron diffraction from the pike samples shows that the material is composed of CaCO{sub 3} having the both the vaterite and aragonite structure, and hydrous CaCO{sub 3} was also observed. The large-scale banding previously identified by SEM was not observed in the TEM despite attempts to intersect the boundaries of the micron-sized layers. The interaction of the electron beam with the sample material was investigated by conducting several electron-irradiation experiments. The electron beam was observed to interact strongly with the sample and caused …

Heisenberg exchange parameters at the interface of antiferromagnetic NiMn with ferromagnetic Co are calculated from first-principles. The authors use a layer version of the Korringa-Kohn-Rostocker multiple scattering approach and an expression, which is based on the expansion of the band energy, to calculate the exchange parameters from the underlying electronic structure. For bulk systems, the parameter sets yield Curie temperatures that are in good agreement with experimental values. In the interface region, the inter-layer interactions in NiMn change significantly compared to the bulk while the intra-layer interactions are almost unchanged.

The conference focused on computational and modeling issues in the geosciences. Of the geosciences, problems associated with phenomena occurring in the earth`s subsurface were best represented. Topics in this area included petroleum recovery, ground water contamination and remediation, seismic imaging, parameter estimation, upscaling, geostatistical heterogeneity, reservoir and aquifer characterization, optimal well placement and pumping strategies, and geochemistry. Additional sessions were devoted to the atmosphere, surface water and oceans. The central mathematical themes included computational algorithms and numerical analysis, parallel computing, mathematical analysis of partial differential equations, statistical and stochastic methods, optimization, inversion, homogenization and renormalization. The problem areas discussed at this conference are of considerable national importance, with the increasing importance of environmental issues, global change, remediation of waste sites, declining domestic energy sources and an increasing reliance on producing the most out of established oil reservoirs.

Current developments in nuclear structure at the `limits` are discussed. The studies of nuclear behavior at extreme conditions provide us with invaluable information about the nature of the nuclear interaction and nucleonic correlations at various energy-distance scales. In this talk frontiers of nuclear structure are briefly reviewed from a theoretical perspective, mainly concentrating on medium-mass and heavy nuclei.

The Functional Genomics Initiative at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory integrates outstanding capabilities in mouse genetics, bioinformatics, and instrumentation. The 50 year investment by the DOE in mouse genetics/mutagenesis has created a one-of-a-kind resource for generating mutations and understanding their biological consequences. It is generally accepted that, through the mouse as a surrogate for human biology, we will come to understand the function of human genes. In addition to this world class program in mammalian genetics, ORNL has also been a world leader in developing bioinformatics tools for the analysis, management and visualization of genomic data. Combining this expertise with new instrumentation technologies will provide a unique capability to understand the consequences of mutations in the mouse at both the organism and molecular levels. The goal of the Functional Genomics Initiative is to develop the technology and methodology necessary to understand gene function on a genomic scale and apply these technologies to megabase regions of the human genome. The effort is scoped so as to create an effective and powerful resource for functional genomics. ORNL is partnering with the Joint Genome Institute and other large scale sequencing centers to sequence several multimegabase regions of both human and mouse genomic DNA, …

The policy debate that has surrounded the national laboratories of the Department of Energy since the end of the Cold War has been very confusing. Initially, with the passage of the National Competitiveness Technology Transfer Act of 1989, the laboratories were encouraged to form cooperative arrangements with industry to maintain their technology base and give a boost for U.S. industrial competitiveness. But in the 104th Congress, technology transfer programs were severely constrained.

The accurate determination of temperature of galvanneal sheet emerging from a zinc bath is a challenging process measurement. The line moves at high speeds, up to 900 feet per minute, and the emissivity varies widely as it moves through the radio-frequency (RF) induction heating ovens and subsequently cools. This presents a great source of error if the pyrometric approach is used since the accuracy is sensitive to emissivity variation. This problem has been circumvented by an approach described here which uses a thermally sensitive phosphor technique for temperature measurement. For this, a small amount of a phosphor material is deposited on the liquid surface of the sheet. When the small layer of phosphor moves to the measurement station, it is illuminated by a short laser pulse which produces fluorescence from the material. The time dependence of the fluorescence indicates the temperature. Introduction of the microgram quantities of material has been shown to have no detrimental impact on product quality! This presentation describes a phosphor-based system for measuring temperature on a galvanneal manufacturing line. To date, measurements with an accuracy of +/- 5 deg F have been made at National Steel=s Midwest facility. This effort is a part of the Advanced …

Crystalline Silicotitanate (CST) is an inorganic ion exchange medium that was designed to sorb Cs-137, Sr-90 and several other radionuclides. CST exhibits high selectivity for the ion exchange of cesium from highly alkaline solutions containing large quantities of sodium. Through the Tanks Focus Area (TFA), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was funded to demonstrate the effectiveness of CST as an ion exchange material using supernate from the Melton Valley Storage Tanks (MVST). After processing the supernate through columns containing CST, the CST will be sluiced into drums and dewatered. Some of the CST will be shipped to the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) to demonstrate vitrification of the cesium-loaded CST in the shielded cells facility of SRTC. Vitrification is considered to be the Best Demonstrated Available Technology for immobilization of high-level waste and is currently being investigated for the treatment of low-level/mixed wastes. Vitrification of cesium-loaded CST offers a number of benefits. Vitrification: (1) is less expensive than many of the technologies available; (2) offers a large volume reduction; (3) produces a waste form that is very durable; (4) is an established technology; (5) can be used for a wide variety of waste streams; and (6) produces a waste form …

In this paper, sustainable forest management is discussed within the historical and theoretical framework of the sustainable development debate. The various criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management put forth by different institutions are critically explored. Specific types of climate change mitigation policies/projects in the forest sector are identified and examined in the light of the general criteria for sustainable forest management. Areas of compatibility and contradiction between the climate mitigation objectives and the minimum criteria for sustainable forest management are identified and discussed. Emphasis is put on the problems of monitoring and verifying carbon benefits associated with such projects given their impacts on pre-existing policy objectives on sustainable forest management. The implications of such policy interactions on assignment of carbon credits from forest projects under Joint Implementation/Activities Implemented Jointly initiatives are discussed. The paper concludes that a comprehensive monitoring and verification regime must include an impact assessment on the criteria covered under other agreements such as the Biodiversity and/or Desertification Conventions. The actual carbon credit assigned to a specific project should at least take into account the negative impacts on the criteria for sustainable forest management. The value of the impacts and/or the procedure to evaluate them need to …

Our goal is to develop and implement an integrated intelligent system which can recognize biologically significant features in DNA sequence and provide insight into the organization and function of regions of genomic DNA. GRAIL is a modular expert system which facilitates the recognition of gene features and provides an environment for the construction of sequence annotation. The last several years have seen a rapid evolution of the technology for analyzing genomic DNA sequences. The current GRAIL systems (including the e-mail, XGRAIL, JAVA-GRAIL and genQuest systems) are perhaps the most widely used, comprehensive, and user friendly systems available for computational characterization of genomic DNA sequence.

Stabilization/solidification (S/S) has been identified as the preferred treatment option for hazardous radioactive sludges, and currently grouting and vitrification are considered the leading candidate S/S technologies. Consequently, a project was initiated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to define composition envelopes, or operating windows, for acceptable grout and glass formulations containing Melton Valley Storage Tank (MVST) sludges. The resulting data are intended to be used as guidance for the eventual treatment of the MVST sludges by the government and/or private sector. Wastewater at ORNL is collected, evaporated, and stored in the MVSTs pending treatment for disposal. The waste separates into two phases: sludge and supernate. The sludges in the tank bottoms have been accumulating for several years and contain a high amount of radioactivity, with some classified as transuranic (TRU) sludges. The available total constituent analysis for the MVST sludge indicates that the Resource and Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) metal concentrations are high enough to be potentially RCRA hazardous; therefore, these sludges have the potential to be designated as mixed TRU waste. S/S treatment must be performed to remove free liquids and reduce the leach rate of RCRA metals. This paper focuses on initial results for the development of the …

In the search for the quark-gluon plasma, it has been suggested that the production of charmonium will be suppressed in a quark-gluon plasma because of the screening of the interaction between c and {anti c}. To extract information on the suppression due to the quark-gluon plasma, it is necessary to study the suppression of J/{psi} production by sources different from the quark-gluon plasma. It is therefore useful to examine the mechanism of heavy quarkonium production and its propagation in nuclei. The authors describe a precursor in heavy quarkonium production in terms of a coherent admixture of states of different color, spin, and angular momentum quantum numbers, and obtain the production amplitudes for different quarkonium bound states by projecting out this precursor state onto these bound states. The precursor is absorbed in its passage through a nucleus in a pA reaction, and the total cross section between this precursor with a nucleon can be calculated with the two-gluon model of the Pomeron. Such a description of coherent precursors and their subsequent interactions with nucleons can explain many salient features of J/{psi} and {psi}{prime} production in pA collisions.

A new beam diagnostic to measure transverse profiles of electron beams is described. This profile monitor uses a Yttrium:Aluminum:Garnet (YAG) crystal doped with a visible light scintillator to produce an image of the transverse beam distribution. The advantage of this material over traditional fluorescent screens is that it is formed from a single crystal, and therefore has improved spatial resolution. The current system is limited to a resolution of about 10 microns. Improvements in the optical transport will enable measurements of RMS beam sizes of less than 1 micron. The total cost of the system is modest.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is a planned geologic repository for permanent disposal of transuranic waste generated by the U.S. Department of Energy. Disposal regions consist of panels and drifts mined from the bedded salt of the Salado Formation at a depth of approximately 650 m below the surface. This lithology is part of the 225 million year old Delaware Basin, and is geographically located in southeastern New Mexico. Four shafts service the facility needs for air intake, exhaust, waste handling, and salt handling. As the science advisor for the project, Sandia National Laboratories developed the WIPP shaft sealing system design. This design is a fundamental component of the application process for facility licensing, and has been found acceptable by stakeholders and regulatory agencies. The seal system design is founded on results obtained from laboratory and field experiments, numerical modeling, and engineering judgment. This paper describes a field test program to characterize the fluid flow properties in the WIPP shafts at representative seal locations. This work was conducted by Duke Engineering and Services under contract to Sandia National Laboratories in support of the seal system design.

Calcite is ubiquitous at Yucca Mountain, occurring in the soils and as fracture and cavity coatings within the volcanic tuff section. Strontium is a trace element in calcite, generally at the tens to hundreds of ppm level. Because calcite contains very little rubidium and the half-life of the {sup 87}Rb parent is billions of years, the {sup 87}Sr/{sup 86}Sr ratios of the calcite record the ratio in the water from which the calcite precipitated. Dissolution and reprecipitation does not alter these compositions so that, in the absence of other sources of strontium, one would expect the strontium ratios along a flow path to preserve variations inherited from strontium in the soil zone. Strontium isotope compositions of calcites from various settings in the Yucca Mountain region have contributed to the understanding of the unsaturated zone (UZ), especially in distinguishing unsaturated zone calcite from saturated zone calcite. Different populations of calcite have been compared, either to group them together or distinguish them from each other in terms of their strontium isotope compositions. Ground water and perched water have also been analyzed; this paper presents strontium isotope data obtained on pore water.

Di-isopropyl methylphosphonate (DIMP) is a byproduct from the manufacture of the nerve agent Sarin. The persistence of DIMP in the ground water is an important question in evaluating the potential environmental impacts of DIMP contamination. The half-life of DIMP in ground water at 10 deg C was estimated to be 500 years with a 95% confidence interval of 447 to 559 years from measurements of the hydrolysis rates at temperatures between 70 to 98 deg C.Extrapolation of the kinetics to 10 deg C used the Arrhenius equation, and calculation of the half-life assumed first-order kinetics. Inorganic phosphate was not detected.

The solution mediated phase transformation of a lithium zinc phosphate has been investigated. The zeolite type ABW phase, LiZnPO{sub 4}. H{sub 2}O, suspended in an aqueous solution of LiNO{sub 3}, transforms to the more dense phase, (delta tau) LiZnPO{sub 4} (crystobalite type structure). In situ time resolved powder diffraction using synchrotron radiation, has been utilized to obtain isothermal crystallization curves in the temperature range 179 {degrees} C to 210 {degrees} C. A power law was used for the kinetic analysis, giving an apparent activation energy for the reaction, Ea = 93.1 kJ/mole. The order of the power law varies from 2. 80 to 4.41 in the observed temperature range. This indicates a continuous change in the mechanism of the nucleation.

There is something magical about ``round birthdays.`` They make one stop and think about where he is, how he got there, and where he is going. The same is apparently true of conferences, especially those like ICPEAC which represent the periodic coming together of a broad range of scientists in a reasonably well-defined discipline. This Vienna conference is the 20th in the ICPEAC series, and a retro- and pro-spective analysis seems appropriate. At the first ICPEAC in New York (1958), there were about 50 participants. In Vienna (1997), there were more than 800 participants. How do we account for this growth? ICPEAC is one of the most democratic conferences of its size. For example, input from a general committee of 50 representing the many geographic and sub- disciplinary areas gives continuous refreshment of ideas for the invited program. And, as in any democracy, there is a constant state of turmoil and self doubt. After all, atomic collisions is a ``mature`` field, and was a ``mature`` field at the time of the first ICPEAC in 1958, 50 what can one expect in new developments? This self doubt is best expressed in the comment of Ben Bederson (the ``Father of ICPEAC``) following …

The authors apply optimal control techniques to find approximate solutions to an inverse problem for the acoustic wave equation. The inverse problem (assumed here to have a solution) is to determine the boundary reflection coefficient from partial measurements of the acoustic signal. The sought reflection coefficient is treated as a control and the goal--quantified by an approximate functional--is to drive the model solution close to the experimental data by adjusting this coefficient. The problem is solved by finding the optimal control that minimizes the approximate functional. Then by driving the cost of the control to zero one proves that the corresponding sequence of optimal controls represents a converging sequence of estimates for the solution of the inverse problem. Compared to classical regularization methods (e.g., Tikhonov coupled with optimization schemes), their approach yields: (1) a systematic procedure to solve inverse problems of identification type and (ii) an explicit expression for the approximations of the solution.

Verification and validation issues have been perceived as important factors in the large scale deployment of knowledge-based digital systems for plant transient diagnostics and management. Research and development (R&D) is being performed on the IGENPRO package to resolve knowledge base issues. The IGENPRO approach is to structure the knowledge bases on generic thermal-hydraulic (T-H) first principles and not use the conventional event-basis structure. This allows for generic comprehensive knowledge, relatively small knowledge bases and above all the possibility of T-H system/plant independence. To demonstrate concept feasibility the knowledge structure has been implemented in the diagnostic module PRODIAG. Promising laboratory testing results have been obtained using data from the full scope Braidwood PWR operator training simulator. This knowledge structure is now being implemented in the transient management module PROMANA to treat unanticipated events and the PROTREN module is being developed to process actual plant data. Achievement of the IGENPRO R&D goals should contribute to the acceptance of knowledge-based digital systems for transient diagnostics and management.

The linear, nonthreshold extrapolation from a dose-response relationship for ionizing radiation derived at higher doses to doses for which regulatory standards are proposed is being challenged by some scientists and defended by others. It appears that the risks associated with exposures to doses of interest are below the risks that can be measured with epidemiologic studies. Therefore, many have looked to biology to provide information relevant to risk assessment. The workshop reported here, ``The Impact of biology on Risk Assessment,`` was planned to address the need for further information by bringing together scientists who have been working in key fields of biology and others who have been contemplating the issues associated specifically with this question. The goals of the workshop were to summarize and review the status of the relevant biology, to determine how the reported biologic data might influence risk assessment, and to identify subjects on which more data is needed.