The NIF Power Conditioning System (PCS) is required to deliver -68 kJ to each of the 3840 flashlamp pairs in the NIF laser in a current pulse with a peak of -500 kA and rise time of- 150 µs. The PCS will consist of 192 modules each of which drive 20 lamp-pairs. Each module will basically be a 6 rnF capacitor bank with a nominal charge voltage of 23.5 kV which is switched by a single pressurized air gas switch to 20 RG-220 cables that are connected to individual lamp loads. In addition each module will have a number of subsystems including; a lamp pre-ionization system, power supplies, isolation circuits, trigger systems, safety dump systems, gas system, and an embedded control system. A module will also include components whose primary function is to limit fault currents and thus minimize collateral damage in faults. In the Prototype Development and Testing effort at Sandia National Laboratories all of these were integrated into a single system and proper fimctionality was demonstrated. Extensive testing was done at nominal operating levels into resistive dummy loads and some testing in fault modes was also done. A description of the system and a summary of testing is …

Theoretical analysis and preliminary experiment on ionization instability of intense laser pulses in ionizing plasmas are presented. The ionization instability is due to the dependence of the ionization rate on the laser intensity and scatters the laser energy off the original propagation direction.

Fermilab experiment E866 has performed a precision measurement of the ratio of Drell-Yan yields from 800 GeV/c protons incident on deuterium and hydrogen targets. The measurement is used to determine the ratio of down antiquarks({bar d}) to up antiquarks({bar u}) in the proton over a broad range in the fraction of the proton momentum carried by the antiquark, 0.02 < x < 0.345. For x < 0.15, the data is in reasonable agreement with pre-existing parton distributions while for x > 0.20 the data is much closer to unity than these parton functions had indicated. The light quark asymmetry provides valuable information on the relative role perturbative and non-perturbative mechanisms play in generating the nucleon sea. A proposal to extend the Drell-Yan measurement to higher values of x using 120 GeV protons from the Fermilab main injector will be discussed.

The objective of this project is to increase the recoverable heavy oil reserves within sections of the Wilmington Oil Field, near Long Beach, California. This is realized through the testing and application of advanced reservoir characterization and thermal production technologies. It is hoped that the successful application of these technologies will result in their implementation throughout the Wilmington Field and through technology transfer, will be extended to increase the recoverable oil reserves in other slope and basin clastic (SBC) reservoirs. The existing steamflood in the Tar zone of Fault Block (FB) II-A has been relatively insufficient because of several producability problems which are common in SBC reservoir; inadequate characterization of the heterogeneous turbidite sands, high permeability thief zones, low gravity oil and non-uniform distribution of the remaining oil. This has resulted in poor sweep efficiency, high steam-oil ratios, and early breakthrough. Operational problems related to steam breakthrough, high reservoir pressure, and unconsolidated sands have caused premature well and downhole equipment failures. In aggregate, these reservoir and operational constraints have resulted in increased operating costs and decreased recoverable reserves.

Daily newspaper from Perry, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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A new mold material has been developed for use in making rare-earth permanent magnet components with precise dimensions in the 10 to 1000 µm range by hot-forging. These molds are made from molds poly(methyl)methacrylate (PMMA) made by deep x-ray lithography (DXRL). An alumina bonded with colloidal silica has been developed for use in these molds. This material can be heated to 950°C without changing dimensions where it develops the strength needed to withstand the hot-fmging conditions (750°C, 100 MPa). In addition, it disintegrates in HF so that parts can be easily removed after forging.

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A syringe-like disposable cutaneous biopsy instrument equipped with a tubular blade at its lower end, and designed so that a vacuum is created during use, said vacuum serving to retain undeformed a plug of tissue cut from a patient's skin.

This paper discusses the design and implementation of an interface that allows a debugger to obtain the information necessary to display the contents of the MPI message queues. The design has been implemented in the TotalView debugger, and dynamic libraries that conform to the interface exist for MPICH, as well as the proprietary MPI implementations from Compaq, IBM, and SGI.

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High resolution 2D imaging experiment on the saturated 18.9 nm Ni-like soft X-ray laser is presented. The imaging experiment allows measurement of the absolute output energy and intensity of the X-ray laser, while it gives detailed information on the spatial characteristics of the X-ray laser for understanding the physics and further improving the performance of the X-ray laser.

The authors present a technique for deriving predictions for the run times of parallel applications from the run times of similar applications that have executed in the past. The novel aspect of the work is the use of search techniques to determine those application characteristics that yield the best definition of similarity for the purpose of making predictions. They use four workloads recorded from parallel computers at Argonne National Laboratory, the Cornell Theory Center, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach.They show that on these workloads the techniques achieve predictions that are between 14 and 60% better than those achieved by other researchers; the approach achieves mean prediction errors that are between 41 and 65% of mean application run times.

In this paper we describe the difficulties inherent in making accurate, reproducible measurements of message-passing performance. We describe some of the mistakes often made in attempting such measurements and the consequences of such mistakes. We describe mpptest, a suite of performance measurement programs developed at Argonne National Laboratory, that attempts to avoid such mistakes and obtain reproducible measures of MPI performance that can be useful to both MPI implementers and MPI application writers. We include a number of illustrative examples of its use.

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Partitioning and transmutation strategies are under study in several countries as a means of reducing the long-term hazards of spent fuel and other high-level nuclear waste. Various reactor and accelerator-driven system concepts have been proposed to transmute the long-lived radioactive nuclei of waste into stable or short-lived species. Among these concepts, the accelerator-driven transmutation of waste (ATW) system has been proposed by LANL for rapid destruction of transuranic actinides and long-lived fission products ({sup 99}Tc and {sup 129}I).The current reference ATW concept employs a subcritical, liquid metal cooled, fast-spectrum nuclear subsystem. Because the discharged fuel is recycled, analysis of ATW nuclear performance requires modeling of the external cycle as well as the in-core fuel management. The fuel cycle analysis of ATW can be performed rigorously using Monte Carlo calculations coupled with detailed depletion calculations. However, the inefficiency of this approach makes it impractical, particularly in view of (a) the large number of fuel cycle calculations needed for design optimization and (b) the need to represent complex in-core and out-of-core fuel cycle operations. To meet the need for design-oriented capabilities, tools previously developed for fast reactor calculations are being adapted for application to ATW. Here we describe the extension and application …

The accelerator-driven transmutation of waste (ATW) system has been proposed for transmuting the long-lived radioactive nuclei of high-level waste to stable or short-lived species. In recent ATW design concepts, lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE), consisting of 44.5% Pb and 55.5% Bi by weight is used as the spallation target, system coolant, and reflector. Because of the excellent neutron reflection properties of LBE, the subcriticality level of ATW is quite sensitive to the cross sections of lead and bismuth. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of these cross sections on subcriticality and other core characteristics of ATW and to compare the results obtained using cross sections in different evaluated nuclear data files. The effects of lead and bismuth cross sections on the core characteristics of ATW were studied using 33 group cross section sets derived from the ENDF/B-VI, ENDF/B-V, JENDL-3.2, and BROND-2.2 nuclear data. A 2000 MW(thermal) ATW configuration similar to that described in Reference 1 was used in this study. In this configuration, the spallation target region is 55 cm high and 25 cm in radius, and is surrounded by a 15-cm thick LBE buffer. The adjacent fueled region is {approximately}65 cm thick and 200 cm high. The …

The integration of PZT and SBT film-based capacitors with Si integrated circuit technology requires the use of processing steps that may degrade the performance of individual device components. Hydrogen annealing to remove damage in the Si FET adversely affects both PZT and SBT, although the mechanisms of degradation are different. We have used Mass spectroscopy of recoiled ions (MSRI), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and electrical characterization to study the mechanisms of hydrogen-induced degradation in these two materials. The mechanism responsible for degradation in SBT during hydrogen annealing appears to be hydrogen-induced volatilization of Bi from the near-surface region during film growth. Although there is a similar, but smaller, loss of Pb in PZT, the resulting change in stoichiometry is not responsible for the degradation of the ferroelectric properties. Raman spectroscopy reveals that PZT films exposed to hydrogen exhibit evidence for the formation of polar hydroxyl [OH-] bonds, which can block the movement of ions in the lattice and inhibit polarization. The possible sites for the incorporation of hydrogen are discussed in terms of ionic radii, and crystal structure.

A prototype equation of state (EOS) browser application has been developed at LLNL. This browser provides an interactive, graphical user interface that allows EOS data to be analyzed, visualized, and compared with experimental data. The user can view our EOS table data in both tabular and graphical form, can obtain lists of table ranges, and can view material information. In addition, the browser allows the user to utilize the interpolation routines of our EOS package to produce the same interpolated EOS data that would be passed to a simulation code, and to analyze this data in many different ways. Interpolated data can be obtained through use of a query function, and lists of interpolated data over various ranges can be produced. Analysis functions include the calculation and display of isotherms, isochores, isobars, adiabats, and shock Hugoniots. Moreover, experimental data can be overlaid onto these plots in order to establish confidence in particular EOS tables. It is expected that this browser environment will be a valuable tool for scientists who use large simulation codes that access equation of state data.

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Electron beam temperature, {beta}{perpendicular} (= v{perpendicular}/v), is important to control for the development of high dose flash radiographic bremsstrahlung sources. At high voltage (> 5 MV) increasing electron beam temperature has a serious deleterious effect on dose production. The average and time resolved behavior of beam temperature was measured during radiographic experiments on the HERMES III accelerator (10 MV, 50 kA, 70 ns). A linear array of thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) were used to estimate the time integrated average of beam temperature. On and off-axis photoconducting diamond (PCD) detectors were used to measure the time resolved bremsstrahlung dose rate, which is dependent on beam energy and temperature. The beam temperature can be determined by correlating PCD response with accelerator voltage and current and also by analyzing the ratio of PCD amplitudes on and off axis. This ratio is insensitive to voltage and current and thus, is more reliable than utilizing absolute dose rate. The data is unfolded using comparisons with Monte Carlo simulations to obtain absolute beam temperatures. The data taken on HERMES III show abrupt increases in {beta}{perpendicular} midway through the pulse indicating rapid onset of beam instability.