Sandia National Laboratory are working on ways to increase production using Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management is: finding ways to create, identify, capture, and distribute organizational knowledge to the people who need it; to help information and knowledge flow to the right people at the right time so they can act more efficiently and effectively; recognizing, documenting and distributing explicit knowledge (explicit knowledge is quantifiable and definable, it makes up reports, manuals, instructional materials, etc.) and tacit knowledge (tacit knowledge is doing and performing, it is a combination of experience, hunches, intuition, emotions, and beliefs) in order to improve organizational performance and a systematic approach to find, understand and use knowledge to create value.

A cold pump test, training, and mock-up facility needs to be acquired and installed to support Tank Waste Retrieval and Disposal (TWR&D). Such a facility would serve useful purposes for the TWR&D, and would also have the capability to provide similar services for other Hanford Site activities.

This document defines the functions and requirements (F&R) for a test facility to provide for pre-deployment, checkout, testing, and training for the underground storage tank retrieval equipment, systems, and crews that will be developed or deployed as part of Waste Feed Delivery. The F&R for a River Protection Project retrieval test facility, one that supports a production mode tank farm system, are identified.

A transient, multi-dimensional model has been developed to simulate proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. The model accounts simultaneously for electrochemical kinetics, current distribution, hydrodynamics and multi-component transport. A single set of conservation equations valid for flow channels, gas-diffusion electrodes, catalyst layers and the membrane region are developed and numerically solved using a finite-volume-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. The numerical model is validated against published experimental data with good agreement. Subsequently, the model is applied to explore hydrogen dilution effects in the anode feed. The predicted polarization cubes under hydrogen dilution conditions are found to be in qualitative agreement with recent experiments reported in the literature. The detailed two-dimensional electrochemical and flow/transport simulations further reveal that in the presence of hydrogen dilution in the fuel stream, hydrogen is depleted at the reaction surface resulting in substantial kinetic polarization and hence a lower current density that is limited by hydrogen transport from the fuel stream to the reaction site.

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Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed national security legal authorities related to infrastructure protection, focusing on the administration's National Plan for Information Systems Protection."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the progress towards achieving the goals of the Energy Policy Act's petroleum replacement programs, focusing on the: (1) progress made in acquiring alternative fuel vehicles and using alternative fuels to meet the act's fuel replacement goals; (2) impediments to using alternative fuel vehicles; and (3) measures that can be taken to address those impediments to using alternative fuel vehicles and alternative fuels to help reach the act's replacement goals."

Evaluation of direct buried piping currently in use or designated for future Saltwell pumping in S and SX Farms. Documented evaluation of failed S-103 saltwell pumping transfer line 3 inch SN-219. This evaluation is intended to reflect current status of Saltwell piping, when taken in context with referenced documents.

A series of tests were conducted to provide site-specific Kd values for constituents of concern at the TNX Outfall Delta Operable Unit. These Kd values can be used to calculate contaminant migration within the operable unit and are, at this time considered to be the most defensible values.

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A non-invasive microwave device for the detection of epi/subdural hemorrhaging (hematoma) is under current development. The final device will be highly portable and allow real time assessment of head injuries, thereby satisfying early detection needs of the field technician as well as providing a tool for repetitious monitoring of high-risk individuals. The device will adopt the advanced technology of micropower impulse radar (MIR) which is a state of the art low cost ultra wide band (UWB) microwave radar developed here at LLNL. It will consist of a MIR transmitting and receiving module, a computer based signal processing module, and a device-to-patient signal coupling module--the UWB antenna. The prototype design is being guided by the needs of the patient and the practitioner along with the prerequisites of the technology including issues such as the specificity of the device, efficacy of diagnosis, accuracy, robustness, and patient comfort. The prototype development follows a concurrent approach which .includes experiments designed to evaluate requirements of the radar and antenna design, phantom development to facilitate laboratory investigations, and investigation into the limits of adapting pre-existing non-medical MIR devices to medical applications. This report will present the accomplishments and project highlights to date in the fiscal year …

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The authors explore the use of variational grid-generation to perform alignment of a grid with a given vector field. Variational methods have proven to be a powerful class of grid-generators, but when they are used in alignment, difficulties may arise in treating boundaries due to an incompatibility between geometry and vector field. In this paper, a refinement of the procedure of iterating boundary values is presented. It allows one to control the quality of the grid in the face of the above-mentioned incompatibility. This procedure may be incorporated into any variational alignment algorithm. The authors demonstrate its use with respect to a new quasi-variational alignment method having a particularly simple structure. The latter method is comparable to Knupp's method (see [7]), but avoids use of the Winslow equations.

Scenarios for the building of muon colliders or storage rings suitable for the generation of robust neutrino beams call for the generation of a prodigious quantity of pions. These pions are then conducted into a decay channel where the resulting muon decay products can be collected for cooling and subsequent acceleration. Central to this concept is the design and construction of a target which will be highly efficient in producing pions of both signs while mitigating the absorption of these pions before they decay. This design effort is being facilitated by using two computer codes FLUKA and MARS. The authors present comparisons of the two computer codes and also present a comparison of these codes with available data.

During the period from late June to early September of this year, approximately 1,600 gallons of precipitate feed stored in the Precipitate Hold Tank (PHT) at PHEF decomposed. This decomposition took place during a two month storage period of the Tetraphenyl borate (TPB) precipitate under a CO{sub 2} blanket. The visual inspection of the tank revealed that a very small amount of TPB solids were left and that there were approximately 100 to 110 gals of benzene/high boilers present in the tank. The resultant decomposition products in the PHT consist of an organic and aqueous phase containing a small quantity of unreacted solids. A path forward was developed to understand TPB decomposition and to determine if the material remaining in the PHT could be processed without adverse effects to the process or equipment. A small scale hydrolysis run with the remaining PHT material was made by Process Technology Development Group of DWPT at TNX. It was determined from small scale runs and an extensive analysis of the PHT material that the decomposed material was safe to run at PHEF without adversely affecting the process or equipment. The PHT volume was 1,592 gallons at the time of decomposition. Two runs (66 …

As an integral part of the plutonium disposition program, formulation and process development is being performed for the immobilization of surplus plutonium in a titanate-based ceramic. Small-scale process prototypic and lab-scale functionally prototypic equipment have been tested to help define the immobilization process. The testing has included non-radioactive surrogates and actual actinide oxides contained in the immobilized form. A summary of the process development studies, as well as the formulation studies relevant to the process, will be provided.

A multi-rover cooperative team or swarm developed by Sandia National Laboratories is described, including various control methodologies that have been implemented to date. How the swarm's capabilities could be applied to a lunar ice prospecting mission is briefly explored. Some of the specific major engineering issues that must be addressed to successfully implement the swarm approach to a lunar surface mission are outlined, and potential solutions are proposed.

Electrodeposited metal matrix/metal particle composite (EMMC) coatings were produced with a nickel matrix and aluminum particles. By optimizing the process parameters, coatings were deposited with 20 volume percent aluminum particles. Coating morphology and composition were characterized using light optical microscopy (LOM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). Differential thermal analysis (DTA) was employed to study reactive phase formation. The effect of heat treatment on coating phase formation was studied in the temperature range 415 to 1,000 C. Long-time exposure at low temperature results in the formation of several intermetallic phases at the Ni matrix/Al particle interfaces and concentrically around the original Al particles. Upon heating to the 500--600 C range, the aluminum particles react with the nickel matrix to form NiAl islands within the Ni matrix. When exposed to higher temperatures (600--1,000 C), diffusional reaction between NiAl and nickel produces ({gamma})Ni{sub 3}Al. The final equilibrium microstructure consists of blocks of ({gamma}{prime})Ni{sub 3}Al in a {gamma}(Ni) solid solution matrix, with small pores also present. Pore formation is explained based on local density changes during intermetallic phase formation and microstructural development is discussed with reference to reaction synthesis of bulk nickel aluminides.

A regional groundwater flow model encompassing approximately 100 mi2 surrounding the C, K, L, and P reactor areas has been developed. The reactor flow model is designed to meet the planning objectives outlined in the General Groundwater Strategy for Reactor Area Projects by providing a common framework for analyzing groundwater flow, contaminant migration and remedial alternatives within the Reactor Projects team of the Environmental Restoration Department. The model provides a quantitative understanding of groundwater flow on a regional scale within the near surface aquifers and deeper semi-confined to confined aquifers. The model incorporates historical and current field characterization data up through Spring 1999. Model preprocessing is automated so that future updates and modifications can be performed quickly and efficiently. The CKLP regional reactor model can be used to guide characterization, perform scoping analyses of contaminant transport, and serve as a common base for subsequent finer-scale transport and remedial/feasibility models for each reactor area.

In order to provide unit specific toxicity data that will be used to address critical uncertainty in the ecological risk assessment (ERA) for the TNX Outfall Delta Operable Unit (TNXOD OU), sediments were collected from eight locations in the Inner Swamp portion of the operable unit and two unit specific background locations. These samples were analyzed for total mercury, total uranium, and sediment toxicity.

The collisional dependence of saturated polarization spectroscopy with a picosecond laser is investigated by probing hydroxyl in a flow cell. While nanosecond lasers have been used often for nonlinear diagnostic measurements of flame composition, picosecond lasers provide a potentially superior source for such techniques. Compared to a nanosecond laser, picosecond lasers produce significantly greater peak power for the same pulse energy, and this could improve the signal strength of multi-photon techniques such as degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) and polarization spectroscopy (PS). It has been suggested that the signal produced by such lasers would be less dependent on the collisional environment because the behavior of the molecular system probed by short-pulse lasers is governed more by the spectral width of the laser and the Doppler effect. To investigate the collisional dependence of the polarization spectroscopy signal generated with a picosecond laser, the authors probe the A{sup 2}{Sigma}{sup +}-X{sup 2}{Pi} (0,0) band of OH in a flow cell. In this well-controlled environment, the authors monitor the change in signal strength as they vary the buffer gas pressure by a factor of 50. Hydroxyl (OH) is created by photolysis of hydrogen peroxide using a Nd:YAG laser.

Some aspects of low-frequency, long-wavelength fluctuations are considered. A stochastic model is used to show that power-law time correlations need not arise from self-organized criticality. A formula for the frequency spectrum of uncorrelated, overlapping avalanches is shown to be a special case of the spectral balance equation of renormalized statistical turbulence theory. It is argued that there need be no contradiction between the presence of long-time correlations and the existence of local transport coefficients.

An overall trend toward smaller electronic packages and devices makes it increasingly important and difficult to obtain meaningful diffraction information from small areas. X-ray micro-diffraction, electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) and Kossel are micro-diffraction techniques used for crystallographic analysis including texture, phase identification and strain measurements. X-ray micro-diffraction primarily is used for phase analysis and residual strain measurements. X-ray micro-diffraction primarily is used for phase analysis and residual strain measurements of areas between 10 {micro}m to 100 {micro}m. For areas this small glass capillary optics are used for producing a usable collimated x-ray beam. These optics are designed to reflect x-rays below the critical angle therefore allowing for larger solid acceptance angle at the x-ray source resulting in brighter smaller x-ray beams. The determination of residual strain using micro-diffraction techniques is very important to the semiconductor industry. Residual stresses have caused voiding of the interconnect metal which then destroys electrical continuity. Being able to determine the residual stress helps industry to predict failures from the aging effects of interconnects due to this stress voiding. Stress measurements would be impossible using a conventional x-ray diffractometer; however, utilizing a 30{micro}m glass capillary these small areas are readily assessable for analysis. Kossel produces a …

Recent studies involving the use of micelles, reverse micelles, and microemulsions as organized microheterogeneous media for effecting photochemical transformations have led to growing recognition that the nature of the reaction medium (i.e., microenvironment) may strongly influence the course and efficiency of photoinduced electron transfer. Of particular interest in photochemical energy conversion research is the study of such effects in natural photosynthesis, the process whereby plants and photosynthetic bacteria convert light into chemical energy. The primary process in photosynthesis occurs in trasmembrane pigment-protein complexes called reaction centers (RCs), where following the absorption of light, primary charge separation occurs. This electrochemical energy is stored, and the initial charge separation used to drive all subsequent electron and proton transfer reactions in photosynthesis. One area of current research interest is the determination of the effect of conformational changes in detergent-solubilized RCs on electron transfer. In this report, the authors consider a related issue: the introduction of RCs into biomembrane mimetics and its impact on protein conformation, orientation, and function. As a medium for these studies, they have employed a recently developed stimulus-responsive complex fluid (smart material) that possesses the ability to respond to an environmental change/external stimulus on a molecular level and amplify it …