Water use in the pulp and paper industry is very significant, and the U.S. pulp and paper industries as well as other processing industries are actively pursuing water conservation and pollution prevention by in-process recycling of water. Bleach plant effluent is a large portion of the water discharged from a typical bleached kraft pulp mill. The recycling of bleach plant effluents to the kraft recovery cycle is widely regarded as an approach to low effluent bleached kraft pulp production. The focus of this work has been on developing an electrodialysis process for recycling the acidic bleach plant effluent of bleached Kraft pulp mills. Electrodialysis is uniquely suited as a selective kidney to remove non-process elements (NPEs) from bleach plant effluent before they reach the chemical recovery cycle. Using electrodialysis for selective NPE removal can prevent the problems caused by accumulation of inorganic NPEs in the pulping cycle and recovery boiler. In this work, acidic bleach plant filtrates from three mills using different bleaching sequences based on chlorine dioxide were characterized. The analyses showed no fundamental differences in the inorganic NPE composition or other characteristics among these filtrates. The majority of total dissolved solids in the effluents were found to be …

Over one thousand gallons of tritiated oil, at various contamination levels, are stored in the Main Hill Tritium Facility at the Miamisburg Environmental Management Project (MEMP), commonly referred to as Mound Site. This tritiated oil is to be characterized for hazardous materials and radioactive contamination. Most of the hazardous materials are expected to be in the form of heavy metals, i.e., mercury, silver, lead, chromium, etc, but transuranic materials and PCBs could also be in some oils. Waste oils, found to contain heavy metals as well as being radioactively contaminated, are considered as mixed wastes and are controlled by Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations. The SAMMS (Self-Assembled Mercaptan on Mesoporous Silica) technology was developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for removal and stabilization of RCRA metals (i.e., lead, mercury, cadmium, silver, etc.) and for removal of mercury from organic solvents. The SAMMS material is based on self-assembly of functionalized monolayers on mesoporous oxide surfaces. The unique mesoporous oxide supports provide a high surface area, thereby enhancing the metal-loading capacity. SAMMS material has high flexibility in that it binds with different forms of mercury, including metallic, inorganic, organic, charged, and neutral compounds. The material removes mercury from …

In this paper a method is developed, using higher order statistics, to identify the type and degree of neutron and gamma ray cross talk between detectors that are placed in proximity to one another. A set of measurements was performed using the Nuclear Materials Identification System (NMIS) to acquire the time-dependent bicovariance of the pulses in fast plastic scintillating detectors. These signatures were analyzed to infer the degree and type of false coincidences (cross talk) in relation to true coincidences.

In March 2000, DOE-Headquarters (HQ) requested the Tanks Focus Area (TFA) to assume management responsibility for the Salt Processing Project technology development program at Savannah River Site. The TFA was requested to conduct several activities, including review and revision of the technology development roadmaps, development of down-selection criteria, and preparation of a comprehensive Research and Development (R&D) Program Plan for three candidate cesium removal technologies, as well as the Alpha and strontium removal processes that must also be carried out. The three cesium removal candidate technologies are Crystalline Silicotitanate (CST) Non-Elutable Ion Exchange, Caustic Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX), and Small Tank Tetraphenylborate Precipitation (STTP). This plan describes the technology development needs for each process that must be satisfied in order to reach a down-selection decision, as well as continuing technology development required to support conceptual design activities.

Each content code uniquely identifies the generated waste and provides a system for tracking theprocess and packaging history. Each content code begins with a two-letter site abbreviation thatdesignates the physical location of the RH-TRU waste. The site-specific letter designations for eachof the DOE sites are provided in Table 2. All TRU waste generating/storage sites are included inTable 2 for completeness. Not all of the sites listed in Table 2 have generated/stored RH-TRU waste.

During the WBS4 review almost a year ago in January, and in more recent discussions of needed capsule characterization, I was struck by three pieces of information related to machined Be capsules: (1) that the speed of sound (and perhaps other properties) in Be grains is markedly different in orthogonal directions, (2) that the grain size in the best refined bulk Be samples is 10 to 15 {micro}m, and that these grains in the best case are randomly oriented, and (3) that we are concerned about capsule homogeneity on the level of 1 part in 10{sup 4}, presumably over angular length scales corresponding to the maximum in the growth curve. It seems to me that the first two points might be inconsistent with the third, and this led me to attempt to model the effect of randomly oriented Be grains on the radially dependent properties of a capsule.

The testing reported here was performed on K East Basin consolidated sludge samples to generate data needed for the evaluation and design of the systems that will be used to disposition the K Basin sludge to T-Plant for interim storage. The tests were conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory from May through November 1999 under the direction of the Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project. The samples used in the work discussed here were collected by the SNF Characterization Project from the KE Basin floor and canisters during March and April 1999. These samples (3 from the floor and 3 from the canisters) were shipped to the storage pool at the Postirradiation Testing Laboratory (327 Building) and later transferred to the PNNL Radiochemical Processing Laboratory (325 Building), where they were recovered for testing and analysis. Testing activities presented in this report include particle size measurement via wet sieving, sludge settling and sludge density measurements, sludge shear strength measurement, and measurement of sludge dissolution enthalpy to ascertain the uranium metal content of the sludge. Section 1.0 provides the summary and conclusions to date. Section 2.0 describes the consolidated sample container system, the sample collection and transfer, inspection, and recovery of the samples …

Over 200 single-pass flow-through experiments were completed with LAWABP1 glass, the reference glass for the 2001 Immobilized Low-Activity Waste Performance Assessment. These data provided the kinetic rate law parameters and Na ion-exchange rate needed to conduct long-term performance analyses using the reactive chemical transport code STORM. Pressurized unsaturated flow (PUF) experiments with five prototypic LAW glasses were also performed. The PUF test provides a means to dramatically accelerate the weathering process in a simulated vadose zone environment. The performance of these five next generation LAW glasses in the PUF test (and other accelerated tests) improved dramatically from earlier glass compositions that were being developed by BNFL, Inc. No autocatalytic corrosion rate accelerations were observed in tests that were conducted for over 1 year. SPFT and PUF experiments were run with a commercial humic acid solution, 25 to 50 times more concentrated than expected in Hanford vadose zone pore water. No difference in glass dissolution rate versus the rate measured in deionized water could be detected within experimental error. Initial development and testing of a parallelized lattice-Boltzmann method for solving reactive chemical transport problems in complex geometries was completed. This method is being examined as a means to dramatically decrease the …

Coatings of Be{sub 1-x}Cu{sub x} are prepared by magnetron sputter deposition onto spherical polymer mandrels. The application of an applied bias during deposition refines the columnar morphology of the coating and surface finish to the nanoscale. A mechanical testing technique is developed to load the thin-walled spherical capsules under uniaxial tension at constant strain to fracture. The bias-deposited material exhibits an increase in strength by a factor of three or more following a Hall-Petch type relationship with surface roughness.

We combine AAVSO and VSS/RASNZ optical and Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer EUV light curves of dwarf novae in outburst to place constraints on the nature of dwarf nova outbursts. From the observed optical-EUV time delays of {approx} 0.75-1.5 days, we show that the propagation velocity of the dwarf nova instability heating wave is {approx} 3 km s{sup -1}.

We have developed a methodology for predicting combustion and emissions in a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) Engine. This methodology combines a detailed fluid mechanics code with a detailed chemical kinetics code. Instead of directly linking the two codes, which would require an extremely long computational time, the methodology consists of first running the fluid mechanics code to obtain temperature profiles as a function of time. These temperature profiles are then used as input to a multi-zone chemical kinetics code. The advantage of this procedure is that a small number of zones (10) is enough to obtain accurate results. This procedure achieves the benefits of linking the fluid mechanics and the chemical kinetics codes with a great reduction in the computational effort, to a level that can be handled with current computers. The success of this procedure is in large part a consequence of the fact that for much of the compression stroke the chemistry is inactive and thus has little influence on fluid mechanics and heat transfer. Then, when chemistry is active, combustion is rather sudden, leaving little time for interaction between chemistry and fluid mixing and heat transfer. This sequential methodology has been capable of explaining the main …

The US nuclear waste disposal program is evaluating the Yucca Mountain (YM) site for possible disposal of nuclear waste. Radioactive decay of the waste, particularly spent fuel, generates sufficient heat to significantly raise repository temperatures. Environmental conditions in the repository system evolve in response to this heat. The amount of temperature increase, and thus environmental changes, depends on repository design and operations. Because the evolving environment cannot be directly measured until after waste is emplaced, licensing decisions must be based upon model and analytical projections of the environmental conditions. These analyses have inherent uncertainties. There is concern that elevated temperatures increase uncertainty, because most chemical reaction rates increase with temperature and boiling introduces additional complexity of vapor phase reactions and transport. This concern was expressed by the NWTRB, particularly for above boiling temperatures. They state that ''the cooler the repository, the lower the uncertainty about heat-driven water migration and the better the performance of waste package materials. Above this temperature, technical uncertainties tend to be significantly higher than those associated with below-boiling conditions.'' (Cohon 1999). However, not all uncertainties are reduced by lower temperatures, indeed some may even be increased. This paper addresses impacts of temperatures on uncertainties.

We have measured proton reaction cross sections over a wide mass and energy range at the Brookhaven AGS accelerator. The samples were elemental Be, C, Al, Cu, W, and Pb; the measurements were carried out at ten incident proton kinetic energies in the range 0.54 to 7.8 GeV. The experiment was similar to an earlier experiment in the 200-550 MeV range by Renberg et al. The new results are in good agreement with those of Renberg et al. at the overlap point near 550 MeV. The combined results of the two experiments show an energy dependence expected from the behavior of the nucleon-nucleon cross sections. The results are reproduced by calculations based on variants of the impulse approximation and Glauber theory.

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In this project we studied several fundamental issues arising in the parallel adaptive solution of linear and nonlinear elliptic and parabolic PDEs using multilevel algorithms. We focused our attention on a new approach described in the paper ''A New Paradigm for Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement'' by Bank and Hoist. The new approach requires almost no communication to solve an elliptic equation in parallel, and therefore has the potential to scale much more efficiently on massively parallel computers than do more traditional algorithms. The algorithm described in the Bank and Hoist paper has an inherently multilevel structure, in that a sequence of problems on a refinement hierarchy of meshes is solved during the course of the calculation. In particular, the algorithm has three main components: (1) We solve a small problem on a coarse mesh, and use a posteriori error estimates to partition the mesh. (2) Each processor is provided the complete coarse mesh and instructed to solve the entire problem, but with its adaptive refinement largely limited to its own assigned mesh partition. (3) A final mesh is computed using the union of the refined partitions provided by each processor. The mesh is regularized into a global conformal mesh, and …

The 216-B-3 Pond was a series of ponds for disposal of liquid effluent from past Hanford production facilities. In 1990, groundwater monitoring at B Pond was elevated from "detection" to assessment status because total organic halides and total organic carbon were found to exceed critical means in two wells. Groundwater quality assessment, which ended in 1996, failed to find any specific hazardous waste contaminant that could have accounted for the isolated occurrences of elevated total organic halides and total organic carbon. Hence, the facility was subsequently returned to detection-level monitoring in 1998. Exhaustive groundwater analyses during the assessment period indicated that only two contaminants, tritium and nitrate, could be positively attributed to the B Pond System, with two others (arsenic and I-129) possibly originating from B Pond. Chemical and radiological analyses of soil at the main pond and 216-B-3-3 ditch has not revealed significant contamination. Based on the observed, minor contamination in groundwater and in the soil column, three parameters were selected for site-specific, semiannual monitoring; gross alpha, gross beta, and specific conductance. Total organic halides and total organic carbon are included as constituents because of regulatory requirements. Nitrate, tritium, arsenic, and iodine-129 will be monitored under the aegis of …

Making use of the measurement of the $B\to K^*\gamma$ branching ratio together with the relations following from the limit of high recoil energy, we obtain stringent constraints on the values of the form-factors entering in heavy-to-light $B\to V\ell\ell'$ processes such as $B\to K^*\ell^+\ell^-$, $B\to K^*\nu \bar\nu$ and $B\to \rho\ell\nu$ decays. We show that the symmetry predictions, when combined with the experimental information on radiative decays, specify a severely restricted set of values for the vector and axial-vector form-factors evaluated at zero momentum transfer, $q^2=0$. These constraints can be used to test model calculations and to improve our understanding of the $q^2$-dependence of semileptonic form-factors. We stress that the constraints remain stringent even when corrections are taken into account.

The HMX {beta}-{delta} solid-solid phase transition, which occurs as HMX is heated near 170 C, is linked to increased reactivity and sensitivity to initiation. Thermally damaged energetic materials (EMs) containing HMX therefore may present a safety concern. Information about the phase transition is vital to predictive safety models for HMX and HMX-containing EMs. We report work on monitoring the phase transition with real-time Raman spectroscopy aimed towards obtaining a better understanding of physical properties of HMX through the phase transition. HMX samples were confined in a cell of minimal free volume in a displacement-controlled or load-controlled arrangement. The cell was heated and then cooled at controlled rates while real-time Raman spectroscopic measurements were performed. Raman spectroscopy provides a clear distinction between the phases of HMX because the vibrational transitions of the molecule change with conformational changes associated with the phase transition. Temperature of phase transition versus load data are presented for both the heating and cooling cycles in the load-controlled apparatus, and general trends are discussed. A weak dependence of the temperature of phase transition on load was discovered during the heating cycle, with higher loads causing the phase transition to occur at a higher temperature. This was especially true …

Annual report of performance against FY2000 performance evaluation and fee aggreement.

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Long duration and exploration class space missions will place new requirements on human performance when compared to current space shuttle missions. Specifically, assembly and operation of the International Space Station (ISS) will place significant new demands on the crew. For example, maintenance of systems that provide habitability will become an ongoing activity for the international flight crews. Tasks for maintaining space station habitability will need to be integrated with tasks associated with scientific research. In addition, tasks and resources will need to be prioritized and allocated dynamically in response to changing operational conditions and unplanned system breakdowns. This paper describes an ongoing program to develop a habitability index (HI) for space operations based on the critical function approach. This pilot project focuses on adaptation of the critical function approach to develop a habitability index specifically tailored for space operations. Further work will then be needed to expand and validate the habitability index for application in the ISS operational environment.

The Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC), at the Savannah River Site (SRS), operates a pilot scale testing facility in the TNX Area. Research conducted in the TNX Area generated wastewater that was disposed of in earthen basins until 1988. As a result of these operations, shallow groundwater and sediments beneath the TNX Area are contaminated with both dissolved and residual chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs) such as trichloroethylene (TCE), carbon tetrachloride, and perchloroethylene (PCE). In 1996, the SRS initiated an Interim Remedial Action to capture and contain the dissolved contamination that was greater that 500 {micro}g/L TCE (WSRC, 1999). The Interim Remedial Action included the installation of a recovery well network and air stripper, and a vertical recirculation well. The objective of the recovery well network and air stripper is to provide hydraulic containment of the contaminated groundwater and provide a mechanism for the treatment of purge water generated during monitoring of the Interim Remedial Action. A vertical recirculation well, TVR1A, was installed to test the in-well vapor stripping (IVS) technology. Results from the test indicated that the IVS technology was not effective in the TNX Area. A single well soil vapor extraction test was conducted during June of 1997 …