Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Interview with Donald Burnitt, a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Purple Heart. Burnitt describes his experiences in the war, including the many combat engagements he was part of and when he was wounded in action when his helicopter crashed. He was also awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star.

Under contract DE-AC26-98FT-40370, SRI International has completed the third phase of a planned three-phase effort to develop a laboratory prototype continuous emission monitor (CEM) for dioxins and furans generated during the incineration of waste materials at DOE remediation sites. The project was initiated on July 29, 1998 with the technical effort completed in October 2001. During this research effort, SRI has made numerous improvements in our jet-REMPI instrument. These improvements have involved characterization and optimization of the molecular cooling in the gas jet, implementation of a custom-fabricated, four pulsed valve assembly, new data acquisition and display software, and preliminary development of a wavelength and mass calibration approach. We have also measured the REMPI excitation spectra of numerous organic compounds that are likely to be present in the exhaust stream of a waste incinerator. These spectra must be well characterized in the laboratory to understand any potential interferences that might arise when monitoring for dioxin and furan congeners. Our results to date continue to validate the original concept of using jet-REMPI as the detection method in a dioxin CEM. Using only commercial components with minor modifications, we have already demonstrated a detection sensitivity in the low ppt range with sufficient chemical …

This research has focused on new liquid-liquid extraction chemistry applicable to separation of major sodium salts from alkaline tank waste. It was the overall goal to provide the scientific foundation upon which the feasibility of liquid-liquid extraction chemistry for bulk reduction of the volume of tank waste can be evaluated. Sodium hydroxide represented the initial test case and primary focus. It is a primary component of the waste1 and has the most value for recycle. A full explanation of the relevance of this research to USDOE Environmental Management needs will be given in the Relevance, Impact, and Technology Transfer section below. It should be noted that this effort was predicated on the need for sodium removal primarily from low-activity waste, whereas evolving needs have shifted attention to volume reduction of the high-activity waste. The results of the research to date apply to both applications, though treatment of high-activity wastes raises new questions that will be addressed in the renewal period. Toward understanding the extractive chemistry of sodium hydroxide and other sodium salts, it was the intent to identify candidate extractants and determine their applicable basic properties regarding selectivity, efficiency, speciation, and structure. A hierarchical strategy was to be employed in …

An equilibrium cycle method, embodied in the REBUS-3[1] code system, has generally been used in conventional fast reactor design activities. The equilibrium cycle method provides an efficient approach for modeling reactor system, compared to the more traditional non-equilibrium cycle fuel management calculation approach. Recently, the equilibrium analysis method has been utilized for designing Accelerator Transmutation of Waste (ATW)[2,3,4] cores, in which a scattered-reloading fuel management scheme is used. Compared with the conventional fast reactors, the ATW core is significantly different in several aspects since its main mission is to incinerate the transuranic (TRU) fuels. The high burnup non-fertile fuel has large variations in composition and reactivity during its lifetime. Furthermore, a relatively short cycle length is utilized in the ATW design to limit the potentially large reactivity swing over a cycle, and consequently 7 or 8-batch fuel management is usually assumed for a high fuel burnup. The validity of the equilibrium analysis method for the ATW core, therefore, needed to be verified. The main objective of this paper is to assess the validity of the equilibrium analysis method for a Na-cooled ATW core[4], which is an alternative core design of the ATW system under development.

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Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree.