Researchers at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Technology Center are using advanced microscopy techniques to understand the effects of trace organic chemical additions on nuclear waste slurry flow properties. Trace organic chemicals, surfactants (rheology modifiers), are being used in all types of industries to modify the flow properties of various commercial chemicals. Nuclear waste treatment at the Department of Energy's weapons production facilities, Savannah River Site and Hanford Reservation, is limited by the viscosity of the nuclear waste slurries as the material is processed through a variety of waste treatment and immobilization processes. The picture was taken using a laser scanning confocal microscope.

Femtosecond and nanosecond lasers were compared for ablating brass alloys. All operating parameters from both lasers were equal except for the pulse duration. The ablated aerosol vapor was collected on silicon substrates for particle size measurements or sent into an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer. The diameters and size distribution of particulates were measured from scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of the collected ablated aerosol. SEM measurements showed that particles ablated using nanosecond pulses were single spherical entities ranging in diameter from several micrometers to several hundred nanometers. Primary particles ablated using femtosecond ablation were {approx}100 nm in diameter but formed large agglomerates. ICPMS showed enhanced signal intensity and stability using femtosecond compared to nanosecond laser ablation.

Localized currents driven by pressure gradients play a pivotal role in the magnetohydrodynamic stability of toroidal plasma confinement devices. We have measured the currents generated in the edge of L- (low) and H- (high confinement) mode discharges on the DIII-D tokamak, utilizing the Zeeman effect in an injected lithium beam to obtain high resolution profiles of the poloidal magnetic field. We find current densities in excess of 1 MA/m{sup 2} in a 1 to 2 cm region near the peak of the edge pressure gradient. These values are sufficient to challenge edge stability theories based on specific current formation models.

Summary: The hydrostatic pressure coefficients of interband transition energies of a number of single-walled carbon nanotubes with different chiralities were measured. Both optical absorption and photoluminescence experiments were performed on de-bundled, single-walled carbon nanotube suspensions with hydrostatic pressure applied by diamond anvil cells. The pressure coefficients of the first van Hove transition (bandgap) energies are negative and dependent on the nanotube structure, while the second van Hove transitions are much less sensitive to hydrostatic pressure. The hydrostatic deformation potentials of individual nanotubes are deduced within an elastic model. An empirical equation that relates the pressure coefficients to nanotube structure is presented and discussed.

Presented at ''Bioenergy: The Future of Rural America'' meeting in Westminster, Colorado on November 6, 2003.

OAK-B135 As an element in the US Advanced Power Extraction (APEX) program, they evaluated the design option of using advanced nanocomposite ferritic steel (AFS) as the structural material and Flibe as the tritium breeder and coolant. They selected the recirculating flow configuration as the reference design. Based on the material properties of AFS, they found that the reference design can handle a maximum surface heat flux of 1 MW/m{sup 2}, and a maximum neutron wall loading of 5.4 MW/m{sup 2}, with a gross thermal efficiency of 47%, while meeting all the tritium breeding and structural design requirements. This paper covers the results of the following areas of evaluation: materials selection, first wall and blanket design configuration, materials compatibility, components fabrication, neutronics analysis, thermal hydraulics analysis including MHD effects, structural analysis, molten salt and helium closed cycle power conversion system, and safety and waste disposal of the recirculating coolant design.

The ALS, a third-generation synchrotron light source at Berkeley Lab, has been operating for almost a decade and is generating forefront science by exploiting the high brightness of a third-generation source in three areas: (1) high resolving power for spectroscopy; (2) high spatial resolution for microscopy and spectromicroscopy; and (3) high coherence for experiments such as speckle. However, the ALS was one of the first third-generation machines to be designed, and accelerator and insertion-device technology have significantly changed since its conception. As a result, its performance will inevitably be outstripped by newer, more advanced sources. To remain competitive and then set a new standard, the performance of the ALS, in particular its brightness, must be enhanced. Substantial improvements in brightness and current have always been feasible in principle, but they incur the penalty of a much reduced lifetime, which is totally unacceptable to our users. Significant brightness improvements can be realized in the core soft x-ray region by going to top-off operation, where injection would be quasi-continuous and the lifetime objections disappear. In top-off mode with higher average current, a reduced vertical emittance and beta function, and small-gap permanent-magnet or superconducting insertion devices, one to two orders of magnitude improvement …

Evaluation of solute diffusion in unsaturated porous gravel is very important for investigations of contaminant transport and remediation, risk assessment, and waste disposal (for example, the potential high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada). For a porous aggregate medium such as granular tuff, the total water content is comprised of surface water and interior water. The surface water component (water film around grains and pendular water between the grain contacts) could serve as a predominant diffusion pathway. To investigate the extent to which surface water films and contact points affect solute diffusion in unsaturated gravel, we examined the configuration of water using x-ray computed tomography in partially saturated gravel, and made quantitative measurements of diffusion at multiple water contents using two different techniques. In the first, diffusion coefficients of potassium chloride in 2-4 mm granular tuff at multiple water contents were calculated from electrical conductivity measurements using the Nernst-Einstein equation. In the second, we used laser ablation with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry to perform micro-scale mapping, allowing the measurement of diffusion coefficients for a mixture of chemical tracers for tuff cubes and tetrahedrons having two contact geometries (cube-cube and cube-tetrahedron). The x-ray computed tomography images show limited contact between …

OAK-B135 The local oscillating component of the poloidal magnetic field in plasma associated with MHD instabilities has been measured using the motional Stark effect (MSE) diagnostic on the DIII-D tokamak. The magnetic field perturbations associated with a resistive wall mode (RWM) rotated by internal coils at 20 Hz was measured using the conventional MSE operation mode. These first observations of perturbations due to a MHD mode were obtained on multiple MSE channels covering a significant portion of the plasma and the radial profile o the amplitude of the perturbed field oscillations was obtained. The measured profile is similar to the profile of the amplitude of the electron temperature oscillation measured by electron cyclotron emission (ECE) measurements. In a new mode of measurement, the amplitude of a tearing mode rotating at a high frequency ({approx} 7 kHz) was observed using the spectral analysis of high frequency MSE data on one channel. The spectrum consists of the harmonics of the light modulation employed in the MSE diagnostics, their mutual beat frequencies and their beat frequencies with the rotation frequency of the tearing mode. The value and time variation of the frequency of the observed perturbations is in good agreement with that measured …

A method is proposed for conditioning electron beams via Thomson scattering. The conditioning provides a quadratic correlation between the electron energy deviation and the betatron amplitude of the electrons, which results in enhanced gain in free-electron lasers. Quantum effects imply conditioning must occur at high laser fluence and moderate electron energy. Conditioning of x-ray free-electron lasers should be achievable with present laser technology, leading to significant size and cost reductions of these large-scale facilities.

Abstract: Electron microscope phase images, produced by direct reconstruction of the scattered electron wave from a focal series of high-resolution images, were used to determine the nature of defects formed in GaN:Mg crystals. We studied bulk crystals grown from dilute solutions of atomic nitrogen in liquid gallium at high pressure and thin films grown by the MOCVD method. All the crystals were grown with Ga-polarity. In both types of samples the majority of defects were three dimensional Mg-rich hexagonal pyramids with bases on the (0001) plane and six walls on {l_brace}11{und 2}3{r_brace} planes seen in cross-section as triangulars. Some other defects appear in cross-section as trapezoidal (rectangular) defects as a result of presence of truncated pyramids. Both type of defects have hollow centers. They are decorated by Mg on all six side walls and a base. The GaN which grows inside on the defect walls shows polarity inversion. It is shown that change of polarity starts from the defect tip and propagates to the base, and that the stacking sequence changes from ab in the matrix to bc inside the defect. Exchange of the Ga sublattice with the N sublattice within the defect leads to 0.6 {+-} 0.2{angstrom} displacement between …

Intentional or accidental large-scale airborne toxic releases (e.g. terrorist attacks or industrial accidents) can cause severe harm to nearby communities. As part of an emergency response plan, shelter-in-place (SIP) can be an effective response option, especially when evacuation is infeasible. Reasonably tight building envelopes provide some protection against exposure to peak concentrations when toxic release passes over an area. They also provide some protection in terms of cumulative exposure, if SIP is terminated promptly after the outdoor plume has passed. The purpose of this work is to quantify the level of protection offered by existing houses, and the importance of sorption/desorption to and from surfaces on the effectiveness of SIP. We examined a hypothetical chlorine gas release scenario simulated by the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC). We used a standard infiltration model to calculate the distribution of time dependent infiltration rates within each census tract. Large variation in the air tightness of dwellings makes some houses more protective than others. Considering only the median air tightness, model results showed that if sheltered indoors, the total population intake of non-sorbing toxic gas is only 50% of the outdoor level 4 hours from the start of the release. Based on a …

Increased biomass burning (e.g., forest fires, controlled burns, etc.) and anthropogenic emissions into the earth's atmosphere in the past century have led to much debate with regard to greenhouse gases, atmospheric carbon buildup, aerosol increases, and global warming. Atmospheric aerosols are linked to reduced air quality and visibility (V) in many parts of the world. In south-central South Carolina visibility reduction has been responsible for traffic fatalities on public highways, with resulting lawsuits against governmental entities. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963, with amendments in 1970, 1977, and 1990 to improve air quality. The actual implementation of the Clean Air Act has been an intermittent process because of litigation over some provisions of the Act. However, it is reasonable to assume that visibility has improved in the U.S. over the past decades due to implementation of the Clean Air Act's provisions. In this study visibility data have been acquired for seven weather stations along or near the U.S. East Coast to study how conditions have changed from the 1980s to the 1990s.

Proper cooling of detector electronics is critical to the successful operation of high-energy physics experiments. Collider experiments offer unique challenges based on their physical layouts and hermetic design. Cooling systems can be categorized by the type of detector with which they are associated, their primary mode of heat transfer, the choice of active cooling fluid, their heat removal capacity and the minimum temperature required. One of the more critical detector subsystems to require cooling is the silicon vertex detector, either pixel or strip sensors. A general design philosophy is presented along with a review of the important steps to include in the design process. Factors affecting the detector and cooling system design are categorized. A brief review of some existing and proposed cooling systems for silicon detectors is presented to help set the scale for the range of system designs. Fermilab operates two collider experiments, CDF & D0, both of which have silicon systems embedded in their detectors. A review of the existing silicon cooling system designs and operating experience is presented along with a list of lessons learned.

Plasma simulations are often rendered challenging by the disparity of scales in time and in space which must be resolved. When these disparities are in distinctive zones of the simulation domain, a method which has proven to be effective in other areas (e.g. fluid dynamics simulations) is the mesh refinement technique. We briefly discuss the challenges posed by coupling this technique with plasma Particle-In-Cell simulations, and present examples of application in Heavy Ion Fusion and related fields which illustrate the effectiveness of the approach. We also report on the status of a collaboration under way at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory between the Applied Numerical Algorithms Group (ANAG) and the Heavy Ion Fusion group to upgrade ANAG's mesh refinement library Chombo to include the tools needed by Particle-In-Cell simulation codes.

High-Level Waste (HLW) is a waste associated with the dissolution of spent nuclear fuel for the recovery of weapons-grade material. It is the priority problem for the U.S. Department of Energy's Environmental Management Program. Current HLW treatment processes at the Savannah River Site (Aiken, SC) include the use of monosodium titanate. The local structural speciation of sorbed U varied with loading but not for Sr. Sorbed Sr exhibited specific adsorption as partially-hydrated species whereas sorbed U exhibited specific adsorption as monomeric and dimeric U(VI)-carbonate complexes. Sorption proved site specific. These differences in site specificity and sorption mechanism may account for the difficulties associated with predicting Sr and U loading and removal kinetics using MST.

The CDF experiment at the Tevatron has used p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV to perform electroweak physics measurements. A program of precision electroweak tests of SM started measuring W and Z bosons cross section using different leptonic final states, evaluating dielectron Forward-Backward Asymmetry A{sub FB} and di-boson cross section production.

In this paper we analyze the propagation of noise in iterative image reconstruction algorithms. We derive theoretical expressions for the general form of preconditioned gradient algorithms with line searches. The results are applicable to a wide range of iterative reconstruction problems, such as emission tomography, transmission tomography, and image restoration. A unique contribution of this paper comparing to our previous work [1] is that the line search is explicitly modeled and we do not use the approximation that the gradient of the objective function is zero. As a result, the error in the estimate of noise at early iterations is significantly reduced.

The recent development of new prostate tracers has motivated us to build a low cost PET camera optimized to image the prostate. Coincidence imaging of positron emitters is achieved using a pair of external curved detector banks. The bottom bank is fixed below the patient bed, and the top bank moves upward for patient access and downward for maximum sensitivity. In this paper, we study the design of septa for the prostate camera using Monte Carlo simulations. The system performance is measured by the detectability of a prostate lesion. We have studied 17 septa configurations. The results show that the design of septa has a large impact on the lesion detection at a given activity concentration. Significant differences are also observed between the lesion detectability and the conventional noise equivalent count (NEC) performance, indicating that the NEC is not appropriate for the detection task.

In 2001 the Tevatron run II began, after a five year period of significant upgrade of the accelerator itself and of the experiments CDF and D0. After a detector commissioning run, the CDF experiment is now taking high quality data with all subsystems functional. We report in this talk the first preliminary CDF results on top quark and W/Z boson properties, based on run II data. The top quark, discovered in 1995 at the Tevatron, has proven to be a very interesting particle. Its properties allow to perform stringent tests of the Standard Model (SM) and to search for new physics through a deviation from SM predictions. We give here some expectations of what Tevatron run II will ultimately provide to our understanding of matter.

The electrochemical properties of LiFePO4 cathodes with different carbon contents were studied to find out the role of carbon as conductive additive. LiFePO4 cathodes containing from 0 percent to 12 percent of conductive additive (carbon black or mixture of carbon black and graphite) were cycled at different C rates. The capacity of LiFePO4 cathode increased, as conductive additive content increased. Carbon increased the utilization of active material and the electrical conductivity of electrode, but decreased volumetric capacity of electrode.

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The cycling performance of low-cost LiFePO4-based high-power lithium-ion cells was investigated and the components were analyzed after cycling to determine capacity fade mechanisms. Pouch type LiFePO4/natural graphite cells were assembled and evaluated by constant C/2 cycling, pulse-power and impedance measurements. From post-test electrochemical analysis after cycling, active materials, LiFePO4 and natural graphite, showed no degradation structurally or electrochemically. The main reasons for the capacity fade of cell were lithium inventory loss by side reaction and possible lithium deposition on the anode.

Design of a new aberration corrected Photoemission electron microscope PEEM3 at the Advanced Light Source is outlined. PEEM3 will be installed on an elliptically polarized undulator beamline and will be used for the study of complex materials at high spatial and spectral resolution. The critical components of PEEM3 are the electron mirror aberration corrector and aberration-free magnetic beam separator. The models to calculate the optical properties of the electron mirror are discussed. The goal of the PEEM3 project is to achieve the highest possible transmission of the system at resolutions comparable to our present PEEM2 system (50 nm) and to enable significantly higher resolution, albeit at the sacrifice of intensity. We have left open the possibility to add an energy filter at a later date, if it becomes necessary driven by scientific need to improve the resolution further.