The PUREX process has been progressively and continuously improved during the past three decades, and these improvements account for successful commercialization of reprocessing in a few countries. The renewed interest in nuclear energy and the international growth of nuclear electricity generation do not equate – and should not be equated -with increasing proliferation risks. Indeed, the nuclear renaissance presents a unique opportunity to enhance the culture of non-proliferation. With the recent revival of interest in nuclear technology, technical methods for prevention of nuclear proliferation are being revisited. Robust strategies to develop new advanced separation technologies are emerging worldwide for sustainability and advancement of nuclear energy with enhanced proliferation resistance. On the other hand, at this moment, there are no proliferation resistance advanced technologies. . Until now proliferation resistance as it applies to reprocessing has been focused on not separating a pure stream of weapons-usable plutonium. France, as an example, has proposed a variant of the PUREX process, the COEX TM process, which does not result on a pure plutonium product stream. A further step is to implement a process based on group extraction of actinides and fission products associated with a homogeneous recycling strategy (UNEX process in the US, GANEX …

The Tevatron collider has provided the CDF and D0 experiences with large datasets as input to a rich program of searches for physics beyond the standard model. The results presented here are a partial survey of recent searches conducted by the two collaborations using up to 6 fb{sup -1} of data. The standard model (SM) of particles, despite its remarkable description of experimental data at the elementary particle level, has some deficiencies to explain what is observed in the universe: lack of anti-matter, existence of dark matter, etc. Working at the energy frontier, as was the case at the Tevatron for so many years, gives experimentalists the hope to discover new non-SM particles which would indicate some direction to follow at explaining these SM deficiencies. Over the years, the CDF and D0 experiments have gained experience in the detector responses to all particle types. It allows to look at a large number of different final states searching for deviations from the SM expectations. As the knowledge of detector particle responses becomes more accurate, the complexity of final states can increase. For a given final state signature, the non-observation of deviations from the SM prediction allows to constrain several models at …

Alloy 617 is the one of the leading candidate materials for Intermediate Heat eXchangers (IHX) of a Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR). System start-ups and shut-downs as well as power transients will produce low cycle fatigue (LCF) loadings of components. Furthermore, the anticipated IHX operating temperature, up to 950°C, is in the range of creep so that creep-fatigue interaction, which can significantly increase the fatigue crack growth, may be one of the primary IHX damage modes. To address the needs for Alloy 617 codification and licensing, a significant creep-fatigue testing program is underway at Idaho National Laboratory. Strain controlled LCF tests including hold times up to 1800s at maximum tensile strain were conducted at total strain range of 0.3% and 0.6% in air at 950°C. Creep-fatigue testing was also performed in a simulated VHTR impure helium coolant for selected experimental conditions. The creep-fatigue tests resulted in failure times up to 1000 hrs. Fatigue resistance was significantly decreased when a hold time was added at peak stress and when the total strain was increased. The fracture mode also changed from transgranular to intergranular with introduction of a tensile hold. Changes in the microstructure were methodically characterized. A combined effect of temperature, …

Mercury has had various uses in nuclear fuel reprocessing and other nuclear processes, and so is often present in radioactive and mixed (radioactive and hazardous) wastes. Test programs performed in recent years have shown that mercury in off-gas streams from processes that treat radioactive wastes can be controlled using fixed beds of activated sulfur-impregnated carbon, to levels low enough to comply with air emission regulations such as the Hazardous Waste Combustor (HWC) Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. Carbon bed hot spots or fires have occurred several times during these tests, and also during a remediation of tanks that contained mixed waste. Hot spots occur when localized areas in a carbon bed become heated to temperatures where oxidation occurs. This heating typically occurs due to heat of absoption of gas species onto the carbon, but it can also be caused through external means such as external heaters used to heat the carbon bed vessel. Hot spots, if not promptly mitigated, can grow into bed fires. Carbon bed hot spots and fires must be avoided in processes that treat radioactive and mixed waste. Hot spots are detected by (a) monitoring in-bed and bed outlet gas temperatures, and (b) more important, monitoring …

Prior research suggests that chemical processes taking place on the surface of particle filters employed in buildings may lead to the formation of harmful secondary byproducts. We investigated ozone reactions with fiberglass, polyester, cotton/polyester and polyolefin filter media, as well as hydrolysis of filter media additives. Studies were carried out on unused media, and on filters that were installed for 3 months in buildings at two different locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Specimens from each filter media were exposed to {approx}150 ppbv ozone in a flow tube under a constant flow of dry or humidified air (50percent RH). Ozone breakthrough was recorded for each sample over periods of {approx}1000 min; the ozone uptake rate was calculated for an initial transient period and for steady-state conditions. While ozone uptake was observed in all cases, we did not observe significant differences in the uptake rate and capacity for the various types of filter media tested. Most experiments were performed at an airflow rate of 1.3 L/min (face velocity = 0.013 m/s), and a few tests were also run at higher rates (8 to 10 L/min). Formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, two oxidation byproducts, were quantified downstream of each sample. Those aldehydes (m/z …

Local level actions are crucial for achieving energy-saving and greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Yet it is challenging to implement new policies and actions due to a lack of information, funding, and capacity. This is particularly the case in developing countries such as China. Even though national energy intensity and carbon intensity targets have been set, most local governments do not have the knowledge regarding actions to achieve the targets, the cost-effectiveness of policies, the possible impact of policies, or how to design and implement a climate action plan. This paper describes a guidebook that was developed to motivate and provide local governments in China with information to create an action plan to tackle climate change and increase energy efficiency. It provides a simple step-by-step description of how action plans can be established and essential elements to be included - from preparing a GHG emission inventory to implementation of the plan. The guidebook also provides a comprehensive list of successful policies and best practices found internationally and in China to encourage low carbon development in industry, buildings, transportation, electric power generation, agriculture and forestry. This paper also presents indicators that can be used to define low-carbon development, as well as …

The structural disorder and lattice stability of complex perovskite (Ba,Sr)(Co,Fe)O3, a promising cathode material for solid oxide fuel cells and oxygen permeation membranes, is explored by means of first principles DFT calculations. It is predicted that Ba and Sr ions easily exchange their lattice positions (A-cation disorder) similarly to Co and Fe ions (B-cation disorder). The cation antisite defects (exchange of A- and B-type cations) have a relatively high formation energy. The BSCF is predicted to exist in an equilibrium mixture of several phases and can decompose exothermically into the Ba- and Co-rich hexagonal (Ba,Sr)CoO3 and Sr- and Fe-rich cubic (Ba,Sr)FeO3 perovskites.

The scale and magnitude of pressure perturbation and brine migration induced by geologic carbon sequestration is discussed assuming a full-scale deployment scenario in which enough CO{sub 2} is captured and stored to make relevant contributions to global climate change mitigation. In this scenario, the volumetric rates and cumulative volumes of CO{sub 2} injection would be comparable to or higher than those related to existing deep-subsurface injection and extraction activities, such as oil production. Large-scale pressure build-up in response to the injection may limit the dynamic storage capacity of suitable formations, because over-pressurization may fracture the caprock, may drive CO{sub 2}/brine leakage through localized pathways, and may cause induced seismicity. On the other hand, laterally extensive sedimentary basins may be less affected by such limitations because (i) local pressure effects are moderated by pressure propagation and brine displacement into regions far away from the CO{sub 2} storage domain; and (ii) diffuse and/or localized brine migration into overlying and underlying formations allows for pressure bleed-off in the vertical direction. A quick analytical estimate of the extent of pressure build-up induced by industrial-scale CO{sub 2} storage projects is presented. Also discussed are pressure perturbation and attenuation effects simulated for two representative sedimentary basins …

As power generation from variable distributed energy resources (DER) grows, energy flows in the network are changing, increasing the requirements for ancillary services, including voltage support. With the appropriate power converter, DER can provide ancillary services such as frequency control and voltage support. This paper outlines the economic potential of DERs coordinated in a microgrid to provide reactive power and voltage support at its point of common coupling. The DER Customer Adoption Model assesses the costs of providing reactive power, given local utility rules. Depending on the installed DER, the cost minimizing solution for supplying reactive power locally is chosen. Costs include the variable cost of the additional losses and the investment cost of appropriately over-sizing converters or purchasing capacitors. A case study of a large health care building in San Francisco is used to evaluate different revenue possibilities of creating an incentive for microgrids to provide reactive power.

This paper will review a procurement, acquisition, and contract process of a large-scale replicable net zero energy (ZEB) office building. The owners developed and implemented an energy performance based design-build process to procure a 220,000 ft2 office building with contractual requirements to meet demand side energy and LEED goals. We will outline the key procurement steps needed to ensure achievement of our energy efficiency and ZEB goals. The development of a clear and comprehensive Request for Proposals (RFP) that includes specific and measurable energy use intensity goals is critical to ensure energy goals are met in a cost effective manner. The RFP includes a contractual requirement to meet an absolute demand side energy use requirement of 25 kBtu/ft2, with specific calculation methods on what loads are included, how to normalize the energy goal based on increased space efficiency and data center allocation, specific plug loads and schedules, and calculation details on how to account for energy used from the campus hot and chilled water supply. Additional advantages of integrating energy requirements into this procurement process include leveraging the voluntary incentive program, which is a financial incentive based on how well the owner feels the design-build team is meeting the RFP …

Some conclusions from this presentation are: (1) EV Charging/discharging pattern mainly depends on the objective of the building (cost versus CO{sub 2}); (2) performed optimization runs show that stationary batteries are more attractive than mobile storage when putting more focus on CO{sub 2} emissions because stationary storage is available 24 hours a day for energy management - it's more effective; (3) stationary storage will be charged by PV, mobile only marginally; and (4) results will depend on the considered region and tariff. Final research work will show the results for 138 different buildings in nine different climate zones and three major utility service territories.

Chalcopyrite solar cells based on CuInSe2 and associated alloys have demonstrated high efficiencies, with current annual shipments in the hundreds of megawatts (MW) range and increasing. Largely due to concern over possible indium (In) scarcity, a related set of materials, the kesterites, which comprise Cu2ZnSnS4 and associated alloys, has received increasing attention. Similarities and differences between kesterites and chalcopyrites are discussed as drawn from theory, depositions, and materials characterization. In particular, we discuss predictions from density functional theory, results from vacuum co-evaporation, and characterization via x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, electron beam-induced current, quantum efficiency, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, and luminescence.

As the United States dramatically expands wind energy deployment, the industry is challenged with developing a skilled workforce and addressing public resistance. Wind Powering America?s Wind for Schools project addresses these issues by: 1) Developing Wind Application Centers (WACs) at universities; WAC students assist in implementing school wind turbines and participate in wind courses. 2) Installing small wind turbines at community 'host' schools. 3) Implementing teacher training with interactive curricula at each host school.

An electroweak singlet scalar can couple to pairs of vector bosons through loop-induced dimension five operators. Compared to a Standard Model Higgs boson, the singlet decay widths in the diphotons and Z{gamma} channels are generically enhanced, while decays into massive final states like WW and ZZ are kinematically disfavored. The overall event rates into {gamma}{gamma} and Z{gamma} can exceed the Standard Model expectations by orders of magnitude. Such a singlet may appear as a resonant signal in the {gamma}{gamma} and Z{gamma} channels, even with a mass above the WW kinematic threshold.

A temperature sensitivity evaluation has been performed for the AGR-1 fuel experiment on an individual capsule. A series of cases were compared to a base case by varying different input parameters into the ABAQUS finite element thermal model. These input parameters were varied by ±10% to show the temperature sensitivity to each parameter. The most sensitive parameters are the outer control gap distance, heat rate in the fuel compacts, and neon gas fraction. Thermal conductivity of the compacts and graphite holder were in the middle of the list for sensitivity. The smallest effects were for the emissivities of the stainless steel, graphite, and thru tubes. Sensitivity calculations were also performed varying with fluence. These calculations showed a general temperature rise with an increase in fluence. This is a result of the thermal conductivity of the fuel compacts and graphite holder decreasing with fluence.

The {Lambda}{sub b}(udb) baryon is observed in the decay {Lambda}{sub b} {yields} J/{psi}{Lambda} using 6.1 fb{sup -1} of p{bar p} collisions collected with the D0 detector at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. The production fraction multiplied by the branching fraction for this decay relative to that for the decay B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi}K{sub s}{sup 0} is measured to be 0.345 {+-} 0.034 (stat.) {+-} 0.033 (syst.) {+-} 0.003 (PDG). Using the world average value of f(b {yields} B{sup 0}) {center_dot} {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} J/{psi}K{sub s}{sup 0}) = (1.74 {+-} 0.08) x 10{sup -5}, they obtain f(b {yields} {Lambda}{sub b}) {center_dot} {Beta}({Lambda}{sub b} {yields} J/{psi}{Lambda}) = (6.01 {+-} 0.60 (stat.) {+-} 0.58 (syst.) {+-} 0.28 (PDG)) x 10{sup -5}. This measurement represents an improvement in precision by about a factor of three with respect to the current world average.

The quantification of the discretization error associated with the spatial discretization of the Discrete Ordinate(DO) equations in multidimensional Cartesian geometries is the central problem in error estimation of spatial discretization schemes for transport theory as well as computer code verification. Traditionally fine mesh solutions are employed as reference, because analytical solutions only exist in the absence of scattering. This approach, however, is inadequate when the discretization error associated with the reference solution is not small compared to the discretization error associated with the mesh under scrutiny. Typically this situation occurs if the mesh of interest is only a couple of refinement levels away from the reference solution or if the order of accuracy of the numerical method (and hence the reference as well) is lower than expected. In this work we present a Method of Manufactured Solutions (MMS) benchmark suite with variable order of smoothness of the underlying exact solution for two-dimensional Cartesian geometries which provides analytical solutions aver- aged over arbitrary orthogonal meshes for scattering and non-scattering media. It should be emphasized that the developed MMS benchmark suite first eliminates the aforementioned limitation of fine mesh reference solutions since it secures knowledge of the underlying true solution and second …

Neutron Resonance Transmission Analysis (NRTA) is an analytical technique that uses neutrons to assay the isotopic content of bulk materials. The technique uses a pulsed accelerator to produce an intense, short pulse of neutrons in a time-of-flight configuration. These neutrons, traveling at different speeds according to their energy, can be used to interrogate a spent fuel (SF) assembly to determine its plutonium content. Neutron transmission through the assembly is monitored as a function of neutron energy (time after the pulse), similar to the way neutron cross-section data is often collected. The transmitted neutron intensity is recorded as a function of time, with faster (higher-energy) neutrons arriving first and slower (lower-energy) neutrons arriving later. The low-energy elastic scattering and absorption resonances of plutonium and other isotopes modulate the transmitted neutron spectrum. Plutonium content in SF can be determined by analyzing this attenuation. Work is currently underway at Idaho National Laboratory, as a part of United States Department of Energy's Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI), to investigate the NRTA technique and to assess its feasibility for quantifying the plutonium content in SF and for determining the diversion of SF pins from assemblies. Preliminary results indicate that NRTA has great potential for being …

Protein–protein interactions offer an insight into cellular processes beyond what may be obtained by the quantitative functional genomics tools of proteomics and transcriptomics. The aforementioned tools have been extensively applied to study E. coli and other aerobes and more recently to study the stress response behavior of Desulfovibrio 5 vulgaris Hildenborough, a model anaerobe and sulfate reducer. In this paper we present the first attempt to identify protein-protein interactions in an obligate anaerobic bacterium. We used suicide vector-assisted chromosomal modification of 12 open reading frames encoded by this sulfate reducer to append an eight amino acid affinity tag to the carboxy-terminus of the chosen proteins. Three biological replicates of the 10 ‘pulled-down’ proteins were separated and analyzed using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Replicate agreement ranged between 35% and 69%. An interaction network among 12 bait and 90 prey proteins was reconstructed based on 134 bait-prey interactions computationally identified to be of high confidence. We discuss the biological significance of several unique metabolic features of D. vulgaris revealed by this protein-protein interaction data 15 and protein modifications that were observed. These include the distinct role of the putative carbon monoxide-induced hydrogenase, unique electron transfer routes associated with different oxidoreductases, and the possible …

We present a comprehensive error estimation of four spatial discretization schemes of the two-dimensional Discrete Ordinates (SN) equations on Cartesian grids utilizing a Method of Manufactured Solution (MMS) benchmark suite based on variants of Larsen’s benchmark featuring different orders of smoothness of the underlying exact solution. The considered spatial discretization schemes include the arbitrarily high order transport methods of the nodal (AHOTN) and characteristic (AHOTC) types, the discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element method (DGFEM) and the recently proposed higher order diamond difference method (HODD) of spatial expansion orders 0 through 3. While AHOTN and AHOTC rely on approximate analytical solutions of the transport equation within a mesh cell, DGFEM and HODD utilize a polynomial expansion to mimick the angular flux profile across each mesh cell. Intuitively, due to the higher degree of analyticity, we expect AHOTN and AHOTC to feature superior accuracy compared with DGFEM and HODD, but at the price of potentially longer grind times and numerical instabilities. The latter disadvantages can result from the presence of exponential terms evaluated at the cell optical thickness that arise from the semianalytical solution process. This work quantifies the order of accuracy and the magnitude of the error of all four discretization methods …

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This poster describes how the power system switchgear and power system protection for WPPs should be carefully designed to be compatible with the operation of conventional synchronous generators connected to the same grid.

Although it has been used for many years in commercial buildings, the application of demand controlled ventilation in residences is limited. In this study we used occupant exposure to pollutants integrated over time (referred to as 'dose') as the metric to evaluate the effectiveness and air quality implications of demand controlled ventilation in residences. We looked at air quality for two situations. The first is that typically used in ventilation standards: the exposure over a long term. The second is to look at peak exposures that are associated with time variations in ventilation rates and pollutant generation. The pollutant generation had two components: a background rate associated with the building materials and furnishings and a second component related to occupants. The demand controlled ventilation system operated at a low airflow rate when the residence was unoccupied and at a high airflow rate when occupied. We used analytical solutions to the continuity equation to determine the ventilation effectiveness and the long-term chronic dose and peak acute exposure for a representative range of occupancy periods, pollutant generation rates and airflow rates. The results of the study showed that we can optimize the demand controlled airflow rates to reduce the quantity of air …

A class of reconstructed discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods is presented to solve compressible flow problems on arbitrary grids. The idea is to combine the efficiency of the reconstruction methods in finite volume methods and the accuracy of the DG methods to obtain a better numerical algorithm in computational fluid dynamics. The beauty of the resulting reconstructed discontinuous Galerkin (RDG) methods is that they provide a unified formulation for both finite volume and DG methods, and contain both classical finite volume and standard DG methods as two special cases of the RDG methods, and thus allow for a direct efficiency comparison. Both Green-Gauss and least-squares reconstruction methods and a least-squares recovery method are presented to obtain a quadratic polynomial representation of the underlying linear discontinuous Galerkin solution on each cell via a so-called in-cell reconstruction process. The devised in-cell reconstruction is aimed to augment the accuracy of the discontinuous Galerkin method by increasing the order of the underlying polynomial solution. These three reconstructed discontinuous Galerkin methods are used to compute a variety of compressible flow problems on arbitrary meshes to assess their accuracy. The numerical experiments demonstrate that all three reconstructed discontinuous Galerkin methods can significantly improve the accuracy of the …