Advancements in technology have opened many opportunities to improve upon the current infrastructure surrounding the nuclear fuel cycle. Embedded devices, very small sensors, and wireless technology can be applied to Security, Safety, and Nonproliferation of Spent Nuclear Fuel. Security, separate of current video monitoring systems, can be improved by integrating current wireless technology with a variety of sensors including motion detection, altimeter, accelerometer, and a tagging system. By continually monitoring these sensors, thresholds can be set to sense deviations from nominal values. Then alarms or notifications can be activated as needed. Safety can be improved in several ways. First, human exposure to ionizing radiation can be reduced by using a wireless sensor package on each spent fuel cask to monitor radiation, temperature, humidity, etc. Since the sensor data is monitored remotely operator stay-time is decreased and distance from the spent fuel increased, so the overall radiation exposure is reduced as compared to visual inspections. The second improvement is the ability to monitor continuously rather than periodically. If changes occur to the material, alarm thresholds could be set and notifications made to provide advanced notice of negative data trends. These sensor packages could also record data to be used for scientific …

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Presents a method to constrain average galaxy star formation rates, star formation histories, and the intracluster light as a function of halo mass.

The ITER in-vessel coil system includes Vertical Stability (VS) coils and Edge Localized Mode (ELM) coils. There are two large VS ring coils, one upper and one lower. Each has four turns which are independently connected. The VS coils are needed for successful operation of ITER for most all of its operating modes. The VS coils must be highly reliable and fault tolerant. The operating environment includes normal and disruption Lorentz forces. To parametrically address all these design conditions in a tractable analysis requires a simplified model. The VS coils are predominately axisymmetric, and this suggests that an axisymmetric model can be meaningfully used to address the variations in mechanical design, loading, material properties, and time dependency. The axisymmetric finite element analysis described in this paper includes simulations of the bolted frictional connections used for the mounting details. Radiation and elastic-plastic response are modeled particularly for the extreme faulted conditions. Thermal connectivity is varied to study the effects of partial thermal connection of the actively cooled conductor to the remaining structure.

Article describes study which sought to determine if baker's yeast β-glucan (BG) could positively affect the immune system of individuals undergoing intense exercise stress.

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Nanostructured uranium oxides have been prepared in ionic liquids as templating agents. Using the ionic liquids as reaction media for inorganic nanomaterials takes advantage of the pre-organized structure of the ionic liquids which in turn controls the morphology of the inorganic nanomaterials. Variation of ionic liquid cation structure was investigated to determine the impact on the uranium oxide morphologies. For two ionic liquid cations, increasing the alkyl chain length increases the aspect ratio of the resulting nanostructured oxides. Understanding the resulting metal oxide morphologies could enhance fuel stability and design.

Plutonium-238 is used in Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) to generate electrical power and in Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) to produce heat for electronics and environmental control for deep space missions. The domestic supply of Pu-238 consists of scrap material from previous mission production or material purchased from Russia. Currently, the United States has no significant production scale operational capability to produce and separate new Pu-238 from irradiated neptunium-237 targets. The Department of Energy - Nuclear Energy is currently evaluating and developing plans to reconstitute the United States capability to produce Pu-238 from irradiated Np-237 targets. The Savannah River Site had previously produced and/or processed all the Pu-238 utilized in Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for deep space missions up to and including the majority of the plutonium for the Cassini Mission. The previous full production cycle capabilities included: Np-237 target fabrication, target irradiation, target dissolution and Np-237 and Pu-238 separation and purification, conversion of Np-237 and Pu-238 to oxide, scrap recovery, and Pu-238 encapsulation. The capability and equipment still exist and could be revitalized or put back into service to recover and purify Pu-238/Np-237 or broken General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) pellets utilizing existing process equipment in HB-Line Scrap Recovery, and …

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This article offers comment on "Density, speed of sound, refractive index and derivatives properties of the binary mixture N-Hexane + N-Heptane (or N-Octane or N-Nonane), T=288.15 - 313.15 K."

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Article on detecting evolutionary strata on the human X chromosome in the absence of gametologous Y-linked sequences.

An extensive R&D program has been conducted that has confirmed the feasibility of designing and fabricating copper alloy magnets that can successfully operate at temperatures as high as 350C. The process, originally developed for the possibility of manufacturing in-vessel resonant magnetic field perturbation (RMP) coils for JET, has been optimized for insulated magnet (and, potentially, other high temperature component) applications. One of the benefits of high temperature operation is that active cooling may no longer be required, greatly simplifying magnet/component design. These elevated temperatures are beyond the safe operating limits of conventional OFHC copper and the epoxies that bond and insulate the turns of typical magnets. This would necessitate the use an alternative copper alloy conductor such as C18150 (CuCrZr). Coil manufacture with polyimide is very similar to conventional epoxy bonded coils. Conductors would be dry wound then impregnated with polyimide of low enough viscosity to permit saturation, then cured; similar to the vacuum pressure impregnation process used for conventional epoxy bonded coils. Representative polyimide insulated coils were mechanically tested at both room temperature and 350C. Mechanical tests included turn-to-turn shear bond strength and overall polyimide adhesion strength, as well as the flexural strength of a 48-turn polyimide-bonded coil bundle. …

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This article identifies vascular plants and mosses in Cerro Bandera, Puerto Williams Chile.

Article on a group contribution model for determining the vaporization enthalpy of organic compounds at the standard reference temperature of 298 K.