On September 9, 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued General Permit No. WA-R-00-OOOF, Authorization to Discharge Under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) for Storm Water Discharges Associated with Industrial Activity to the US Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (RL). RL submitted a Notice of Intent to comply with this permit to EPA in conformance with the General Permit requirements on October 1, 1992. On February 14, 1994, EPA issued a Storm Water General Permit Coverage Notice and assigned WA-R-00-Al7F as the Hanford Site`s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) storm water permit number. The Hanford Site Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP) (WHC 1996a) was certified by J. E Rasmussen, Director Environmental Assurance, RL, on September 24, 1996, in compliance with Part IV.B(i) of the General Permit. As required by General Permit No. WA-R-00-OOOF (WA-R-00-Al7F), Section IV, Part D, Section 4.c, an annual report must be developed by RL and retained on site to verify that the requirements listed in the General Permit are being implemented. The previous Hanford Site Storm Plater Comprehensive Site Compliance Evaluation Report (WHC 1996b) addressed the period from July 1995 through June 1996. This document fulfills the requirement to prepare …

This Pollution Prevention Design Assessment (PPDA) provides data for cost-benefit analysis of the potential environmental impact of the APT, is an integral part of pollution prevention/waste minimization, and is required by DOE for any activity generating radioactive, hazardous, and mixed wastes. It will also better position the APT to meet future requirements, since it is anticipated that regulatory and other requirements will continue to become more restrictive and demanding.

Die Casting dies are subject to severe service conditions during the die casting operation. While these severe conditions are necessary to achieve high production rates, they cause the dies which are commonly made of H13 die steel, to suffer frequent failures. The major die failure mechanisms are erosion or washout, Heat checking, soldering and corrosion. Due to their geometrical complexity, die casting dies are very expensive (some dies cost over a million dollars), and thus a large number of parts have to be produced by a die, to justify this cost and leverage the advantages of the die casting process (high production rates, low manpower costs). A potential increase in the die service life, thus has a significant impact on the economics of the die; casting operation. There are many ways to extend die life: developing new wear resistant die materials, developing new surface treatments including coatings, improving heat treatment of existing H13 dies, using better lubricants that can protect the die material, or modifying the die geometry and process parameters to reduce the intensity of wear. Of these the use of coatings to improve the wear resistance of the die surface has shown a lot of promise. Consequently, use …

The objective of this project has been to develop a fundamental understanding of seismicity associated with energy production. Earthquakes are known to be associated with oil, gas, and geothermal energy production. The intent is to develop physical models that predict when seismicity is likely to occur, and to determine to what extent these earthquakes can be used to infer conditions within energy reservoirs. Early work focused on earthquakes induced by oil and gas extraction. Just completed research has addressed earthquakes within geothermal fields, such as The Geysers in northern California, as well as the interactions of dilatancy, friction, and shear heating, on the generation of earthquakes. The former has involved modeling thermo- and poro-elastic effects of geothermal production and water injection. Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are used to measure deformation associated with geothermal activity, and these measurements along with seismic data are used to test and constrain thermo-mechanical models.

Because of questions regarding current density and inductance estimates of the Atlas oil transmission line in the region where the vertical plates connect to the disk line, calculations using the 3D FE program Flux3d were initiated. Flux3d inductance values are nearly that estimated by D. Scudder. Calculations for three base designs of E. Ballard and D. Pierce were completed where several variations for each base design were used to determine the important parameters affecting inductance and to check inductance consistency. Flux3d showed for the first base design a very high current density of 36MA/m at the connection between the vertical and horizontal ground plates resulting in a magnetic pressure of 120 kpsi. The second base design modified this connection to reduce the current density to 20MA/m and 36 kpsi and for design 3 current density is 17MA/m. Maximum current density on the hot plates is 20MA/m for all 3 designs. These values assumed 1.2MA per VTL or 45.6MA total system current. Electrical fields on the top of the hot plate near the disk line connection is about 50% greater than the nominal value near the center of the vertical plates.

This report documents the measurement of headspace gas concentrations and monitoring results from the Hanford tanks that have continuous flammable gas monitoring. The systems used to monitor the tanks are Standard Hydrogen Monitoring Systems. Further characterization of the tank off-gases was done with Gas Characterization Systems and vapor grab samples. The background concentrations of all tanks are below the action level of 6250 ppm. Other information which can be derived from the measurements (such as generation rate, release rate, and ventilation rate) is also discussed.

Acoustic Resonance Spectroscopy (ARS) is a non-destructive evaluation technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This technology has resulted in three generations of instrumentation, funded by the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA), specifically designed for field identification of chemical weapon (CW) munitions. Each generation of ARS instrumentation was developed with a specific user in mind. The ARS1OO was built for use by the U.N. Inspection Teams going into Iraq immediately after the Persian Gulf War. The ARS200 was built for use in the US-Russia Bilateral Chemical Weapons Treaty (the primary users for this system are the US Onsite Inspection Agency (OSIA) and their Russian counterparts). The ARS300 was built with the requirements of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in mind. Each successive system is an improved version of the previous system based on learning the weaknesses of each and, coincidentally, on the fact that more time was available to do a requirements analysis and the necessary engineering development. The ARS300 is at a level of development that warrants transferring the technology to a commercial vendor. Since LANL will supply the computer software to the selected vendor, it is possible for LANL to continue to …

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This report is prepared as part of Technical/QA Task Plan WSRC-RP-97-351 which was issued in response to Technical Task Request HLW/DWPF/TTR-970132 submitted by DWPF. Presented in this report is a statistical analysis of DWPF Mock-up test data for evaluation of two new analytical methods which use insert samples from the existing HydragardTM sampler. The first is a new hydrofluoric acid based method called the Cold Chemical Method (Cold Chem) and the second is a modified fusion method.Either new DWPF analytical method could result in a two to three fold improvement in sample analysis time.Both new methods use the existing HydragardTM sampler to collect a smaller insert sample from the process sampling system. The insert testing methodology applies to the DWPF Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) and the Melter Feed Tank (MFT) samples.The insert sample is named after the initial trials which placed the container inside the sample (peanut) vials. Samples in small 3 ml containers (Inserts) are analyzed by either the cold chemical method or a modified fusion method. The current analytical method uses a HydragardTM sample station to obtain nearly full 15 ml peanut vials. The samples are prepared by a multi-step process for Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) analysis by …