Large-scale EE programs would modestly increase tariffs but reduce consumers' electricity bills significantly. However, the primary benefit of EE programs is a significant reduction in power shortages, which might make these programs politically acceptable even if tariffs increase. To increase political support, utilities could pursue programs that would result in minimal tariff increases. This can be achieved in four ways: (a) focus only on low-cost programs (such as replacing electric water heaters with gas water heaters); (b) sell power conserved through the EE program to the market at a price higher than the cost of peak power purchase; (c) focus on programs where a partial utility subsidy of incremental capital cost might work and (d) increase the number of participant consumers by offering a basket of EE programs to fit all consumer subcategories and tariff tiers. Large scale EE programs can result in consistently negative cash flows and significantly erode the utility's overall profitability. In case the utility is facing shortages, the cash flow is very sensitive to the marginal tariff of the unmet demand. This will have an important bearing on the choice of EE programs in Indian states where low-paying rural and agricultural consumers form the majority of …

To compensate the large tune shift and tune spread generated by the head-on beam-beam interactions in polarized proton operation in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a low energy electron beam with proper Gaussian transverse profiles was proposed to collide head-on with the proton beam. In this article, using a modified version of SixTrack [1], we investigate stability of the single particle in the presence of head-on beam-beam compensation. The Lyapunov exponent and action diffusion are calculated and compared between the cases without and with beam-beam compensation for two different working points and various bunch intensities. Using the action diffusion results the emittance growth rate and lifetime of the proton beam is also estimated for the different scenarios.

Injectivity tests in wells with two permeable zones and internal flow is analyzed in order to include the usually severe thermal transient effects. A theoretical analysis is performed and a method devised to obtain information from the thermal transient, provided that temperature is measured simultaneously with pressure. The technique is illustrated with two real tests performed at Miravalles, Costa Rica. It allows to estimate total injectivity index as well as the injectivity index of each one of the two zones separately. Correct position of measuring tools and nature of spontaneous internal flow is also discussed.

An increase in engine and vehicle efficiency usually requires an increase in the severity of contact at the interfaces of many critical components. Examples of such components include piston rings and cylinder liners in the engine, gears in the transmission and axle, bearings, etc. These components are oil-lubricated and require enhancement of their tribological performance. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) recently developed a carbon-based coating with very low friction and wear properties. These near-frictionless-carbon (NFC) coatings have potential for application in various engine components for performance enhancement. This paper presents the study of the tribological performance of NFC-coated steel surfaces when lubricated with fully formulated and basestock synthetic oils. The NFC coatings reduced both the friction and wear of lubricated steel surfaces. The effect of the coating was much more pronounced in tests with basestock oil. This suggests that NFC-coated parts may not require heavily formulated lubricant oils to perform satisfactorily in terms of reliability and durability.

Semiconductor microlasers are attractive components for micro-analysis systems because of their ability to emit coherent intense light from a small aperture. By using a surface-emitting semiconductor geometry, we were able to incorporate fluid flow inside a laser microcavity for the first time. This confers significant advantages for high throughput screening of cells, particulates and fluid analytes in a sensitive microdevice. In this paper we discuss the intracavity microfluidics and present preliminary results with flowing blood and brain cells.

InGaAsN is a new semiconductor alloy system with the remarkable property that the inclusion of only 2% nitrogen reduces the bandgap by more than 30%. In order to help understand the physical origin of this extreme deviation from the typically observed nearly linear dependence of alloy properties on concentration, we have investigated the pressure dependence of state energies using both experimental and theoretical methods. the excited We report measurements of the low temperature photoluminescence of the material for pressures between ambient and 110 kbar. We also describe a simple, density- functional-theory-based approach to calculating the pressure dependence of low lying excitation energies for low concentration alloys. The theoretically predicted pressure dependence of the bandgap is in excellent agreement with the experimental data. Based on the results of our calculations, we suggest an explanation for the strongly non-linear pressure dependence of the bandgap that, surprisingly, does not involve a nitrogen impurity state.

The availability of whole-cell level metabolic networks of high quality has made it possible to develop a predictive understanding of bacterial metabolism. Using the optimization framework of flux balance analysis, I investigate metabolic response and activity patterns to variations in the availability of nutrient and chemical factors such as oxygen and ammonia by simulating 30,000 random cellular environments. The distribution of reaction fluxes is heavy-tailed for the bacteria H. pylori and E. coli, and the eukaryote S. cerevisiae. While the majority of flux balance investigations have relied on implementations of the simplex method, it is necessary to use interior-point optimization algorithms to adequately characterize the full range of activity patterns on metabolic networks. The interior-point activity pattern is bimodal for E. coli and S. cerevisiae, suggesting that most metabolic reaction are either in frequent use or are rarely active. The trimodal activity pattern of H. pylori indicates that a group of its metabolic reactions (20%) are active in approximately half of the simulated environments. Constructing the high-flux backbone of the network for every environment, there is a clear trend that the more frequently a reaction is active, the more likely it is a part of the backbone. Finally, I briefly …

A Technicon Autoanalyzer for hexavalent chromium has been installed at the Automatic Columbia River Monitoring Station located along the west bank of the Columbia River. The sample water is delivered to the building by a deep well jet pump for continuous monitoring for gross gamma, {sup 131}I, hexavalent chromium, and for emergency water samples. An alarm system indicates unusually high activity levels. The unit was installed to detect hexavalent chromium which reaches the river as a result of cooling water treatment for the production reactors upstream, and via groundwater as a result of waste disposal practices at the 300 Area. The detection of the Cr{sup +6} ion is based upon its reaction with diphenylcarbazide to produce a reddish-violet color in slightly acid solutions. The degree of color is indicated by light absorption in the calorimeter which is plotted on the recorder and is directly related to the concentration of hexavalent chromium in the river water. Although designed to operate continuously and automatically, routine inspection is required to assure proper functioning of all components and to perform the required maintenance and pick up of recorded data. The following data is to provide general information relevant to the operation and maintenance of …

This paper presents a linear flow water influx analysis method where the aquifer is separated from the reservoir by a partially communicating fault. Transient pressure distributions are considered both in the reservoir and in the aquifer. Cases where the leaky fault is located within the aquifer can be analyzed with this model given a superposition of constant rate flow periods at the oil-water interface. Constant production rate is specified at the inner boundary, without inner boundary storage and skin. The partially communicating fault is modeled as a boundary skin of infinitesimal thickness having no storage. The aquifer considered in this paper is infinite in the lateral extend. The problem is posed and solved using the Laplace transformation, yielding Laplace solutions of the exponential form. The solutions presented in this paper, along with a set of type curves extend the transient linear flow work presented by Hurst (1958) and by Nabor and Barham (1964). When the inner region, the reservoir, has an infinite permeability and a finite storage, it acts like a tank, where the boundary pressure is equal to average pressure in the inner region. This case is identical to the linear water influx model presented by Hurst (1958). When …

This paper presents results of a six month Injection and Tracer test done in Olkaria East Geothermal Field The Injection tests show that commencement of injection prior to onset of large drawdown in the reservoir leads to greater sustenance of well production and can reduce well cycling which is a common feature of wells in Olkaria East Field. For cases where injection is started after some drawdown has occurred in the reservoir, injection while leading to improvement of well output can also lead to increase in well cycling which is a non desirable side effect. Tracer tests reveal slow rate of fluid migration (< 5 m/hr). However estimates of the cumulative tracer returns over the period of injection is at least 31% which is large and reveals the danger of late time thermal drawdown and possible loss of production. It is shown in the discussion that the two sets of results are consistent with a reservoir where high permeability occurs along contact surfaces which act as horizontal "fractures" while the formations between the "fractures" have low permeability. This type of fracture system will lead to channeled flow of injected fluid and therefore greater thermal depletion along the fractures while formations …

The presented paper partially summarizes the work of the Beam Delivery working group (WG4) at Snowmass, concentrating on status of optics, layout, collimation, and background. The strawman layout with 2 interaction regions was recommended at the first ILC workshop at KEK in November 2004. Two crossing-angle designs were included in this layout. The design of the ILC BDS has evolved since the first ILC workshop. The progress on the BDS design and extraction line design has been reviewed and the design issues were discussed during the optics and layout session at the Snowmass.

TOUGH2, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's general purpose simulator for mass and heat flow and transport was enhanced with the addition of a set of preconditioned conjugate gradient solvers and ported to a PC. The code was applied to a number of large 3-D geothermal reservoir problems with up to 10,000 grid blocks. Four test problems were investigated. The first two involved a single-phase liquid system, and a two-phase system with regular Cartesian grids. The last two involved a two-phase field problem with irregular gridding with production from and injection into a single porosity reservoir, and a fractured reservoir. The code modifications to TOUGH2 and its setup in the PC environment are described. Algorithms suitable for solving large matrices that are generally non-symmetric and non-positive definite are reviewed. Computational work per time step and CPU time requirements are reported as function of problem size. The excessive execution time and storage requirements of the direct solver in TOUGH2 limits the size of manageable 3-D reservoir problems to a few hundred grid blocks. The conjugate gradient solvers significantly reduced the execution time and storage requirements making possible the execution of considerably larger problems (10,000+ grid blocks). It is concluded that the current PCs provide …

The need for breeding does not appear to be highly cost for a moderately optimistic expanding nuclear power economy between 1960 and 2000. Since the expansion rate of the US nuclear economy is assumed to be high at least 2/3 of the U-235 recovered from natural uranium is used to supply reactor inventory. It is the remaining 1/3 of the available U-235 that can be saved by breeder breeders or a breeder and converter are the doubling time and a parameter expressing the total fissile inventory per magawatt of electricity. In fact, the need for new raw material in any given year is reduced more by specific power than by changing from a converter to a value of total inventory per magawatt of electricity and the content and value of plutonium or U-233 than on raw material cost. The use of 12% vs. 4% annual lease charge can change the inventory costs more significantly than either the Pu (or U-233)/U-235 value ratio or raw material cost. Net fuel burn costs vary more with the product of net conversion ratio and Pu (or U-233)/U-235 value ratio than with the cost of raw material. (auth)

In this paper the authors present performance results from several parallel benchmarks and applications on a 400-node Linux cluster at Sandia National Laboratories. They compare the results on the Linux cluster to performance obtained on a traditional distributed-memory massively parallel processing machine, the Intel TeraFLOPS. They discuss the characteristics of these machines that influence the performance results and identify the key components of the system software that they feel are important to allow for scalability of commodity-based PC clusters to hundreds and possibly thousands of processors.

We report magneto-exciton spectroscopy studies of (411)A and (100)-oriented GaAs/Al{sub 0.3}Ga{sub 0.7}As multiquantum well structures. The samples consisted of seven GaAs quantum wells with widths varying between 0.6 and 12nm, were grown on (411)A and (100)-oriented GaAs substrates. The exciton diamagnetic energy shifts and linewidths were measured between 0 and 14T at 1.4K The dependence of the exciton diamagnetic shifts with magnetic field were calculated using a variational approach and good agreement with experiment for both substrate orientations was found.

A number of activities are underway as part of the Spent Nuclear Fuels Project (SNFP) related to the processing and disposing of sludge in the 105-K Basins (K Basins). Efforts to rigorously define data requirements for these activities are being made using the Data Quality Objectives (DQO) process. Summaries of current sludge characterization data are required to both help support this DQO process and to allow continued progress with on-going engineering activities (e.g., evaluations of disposal alternatives). This document provides the status of K Basins sludge characterization data currently available to the Nuclear Fuel Evaluations group. This group is tasked by the SNFP to help develop and maintain the characterization baseline for the K Basins. The specific objectives of this document are to: (1) provide a current summary (and set of references) of sludge characterization data for use by SNFP initiatives, to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort and to support on-going initiatives; (2) submit these data to an open forum for review and comment, and identify additional sources of significant data that may be available; (3) provide a summary of current data to use as part of the basis to develop requirements for additional sludge characterization data through the DQO …

This presentation was given at the DOE Office of Science-Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) High-Level Waste Workshop held on January 19-20, 2005 at the Savannah River Site.

The electromagnetic calorimeter at the BABAR detector, part of the asymmetric B Factory at SLAC, measures photons in the energy range from 20 MeV to 8 GeV with high resolution. The current status of the calorimeter, now in its seventh year of operation, is being presented, as well as details on improvements made to the analysis code during the last years.

During the ultrasonic (UT) inspection of K-Reactor tank by the Equipment Engineering Section in the spring of 1990, solid material (termed debris) was seen on the bottom of the tank. When the UT inspection was complete, a specially designed underwater vacuum cleaner was used to collect the accumulation at 17 monitor pin positions. This material was sent to SRL for characterization as an action item of the Reactor Corrosion Mitigation Committee. Acquisition of this debris provided an opportunity to obtain first-hand information about conditions within the tank that affect corrosion conditions and/or moderator chemistry. The purpose of this memorandum is to describe the results of the analyses and the implications of what was found.

During the ultrasonic (UT) inspection of K-Reactor tank by the Equipment Engineering Section in the spring of 1990, solid material (termed debris) was seen on the bottom of the tank. When the UT inspection was complete, a specially designed underwater vacuum cleaner was used to collect the accumulation at 17 monitor pin positions. This material was sent to SRL for characterization as an action item of the Reactor Corrosion Mitigation Committee. Acquisition of this debris provided an opportunity to obtain first-hand information about conditions within the tank that affect corrosion conditions and/or moderator chemistry. The purpose of this memorandum is to describe the results of the analyses and the implications of what was found.

Tracer injection for identifying reservoir and transport parameters in geothermal sources has become an important procedure for designing an optimum reinjection program. Field tests have been analyzed using convection-diffusion equation to predict fracture size, width and probable thermal breakthrough times. The present study was conducted in a laboratory fractured reservoir model whose physical properties were known. The tracer, KI, breakthrough profiles were analyzed for different injection-production depth schemes. For different patterns different preferential flow paths existed which were then affected by flow through auxiliary paths. A correlation between heat and mass transport was used to define an apparent heat transfer coefficient for the flow. 3 tabs., 5 figs., 7 refs.

A list of particle-accelerator installations, giving location, type, dimensions, particles accelerated, and energy, is presented. (A.C.)

Reinjection of spent geothermal brine is a common means of disposing of geothermal effluents and maintaining reservoir pressures. Contrary to the predictions of two-fluid models (two-viscosity) of nonisothermal injection, an increase of injectivity, with continued injection, is often observed. Injectivity enhancement and thermally-affected pressure transients are particularly apparent in short-term injection tests at the Los Azufres Geothermal Field, Mexico. During an injection test, it is not uncommon to observe that after an initial pressure increase, the pressure decreases with time. As this typically occurs far below the pressure at which hydraulic fracturing is expected, some other mechanism for increasing the near-bore permeability must explain the observed behavior. This paper focuses on calculating the magnitude of the near-bore permeability changes observed in several nonisothermal injection tests conducted at the Los Azufres Geothermal Field. In order to evaluate the pressure transient data and calculate the magnitude of the thermally induced permeability changes, a new analytic solution for calculating pressure transients with time-varying sandface flowrates and temperatures has been developed. The effects of temperature-dependent fluid and rock properties, as well as a moving thermal front, are explicitly included in the calculations. Based on this new solution, a technique is developed for calculating the …

Address on the Department of Energy's overall energy policy, the role of alternative energy sources within the policy framework, and expectations for geothermal energy. Commendation of the industry's decision to pursue the longer-term field effort while demand for geothermal energy is low, and thus prepare for a substantial geothermal contribution to the nation's energy security.