High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGRs) utilize graphite-base fuels. Fluidized-bed burners are being employed successfully in the experimental reprocessing of these fuels. The primary fluidized-bed burner is a unit operation in the reprocessing flowsheet in which the graphite moderator is removed. A detailed description of the development status of the 0.20-m (8-in.) diameter primary fluidized-bed burner as of July 1, 1977 is presented. Experimental work to date performed in 0.10; 0.20; and 0.40-m (4, 8, and 16 in.) diameter primary burners has demonstrated the feasibility of the primary burning process and, at the same time, has defined more clearly the areas in which additional experimental work is required. The design and recent operating history of the 0.20-m-diameter burner are discussed, with emphasis placed upon the evolution of the current design and operating philosophy.

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This report is written as a partial account of work performed for the Department of Energy on the 10 MW Solar Thermal Pilot Plant Project. This report is in two parts: Computer Program Description and Computer Program Source Listing.

This report consists of the actual computer source listing of Program 10 MW Solar Thermal Pilot Plant (STMPPS).

Bid documents are provided for the construction of the collector subsystem foundation of the Barstow Solar Pilot Plant, including invitation to bid, bid form, representations and certifications, construction contract, and labor standards provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act. Instructions to bidders, general provisions and general conditions are included. Technical specifications are provided for the construction. (LEW)

Forty kilowatts of solar cell modules was produced in this program. This is equivalent to 4123 modules. The average power output per module was 9.7 watts at 16.5 volts, 60/sup 0/C and 100 mW/cm/sup 2/. The peak production rate was 200 modules per week which is equal to 1.9 kW per week. This rate was sustained for over four and one-half months and is equivalent to 100 kW per year. The solar cell module design, electrical and power performance, module preproduction environmental test results, production and shipping schedule, program summary, and delivery are described. A cost analysis section is written. Particular emphasis on the percentage of labor and material utilized in constructing a solar cell module is presented. Also included are cost reduction recommendations. It was concluded from this program that volume production on the order of hundreds of kilowatts per year per company as a minimum is required to significantly reduce the price per watt for solar cell modules. Sensor Technology more than doubled its solar cell module manufacturing facilities since the completion of the JPL Block II procurement. Plans are being made for large scale expansion of our facilities to meet growing JPL/DOE procurements.

Experiments measuring the energy deposited by electron beams were performed to provide bench marks against which to evaluate our HANDYL76 electron beam computer code. The experiments, done at Stanford's Mk III accelerator, measured dose vs depth and dose vs radius profiles induced in layered aluminum targets by 500-MeV electrons. The dose was measured by passive thermoluminescence and photographic film placed between aluminum plates. The calculations predict a dose vs radius profile that forward-peaks on axis after the beam passes through a 200-cm air gap; the experimental measurements do not show this peak. This discrepancy indicates there may be a problem in using HANDYL76 to calculate deep penetration of a target with a large gap.

The second Personnel Dosimeter Intercomparison Study (PDIS) was conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's DOSAR Facility during the period February 18-19, 1976. Eleven independent organizations participated in an intercomparison of neutron and gamma-ray dosimeters used for routine personnel dosimetry. The dosimeters, which were shipped to the DOSAR Facility, were exposed at the Health Physics Research Reactor to one of three ''standardized'' radiation fields which have been used for the past several years for intercomparing nuclear accident dosimeters. The results of PDIS reveal that estimates of dose equivalent vary over a wide range. For a given radiation field these dose estimates may vary by more than a factor of 2, indicating the need for continued evaluation of the response of personnel dosimeters used in mixed fields of neutron and gamma radiation.

As part of a program to characterize the plant and animal life of the Laboratory site and surrounding areas, two breeding bird census plots were established in 1977 to document the occurrence and abundance of breeding species in two extreme successional stages of Long Island oak-pine forest. A 9.3-hectare plot located near the northeastern corner of the Laboratory site is composed of second growth oak-pine forest in a late successional stage. The second plot measures 9.7 hectares and is located in the scrub oak-pitch pine barrens at Westhampton. Each plot was surveyed with a transit and steel tape and marked with wooden stakes at 100-foot intervals. Quantitative vegetational surveys were made in each plot and all plant species identified. Tree composition was measured as a function of species and size. Shrub density, percent of ground cover and percent of canopy were also measured. The Laboratory plot contained 2100 trees of five species per hectare, 72% ground cover and 84% canopy coverage. The Westhampton plot contained only one tree species, Pitch Pine, at 366 trees per hectare, 92% ground cover and no canopy. Twelve census trips, mostly of two to three hour duration, were made in each plot. Each bird observed …

This study summarizes the promise and timing of the hybrid concept and culminates in a generic R and D timetable. This document emphasizes the meaningfulness of the concept to tomorrow's energy needs and energy production systems rather than strict analysis of technical feasibility. (MOW)

The 1978 Source Book for Fusion--Fission Hybrid Systems was prepared by United Engineers and Constructors Inc. for the U.S. Department of Energy and the Electric Power Research Institute. It reviews the current status of fusion--fission hybrid reactors, and presents the prevailing views of members of the fusion community on the RD and D timetable required for the development and commercialization of fusion--fission hybrids. The results presented are based on a review of related references as well as interviews with recognized experts in the field. Contributors from the academic and industrial communities are listed.

The author distinguishes between geothermal resource base, accessible geothermal resource base, geothermal resource, and geothermal reserve. Conditions for periodically updating the assessment of geothermal energy resources include: increased data from expanded exploration and drilling; development of improved and new technologies for exploration, evaluation, extraction, and use; rapid evolution of geothermal knowledge; and the increased role of geothermal energy in response to changing economic, social, political, and environmental conditions, particularly an increasing awareness of the limits to petroleum and natural gas resources. Accordingly, the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) plans by the end of 1978 to update its 1975 assessment of the United States’ geothermal resource, with increased emphasis on several items. The USGS’s joint evaluations of geothermal resource-assessment techniques in the last year with the National Electric Agency of Italy (ENEL) under U. S. Energy Research and Development Agency sponsorship identified a number of problems, one of which was how to formulate geothermal recovery factors for systems producing by intergranular vaporization and by intergranular flow. The first formulation is fairly rigorous; the author solicits the reservoir engineering community’s help in improving the estimate of the second. 3 figs., 11 refs.

A Thomson-scattering system using a 6-joule Q-switched ruby laser and an eight-channel polychromator was constructed and employed to measure electron temperatures and densities at the center of the 2XII mirror confinement experiment. This report discusses experimental considerations used to guide design, construction, alignment, and operation of the Thomson-scattering system. (auth)

This report summarizes all the technical work performed on the 3000-MW(t) 3-loop High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Gas Turbine design as of June 1979. Although the plant configuration has changed to a 2000-MW(t) 2-loop plant, most of the technical assessments described in this report are still applicable to the 2000-MW(t) plant. The report covers the criteria under which the plant was designed, the technical feasibility problems associated with the plant and their potential solutions, and other potential applications and improvements which could make the gas turbine concept more attractive economically.

This report documents the technical progress through the first six months of this one-year program under DoE Contract which was effective 1 May 1978.

A workbook for implementing an abbreviated version of the RD and D portfolio selection methodology described in A Resource Allocation Methodology for Establishing RD and D Budgetary Priorities is presented. The purpose of the abbreviated methodology is to allow a fast, first-cut analysis of a set of programs and to provide a means of discovering important issues that deserve more detailed analysis. The use of the abbreviated methodology in the overall process of evaluating RD and D programs is outlined. The effect of the program on a process is represented by the process model. Those process cost and performance characteristics that are important to the market for an energy product are described. The product cost model takes the cost and performance characteristics and the feedstock price and calculates the cost of producing a unit of energy using the technology in question. The market model takes this cost, the demand for the energy product, and the characteristics of alternative sources of the same product, and specifies the market share captured by the new technology. From this point it is relatively straightforward to infer the impacts of the new technology on the energy system. The benefit model evaluates the impacts in a …

A glovebox ventilation system was designed for a new plutonium-238 processing facility that provided 1) downdraft ventilation, 2) a leak tight seal around the High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, and 3) a method for changing the filters internally without risk of contaminating the laboratory.

The Environmental Science Division at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has in use a system of absolute Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). Basically, absolute INAA is dependent upon the absolute measurement of the disintegration rates of the nuclides produced by neutron capture. From such disintegration rate data, the amount of the target element present in the irradiated sample is calculated by dividing the observed disintegration rate for each nuclide by the expected value for the disintegration rate per microgram of the target element that produced the nuclide. In absolute INAA, the expected value for disintegration rate per microgram is calculated from nuclear parameters and from measured values of both thermal and epithermal neutron fluxes which were present during irradiation. Absolute INAA does not depend on the concurrent irradiation of elemental standards but does depend on the values for thermal and epithermal neutron capture cross-sections for the target nuclides. A description of the analytical method is presented.

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Instrumented spool pieces for installation in the piping of the German Primarkreislauf (PKL) test reactor have been designed and tested. The primary objective of the spools is to provide measurements of two-phase steam-water flow parameters (pressure, temperature, velocity) from which mass flow rates can be calculated. Each spool contains a three-beam densitometer, flow turbine, drag screen, and pressure and temperature sensors. The spools were prototype tested in single- and two-phase steam-water flows and the results of the mass flow calculations were compared to known values. The present software calculations of total mass flow in two-phase flows requires data from two instruments only: the flow turbine and drag screen. In this report, mass flow calculations based on other instrument combinations are investigated and compared to the programmed calculations.

Experiments were carried out and chemical aspects of ambient precipitation were determined using a sequential precipitation collector for the period July 1976 through September 1977. A related report provides experimental details. In experiments with plants, experiments were aimed to document: the foliar response of six clones of hybrid poplar to simulated acid rain; effects of buffered solutions and various anions on vegetative and sexual development of gametophytes of the fern (Pteridium aquilinum) and the acid-sensitive steps of symbiotic nitrogen fixation of the garden pea (Pisum sativum). After five 6 min daily exposures to simulated rain of pH 2.7, up to 10 percent of the leaf area of some poplar clones was injured. Lesions developed mostly near stomata and vascular tissue as shown with other plant species. Acidic solutions have a marked effect on sperm motility and fertilization (sexual reproduction) of bracken fern. Since sexual reproduction of ferns is very sensitive to mildly acidic conditions under laboratory conditions, experiments are planned to view the response of sexual stages of other plant species. Nodulation and symbiotic nitrogen fixation in Pisum is very sensitive to nutrient solution acidity. Specific isolates of Rhizobium bacteria are used and the medium pH can be maintained rigidly. …

A discussion of the problem of sodium vapor bubble collapse is presented. The physics of vapor collapse is presented in light of the work by Peppler et al. Theoretical estimates of the sound source level based on the work by Rayleigh and Judd are compared to an approximate pressure-volume work approach and recent experimental observations. Reactor ambient noise and transmission loss considerations are presented in regard to their impact on this detection problem. A methodology is proposed which considers the importance of the sound source level, ambient noise, transmission loss and a detection threshold and provides a means by which the feasibility of sodium vapor bubble collapse detection in an operating LMFBR may be assessed. The interrelationships between the detection threshold and the probability of detection and false alarm are discussed and applied to a standard acoustic square law detection system. This analysis clearly illustrates that the feasibility of such a detection system is strongly dependent on the knowledge of sound source levels, ambient noise levels and the transmission loss between the source and receiver. Furthermore, requirements of a high degree of probability of detection and a low probability of false alarm were found to require a high signal to …

An enengy-to-pulse-height converter was developed for use in acoustic emission testing. This instrument accepts an amplified signal from a piezoelectric crystal and generates a pulse whose amplitude is propontional to either the energy or width of the input signal. Either linear or logarithmic responses can be selected. Theory, circuit design, and performance specifications have been determined, based on calculations and measurements. (auth)

An analytical solution for acoustic flaw triangulation on thin spherical shells has been prepared. A FORTRAN program is provided which takes as input the differences in the arrival times of acoustic energy at the transducers and evaluates the spherical coordinates of the flaw. Only three experimental time differences need be measured. For this measurement, four transducers are required. One transducer is placed at (R, 0, 0) in spherical coordinates; the other three are spaced 90 degrees apart around the equator.