The purpose of this report is to provide information on the origin, extent and stability of ''soft zones'' in the carbonate bearing strata at the Savannah River Site (SRS). As part of this study, a comprehensive historical compendium of how soft zones have been addressed during the past 47 years at SRS is reviewed.

Within the next ten years the Standard Model will likely have to be modified to encompass a wide range of newly discovered phenomena, new elementary particles, new symmetries, and new dynamics. These phenomena will be revealed through experiment with high energy particle accelerators, mainly the LHC. This will represent a revolution in our understanding of nature, and will either bring us closer to an understanding of all phenomena, through existing ideas such as supersymmetry to superstrings, or will cause us to scramble to find new ideas and a new sense of direction. We are thus entering a dramatic and important time in the quest to understand the fundamental laws of nature and their role in shaping the universe. The energy scales now probed by the Tevatron, of order hundreds of GeV, will soon be subsumed by the LHC and extended up to a few TeV. We expect the unknown structure of the mysterious symmetry breaking of the Standard Model to be revealed. We will then learn the answer to a question that has a fundamental bearing upon our own existence: 'What is the origin of mass?' All modern theories of 'electroweak symmetry breaking' involve many new particles, mainly to provide …

Uranium hydriding is one of the most important processes that has received considerable attention over many years. Although many experimental and modeling studies have been carried out concerning thermochemistry, diffusion kinetics and mechanisms of U-hydriding, very little is known about the electronic structure and electronic features that govern the U-hydriding process. Yet it is the electronic feature that controls the activation barrier and thus the rate of hydriding. Moreover the role of impurities and the role of the product UH{sub 3} on hydriding rating are not fully understood. An early study by Condon and Larson concerns with the kinetics of U-hydrogen system and a mathematical model for the U-hydriding process. They proposed that diffusion in the reactant phase by hydrogen before nucleation to form hydride phase and that the reaction is first order for hydriding and zero order for dehydriding. Condon has also calculated and measures the reaction rates of U-hydriding and proposed a diffusion model for the U-hydriding. This model was found to be in excellent agreement with the experimental reaction rates. From the slopes of the Arrhenius plot the activation energy was calculated as 6.35 kcal/mole. In a subsequent study Kirkpatrick formulated a close-form for approximate solution to …

Many of the important challenges facing humanity, including developing alternative sources of energy and improving health, are being addressed by advances that demand the improved understanding and control of matter. While the visualization, exploration, and manipulation of macroscopic matter have long been technological goals, scientific developments in the twentieth century have focused attention on understanding matter on the atomic scale through the underlying framework of quantum mechanics. Of special interest is matter that consists of natural or artificial nanoscale building blocks defined either by atomic structural arrangements or by electron or spin formations created by collective correlation effects (Figure 1.1). The essence of the challenge to the scientific community has been expressed in five grand challenges for directing matter and energy recently formulated by the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee [1]. These challenges focus on increasing our understanding of, and ultimately control of, matter at the level of atoms, electrons. and spins, as illustrated in Figure 1.1, and serve the entire range of science from advanced materials to life sciences. Meeting these challenges will require new tools that extend our reach into regions of higher spatial, temporal, and energy resolution. X-rays with energies above 10 keV offer capabilities extending beyond …

Prediction of the amount of water that may seep into the waste emplacement drifts is an important aspect of assessing the performance of the proposed geologic nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The repository is to be located in thick, partially saturated fractured tuff that will be heated to above-boiling temperatures as a result of heat generation from the decay of nuclear waste. Since water percolating down towards the repository will be subject to vigorous boiling for a significant time period, the superheated rock zone (i.e., rock temperature above the boiling point of water) can form an effective vaporization barrier that reduces the possibility of water arrival at emplacement drifts. In this paper, we analyze the behavior of episodic preferential flow events that penetrate the hot fractured rock, and we evaluate the impact of such flow behavior on the effectiveness of the vaporization barrier.

The report summarizes what transpired during brake linings-related workshop held at the Fall 2003 meeting of the Technology and Maintenance Council (TMC) in Charlotte, NC. The title of the workshop was ''Developing a Useful Friction Material Rating System''. It was organized by a team consisting of Peter Blau (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Jim Britell (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), and Jim Lawrence (Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association). The workshop was held under the auspices of TMC Task Force S6 (Chassis), chaired by Joseph Stianche (Sanderson Farms, Inc.). Six invited speakers during the morning session provided varied perspectives on testing and rating aftermarket automotive and truck brake linings. They were: James R. Clark, Chief Engineer, Foundation Brakes and Wheel Equipment, Dana Corporation, Spicer Heavy Axle and Brake Division; Charles W. Greening, Jr, President, Greening Test Labs; Tim Duncan, General Manager, Link Testing Services;Dennis J. McNichol, President, Dennis NationaLease; Jim Fajerski, Business Manager, OE Sales and Applications Engineering, Federal Mogul Corporation; and Peter J. Blau, Senior Materials Development Engineer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The afternoon break-out sessions addressed nine questions concerning such issues as: ''Should the federal government regulate aftermarket lining quality?''; ''How many operators use RP 628, and if so, what's …

This Engineering Task Plan (ETP) defines the task and deliverables associated with the design, fabrication and testing of an improved spray wash system for the Rotary Mode Core Sampling (RMCS) System Support Trucks.

This 6th quarterly Technical Progress Report for the Lignite Fuel Enhancement Project summarizes activities from October 1st through December 31st of 2005. It also summarizes the subsequent purchasing activity and dryer/process construction. Hypothesis remains the same. We will be able to dry lignite an increment to benefit the performance of and reduce emissions from a coal burning electric power generating station.

Stored solutions containing plutonium and nitric acid and possibly uranium thorium and minor amounts of other substances will be used for development and demonstration of a vertical calciner direct denitration process for conversion of those to stable storable PuO{sub 2} rich solids. Some of those solutions are quite dilute and very impure these require either pretreatment to make them suitable for calciner feed or an alternate stabilization method. Untreated scrap solutions containing some amounts of sulfate phosphate sodium and/or potassium may also be tested for suitability of direct denitration for conversion directly to PuO{sub 2}-rich solids. A vertical calciner will be used to demonstrate the direct denitration process for converting plutonium-bearing liquors to stable plutonium-rich solids. The calciner and some of its ancillary equipment were previously tested with non-radioactive chemicals to demonstrate operability.

Stored solutions containing plutonium and nitric acid and possibly uranium thorium and minor amounts of other substances will be used for development and demonstration of a vertical calciner direct denitration process for conversion of those to stable storable PuO{sub 2} rich solids. Some of those solutions are quite dilute and very impure these require either pretreatment to make them suitable for calciner feed or an alternate stabilization method. Untreated scrap solutions containing some amounts of sulfate phosphate sodium and/or potassium may also be tested for suitability of direct denitration for conversion directly to PuO{sub 2}-rich solids. A vertical calciner will be used to demonstrate the direct denitration process for converting plutonium-bearing liquors to stable plutonium rich solids. The calciner and some of its associated equipment were previously tested with non-radioactive chemicals to demonstrate operability.

Siloxanes have a wide variety of applications throughout the aerospace industry which take advantage of their exceptional insulating and adhesive properties and general resilience. They also offer a wide range of tailorable engineering properties with changes in composition and filler content. They are, however, subject to degradation in radiatively and thermally harsh environments. We are using solid state nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to investigate changes in network and interfacial structure in siloxane elastomers and their correlations to changes in engineering performance in a series of degraded materials. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) parameters such as transverse (T{sub 2}) relaxation times, cross relaxation rates, and residual dipolar coupling constants provide excellent probes of changes crosslink density and motional dynamics of the polymers caused by multi-mechanism degradation. The results of NMR studies on aged siloxanes are being used in conjunction with other mechanical tests to provide insight into component failure and degradation kinetics necessary for preliminary lifetime assessments of these materials as well as into the structure-property relationships of the polymers. NMR and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results obtained both from high resolution NMR spectrometers as well as low resolution benchtop NMR screening tools will be presented.

We have demonstrated the feasibility of fabricating pure-metal foams via a novel four-step technique based upon ion beam lithography. In this report we discuss why and how such foams are useful as bright, high-photon-energy x-ray sources; the details of the fabrication technique we employed to make such foams; the results obtained; and what we plan to do in the future to improve the technique and turn the foams so fabricated into real laser targets for high-brightness, high-energy back lighting.

In this quarter, further analysis was done to investigate the difficulty in predicting fracture at the slab ends. The stress concentration created by the notch geometry at the slab ends can accelerate damage and promote fracture at the relatively low strain rates that exist when the notch region is not directly in the roll bite. However, the phenomenological fracture model provided by Alcoa Technical Center (ATC) was calibrated for strain rates characteristic of the rolling process zone and hydrostatic stress states less severe than the leading edge notch. Additional experiments are being performed at ATC to extend the model's range to include the low strain rate, high triaxiality condition. A bug in the parallel code that caused an inconsistent temperature distribution at the slab surface has been identified and Corrected. Currently, more simulations are being performed to validate the model.

We report here the BRAHMS measurements of particle production in d+Au and p+p collisions at RHIC. The results presented here are compared to previous p+A measurements at lower energies in fixed target mode. Some preliminary results on abundances of identified particles at high rapidity are also presented.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is an x-ray Free-Electron Laser (FEL) project presently in a commissioning phase at SLAC. We report here on very low emittance measurements made at low bunch charge, and a few femtosecond bunch length produced by the LCLS bunch compressors. Start-to-end simulations associated with these beam parameters show the possibilities of generating hundreds of GW at 1.5 {angstrom} x-ray wavelength and nearly a single longitudinally spike at 1.5 nm with 2-fs duration.

A recently developed coda magnitude methodology was applied to selected broadband stations in Turkey for the purpose of testing the coda method in a large, laterally complex region. As found in other, albeit smaller regions, coda envelope amplitude measurements are significantly less variable than distance-corrected direct wave measurements (i.e., L{sub g} and surface waves) by roughly a factor 3-to-4. Despite strong lateral crustal heterogeneity in Turkey, we found that the region could be adequately modeled assuming a simple 1-D, radially symmetric path correction for 10 narrow frequency bands ranging between 0.02 to 2.0 Hz. For higher frequencies however, 2-D path corrections will be necessary and will be the subject of a future study. After calibrating the stations ISP, ISKB, and MALT for local and regional distances, single-station moment-magnitude estimates (M{sub w}) derived from the coda spectra were in excellent agreement with those determined from multi-station waveform modeling inversions of long-period data, exhibiting a data standard deviation of 0.17. Though the calibration was validated using large events, the results of the calibration will extend M{sub w} estimates to significantly smaller events which could not otherwise be waveform modeled due to poor signal-to-noise ratio at long periods and sparse station coverage. The …

The use of laser diodes instead of flashlamps to pump solid state lasers generally results in lighter weight, more compact systems with improved efficiency and reliability. These traits are important to a wide variety of applications in military, industrial and other areas. Common solid state laser systems such as yttrium aluminum garnet doped with neodymium or ytterbium (Nd:YAG and Yb:YAG, respectively) require pump light in the 800 to 1000 nm range, and such laser diodes have typically been fabricated in the AlGaAs material system on a GaAs substrate. Unfortunately, the presence of aluminum in or near the light-generating regions of these devices appears to limit their high-power performance, so for improved performance attention has turned to the aluminum-free (''Al-free'') material system of InGaAsP on a GaAs substrate. Laser diodes in this system offer the wavelength coverage similar to the AlGaAs/GaAs material system, and early results suggest that they may offer improved high-power performance. However, such Al-free diodes are more challenging to manufacture than AlGaAs-based devices. The goal of this LDRD project has been to evaluate Al-free diode technology in comparison with conventional AlGaAs-based structures for use in diode-pumped solid state lasers. This has been done by testing commercially available devices, …

We have recently completed a large-area, coded-aperture, gamma-ray imager for use in searching for radiation sources. The instrument was constructed to verify that weak point sources can be detected at considerable distances if one uses imaging to overcome fluctuations in the natural background. The instrument uses a rank-19, one-dimensional coded aperture to cast shadow patterns onto a 0.57 m{sup 2} NaI(Tl) detector composed of 57 individual cubes each 10 cm on a side. These are arranged in a 19 x 3 array. The mask is composed of four-centimeter thick, one-meter high, 10-cm wide lead blocks. The instrument is mounted in the back of a small truck from which images are obtained as one drives through a region.

Separating the metals from the glass is the first step in recycling end-of-life cadmium telluride photovoltaic modules and manufacturing scrap. We accomplished this by leaching the metals in solutions of various concentrations of acids and hydrogen peroxide. A relatively dilute solution of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide was found to be most effective for leaching cadmium and tellurium from broken pieces of CdTe PV modules. A solution comprising 5 mL of hydrogen peroxide per kg of PV scrap in 1 M sulfuric acid, gave better results than the 12 mL H{sub 2}O{sub 2}/kg, 3.2 M H{sub 2}SO{sub 4} solution currently used in the industry. Our study also showed that this dilute solution is more effective than hydrochloric-acid solutions and it can be reused after adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide. These findings, when implemented in large-scale operation, would result in significant savings due to reductions in volume of the concentrated leaching agents (H{sub 2}SO{sub 4} and H{sub 2}O{sub 2}) and of the alkaline reagents required to neutralize the residuals of leaching.

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The purpose of this Workshop on ''Functional Requirements for the Modeling of Fate and Transport of Waterborne CBRN Materials'' was to solicit functional requirements for tools that help Incident Managers plan for and deal with the consequences of industrial or terrorist releases of materials into the nation's waterways and public water utilities. Twenty representatives attended and several made presentations. Several hours of discussions elicited a set of requirements. These requirements were summarized in a form for the attendees to vote on their highest priority requirements. These votes were used to determine the prioritized requirements that are reported in this paper and can be used to direct future developments.

Under the Nuclear/Radiological Incident Annex of the National Response Framework, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has specific responsibilities as a coordinating agency and for leading interagency response elements in the Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC). Emergency response planning focuses on rapidly providing response elements in stages after being notified of a nuclear/radiological incident. The use of Home Teams during the field team deployment period and recent advances in collecting and transmitting data from the field directly to assessment assets has greatly improved incident assessment times for public protection decisions. The DOE’s Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) based in Las Vegas, Nevada, has successfully deployed technical and logistical support for this mission at national exercises such as Top Officials Exercise IV (TOPOFF IV). In a unique response situation, DOE will provide advance contingency support to NASA during the scheduled launch in the fall of 2009 of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The MSL rover will carry a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium’s radioactive decay. DOE assets and contingency planning will provide a pre-incident response posture for rapid early plume phase assessment in the highly unlikely launch anomaly.

Dramatic advances in data management have been made as a result of the Paperless FRMAC initiative, sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Emergency Response (NA-42). The FRMAC (Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center) is the hub for all radiological monitoring and the production of data products that interpret those measurements in terms of protective action guidelines. As such, very large amounts of data must be quickly assimilated from numerous sources and then widely distributed as graphical interpretations as fast as possible. Paperless FRMAC is a broad initiative to move that data faster, farther and better through telemetry, automation, and networking. This discussion reviews for the first time the status of the now two-year-old Paperless FRMAC initiative. Key features of Paperless FRMAC include multipath telemetry of measurements from DOE field teams, 24/7 Internet presence, early data entry by first responders, support for distance collaborations, and data exchange with the EPA’s SCRIBE database. The heart of the enterprise is the RAMS database, which provides seamless interfacing with GIS, LIMS, and TurboFRMAC for calculations. Paperless FRMAC is presented to users via two Internet websites. The first, FRMAC Portal website, is restricted to the emergency responders for data input, analysis, and product development. The …

A number of shock-recovery experiments have been performed on Berea sandstone for different conditions: dry, water-saturated, hydrostatically water-pressurized and Helium gas-pressurized. The authors also conducted experiments with purified quartz sand in dry and water-saturated conditions with a grain size between 212 to 250 {micro}m and 250 to 300 {micro}m to compare with damaged Berea sandstone. The shock stresses in the range between 1.2 to 9.8 GPa were achieved by impacting projectiles accelerated by a single-stage light-gas gun. Different flyer plate thicknesses were used to produce different shock pulse durations. The water-pressurized sandstone targets were hydrostatically pressurized between 7.58-7.79 MPa, whereas the gas-pressure samples were pressurized to 27.5 MPa using helium gas. The microstructural damage of all specimens is being investigated by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in order to determine differences for these conditions. In this report they will present the results of the systematic SEM investigations for each experiment. The scientific results and discussions including X-ray computed micro tomography and statistical analysis are presented elsewhere. Overall, they collected around 1600 SEM pictures, which are available in electronic form on Compact Disks (CDs). They also provide the results of the laser particle analysis on the CDs.