This report talks about Approach to a Fully Integrated Performance Assurance System.

This report addresses the development of the Hanford site chronic beryllium disease prevention program.

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Tritium reservoirs are constructed from welded stainless steel forgings. While these steels are highly resistant to the embrittling effects of hydrogen isotopes and helium from tritium decay; they are not immune. Tritium embrittlement is an enhanced form of hydrogen embrittlement because of the presence of helium-3 from tritium decay which nucleates as nanometer-sized bubbles on dislocations, grain boundaries, and other microstructural defects. Steels with decay helium bubble microstructures are hardened and less able to deform plastically and become more susceptible to embrittlement by hydrogen and its isotopes. Ductility, elongation-to-failure, and fracture toughness are reduced by exposures to tritium and the reductions increase with time as helium-3 builds into the material from tritium permeation and radioactive decay. Material and forging specifications have been developed for optimal material compatibility with tritium. These specifications cover composition, mechanical properties, and select microstructural characteristics like grain size, flow-line orientation, inclusion content, and ferrite distribution. For many years, the forming process of choice for reservoir manufacturing was high-energy-rate forging (HERF), principally because the DOE forging facility owned only HERF hammers. Today, some reservoir forgings are being made that use a conventional, more common process known as press forging (PF or CF). One of the chief differences …

In this manuscript, conformal mapping is applied to a rib/channel domain of a polymer-electrolyte-fuel-cell diffusion medium. The analysis leads to the calculation of an effective diffusion-medium thickness, which can subsequently be used in 1-D simulations to account for the average rib/channel 2-D geometric effect. Extensions of the analysis to anisotropic and multilayer diffusion media are also given. Both equations and figures show the impact on a given variable at the catalyst layer of having a combined conducting/nonconducting boundary across from it.

Department of Energy (DOE) accident analysis for establishing the required control sets for nuclear facility safety applies a series of simplifying, reasonably conservative assumptions regarding inputs and methodologies for quantifying dose consequences. Most of the analytical practices are conservative, have a technical basis, and are based on regulatory precedent. However, others are judgmental and based on older understanding of phenomenology. The latter type of practices can be found in modeling hypothetical releases into the atmosphere and the subsequent exposure. Often the judgments applied are not based on current technical understanding but on work that has been superseded. The objective of this paper is to review the technical basis for the major inputs and assumptions in the quantification of consequence estimates supporting DOE accident analysis, and to identify those that could be reassessed in light of current understanding of atmospheric dispersion and radiological exposure. Inputs and assumptions of interest include: Meteorological data basis; Breathing rate; and Inhalation dose conversion factor. A simple dose calculation is provided to show the relative difference achieved by improving the technical bases.

A one-dimensional multiple wave-conversion model is constructed that allows energy recirculation in ray phase space. Using a modular eikonal approach, the connection coefficients for this model are calculated by ray phase-space methods. Analytical results (confirmed numerically) show that all connection coefficients exhibit interference effects that depend on an interference phase, calculated from the coupling constants and the area enclosed by the intersecting rays. This conceptual model, which focuses on the topology of intersecting rays in phase space, is used to investigate how mode conversion between primary and secondary waves is modified by the presence of a tertiary wave.

We find that the high-Z crystal Barium Iodide is readily growable by the Bridgman growth technique and is less prone to crack compared to Lanthanum Halides. We have grown Barium Iodide crystals: undoped, doped with Ce{sup 3+}, and doped with Eu{sup 2+}. Radioluminescence spectra and time-resolved decay were measured. BaI{sub 2}(Eu) exhibits luminescence from both Eu{sup 2+} at 420 nm ({approx}450 ns decay), and a broad band at 550 nm ({approx}3 {micro}s decay) that we assign to a trapped exciton. The 550 nm luminescence decreases relative to the Eu{sup 2+} luminescence when the Barium Iodide is zone refined prior to crystal growth. We also describe the performance of BaI{sub 2}(Eu) crystals in experimental scintillator detectors.

We present results on bulk thermodynamic quantities as well as net baryon number, strangeness and electric charge fluctuations in QCD at non-zero density and temperature obtained from lattice calculations with almost physical quark masses for two values of the lattice cut-off aT = 1/4 and 1/6. We show that with our improved p4fa3-action the cut-off effects are under control when using lattices with a temporal extent of 6 or larger and that the contribution to the equation of state, which is due to a finite chemical potential is small for {mu}{sub q}/T < 1. Moreover, at vanishing chemical potential, i.e. under conditions almost realized at RHIC and the LHC, quartic fluctuations of net baryon number and strangeness are large in a narrow temperature interval characterizing the transition region from the low to high temperature phase. At non-zero baryon number density, strangeness fluctuations are enhanced and correlated to fluctuations of the net baryon number. If strangeness is furthermore forced to vanish, as it may be the case in systems created in heavy ion collisions, strangeness fluctuations are significantly smaller than baryon number fluctuations.

Ceramic and single crystal Lutetium Aluminum Garnet scintillators exhibit energy resolution with bialkali photomultiplier tube detection as good as 8.6% at 662 keV. Ceramic fabrication allows production of garnets that cannot easily be grown as single crystals, such as Gadolinium Aluminum Garnet and Terbium Aluminum Garnet. Measured scintillation light yields of Cerium-doped ceramic garnets indicate prospects for high energy resolution.

We present results for meson masses and decay constants measured on 24{sup 3} x 64 lattices using the domain wall fermion formulation with an extension of the fifth dimension of L{sub s} = 16 for N{sub f} 2 + 1 dynamical quark flavors. The lightest dynamical meson mass in our set-up is around 331MeV. while partially quenched mesons reach masses as low as 250MeV. The applicability of SU(3) x SU(3) and SU(2) x SU(2) (partially quenched) chiral perturbation theory will be compared and we quote values for the low-energy constants from both approaches. We will extract the average light quark and strange quark masses and use a non-perturbative renormalization technique (RI/MOM) to quote their physical values. The pion and kaon decay constants are determined at those values from our chiral fits and their ratio is used to obtain the CKM-matrix element |V{sub us}|. The results presented here include statistical errors only.

We investigate correlation functions of the Polyakov loop and static mesodiquark systems with the chiral condensate and the quark number density at finite temperature. In particular the latter observable can give insight into the mechanism of screening and string breaking at finite temperature. We use for our analysis gauge field configurations generated in 2+1 flavor QCD with an improved staggered fermion action with almost physical light quark masses and a physical value of the strange quark mass on lattices with temporal extent N{sub {tau}} = 4 and 6.

A novel algorithm is developed for the simulation of polymer chains suspended in a solvent. The polymers are represented as chains of hard spheres tethered by square wells and interact with the solvent particles with hard core potentials. The algorithm uses event-driven molecular dynamics (MD) for the simulation of the polymer chain and the interactions between the chain beads and the surrounding solvent particles. The interactions between the solvent particles themselves are not treated deterministically as in event-driven algorithms, rather, the momentum and energy exchange in the solvent is determined stochastically using the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. The coupling between the solvent and the solute is consistently represented at the particle level, however, unlike full MD simulations of both the solvent and the solute, the spatial structure of the solvent is ignored. The algorithm is described in detail and applied to the study of the dynamics of a polymer chain tethered to a hard wall subjected to uniform shear. The algorithm closely reproduces full MD simulations with two orders of magnitude greater efficiency. Results do not confirm the existence of periodic (cycling) motion of the polymer chain.

An extensive set of covariances for neutron cross sections has been developed to provide initial, low-fidelity but consistent uncertainty data for nuclear criticality safety applications. The methodology for the determination of such covariances in fast neutron region is presented. It combines the nuclear reaction code EMPIRE, which calculates sensitivity to nuclear reaction model parameters and the Bayesian code KALMAN to propagate uncertainty of the model parameters onto cross sections. Taking into account the large scale of the project (219 fission products), only partial reference to experimental data has been made. Therefore, the covariances are, to a large extent, derived from the perturbation of several critical model parameters selected through the sensitivity analysis. They define optical potential, level densities and pre-equilibrium emission. This exercise represents the first attempt to generate nuclear data covariances on such a scale.

The development of high resolution, room temperature semiconductor radiation detectors requires the introduction of materials with increased carrier mobility-lifetime ({mu}{tau}) product, while having a band gap in the 1.4-2.2 eV range. AlSb is a promising material for this application. However, systematic improvements in the material quality are necessary to achieve an adequate {mu}{tau} product. We are using a combination of simulation and experiment to develop a fundamental understanding of the factors which affect detector material quality. First principles calculations are used to study the microscopic mechanisms of mobility degradation from point defects and to calculate the intrinsic limit of mobility from phonon scattering. We use density functional theory (DFT) to calculate the formation energies of native and impurity point defects, to determine their equilibrium concentrations as a function of temperature and charge state. Perturbation theory via the Born approximation is coupled with Boltzmann transport theory to calculate the contribution toward mobility degradation of each type of point defect, using DFT-computed carrier scattering rates. A comparison is made to measured carrier concentrations and mobilities from AlSb crystals grown in our lab. We find our predictions in good quantitative agreement with experiment, allowing optimized annealing conditions to be deduced. A major result …

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We study the sign problem of the fermion determinant at nonzero baryon chemical potential. For this purpose we apply a simple model derived from Quantum Chromodynamics, in the limit of large chemical potential and mass. For SU(2) color, there is no sign problem and the mean-field approximation is similar to data from the lattice. For SU(3) color the sign problem is unavoidable, even in a mean-field approximation. We apply a phase-reweighting method, combined with the mean-field approximation, to estimate thermodynamic quantities. We also investigate the meanfield free energy using a saddle-point approximation [1].

A brief summary of the Surrogate reaction method, an indirect approach for determining compound-nuclear reaction cross sections, is presented. The possibilities for obtaining accurate (n,f) cross sections from Surrogate measurements that are analyzed in the Weisskopf-Ewing and Ratio approximations are considered. Theoretical studies and benchmark experiments that provide new insights into the validity and limitations of the Surrogate approach, are discussed.

Prochlorococcus is a marine cyanobacterium that numerically dominates the mid-latitude oceans and is the smallest known oxygenic phototroph. Numerous isolatesfrom diverse areas of the world's oceans have been studied and shown to be physiologically and genetically distinct. All isolates described thus far can be assigned to either a tightly clustered high-light (HL)-adapted clade, or a more divergent low-light (LL)-adapted group. The 16S rRNA sequences of the entire Prochlorococcus group differ by at most 3percent, and the four initially published genomes revealed patterns of genetic differentiation that help explain physiological differences among the isolates. Here we describe the genomes of eight newly sequenced isolates and combine them with the first four genomes for a comprehensive analysis of the core (shared by all isolates) and flexible genes of the Prochlorococcus group, and the patterns of loss and gain of the flexible genes over the course of evolution. There are 1,273 genes that represent the core shared by all 12 genomes. They are apparently sufficient, according to metabolic reconstruction, to encode a functional cell. We describe a phylogeny for all 12 isolates by subjecting their complete proteomes to three different phylogenetic analyses. For each non-core gene, we used a maximum parsimony method to …

We study the phase structure of the four-dimensional twisted Eguchi-Kawai model using numerical simulations. This model is an effective tool for studying SU(N) gauge theory in the large-N limit and provides a nonperturbative formulation of the gauge theory on noncommutative spaces. Recently it was found that its Z{sub n}{sup 4} symmetry, which is crucial for the validity of this model, can break spontaneously in the intermediate coupling region. We investigate in detail the symmetry breaking point from the weak coupling side. Our simulation results show that the continuum limit of this model cannot be taken.

We discuss the calculations of quarkonium spectral functions in potential models and their implications for the interpretation of the lattice data on quarkonium correlators. In particular, we find that melting of different quarkonium states does not lead to significant change in the Euclidean time correlators. The large change of the quarkonium correlators above deconfinement observed in the scalar and axial-vector channels appears to be due to the zero mode contribution.

We compare two renormalization procedures, one based on the short distance behavior of heavy quark-antiquark free energies and the other by using bare Polyakov loops at different temporal entent of the lattice and find that both prescriptions are equivalent, resulting in renormalization constants that depend on the bare coupling. Furthermore these renormalization constants show Casimir scaling for higher representations of the Polyakov loops. The analysis of Polyakov loops in different representations of the color SU(3) group indicates that a simple perturbative inspired relation in terms of the quadratic Casimir operator is realized to a good approximation at temperatures T{approx}>{Tc}, for renormalized as well as bare loops. In contrast to a vanishing Polyakov loop in representations with non-zero triality in the confined phase, the adjoint loops are small but non-zero even for temperatures below the critical one. The adjoint quark-antiquark pairs exhibit screening. This behavior can be related to the binding energy of glue-lump states.