A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As the Department of Defense's (DOD) most expensive aircraft program, and its largest international program, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has the potential to significantly affect the worldwide defense industrial base. As currently planned, it will cost an estimated $245 billion for DOD to develop and procure about 2,400 JSF aircraft and related support equipment by 2027. In addition, the program expects international sales of 2,000 to 3,500 aircraft. If the JSF comes to dominate the market for tactical aircraft as DOD expects, companies that are not part of the program could see their tactical aircraft business decline. Although full rate production of the JSF is not projected to start until 2013, contracts awarded at this point in the program will provide the basis for future awards. GAO was asked to determine the limits on and extent of foreign involvement in the JSF supplier base. To do this, GAO (1) determined how the Buy American Act and the Preference for Domestic Specialty Metals clause apply to the JSF development phase and the extent of foreign subcontracting on the program and (2) identified the data available to …

BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of May 3, 2004. The document has is redacted and includes the Proposed New IJCSG Military Value Score Plan brief (PowerPoint slides).

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Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to granting permission to adjourn from April 20 to April 27, 2004.

We report on the development of a new technique for the measurement of the longitudinal beam profile in storage rings. This technique, which has been successfully demonstrated at the Advanced Light Source, mixes the synchrotron radiation with the light from a mode-locked solid state laser oscillator in a non-linear crystal. The up-converted radiation is then detected with a photomultiplier and processed to extract, store, and display the required information. The available choices of laser repetition frequency, pulse width, and phase modulation give a wide range of options for matching the bunch configuration of a particular storage ring. Besides the dynamic measurement of the longitudinal profile of each bunch, the instrument can monitor the evolution of the bunch tails, the presence of untrapped particles and their diffusion into nominally empty RF buckets (''ghostbunches'').

This paper describes an analytical technique developed to predict an order of magnitude volume of moisture accumulation in massive structures after deactivation. This work was done to support deactivation of a Department of Energy nuclear materials processing facility. The structure is a four-story, concrete building with a rectangular footprint that is approximately 250m long by 37m wide by 22m high. Its walls are 1.2m thick. The building will be supplied with unconditioned ventilation air after deactivation. The objective of the work was to provide a cost effective engineering evaluation to determine if the un-conditioned ventilation air would result in condensate accumulating inside the building under study. The analysis described is a simple representation of a complex problem. The modeling method is discussed in sufficient detail to allow its application to the study of similar structures.

Previous computational work to evaluate erosion in the DWPF Slurry Mix Evaporator vessel has been extended to address the potential for the erosion to accelerate because of changes to the tank bottom profile. The same erosion mechanism identified in the previous work, abrasive erosion driven by high wall shear stress, was applied to the current evaluation. The current work extends the previous analysis by incorporating the observed changes to the tank bottom and coil support structure in the vicinity of the coil guides. The results show that wall shear on the tank bottom is about the same magnitude as found in previous results. Shear stresses in the eroded cavities are reduced compared to those that caused the initial erosion to the extent that anticipated continued erosion of those locations is minimal. If SR operations were continued at an agitator speed of 130 rpm, the edge of the existing eroded cavities would probably smooth out, while the rate of erosion at the bottom of the cavity would decrease significantly with time. Further, reducing the agitator speed to 103 rpm will reduce shear stresses throughout the bottom region of the tank enough to essentially preclude any significant continued erosion. Because this report …

The fill pattern in proton synchrotrons usually features an empty gap, longer than the abort kicker raise time, for machine protection. This gap is referred to as the ''abort gap'' and any particles, which may accumulate in it due to injection errors and diffusion between RF buckets, would be lost inside the ring, rather than in the beam dump, during the kicker firing. In large proton rings, due to the high energies involved, it is vital to monitor the build up of charges in the abort gap with a high sensitivity. We present a study of an abort gap monitor based on a photomultiplier with a gated microchannel plate, which would allow for detecting low charge densities by monitoring the synchrotron radiation emitted. We show results of beam test experiments at the Advanced Light Source using a Hamamatsu 5916U MCP-PMT and compare them to the specifications for the Large Hadron Collider

This note describes a simple beam line to transport H{sup -} beam from the end of the Fermilab 400 MeV Linac to the MuCool Test Area (MTA). The design uses existing dipoles and quadrupoles and other equipment now available at Fermilab. Deflection of single 15 Hz beam pulses from the Linac to the MTA is accomplished using pulsed magnets that are essentially Main Injector trim dipoles with thinner laminations. The beam size is kept small to control beam losses and allow the use of existing surplus or spare equipment. An upgrade of the beam line to illuminate larger objects at high intensity is described.

The objective of this report is to establish a ''single point'' sulfate solubility limit or constraint for the Frit 418 - Sludge Batch 2/3 (SB2/3) system. Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that the glass limit in the Product Composition Control System (PCCS) for the Frit 418 - SB2/3 system be set at 0.60 wt%. The new limit has been set based solely on sealed crucible scale data and does not take credit or account for potential volatilization that may occur in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) melter. Although the limit is established based on sealed crucible scale tests, supplementary testing using the Slurry-Fed Melt Rate Furnace (SMRF) provides a measure of confidence that applying the 0.6 wt% limit in PCCS will prevent the formation of a salt layer in the melter. The critical data point that was used to define the solubility limit for this system was from a ''spiked'' 30% waste loading (WL) glass targeting 0.65 wt%. The measured content in this glass was 0.62 wt%. Applying the Savannah River Technology Center - Mobile Laboratory (SRTCML) inductively coupled plasma (ICP) atomic emission spectroscopy (AES) uncertainties to establish a solubility limit for the Frit …

This report presents the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to qualitative estimate of the erosion phenomena expected in the actual Slurry Mixer Evaporator (SME) and MFT (Melter Feed Tank) process facilities by calculating erosion drivers. Using the transport equations governing the slurry flow, two erosion mechanisms were considered to evaluate high erosion sites and to investigate the primary cause of erosion damage for the modeling domain representative of the actual mixing process in the SME/MFT vessels. One of the two erosion mechanisms is the abrasive erosion which is worn by high wall shear of viscous liquid or by continuous contact or low-angle collision of the moving solids with rough surface, and the other is the chip-off erosion which is mainly governed by high-angle impingement of particles. Ductile wall material such as stainless steel is damaged by wall mechanism when particles are impinged on the ductile surface of the present coil guide geometry with wide-open space and no closed- and curved-flow path. The previous results show that the primary locations of high erosion due to particle impingement are at the occurrence of sudden change of flow direction, sudden contraction, and flow obstruction.

In support of an erosion evaluation for the modified cooling coil guide and its supporting structure in the DWPF SME vessel, a computational model was developed to identify potential sites of high erosion using the same methodology established by previous work. The erosion mechanism identified in the previous work was applied to the evaluation of high erosion locations representative of the actual flow process in the modified coil guide of the SME vessel, abrasive erosion which occurs by high wall shear of viscous liquid. The results show that primary locations of the highest erosion due to the abrasive wall erosion are at the leading edge of the guide, external surface of the insert plate, the tank floor next to the insert plate of the coil guide support, and the upstream lead-in plate. The present modeling results show a good comparison between the original and the modified cases in terms of high erosion sites, as well as the degree of erosion and the calculated shear stress. Wall she ar of the tank floor is reduced by about 30 per cent because of the new coil support plate. Calculations for the impeller speed lower than 103 rpm in the SME showed similar …

This paper presents an overview of the licensing process for a Yucca Mountain repository for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. The paper discusses the steps in the licensing proceeding, the roles of the participants, the licensing and hearing requirements contained in the Code of Federal Regulations. A description of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff acceptance and compliance reviews of the Department of Energy (DOE) application for a construction authorization and a license to receive and possess high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel is provided. The paper also includes a detailed description of the hearing process.

Global warming, promoted by anthropogenic CO{sub 2} emission into the atmosphere, is partially mitigated by the photosynthesis processes of the terrestrial echo systems that act as atmospheric CO{sub 2} scrubbers and sequester carbon in soil. Switching from till to no till soils management practices in agriculture further augments this process. Carbon sequestration is also advanced by putting forward a carbon ''credit'' system whereby these can be traded between CO{sub 2} producers and sequesters. Implementation of carbon ''credit'' trade will be further promulgated by recent development of a non-destructive in situ carbon monitoring system based on inelastic neutron scattering (INS). Volumes and depth distributions defined by the 0.1, 1.0, 10, 50, and 90 percent neutron isofluxes, from a point source located at either 5 or 30 cm above the surface, were estimated using Monte Carlo calculations.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Charge state distributions (CSDs) have been determined in low density ({approx}10 {sup 12} cm{sup -3}) gold plasmas having either a monoenergetic beam (E{sub Beam} = 2.66, 3.53 and 4.54 keV) or experimentally simulated thermal electron distributions (T{sub e} = 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 keV). These plasmas were created in the Livermore electron beam ion traps EBIT-I and EBIT-II. Line emission and radiative recombination features of Ni to Kr-like gold ions were recorded in the x-ray region with a crystal spectrometer and a photometrically calibrated microcalorimeter. The CSDs in the experimentally simulated thermal plasmas were inferred by fitting the observed 4f{yields}3d and 5f{yields}3d lines with synthetic spectra from the Hebrew University Lawrence Livermore Atomic Code (HULLAC). Additionally, the CSDs in the beam plasmas were inferred both from fitting the line emission and fitting the radiative recombination emission to calculations from the General Relativistic Atomic Structure Program (GRASP). Despite the relatively simple atomic physics in the low density plasma, differences existed between the experimental CSDs and the simulations from several available codes (e.g. RIGEL). Our experimental CSD relied upon accurate electron impact cross sections provided by HULLAC. To determine their reliability, we have experimentally determined the cross sections for several of the …

The largest source of uncertainty in estimates of the radiative forcing governing climate change is in the radiative forcing due to anthropogenic aerosols. Current estimates of the global mean of the aerosol radiative forcing range from –0.3 to –3.0 watts per square meter (Wm-2 ) which is opposite in sign and possibly comparable in magnitude to the +2 Wm-2 forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases. We have developed a global aerosol and climate modeling system that provides arguably the most detailed treatment of aerosols and their impact on the planetary radiation balance of any model, but our estimates of radiative forcing have been hindered by our lack of access to high performance computing resources. We propose to use the MSCF to conduct a series of simulations with and without emissions of a variety of aerosol particles and aerosol precursors. These extensive simulations will enable us to produce much more refined estimates of the impact of anthropogenic emissions on radiative forcing of climate change. To take full advantage of the parallelism available on the MSCF MPP1, we will apply the Global Array Toolkit to dynamically load balance the reactive chemistry component of our model. We will adapt our modifications of the …

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Weekly newspaper from Alvin, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The major goal of the project was to study the effect of critical fluctuations on the thermophysical properties and phase behavior of fluids and fluid mixtures. Long-range fluctuations appear because of the presence of critical phase transitions. A global theory of critical fluctuations was developed and applied to represent thermodynamic properties and transport properties of molecular fluids and fluid mixtures. In the second phase of the project, the theory was extended to deal with critical fluctuations in complex fluids such as polymer solutions and electrolyte solutions. The theoretical predictions have been confirmed by computer simulations and by light-scattering experiments. Fluctuations in fluids in nonequilibrium states have also been investigated.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This project develops a new and unique obstacle detection sensor for horizontal directional drilling (HDD) equipment. The development of this new technology will greatly improve the reliability and safety of natural gas HDD construction practices. This sensor utilizes a differential soil impedance measurement technique that will be sensitive to the presence of plastic and ceramic, as well as metallic obstacles. The use of HDD equipment has risen significantly in the gas industry because HDD provides a much more cost-effective and less disruptive method for gas pipe installation than older, trenching methods. However, there have been isolated strikes of underground utilities by HDD equipment, which may have been avoided if methods were available to detect other underground obstacles when using HDD systems. GTI advisors from the gas industry have ranked the value of solving the obstacle detection problem as the most important research and development project for GTI to pursue using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) funds available through its industry partner, GRI. GTI proposes to develop a prototype down-hole sensor system that is simple and compact. The sensor utilizes an impedance measurement technique that is sensitive to the presence of metallic or nonmetallic objects in the proximity of the HDD …

The Analytical Development Section of Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) was requested to determine the holdup of enriched uranium in a facility as part of an overall deactivation project of the facility. The facility was used to fabricate enriched uranium fuel assemblies, lithium-aluminum target tubes, neptunium assemblies, and miscellaneous components for the production reactors. The results of the holdup assays are essential for determining compliance with the Waste Acceptance Criteria, Material Control and Accountability, and to meet criticality safety controls. This report covers calibration of the detectors in order to support holdup measurements in the out-gassing ovens. These ovens were used to remove gas entrained in billet assembly material prior to the billets being extruded into rods by the extrusion press. A portable high purity germanium detection system was used to determine highly enriched uranium (HEU) holdup and to determine holdup of U-235, Np-237, and Am-24 1 that were observed in these components. The detector system was run by an EG and G system that contains the high voltage power supply and signal processing electronics. A personal computer with Gamma-Vision software was used to control and provide space to store and manipulate multiple channel spectra. The measured Np-237 and Am-241 …

This paper presents a Leak Path Factor (LPF) analysis for a postulated fire accident on a building containing plutonium powder when the resulting outside release is partly through the ventilation/filtration system and partly through other pathways such as building access doorways. When analyzing an accident scenario involving the release of radioactive powders inside a building, various pathways for the release to the outside environment can exist. This study is presented to show how the multiple building leak path factors (combination of filtered and unfiltered releases) can be evaluated in an integrated manner to assess the magnitude of the source term to be used in the consequence analysis. The core of the analysis is to calculate the leak path factor, which represents the fraction of respirable radioactive powder that is made airborne that leaves the building through the various pathways. The computer code of choice for this determination is MELCOR1. The analysis results can be used for the transport and dispersion of powder material released to the atmosphere and to estimate the resulting dose that is received by the downwind receptors of interest. This work can be used as model for performing analyses for systems similar in nature where releases can …