The purpose of this project was to demonstrate a practical, environmentally benigh technology for the surface decontamination and decommissioning of radioactive waste. A low temperature, atmospheric pressure plasma has been developed with initial support from the DOE, Environmental Management Sciences Program. This devise selectively etches radioactive metals from surfaces, rendering objects radiation free and suitable for decommissioning. The volatile reaction products are captured on filters, which yields a tremendous reduction in the volume of the waste. The technology shows a great potential for accelerating the clean-up effort for the equipment and structures contaminated with radioactive materials within the DOE complex. The viability of this technology has been demonstrated by selectively and rapidly stripping uranium from stainless steel surfaces at low temperature. Studies on uranium oxide have shown that etch rates of 4.0 microns per minute can be achieved at temperature below 473 K. Over the past three years, we have made numerous improvements in the design of the atmospheric pressure plasma source. We are now able to scale up the plasma source to treat large surface areas.

Two new Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) groundwater monitoring wells were installed at single-shell tank Waste Management Area (WMA) A-AX in fiscal year 2003 to fulfill commitments for well installations proposed in the draft Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order M-24-00. Well 299-E24-22 has been installed upgradient and well 299-E25-93 downgradient of the WMA. Specific objectives for these wells include monitoring the impact, if any, that potential releases from inside the WMA may have on current groundwater conditions (i.e., improved network coverage); differentiating upgradient groundwater contamination from contaminants released at the WMA; and improving the determination of groundwater flow direction (i.e., improved water table determinations). This report supplies the information obtained during drilling, characterization, and installation of the two new groundwater monitoring wells, 299-E25-93 and 299-E24-22. This document also provides a compilation of hydrogeologic and well construction information obtained during drilling, well construction, well development, pump installation, aquifer testing, and sample collection/analysis activities.

This is one report in the series of reports that discuss the campaign finance practices and related issues. Concerns over financing federal elections have become a seemingly perennial aspect of our political system, centered on the enduring issues of high campaign costs and reliance on interest groups for needed campaign funds. The report talks about the today’s paramount issues such as perceived loopholes in current law and the longstanding issues: overall costs, funding sources, and competition.

The Defense Waste Processing Facility's first melter operated continuously for more than eight years. In November 2002 it was decided to replace the melter. As part of the decommissioning and replacement of the first DWPF melter, three samples were collected from the melter, one from the melter surface and two from the core sampler. The melter samples were analyzed for chemical composition and crystal content.

This Annual Technical Progress Report presents the principle results in enhanced growth of algae using coal combustion products as a catalyst to increase bicarbonate levels in solution. A co-current reactor is present that increases the gas phase to bicarbonate transfer rate by a factor of five to nine. The bicarbonate concentration at a given pH is approximately double that obtained using a control column of similar construction. Algae growth experiments were performed under laboratory conditions to obtain baseline production rates and to perfect experimental methods. The final product of this initial phase in algae production is presented. Algal growth can be limited by several factors, including the level of bicarbonate available for photosynthesis, the pH of the growth solution, nutrient levels, and the size of the cell population, which determines the available space for additional growth. In order to supply additional CO2 to increase photosynthesis and algal biomass production, fly ash reactor has been demonstrated to increase the available CO2 in solution above the limits that are achievable with dissolved gas alone. The amount of dissolved CO2 can be used to control pH for optimum growth. Periodic harvesting of algae can be used to maintain algae in the exponential, rapid …

Conservation Research and Development/New Ultra-Low Carbon High Strength Steels with Improved Bake Hardenability for Enhanced Stretch Formability and Dent Resistance. The experimental work can be divided into four phases. In each phase, the materials were received or designed, processed and tested, to evaluate the BH increment or response, as a function of compositions and processing conditions. Microstructural characterization by various techniques was performed in order to gain insights into the mechanisms of flow stress increment by bake hardening.

Many states have devoted significant efforts to respond to the desire for home and community-based care for persons with disabilities and their families. Nevertheless, financing of nursing home care, chiefly by Medicaid, still dominates most states’ spending for long-term care today. To assist Congress in understanding issues that states face in providing long-term care services, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) undertook a study of 10 states in 2002. This report, one in a series of 10 state reports, presents background and analysis about long-term care in Indiana.

An Autonomous Pathogen Detection System (APDS) unit is an automated, podium-sized system that monitors the air for all three biological threat agents (bacteria, viruses, and toxins). The system has been developed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy and Department of Homeland Security by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to protect people in critical or high-traffic facilities and at special events. The system performs continuous aerosol collection, sample preparation, and multiplexed biological tests using advanced immunoassays as the primary screen. Over ten agents are assayed at once, and results are reported hourly. R&D work this year focused on incorporating polymerase chain-reaction (PCR) techniques for detecting DNA as confirmation of immunoassay positives. The primary objective of the Dugway testing was to demonstrate the APDS with immunoassay identification and PCR confirmation of bacteria. A secondary objective was to demonstrate immunoassay identification of a protein toxoid (denatured toxin) aerosol release. A total of 12 agent trials were conducted over 14 days of testing, for a total of four work weeks at Dugway. Both testing objectives were achieved with multiple releases and clear identifications. The APDS was shown to be effective for identifying aerosolized Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia …

This effort attempts to demonstrate that environmentally acceptable energetic sol-gel coated flash metal multilayer nanocomposites can be used to replace current impact initiated devices (IIDs) which have hazardous and toxic components. Successful completion of this project will result in IIDs that include innocuous compounds, have sufficient output energy for initiation, meet current military specifications, are small, cost competitive, and perform as well as or better than current devices. We expect flash metal multilayer and sol-gel to be generic technologies applicable to a wide range of devices, especially in small caliber ammunition and sub-munitions. We will replace the NOL-130 mixture with a nanocomposite that consists of a mechanically robust energetic multilayer foil that has been coated with a sol-gel energetic material. The exothermic reactions are activated in this nanocomposite are the transformation of the multilayer material to its respective intermetallic alloy and the thermite reaction, which is characterized by very high temperatures, a small pressure pulse, and hot particle ejection. The proposed materials and their reaction products consist of, but are not limited to aluminum, nickel, iron, aluminum oxide, titanium, iron oxide and boron. These materials have much more desirable environmental and health characteristics than the NOL-130 composition.

A recent study of evaporation technologies for treating F- and H-area groundwater contaminated with radionuclides and metals (Flach 2002) suggested that spray evaporation might be a viable alternative or supplemental technique for managing tritiated groundwater at the Mixed Waste Management Facility. The particular technology of interest in this study is the Slimline Manufacturing Ltd. Turbo-Mist Evaporator, which uses a powerful blower and high-pressure spray nozzles to propel a fine mist into the air at high air and water flowrates.

Hanford has 149 single-shell high level waste (HLW) tanks that were constructed between 1943 and 1964. Many of these tanks have leaked or are suspected of leaking HLW into the soil above the ground water. Consequently, a major effort is ongoing to transfer the liquid portion of the waste to the 28 newer, double-shell tanks. Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was tasked to develop grout formulations for the three-layer closure concept selected by CH2M HILL for closing Tank C-106. These grout formulations were also evaluated for use as fill materials in the next six tanks scheduled to be closed. The overall scope consisted of both bench-scale testing to confirm mix designs and scale-up testing to confirm placement properties. This report provides results of the scale-up testing for the three-phase tank closure strategy. It also contains information on grouts for equipment and riser filling. The three-phase fill strategy is summarized as follows: Phase I fill encapsulates and minimizes dispersion of the residual waste in the tank. This fill is referred to as the Stabilization Layer and consists of the Stabilization Grout. The Phase II fill provides structural stability to the tank system and prevents subsidence. It is referred to as the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government is increasingly using online applications to provide access to information and services and to conduct internal business operations. In light of this trend, strong security assurances are needed to properly safeguard sensitive, personal, and financial data, in part by ensuring that the identities of those who use such applications are appropriately authenticated. When fully and properly implemented, public key infrastructure (PKI) offers many of these assurances. In 2001, GAO reported that the federal government faces a number of challenges in deploying PKI technology (GAO-01-277). GAO was requested to follow up this work by (1) determining the status of federal PKI activities, including initiatives planned or under way at 24 major federal departments and agencies, as well as the status and planned activities of the Federal Bridge Certification Authority (FBCA) and Access Certificates for Electronic Services (ACES) programs, and (2) identifying challenges encountered by the 24 agencies in implementing PKI initiatives since the 2001 report was issued. In commenting on a draft of this report, GSA and OMB officials generally agreed with its content and conclusions. Technical comments provided by OMB have been addressed …

This report includes information regarding United States foreign assistance to Israel. Current aid issues, special benefits, and Israel's debt to the United States government are among topics discussed in this report.

An overview of Run I jet physics at the p{bar p} Fermilab Tevatron Collider with a particular emphasis on inclusive jet cross section measurements is given. The impact of these studies on PDFs constrain from global fits is underlined. Preliminary results on inclusive jet and di-jet mass cross section measurements in Run II are then summarized.

We report on an effort to develop methodologies for formal verification of parts of the Multi-Purpose Daemon (MPD) parallel process management system. MPD is a distributed collection of communicating processes. While the individual components of the collection execute simple algorithms, their interaction leads to unexpected errors that are difficult to uncover by conventional means. Two verification approaches are discussed here: the standard model checking approach using the software model checker SPIN and the nonstandard use of a general-purpose first-order resolution-style theorem prover OTTER to conduct the traditional state space exploration. We compare modeling methodology and analyze performance and scalability of the two methods with respect to verification of MPD.

The purpose of this investigation was to obtain baseline groundwater concentrations for naturally occurring stable isotopes of Sr, I, Cs, and Co in shallow aquifers at the Savannah River Site. These data are necessary to fully understand migration and remediation of 90Sr, 129I, 137Cs, and 60Co. Fourteen P-wells were selected and sampled based on their close proximity to facilities, available water table and Gordon aquifer wells, and archived core. This report provides the analytical results from the groundwater sampling and core leaching studies. Several radioactive contaminants have naturally occurring counterparts that are non-radioactive, but have chemical behavior that is identical to the radioactive contaminants. These naturally occurring isotopes are typically present in groundwater at mass concentrations that are orders of magnitude greater than their associated radionuclides. A consequence of this is that the natural constituents compete for adsorption and cation exchange site s with their radioactive counterparts, reducing retardation of the radioactive species. Hence, the concentrations of these natural species are important to the modeling of monitored natural attenuation, performance assessments, and other regulatory documents that require a fate and transport analysis.

We consider supersymmetric models where the scale of supersymmetry breaking lies between 5 x 10{sup 6} GeV and 5 x 10{sup 8} GeV. In this class of theories, which includes models of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, the lightest supersymmetric particle is the gravitino. The next to lightest supersymmetric particle is typically a long lived charged slepton with a lifetime between a microsecond and a second, depending on its mass. Collisions of high energy neutrinos with nucleons in the earth can result in the production of a pair of these sleptons. Their very high boost means they typically decay outside the earth. We investigate the production of these particles by the diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos, and the potential for their observation in large ice or water Cerenkov detectors. The relatively small cross-section for the production of supersymmetric particles is partially compensated for by the very long range of heavy particles. The signal in the detector consists of two parallel charged tracks emerging from the earth about 100 meters apart, with very little background. A detailed calculation using the Waxman-Bahcall limit on the neutrino flux and realistic spectra shows that km{sup 3} experiments could see as many as 4 events …

Schemes for encrypted key exchange are designed to provide two entities communicating over a public network, and sharing a (short) password only, with a session key to be used to achieve data integrity and/or message confidentiality. An example of a very efficient and ''elegant'' scheme for encrypted key exchange considered for standardization by the IEEE P1363 Standard working group is AuthA. This scheme was conjectured secure when the symmetric-encryption primitive is instantiated via either a cipher that closely behaves like an ''ideal cipher,'' or a mask generation function that is the product of the message with a hash of the password. While the security of this scheme in the former case has been recently proven, the latter case was still an open problem. For the first time we prove in this paper that this scheme is secure under the assumptions that the hash function closely behaves like a random oracle and that the computational Diffie-Hellman problem is difficult. Furthermore, since Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks have become a common threat we enhance AuthA with a mechanism to protect against them.

To summarize, polycrystalline ZnO thin films were grown by reactive sputtering. Nitrogen was introduced into the films by reactive sputtering in an NO{sub 2} plasma or by N{sup +} implantation. All ZnO films grown show n-type conductivity. In unintentionally doped ZnO films, the n-type conductivities are attributed to Zn{sub i}, a native shallow donor. In NO{sub 2}-grown ZnO films, the n-type conductivity is attributed to (N{sub 2}){sub O}, a shallow double donor. In NO{sub 2}-grown ZnO films, 0.3 atomic % nitrogen was found to exist in the form of N{sub 2}O and N{sub 2}. Upon annealing, N{sub 2}O decomposes into N{sub 2} and O{sub 2}. In furnace-annealed samples N{sub 2} redistributes diffusively and forms gaseous N{sub 2} bubbles in the films. Unintentionally doped ZnO films were grown at different oxygen partial pressures. Zni was found to form even at oxygen-rich condition and led to n-type conductivity. N{sup +} implantation into unintentionally doped ZnO film deteriorates the crystallinity and optical properties and leads to higher electron concentration. The free electrons in the implanted films are attributed to the defects introduced by implantation and formation of (N{sub 2}){sub O} and Zni. Although today there is still no reliable means to produce good …

We present a numerical algorithm to simulate non-Newtonian flow in complex microdevice components. The model consists of continuum viscoelastic incompressible flow in irregular microscale geometries. Our numerical approach is the projection method of Bell, Colella and Glaz (BCG) to impose the incompressibility constraint coupled with the polymeric stress splitting discretization of Trebotich, Colella and Miller (TCM). In this approach we exploit the hyperbolic structure of the equations of motion to achieve higher resolution in the presence of strong gradients and to gain an order of magnitude in the timestep. We also extend BCG and TCM to an embedded boundary method to treat irregular domain geometries which exist in microdevices. Our method allows for particle representation in a continuum fluid. We present preliminary results for incompressible viscous flow with comparison to flow of DNA and simulants in microchannels and other components used in chem/bio microdevices.

The 1992-1995 running of the Fermilab Tevatron (the so-called Run 1) ended with many important physics goals accomplished, including the discovery of the top quark, and the anticipation of many further questions be to answered in the future. In March 2002, after many detector upgrades by both the CDF and D0 experiments, and significant upgrades of the accelerator itself, the Tevatron Run 2 began (after a detector commissioning run) with the ultimate goal of discovering the Higgs boson. Here, we will highlight some important Run 1 results from CDF in the areas of top quark and Higgs boson physics, show some preliminary studies from Run 2, and give some expectations of what Run 2 will ultimately provide to our understanding of matter.

This study lays out the historical development of the time frame for a low-level waste disposal facility to demonstrate compliance with the DOE performance objectives and requirements. The study recommends that 1,000 years should be used as the time for compliance for all of the performance objectives and requirements (i.e., for the all-pathways, air pathway, radon emanation, water resource protection and inadvertent intruder analyses) for all low-level waste disposal facility performance assessments at the Savannah River Site.

Arcing is a well-known, unwanted discharge regime observed on the surface of sputtering targets. The discharge voltage breaks down to less than 50 V while the current jumps to elevated levels. Arcing is unwanted because it prevents uniform deposition and creates particulates. The issue of arcing has been dealt with by target surface conditioning and by using modern power supplies that have arc suppression incorporated. With increasing quality requirements in terms of uniformity of coatings, and absence of particulates, especially for electrochromic and other advanced coatings applications, the issue of arcing warrants a closer examination with the goal to find other, physics-based, and hopefully better approaches of arcing prevention. From a physics point of view, the onset of arcing is nothing else than the transition of the discharge to a cathodic arc mode, which is characterized by the ignition of non-stationary arc spots. Arc spots operate by a sequence of microexplosions, enabling explosive electron emission, as opposed to secondary electron emission. Arc spots and their fragments have a size distribution in the micrometer and sub-micrometer range, and a characteristic time distribution that has components shorter than microseconds. Understanding the ignition conditions of arc spots are of central physical interest. Spot …

The Picosecond Laser-Electron Inter-Action for the Dynamic Evaluation of Structures (PLEIADES) facility, is a unique, novel, tunable (10-200 keV), ultrafast (ps-fs), hard x-ray source that greatly extends the parameter range reached by existing 3rd generation sources, both in terms of x-ray energy range, pulse duration, and peak brightness at high energies. First light was observed at 70 keV early in 2003, and the experimental data agrees with 3D codes developed at LLNL. The x-rays are generated by the interaction of a 50 fs Fourier-transform-limited laser pulse produced by the TW-class FALCON CPA laser and a highly focused, relativistic (20-100 MeV), high brightness (1 nC, 0.3-5 ps, 5 mm.mrad, 0.2% energy spread) photo-electron bunch. The resulting x-ray brightness is expected to exceed 10{sup 20} ph/mm{sup 2}/s/mrad{sup 2}/0.1% BW. The beam is well-collimated (10 mrad divergence over the full spectrum, 1 mrad for a single color), and the source is a unique tool for time-resolved dynamic measurements in matter, including high-Z materials.