Current status of epidemiological studies of the late effects of internal radium in humans, and mechanistic investigations of those effects.

Quarterly report on activities of Argonne National Laboratory's Nuclear Technical Programs, including results of studies to measure the degradation of backfill materials after their exposure to temperature and humidity expected in high-level nuclear waste repositories.

The work described in this report represents research conducted in the first year of a three-year program to assess, characterize, and design thermoplastic piping for use in elevated-temperature district heating (DH) systems. The present report describes the results of a program to assess the potential usefulness of advanced thermoplastics as piping materials for use in DH systems.

Highlights of the Chemical Technology (CMT) Division's activities during 1985 are presented. In this period, CMT conducted research and development in areas that include advanced batteries--mainly lithium-alloy/metal sulfide and sodium/sulfur, advanced fuel cells with molten carbonate or solid oxide electrolytes, corrosion-protective coatings for high-strength steel, coal utilization, including the heat and seed recovery technology for coal-fired magnetohydrodynamics plants and the technology for fluidized-bed combustion, methodologies for recovery of energy from municipal waste nuclear technology related to waste management, the recovery processes for discharged fuel and the uranium blanket in a sodium-cooled fast reactor, and proof of breeding in a light water breeder reactor, and physical chemistry of selected materials in environments simulating those of fission and fusion energy systems.

An experimental study is reported to investigate the jump phenomenon in critical flow velocities for tube rows with different pitch-to-diameter ratios and the excited and intrinsic instabilities for a tube row with a pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.75. The experimental data provide additional insights into the instability phenomena of tube arrays in crossflow.

Results of environmental monitoring program conducted at Palos Park.

A data bank of field experiences with heat exchanger tube vibration reveals numerous cases of tube failures at, or near, the baffle. The objective of this study is to provide qualitative impact/fretting wear information for heat exchanger tubes through the performance of a series of tests involving the pertinent parameters: impact force level, between the tube and its support; tube to support plate hole clearance; tube support plate thickness; and tube vibration frequency. The characteristics of impact/fretting wear relative to tube motion pattern, material combination and surrounding fluid were also investigated. The test apparatus consists of a cantilevered tube with a simulated tube support plate at the ''free end''. Tube vibration is induced by an electromagnetic exciter to simulate the flow-induced tube motion occurring in a real heat exchanger at the tube/tube support plate interface. Tests are conducted in air, water, and oil, all at room temperature. Wear rate increases significantly with the magnitude of the impact force between the tube and its support plate; the degree and trend of the wear rates are highly dependent on the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the tube/support material combination; the rate of impact/fretting wear decreases with increasing frequency. An empirical formula is …

Tests and analysis are made for tubes conveying fluid for two types of support conditions. The objectives are to study the characteristics of different types of instability, the transition of one instability mechanism to another, and the control of instability.

This report describes a system designed to provide a portable environment for the study of automated reasoning. The system is built on the LMA automated reasoning subroutine package. This program is not part of LMA itself but illustrates the level of inference-based system that can be constructed from the LMA package of tools. It is a clause-based reasoning system supporting a wide variety of techniques which have proven valuable over the years in a long-running automated deduction research project. In addition, it is designed to present a convenient, interactive interface to its user.

This report develops a framework for a universe of discourse usable by such non-human experts. It is based on the idea that a design has many features of a contract and may be described as a contract between humans and a machine, defining what each must do to attain a goal. Several points are discussed: the use of techniques in analytical redundancy and their place as analogues in administrative control for conventional techniques in physical control; the use of redundant computer systems to protect against hardware faults; the necessity to prove properties of software used in redundant hardware, because software faults are common modes across redundant hardware; and some issues in choosing a programming language for provable control software. Because proof of correctness is costly, it should be used only where necessary. This report concludes that the degree of reliability needed by the plant model used in analytic redundancy protection need not be nearly as reliable as the mechanism to detect discrepancy between plant and model.

The mathematical development and numerical solution of the finite-difference equations are summarized. The report provides a guide for user application and details the programming structure of DIF3D. Guidelines are included for implementing the DIF3D export package on several large scale computers. Optimized iteration methods for the solution of large-scale fast-reactor finite-difference diffusion theory calculations are presented, along with their theoretical basis. The computational and data management considerations that went into their formulation are discussed. The methods utilized include a variant of the Chebyshev acceleration technique applied to the outer fission source iterations and an optimized block successive over-relaxation method for the within-group iterations. A nodal solution option intended for analysis of LMFBR designs in two- and three-dimensional hexagonal geometries is incorporated in the DIF3D package and is documented in a companion report, ANL-83-1.

Highlights of the Chemical Engineering (CEN) Division's activities during 1981 are presented. In this period, CEN conducted research and development in the following areas: rechargeable lithium-alloy/iron sulfide batteries for electric vehicles and other applications, aqueous batteries--improved lead-acid, nickel/zinc, and nickel/iron--for electric vehicles, as well as advanced lead-acid batteries for electric.-utility load leveling, energy-efficient industrial electrochemical processes, molten carbonate fuel cells for use by electric utilities, coal technology, mainly fluidized-bed combustion of coal in the presence of an SO2 sorbent of limestone, heat- and seed-recovery technology for open-cycle magnetohydrodynamic systems.

Quarterly report discussing fuel cell research and development work at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). This report describes efforts directed toward (1) improving understanding of component behavior in molten carbonate fuel cells and (2) developing alternative materials and concepts for components. The principal focus was changed during this period from the development of cathodes fabricated from NiO and electrolyte supports of sintered y-LiA102 to an investigation of NiO cathode dissolution and deposition and a search for alternative cathode materials.

This proceedings contains the summaries and contents of a number of papers presented at the 1982 NEANDC/NEACRP specialists meeting on fast-neutron capture cross sections. The table of contents has been summarized to provide a sketch of the topical matter.

As part of the Solar Reliability and Materials Program at Argonne National Laboratory, the atmospheric corrosion of candidate batten and enclosure materials were tested on outdoor racks parallel to the tilted solar-collected panels at nine National Solar Data Network (NSDN) sites, located in mild marine, mild industrial, and rural environments. The candidate materials evaluated include galvanized steel (G-90), aluminized steel (Type 2), aluminum (6061), and white polyester painted steel. Data analyses predicted that all the first three materials will last more than 20 years in the nine sites tested. However, repainting of the painted steel is probably needed within five years in a mild marine environment and five to ten years in a mild industrial or rural environment.

As part of the Solar Reliability and Materials Program at Argonne National Laboratory, metal corrosion associated with thermal cycling at 82 C circulating and 176 C stagnating temperatures of propylene glycol and ASTM corrosive water mixture (50% v/o) was investigated. Preliminary data indicate that in a mixed metal system of copper, steel, and aluminum specimens stagnating together in a glycol solution, the copper randomly pits and the pitting stops when the pit depth extends to about 1-1/2 mil. The addition of 1% molybdate as an inhibitor to the glycol solution is slightly beneficial for steel, but the added expense of adding and maintaining the concentration of an inhibitor may not be warranted. Dissolved copper rapidly deposits on the aluminum surface and promotes severe galvanic corrosion.

The TCLUST1 computer program was developed to study the transient thermal behavior of a subassembly of a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR) that is thermally coupled to its six neighboring subassemblies. Each of the seven subassemblies may be either a reflector subassembly, which contains a single solid hexagonal rod, or a pin-bundle subassembly. The TCLUST1 analytical model was developed based on conservation of energy, and the temperature distribution in the subassembly was obtained using the successive over-relaxation (SOR) technique. Measured temperatures obtained from a natural-convection flow test performed in EBR-II compare well with those predicted by TCLUST1. Appendixes describe the code input and go through a sample program.

The third volume of a series of reports containing the proceedings of the Focused Research Program on "Spectral Theory and Boundary Value Problems."

Since the early 1970s, extensive studies of fluid-elastic instability of circular cylinders in crossflow have been reported. A significant understanding of the phenomena involved now exists. However, some confusion, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation still remain. The objective of this report is to discuss, on the basis of the current state of the art, a series of the most asked questions. Emphasis is placed on the determination of the critical flow velocity, non-dimensional parameters, stability criteria, and instability mechanisms.

An analysis of the transient swelling rate of oxide fuel, based on fission-gas bubble conditions calculated with the FRAS3 code, has been developed and implemented in the code. The need for this capability arises in the coupling of the FRAS3 fission-gas analysis code to the FPIN fuel-pin mechanics code. An efficient means of closely coupling the calculations of swelling strains and stresses between the modules is required. The present analysis provides parameters that allow the FPIN calculation to proceed through a fairly large time step, using estimated swelling rates, to calculate the stresses. These stress values can then be applied in the FRAS3 detailed calculation to refine the swelling calculation, and to provide new values for the parameters to estimate the swelling in the next time step. The swelling rates were calculated for two representative transients and used to estimate swelling over a short time period for various stress levels.

Logic Machine Architecture (LMA) is a package of software tools for the construction of inference-based systems. This document is the reference manual for layer 2 of LMA. It contains the information necessary to write LMA-based systems at the level of layer 3. Such systems include theorem provers, reasoning components for expert systems, and customized deduction components for a variety of application systems.

This report describes the current state of the utility subroutine package used with codes being developed by the staff of the Applied Physics Division. The package provides a variety of useful functions for BCD input processing, dynamic core-storage allocation and management, binary I/O and data manipulation. The routines were written to conform to coding standards which facilitate the exchange of programs between different computers.

This report contains an elastic stress and displacement analysis of a prismatic cell can subjected to internal pressure. A computer program was written to perform the analysis. The results show that, for the geometry chosen, the thicknesses of the cell-can walls and the magnitude of the internal pressure are the most important parameters that determine the stresses and deformations of the cell can. Recommendations for future studies are included.

A summary for 1979 of Argonne National Laboratory's program on the development of advanced batteries is presented. These batteries are being developed for electric-vehicle propulsion and stationary energy-storage applications. The principal cells under investigation at present are of a vertically oriented, prismatic design with one or more inner positive electrodes of FeS or FeS2, facing negative electrodes of Li-Al alloy, and molten LiCl-KCl electrolyte; the cell operating temperature is 400 to 500 degrees C. A small effort on the development of a calcium/metal sulfide cell is also being conducted.