The Saltstone Facility at Savannah River Site (SRS) mixes low-level radiological liquid waste with grout for permanent disposal as cement in vault cells. The grout mixture is poured into each cell in approximately 17 batches (8 to 10 hours duration). The grout mixture contains ten flammable gases of concern that are released from the mixture into the cell. Prior to operations, simple parametric transient calculations were performed to develop batch parameters (including schedule of batch pours) to support operational efficiency while ensuring that a flammable gas mixture does not develop in the cell vapor space. The analysis demonstrated that a nonflammable vapor space environment can be achieved, with workable operational constraints, without crediting the ventilation flow as a safety system control. Isopar L was identified as the primary flammable gas of concern. The transient calculations balanced inflows of the flammable gases into the vapor space with credited outflows of diurnal breathing through vent holes and displacement from new grout pours and gases generated. Other important features of the analyses included identifying conditions that inhibited a well-mixed vapor space, the expected frequency and duration of such conditions, and the estimated level of stratification that could develop.

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While historically hydrogen has been considered an impurity in titanium, when used as a temporary alloying agent it promotes beneficial changes to material properties that increase the hot-workability of the metal. This technique known as thermohydrogen processing was used to temporarily alloy hydrogen with commercially pure titanium sheet as a means of facilitating the friction stir welding process. Specific alloying parameters were developed to increase the overall hydrogen content of the titanium sheet ranging from commercially pure to 30 atomic percent. Each sheet was evaluated to determine the effect of the hydrogen content on process loads and tool deformation during the plunge phase of the friction stir welding process. Two materials, H-13 tool steel and pure tungsten, were used to fabricate friction stir welding tools that were plunged into each of the thermohydrogen processed titanium sheets. Tool wear was characterized and variations in machine loads were quantified for each tool material and weld metal combination. Thermohydrogen processing was shown to beneficially lower plunge forces and stabilize machine torques at specific hydrogen concentrations. The resulting effects of hydrogen addition to titanium metal undergoing the friction stir welding process are compared with modifications in titanium properties documented in modern literature. Such comparative …

New single-family home construction represents a significant and important market for the introduction of energy-efficient gas-fired space heating and water-heating equipment. In the new construction market, the choice of furnace and water-heater type is primarily driven by first cost considerations and the availability of power vent and condensing water heaters. Few analysis have been performed to assess the economic impacts of the different combinations of space and water-heating equipment. Thus, equipment is often installed without taking into consideration the potential economic and energy savings of installing space and water-heating equipment combinations. In this study, we use a life-cycle cost analysis that accounts for uncertainty and variability of the analysis inputs to assess the economic benefits of gas furnace and water-heater design combinations. This study accounts not only for the equipment cost but also for the cost of installing, maintaining, repairing, and operating the equipment over its lifetime. Overall, this study, which is focused on US single-family new construction households that install gas furnaces and storage water heaters, finds that installing a condensing or power-vent water heater together with condensing furnace is the most cost-effective option for the majority of these houses. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the new construction residential …

On the Cray XT, aprun is the command to launch an application to a set of compute nodes reserved through the Application Level Placement Scheduler (ALPS). At the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), interactive aprun is disabled. That is, invocations of aprun have to go through the batch system. Batch scripts can and often do contain several apruns which either use subsets of the reserved nodes in parallel, or use all reserved nodes in consecutive apruns. In order to better understand how NERSC users run on the XT, it is necessary to associate aprun information with jobs. It is surprisingly more challenging than it sounds. In this paper, we describe those challenges and how we solved them to produce daily per-job reports for completed apruns. We also describe additional uses of the data, e.g. adjusting charging policy accordingly or associating node failures with jobs/users, and plans for enhancements.