The passage of the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act of 1992 (LWA) marked a turning point for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) program. It established a Congressional mandate to open the WIPP in as short a time as possible, thereby initiating the process of addressing this nation`s transuranic (TRU) waste problem. The DOE responded to the LWA by shifting the priority at the WIPP from scientific investigations to regulatory compliance and the completion of prerequisites for the initiation of operations. Regulatory compliance activities have taken four main focuses: (1) preparing regulatory submittals; (2) aggressive schedules; (3) regulator interface; and (4) public interactions

This dissertation proposal covers research work that started in the spring of 1992. The aim of the research has been to study the structural performance and stability of proposed nuclear waste containers and the enclosed fuel rods to be used in the long term storage of High Level Nuclear Waste (HLNW). This research is in two phases, computational and experimental. The computational phase deals with the linear and nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of the different containers due to various loading conditions during normal handling conditions and due to the effect of long term corrosion while the canister is stored in the drift of a backfilled geological repository. The elastoplastic stability of the nuclear fuel rods were studied under body forces resulting from acceleration vectors at varying angles, resulting from a sudden drop of the canister at an angle onto a hard surface.

This report presents experimental techniques for determining the static and dynamic response, in three dimensional space, of a flexible three-link hydraulic steel robot. The flexible robot was originally built under a grant from the Army Research Office (ARO) and has been the subject of a six year research project involving 12 graduate students and four faculty members. The research was continued under grant from the U.S. Department of Energy which is considering the use of robot in remote handling, placement and retrievability of H.L.N.W. canisters in geological formations. A series of static and dynamic experiments was conducted under two different loads at various angular positions of the robot links.

The aim of this part of the Nuclear Waste Package Project research at UNLV is to investigate the stresses in a model of a faulted mountain and the effect of the fault on the stability of drifts in a proposed High Level Nuclear Waste Repository. An investigation was performed to develop a proper technique for analyzing the stresses in and around three adjacent scaled tunnel models, along with the stress concentration factors resulting from the existence of a fault that penetrates two of the three tunnels, at an inclined angel of 44{degrees} to the horizontal plane. The results and experience gained from this investigation will be used in a future project in which a full-size repository drift and a penetrating fault will be modeled and analyzed.

The Waste Sampling and Characterization Facility is a `Non-Nuclear, Radiological Facility. This document demonstrates, by analysis, that WSCF can meet the chemical and radiological inventory limits for a radiological facility. It establishes control that ensures those inventories are maintained below threshold values to preserve the `Non- Nuclear, Radiological` classification.

The 1995 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for the Y-12 Plant (Part III-F, page 41) requires the preparation of a report to describe procedures and criteria used in operating on-site treatment systems to maintain compliance with the NPDES permit. This report has been prepared to fulfill this requirement. Five wastewater treatment systems are currently in operation at the Y-12 Plant; they are operated by personal in the Waste Management and Facilities Management Organizations.

US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently formulated a national standard for digitization and compression of gray-scale fingerprint images. Fingerprints are scanned at a spatial resolution of 500 dots per inch, with 8 bits of gray-scale resolution. The compression algorithm for the resulting digital images is based on adaptive uniform scalar quantization of a discrete wavelet transform subband decomposition (wavelet/scalar quantization method). The FBI standard produces archival-quality images at compression ratios of around 15 to 1 and will allow the current database of paper fingerprint cards to be replaced by digital imagery. The compression standard specifies a class of potential encoders and a universal decoder with sufficient generality to reconstruct compressed images produced by any compliant encoder, allowing flexibility for future improvements in encoder technology. A compliance testing program is also being implemented to ensure high standards of image quality and interchangeability of data between different implementations.

In order to remain competitive in the changing steel market, US steel producers restructured by taking on foreign and domestic partners, closing facilities and/or trimming work forces, and modernizing their steel making facilities. However, very little was done to develop production management technology to complement these changes. The Logistics and Integrated Scheduling program (LIS) was undertaken to address this issue. LIS is an information management system that delivers better customer service, better quality materials, and a just-in-time delivery system. It involves three major components: (1) material marking and sensing: advanced R&D applied to determining cost effective, feasible solutions to passive inventory; (2) material inventory and tracking: advanced technology applied to managing inventory movement; (3) planning and scheduling: beginning with annual production plans, order management, and operational constraints, the ability to build integrated schedules capable of pull through and push through scheduling for various plant capability levels and location configurations with rapid turnaround capability. LIS provides accurate, automated tracking of material flows throughout the mill, the collection and analysis of production data, and automated schedule optimization.

It is widely accepted that dead-reckoning based on the rolling with no-slip condition on the wheels is not a reliable method to ascertain the position and orientation of a mobile robot for any reasonable distance. The authors establish that wheel slip is inevitable under the dynamic model of motion using classical results on the accessibility and controllability in nonlinear control theory and an analytical model of rolling of two linearly elastic bodies.

The process for making an in-situ whisker reinforced glass-ceramic that is up to 1.5 times as strong as conventional glass-ceramics was developed at Virginia Tech and patented in 1993. This technology has been identified as having commercial potential for use in high temperature heat exchanger applications for the electric power generation field by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). This technology was licensed by MATVA, Inc., a small Virginia business, for further development. In particular, the goal of this project was to develop a property database and conduct initial testing of heat exchanger prototypes to demonstrate its potential application. This final report describes how the glass precursor was formed, physical properties of the glass-ceramic, techniques for making heat exchanger prototypes.

We demonstrate that there are regions of parameter space in the next-to-minimal (i.e. two-Higgs-doublet, one-Higgs-singlet superfield) supersymmetric extension of the SM for which none of the Higgs bosons are observable either at LEP2 with $\sqrt{s}=192 GeV$ and an integrated luminosity of $L=1000inverse pb$ or at the LHC with $L=600 inverse fb$.

This paper discusses wind energy and its potential to significantly impact the generation of electricity within the US. The principles and the equipment used to convert wind energy to electricity are described, as is the status of current technology. Markets and production projections are given. There is discussion of the advances required to reduce the selling cost of electricity generated from the wind from today`s price of about $0.05 per kilowatt-hour to full cost-competitiveness with gas- and coal-based electricity.

Recently several RICH protypes successfully tested a gaseous TEA photocathode. However, its wire ageing behavior is unknown. In principle, TEA is a more strongly bonded molecule than TMAE, and, as a result, one would expect better wire ageing behavior. This paper explores this question.

This document contains the conference proceedings of the Women in Engineering Conference: Capitalizing on Today`s Challenges, held June 1-4, 1996 in Denver, Colorado. Topics included engineering and science education, career paths, workplace issues, and affirmative action.

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X-ray double crystal diffractometry (XRDCD) was used to assess cyclic microstructural deformation in a face centered cubic (fcc) steel (AISI304) and a body centered cubic (bcc) steel (SA508 class 2). The first objective of the investigation was to determine if XRDCD could be used to effectively monitor cyclic microstructural deformation in polycrystalline Fe alloys. A second objective was to study the microstructural deformation induced by cyclic loading of polycrystalline Fe alloys. The approach used in the investigation was to induce fatigue damage in a material and to characterize the resulting microstructural deformation at discrete fractions of the fatigue life of the material. Also, characterization of microstructural deformation was carried out to identify differences in the accumulation of damage from the surface to the bulk, focusing on the following three regions: near surface (0--10 {micro}m), subsurface (10--300 {micro}m), and bulk. Characterization of the subsurface region was performed only on the AISI304 material because of the limited availability of the SA508 material. The results from the XRDCD data indicate a measurable change induced by fatigue from the initial state to subsequent states of both the AISI304 and the SA508 materials. Therefore, the XRDCD technique was shown to be sensitive to the microstructural …

Thermal and nonthermal x-ray emission from the implosion of compact tungsten wire arrays in 5-MA Saturn discharges is reported. The timing of multiple implosions and the thermal x-ray spectra (1 to 10 keV) agree with 2D radiation-hydrocode simulations. Nonthermal x-ray emission (10 to 100 keV) correlates with pinch spots distributed along the z-axis. The similarities of the measured nonthermal spectrum, yield, and pinch-spot emission with those of 0.8-MA, single- exploded-wire discharges on Gamble-II suggest a common nonthermal- production mechanism. Nonthermal x-ray yields are lower than expected from current scaling of Gamble II results, suggesting that implosion geometries are not as efficient as single-wire geometries for nonthermal x-ray production. The instabilities, azimuthal asymmetries, and inferred multiple implosions that accompany the implosion geometry lead to larger, more irregular pinch spots, a likely reason for reduced nonthermal efficiency. A model for nonthermal-electron acceleration across magnetic fields in highly- collisional, high-atomic-number plasmas combined with 1D hydrocode simulations of Saturn compact loads predicts weak nonthermal x-ray emission.

We have performed a series of 1-D numerical simulations of the x-ray emission from National Ignition Facility (NIF) targets. Results are presented in terms of total x-ray energy, pulse length, and spectrum. Scaling of x-ray emissions is presented for variations in both target yield and hohlraum thickness. Experiments conducted on the Nova facility provide some validation of the computational tools and methods.

Recently, H.L. Edwards et al. observed, in STM experiments at 20K, modulations in the CuO chain layer of cold-cleaved single crystals of YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7-{delta}} which they interpreted as a possible charge density wave (CDW). Since X-ray scattering is an ideal tool for the study of static or dynamic lattice displacements, we performed a synchrotron X-ray study at beamline X14 at the NSLS of BNL on a high quality single crystal of YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7- {delta}}, which was mainly single domain with a spacially well localized volume fraction of other twin orientations of roughly 10%. Appropriate scattering configurations were chosen to enable observations of longitudinal or transverse CDWs with polarization either in the chain direction, {parallel} <001> or {perpendicular} to it in <001>. The X-ray energy of 16keV allowed us to reach large momentum transfers to increase the sensitivity to lattice displacements. In none of our scans, which definitely covered the case of a 1-dimensional longitudinal CDW with propagation in the b direction as proposed by Edwards et al., did we find intensity other than the main Bragg peak(s) and the twin reflections. We therefore suspect that the STM finding may be a surface-induced phenomenon.

Much of this thesis represents the groundwork necessary in order to probe Mn clusters more productively than with conventional Mn K-edge XAS and is presented in Part 1. Part 2 contains the application of x-ray techniques to Mn metalloproteins and includes a prognosis at the end of each chapter. Individual Mn oxidation states are more readily distinguishable in Mn L-edge spectra. An empirical mixed valence simulation routine for determining the average Mn oxidation state has been developed. The first Mn L-edge spectra of a metalloprotein were measured and interpreted. The energy of Mn K{beta} emission is strongly correlated with average Mn oxidation state. K{beta} results support oxidation states of Mn(III){sub 2}(IV){sub 2} for the S{sub 1} state of Photosystem II chemical chemically reduced preparations contain predominantly Mn(II). A strength and limitation of XAS is that it probes all of the species of a particular element in a sample. It would often be advantageous to selectively probe different forms of the same element. The first demonstration that chemical shifts in x-ray fluorescence energies can be used to obtain oxidation state-selective x-ray absorption spectra is presented. Spin-dependent spectra can also be used to obtain a more simplified picture of local structure. The …