The roughly 0.5-km{sup 2} (0.2-mi{sup 2}) Hanford Waste Vitrification Plant (WHVP) site is located in the Pasco Basin in south-central Washington State at the US Department of Energy`s Hanford Site. The HWVP site is planned for use as a waste treatment facility for treating the high-activity fraction of waste currently stored in underground storage tanks on the Hanford Site. In order to determine the pre-construction chemical properties of the proposed construction site soils and to enable the HWVP to segregate these, as necessary, from any impact of HWVP operations, a soil baseline sampling plan was written and implemented. The report describes the baseline sampling plan.

The objectives of this project are to test novel fullerene based catalysts for application in methane activation. Fullerenes are a recently discovered allotrope of carbon that have been found to possess unusual properties, some of which may be ideal for methane conversion to higher hydrocarbons. The project is divided into three technical tasks. Task 1 deals with the synthesis and characterization of the fullerenes and fullerene soots, Task 2 with the testing of the catalysts, and Task 3 with the evaluation of the results and technical reporting requirements. This quarter we prepared fullerene soot and conducted experiments to determined its reactivity towards methane, hydrogen, and ethylene. The results are summarized: (1) Soot containing approximately 12-14 wt % fullerenes was prepared by the discharge method of Haufler et al. SRI is in the process of developing methodology to produce large scale amounts of fullerenes and fullerene based materials and is working with a private company to that end. In order to provide a background of fullerene soot and describe some of these methods we have included Appendix A. (2) We conducted some preliminary experiments in order to determine the temperature regime at which fullerene based soot would begin to be active …

The initial work on the synthesis of MTBE during CO hydrogenation shows that MTBE cannot be formed directly on metal sites and likely requires the presence of an acid site. However, MTBE can be made successfully when an acid site, provided by the zeolites, is present in the vicinity of the methanol-synthesis metal sites. When i-butylene was added during CO hydrogenation over a composite catalyst consisting of Li-Pd/SiO{sub 2} and a hydrogen-zeolite, MTBE was formed in measurable amounts. The major by-product of this reaction scheme was isobutane and the dimer of i-butylene. In general, ZSM-5 was found to be superior to LZ210-12 HY zeolite. CO hydrogenation over a bifunctional PdNaY catalyst shows that branched hydrocarbons as well as MEOH can be made successfully at the same time. Addition of i-butylene over this catalyst only (i.e. without other zeolite) results in the formation of trace amounts of MTBE.

An active neutron interrogation system utilizing the differential die-away technique (DDT), was built to assay fissile material in small waste packages for a variety of matrices. Within minutes the system can make a ``go/no-go`` decision for sorting low-level waste (LLW) from transuranic waste (TRUW). It can also provide gram-level accountability of weapons-grade (WG) Pu in TRUW providing lumps of self-shielding fissile material are absent.

The uranium-0.8 wt % titanium (U-0.8 Ti) alloy is often used in weapon applications where high strength and fairly good ductility are necessary. Components are immersion quenched in water from the gamma phase to produce a martensitic structure that is amenable to aging. Undesirable conditions occur when a component occasionally cracks during the quenching process, and when tensile specimens fail prematurely during mechanical testing. These two failures prompted an investigative analysis and a series of studies to determine the causes of the cracking and erratic behavior observed in this alloy. Quench-related failures whereby components that cracked either during or immediately after the heat treatment/quenching operation were sectioned for metallographic examination of the microstructure to examine the degree of phase transformation. Examination of premature tensile specimen failures by scanning electron microscopy and x-ray imaging of fracture surfaces revealed pockets of inclusions at the crack origins. In addition, tests were conducted to evaluate the detrimental effects of internal hydrogen on ductility and crack initiation in this allay.

Progress was made in the following areas: radioinduced segregation (modeling and experiment), deformation of irradiated microstructures, stress corrosion cracking of irradiated microstructures, and development of an apparatus to determine the role of deformation on the radiation microstructure in-situ. Materials used were based on Ni-Cr-Fe and 304L.

Newsletter focusing on pecan disease and pest control in Texas, including prevention, identification, treatment, and educational opportunities.