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Sessions covered all areas of molecular energy transfer, with 10 sessions of talks and poster sessions covering the areas of :  Energy Transfer in Inelastic and Reactive Scattering  Energy Transfer in Photoinitiated and Unimolecular Reactions  Non-adiabatic Effects in Energy Transfer  Energy Transfer at Surfaces and Interfaces  Energy Transfer in Clusters, Droplets, and Aerosols  Energy Transfer in Solution and Solid  Energy Transfer in Complex Systems  Energy Transfer: New vistas and horizons  Molecular Energy Transfer: Where Have We Been and Where are We Going?

The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the world’s premier test reactors for studying the effects of intense neutron radiation on reactor materials and fuels. The ATR began operation in 1967, and has operated continuously since then, averaging approximately 250 operating days per year. The combination of high flux, large test volumes, and multiple experiment configuration options provide unique testing opportunities for nuclear fuels and material researchers. The ATR is a pressurized, light-water moderated and cooled, beryllium-reflected highly-enriched uranium fueled, reactor with a maximum operating power of 250 MWth. The ATR peak thermal flux can reach 1.0 x1015 n/cm2-sec, and the core configuration creates five main reactor power lobes (regions) that can be operated at different powers during the same operating cycle. In addition to these nine flux traps there are 68 irradiation positions in the reactor core reflector tank. The test positions range from 0.5” to 5.0” in diameter and are all 48” in length, the active length of the fuel. The INL also has several hot cells and other laboratories in which irradiated material can be examined to study material radiation effects. In 2007 the US Department of Energy (DOE) designated …

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Talks about Application of PCB and FDM Technologies to Magnetic Measurement Probe System Development. Accuracy and construction flexibility aspects of probe development are tested.

Each intercity long-haul truck in the U.S. idles approximately 1,800 hrs per year, primarily for sleeper cab hotel loads. Including workday idling, over 2 billion gallons of fuel are used annually for truck idling. NREL's CoolCab project works closely with industry to design efficient thermal management systems for long-haul trucks that keep the cab comfortable with minimized engine idling and fuel use. The impact of thermal load reduction technologies on idle reduction systems were characterized by conducting thermal soak tests, overall heat transfer tests, and 10-hour rest period A/C tests. Technologies evaluated include advanced insulation packages, a solar reflective film applied to the vehicle's opaque exterior surfaces, a truck featuring both film and insulation, and a battery-powered A/C system. Opportunities were identified to reduce heating and cooling loads for long-haul truck idling by 36% and 34%, respectively, which yielded a 23% reduction in battery pack capacity of the idle-reduction system. Data were also collected for development and validation of a CoolCalc HVAC truck cab model. CoolCalc is an easy-to-use, simplified, physics-based HVAC load estimation tool that requires no meshing, has flexible geometry, excludes unnecessary detail, and is less time-intensive than more detailed computer-aided engineering modeling approaches.

Analyzes Thomson scattering of x-rays by warm dense matter.

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Electric-drive vehicles utilizing lithium-ion batteries experience wholly different degradation patterns than do conventional vehicles, depending on geographic ambient conditions and consumer driving and charging patterns. A semi-empirical life-predictive model for the lithium-ion graphite/nickel-cobalt-aluminum chemistry is presented that accounts for physically justified calendar and cycling fade mechanisms. An analysis of battery life for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles considers 782 duty-cycles from travel survey data superimposed with climate data from multiple geographic locations around the United States. Based on predicted wear distributions, opportunities for extending battery life including modification of battery operating limits, thermal and charge control are discussed.

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Fuel failure is most commonly induced in research and test reactor fuel elements by exposure to an under-cooled or over-power condition that results in the fuel temperature exceeding a critical threshold above which blisters form on the plate. These conditions can be triggered by normal operational transients (i.e. temperature overshoots that may occur during reactor startup or power shifts) or mild upset events (e.g., pump coastdown, small blockages, mis-loading of fuel elements into higher-than-planned power positions, etc.). The rise in temperature has a number of general impacts on the state of a fuel plate that include, for example, stress relaxation in the cladding (due to differential thermal expansion), softening of the cladding, increased mobility of fission gases, and increased fission-gas pressure in pores, all of which can encourage the formation of blisters on the fuel-plate surface. These blisters consist of raised regions on the surface of fuel plates that occur when the cladding plastically deforms in response to fission-gas pressure in large pores in the fuel meat and/or mechanical buckling of the cladding over damaged regions in the fuel meat. The blister temperature threshold decreases with irradiation because the mechanical properties of the fuel plate degrade while under irradiation (due …

The throughput and resolving power of an X-ray spectrometer that uses a curved crystal as the diffraction element is determined primarily by the crystal X-ray reflectivity properties. This poster presents a measurement technique for these crystal parameters using a simple diode source to produce a narrow spectral band. The results from measurements on concave elliptical polyethylene terephthalate (PET) crystals and convex potassium acid phthalate (KAP) crystals show large variations in the key parameters compared to those from the flat crystal.

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The I2B coal seam in the Charqueadas coal field has been evaluated as a target for enhanced coal bed methane production and CO{sub 2} sequestration. The samples were low rank coals (high volatile bituminous and sub-bituminous) obtained from the I2B seam as �3� cores. Such properties as sorption capacity, internal structure of the samples, porosity and permeability were of primary interest in this characterization study.

Multiple process approaches have been used historically to manufacture cylindrical nuclear fuel compacts. Scale-up of fuel compacting was required for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) project to achieve an economically viable automated production process capable of providing a minimum of 10 compacts/minute with high production yields. In addition, the scale-up effort was required to achieve matrix density equivalent to baseline historical production processes, and allow compacting at fuel packing fractions up to 46% by volume. The scale-up approach of jet milling, fluid-bed overcoating, and hot-press compacting adopted in the U.S. Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development Program involves significant paradigm shifts to capitalize on distinct advantages in simplicity, yield, and elimination of mixed waste. A series of designed experiments have been completed to optimize compaction conditions of time, temperature, and forming pressure using natural uranium oxycarbide (NUCO) fuel. Results from these experiments are included. The scale-up effort is nearing completion with the process installed and operational using nuclear fuel materials. The process is being certified for manufacture of qualification test fuel compacts for the AGR-5/6/7 experiment at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

One-dimensional fiber-bundle arrays may prove useful in a number of radiation sensing applications where radiation detection over large areas is needed. Tests have been performed to evaluate the light generation and transmission characteristics of 15-meter long, 10-fiber bundles of BCF-10, BCF-12, and BCF-20 scintillating fibers (Saint Gobain) exposed to collimated gamma-ray sources. The test set-up used one R9800 (Hamamatsu) photomultiplier tube (PMT) at each end, with a high-speed waveform digitizer to collect data. Time constraints were imposed on the waveform data to perform time-of-flight analysis of the events in the fiber bundles, eliminating spurious noise pulses in the high gain PMTs and also allowing 1-dimensional localization of interactions along the lengths of the fiber bundles. This paper will present the results of these measurements including the attenuation coefficients of the two fiber types and the timing resolution (position uncertainty) possible for each fiber bundle when using the R9800 PMTs.

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Radioactive liquid waste has been stored in underground carbon steel tanks for nearly 60 years at the Savannah River Site. The site is currently in the process of removing the waste from these tanks in order to place it into vitrified, stable state for longer term storage. The last stage in the removal sequence is a chemical cleaning step that breaks up and dissolves metal oxide solids that cannot be easily pumped out of the tank. Oxalic acid (OA) will be used to chemically clean the tanks after waste retrieval is completed. The waste tanks at SRS were constructed from carbon steel materials and thus are vulnerable to corrosion in acidic media. In addition to structural impacts, the impact of corrosion on the hydrogen generated during the process must be assessed. Electrochemical and coupon immersion tests were used to investigate the corrosion mechanism at anticipated process conditions. The testing showed that the corrosion rates were dependent upon the reduction of the iron species that had dissolved in solution. Initial corrosion rates were elevated due to the reduction of the ferric species to ferrous species. At later times, as the ferric species depleted, the corrosion rate decreased. On the other hand, …

Aluminum and stainless steel coupons were put into a nuclear fuel basin to monitor the effect of water chemistry on the corrosion of fuel cladding. These coupons have been monitored for over ten years. The corrosion and pitting data is being used to model the kinetics and estimate the damage that is occurring to the fuel cladding.