The subsurface radioactive disposal facility located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho site contains neutron-activated metals from non-fuel nuclear-reactor-core components. A long-term corrosion study is being conducted to obtain site-specific corrosion rates to support efforts to more accurately estimate the transfer of activated elements in an arid vadose zone environment. The study uses non-radioactive metal coupons representing the prominent neutron-activated material buried at the disposal location, namely, two types of stainless steels, welded stainless steel, welded nickel-chromium steel alloy, zirconium alloy, beryllium, and aluminum. Additionally, carbon steel (the material used in cask disposal liners and other disposal containers) and duplex stainless steel (high-integrity containers) are also included in the study. This paper briefly describes the test program and presents the corrosion rate results through twelve years of underground exposure.

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) reduces the strong interactions, in all their variety, to an elegant nonabelian gauge theory. It clearly and elegantly explains hadrons at short distances, which has led to its universal acceptance. Since its advent, however, many of its long-distance, emergent properties have been believed to be true, without having been demonstrated to be true. This paper reviews a variety of results in this regime that have been established with lattice gauge theory, directly from the QCD Lagrangian. This body of work sheds light on the origin of hadron masses, its interplay with dynamical symmetry breaking, as well as on other intriguing features such as the phase structure of QCD. In addition, nonperturbative QCD is quantitatively important to many aspects of particle physics (especially the quark flavor sector), nuclear physics, and astrophysics. This review also surveys some of the most interesting connections to those subjects.

This CRS report, updated as warranted, discusses policy issues regarding military-to-military (mil-to-mil) contacts with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and provides a record of major contacts and crises since 1993.

A report detailing USAID's biodiversity conservation and forestry programs, including the results and funding, for fiscal year 2010.

"This research project is aimed at establishing a framework for levying MBUFs designed to achieve various air quality improvement policy objectives. This research presents the first step toward a pricing framework based on the concept of performance measurement that systematically defines and incorporates potential air quality goals. The process of developing the proposed framework included defining the interactive role of user fees and pricing in roadway transportation operations and identifying air quality performance measures for determining the appropriate vehicle mileage fee price."

If properly employed, the placement of three-dimensional feature patterns, also referred to as textures, on relatively-moving, load-bearing surfaces can be beneficial to their friction and wear characteristics. For example, geometric patterns can function as lubricant supply channels or depressions in which to trap debris. They can also alter lubricant flow in a manner that produces thicker load-bearing films locally. Considering the area occupied by solid areas and spaces, textures also change the load distribution on surfaces. At least ten different attributes of textures can be specified, and their combinations offer wide latitude in surface engineering. By employing directional machining and grinding procedures, texturing has been used on bearings and seals for well over a half century, and the size scales of texturing vary widely. This report summarizes past work on the texturing of load-bearing surfaces, including past research on laser surface dimpling of ceramics done at ORNL. Textured surfaces generally show most pronounced effects when they are used in conformal or nearly conformal contacts, like that in face seals. Combining textures with other forms of surface modification and lubrication methods can offer additional benefits in surface engineering for tribology. As the literature and past work at ORNL shows, texturing does …

In the first year of this contractual effort a hypo-elastic constitutive model was developed and shown to have great potential in modeling the elastic response of parenchyma. This model resides at the macroscopic level of the continuum. In this, the second year of our support, an isotropic dodecahedron is employed as an alveolar model. This is a microscopic model for parenchyma. A hopeful outcome is that the linkage between these two scales of modeling will be a source of insight and inspiration that will aid us in the final year's activity: creating a viscoelastic model for parenchyma.

This fact sheet provides an overview of the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind and Water Power Program's water power research activities. Water power is the nation's largest source of clean, domestic, renewable energy. Harnessing energy from rivers, manmade waterways, and oceans to generate electricity for the nation's homes and businesses can help secure America's energy future. Water power technologies fall into two broad categories: conventional hydropower and marine and hydrokinetic technologies. Conventional hydropower facilities include run-of-the-river, storage, and pumped storage. Most conventional hydropower plants use a diversion structure, such as a dam, to capture water's potential energy via a turbine for electricity generation. Marine and hydrokinetic technologies obtain energy from waves, tides, ocean currents, free-flowing rivers, streams and ocean thermal gradients to generate electricity. The United States has abundant water power resources, enough to meet a large portion of the nation's electricity demand. Conventional hydropower generated 257 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity in 2010 and provides 6-7% of all electricity in the United States. According to preliminary estimates from the Electric Power Resource Institute (EPRI), the United States has additional water power resource potential of more than 85,000 megawatts (MW). This resource potential includes making efficiency upgrades to existing hydroelectric …

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) study of 20% Wind Energy by 2030 was conducted to consider the benefits, challenges, and costs associated with sourcing 20% of U.S. energy consumption from wind power by 2030. This study found that with proactive measures, no insurmountable barriers were identified to meet the 20% goal. Following this study, DOE and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted two more studies: the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS) covering the eastern portion of the U.S., and the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS) covering the western portion of the United States. The WWSIS was conducted by NREL and research partner General Electric (GE) in order to provide insight into the costs, technical or physical barriers, and operational impacts caused by the variability and uncertainty of wind, photovoltaic, and concentrated solar power when employed to serve up to 35% of the load energy in the WestConnect region (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming). WestConnect is composed of several utility companies working collaboratively to assess stakeholder and market needs to and develop cost-effective improvements to the western wholesale electricity market. Participants include the Arizona Public Service, El Paso Electric Company, NV Energy, Public …

135Xe is a good indicator that fission has occurred and is a valuable isotope that helps enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Due to its rather short half life and minimal commercial interest, there are no known sources where 135Xe can be purchased. Readily available standards of this isotope for calibrating collection and analytical techniques would be very useful. 135Xe can be produced in the fissioning of actinide isotopes, or by neutron capture on 134Xe. Since the neutron capture cross section of 134Xe is 3 mB, neutron capture is a low yield, though potentially useful, production route. 135Xe is also produced by spontaneous fission of 252Cf. 252Cf has a spontaneous fission rate of about 6 x 1011 s-1g-1. The cumulative yield from the spontaneous fission of 252Cf is 4.19%; and the competing neutron capture reaction that depletes 135Xe in thermal reactor systems is negligible because the neutron capture cross-section is low for fast fission neutrons. At the INL, scientists have previously transported fission products from an electroplated 252Cf thin source for the measurement of nuclear data of short-lived fission products using a technique called He-Jet collection. We have applied a similar system to the collection of gaseous 135Xe, in order …

Newsletter of the Employees Retirement System of Texas discussing news, policy changes, and other information about retirement and benefits.