During the 2008 calendar year, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) provided health physics support for the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Transparency Program for external and internal radiation protection. They also provided technical expertise related to BDMS radioactive sources and Russian radiation safety regulatory compliance. For the calendar year 2008, there were 158 person-trips that required dose monitoring of the U.S. monitors. Of the 158 person-trips, 148 person-trips were SMVs and 10 person-trips were Transparency Monitoring Office (TMO) trips. There were 6 monitoring visits by TMO monitors to facilities other than UEIE and 8 to UEIE itself. There were three monitoring visits (source changes) that were back-to-back with a total of 24 monitors. LLNL's Hazard Control Department laboratories provided the dosimetry services for the HEU Transparency monitors. In 2008, the HEU Transparency activities in Russia were conducted in a radiologically safe manner for the HEU Transparency monitors in accordance with the expectations of the HEU Transparency staff, NNSA and DOE. The HEU Transparency now has thirteen years of successful experience in developing and providing health and safety support in meeting its technical objectives.

Making Stuff is a four-part series that explores how materials changed history and are shaping the future. To further enhance public engagement in and understanding of materials science, the project convened an extensive network of community coalitions across the country that hosted Making Stuff outreach activities and events, science cafes, and educator workshops in their local areas. Department Of Energy funding enabled us to increase the number of communities formally involved in the project, from 10 to 20 community hubs. Department of Energy funding also made it possible to develop a collection of materials science resources, activities and hands-on demonstrations for use in a variety of formal and informal settings, and Making Stuff activities were presented at science conferences and festivals around the country. The design, printing and national dissemination of the Making Stuff afterschool activity guide were also developed with DOE funding, as well as professional webinar trainings for scientists and educators to help facilitate many of the community activities and other online and print materials. Thanks to additional funding from the Department of Energy, we were able to expand the reach and scope of the project’s outreach plan, specifically in the areas of: 1) content development, 2) training/professional …

We developed a high bandwidth differential amplifier for gas gun shock experiments/applications. The circuit has a bandwidth > 1 GHz, and is capable of measuring signals of ≤1.5 V with a common mode rejection of 250 V. Conductivity measurements of gas gun targets are measured by flowing high currents through the targets. The voltage is measured across the target using a technique similar to a four-point probe. Because of the design of the current source and load, the target voltage is approximately 250 V relative to ground. Since the expected voltage change in the target is < 1 V, the differential amplifier must have a large common mode rejection. High pass filters suppress internal ringing of operational amplifiers. Results of bench tests are shown.

Hohlraums at the National Ignition Facility convert laser energy into a thermal x-radiation drive, which implodes the capsule, thus compressing the fuel. The x-radiation drive is measured with a low resolution, time-resolved x-ray spectrometer that views the hohlraum's laser entrance hole (LEH) at 37{sup o} to the hohlraum axis. This measurement has no spatial resolution. To convert this to the drive inside the hohlraum, the area and fraction of the measured x-radiation which comes from the region inside the hohlraum must be known. The size of the LEH is measured with the time integrated Static X-ray Imager (SXI) which view the LEH at 18{sup o} to the hohlraum axis. A soft x-ray image has been added to the SXI to measure the fraction of x-radiation inside the LEH's Clear Aperture in order to correct the measured radiation. A multilayer mirror plus filter selects an x-ray band centered at 870 eV, near the x-ray energy peak of a 300 eV blackbody. Results from this channel and corrections to the x-radiation drive are discussed.

To Increase Participation of Students from Underrepresented Groups in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Programs.

The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) has continued the work of the National Center for Hydrogen Technology® (NCHT®) Program Year 6 Task 1.12 project to expose hydrogen separation membranes to coal-derived syngas. In this follow-on project, the EERC has exposed two membranes to coal-derived syngas produced in the pilot-scale transport reactor development unit (TRDU). Western Research Institute (WRI), with funding from the State of Wyoming Clean Coal Technology Program and the North Dakota Industrial Commission, contracted with the EERC to conduct testing of WRI’s coal-upgrading/gasification technology for subbituminous and lignite coals in the EERC’s TRDU. This gasifier fires nominally 200–500 lb/hour of fuel and is the pilot-scale version of the full-scale gasifier currently being constructed in Kemper County, Mississippi. A slipstream of the syngas was used to demonstrate warm-gas cleanup and hydrogen separation using membrane technology. Two membranes were exposed to coal-derived syngas, and the impact of coal-derived impurities was evaluated. This report summarizes the performance of WRI’s patent-pending coalupgrading/ gasification technology in the EERC’s TRDU and presents the results of the warm-gas cleanup and hydrogen separation tests. Overall, the WRI coal-upgrading/gasification technology was shown to produce a syngas significantly lower in CO2 content and significantly higher in CO …

In United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), a Global Positioning System (GPS) device was attached to the undercarriage of Jones's car by the police to track his movements for four weeks. This report will examine three decisions regarding searching, attachment, and monitoring in an effort to find their place in the body of existing Fourth Amendment law pertaining to privacy, property, and technology.

The YWCA Family Village at Issaquah, Net Zero Energy Approach Project provides a compelling model for how the nation can seriously respond to the critical need for affordable housing while advancing environmental standards and reducing economic inequities. Affordable housing developments for vulnerable members of the community and in today's workforce cannot overlook issues, such as climate impact, energy security and water conservation. This project's advanced building design was based on the goal of creating a 100 year building that could achieve net zero energy usage if funding had been available to support the final pieces of energy generation. The team worked closely with community stakeholders to ensure the baseline components of high quality and efficient building envelopes along with efficient systems were in place to set the stage for future incorporation of energy generating systems such as solar panels. As built, these 146 homes, large child care center and community services areas are proving the value of investing upfront for the benefit of future generations by reducing ongoing utility and maintenance costs with an eye toward environmental stewardship and community/resident education. The DOE award helped fund two critical energy conservation features for the YWCA Family Village at Issaquah campus: 1) …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the four states GAO reviewed are implementing processes to verify whether providers met the Medicare and Medicaid EHR programs’ requirements and, therefore, qualified to receive incentive payments in the first year of the EHR programs. To receive such payments, providers must meet both (1) eligibility requirements that specify the types of providers eligible to participate in the programs and (2) reporting requirements that specify the information providers must report to CMS or the states, including measures that demonstrate meaningful use of an EHR system and measures of clinical quality. For the Medicare EHR program, CMS has implemented prepayment processes to verify whether providers have met all of the eligibility requirements and one of the reporting requirements. Beginning in 2012, the agency also has plans to implement a risk-based audit strategy to verify on a postpayment basis that a sample of providers met the remaining reporting requirements. For the Medicaid EHR Program, the four states GAO reviewed have implemented primarily prepayment processes to verify whether providers met …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has departmentwide policy and procedures for convening and conducting administrative investigation boards (AIB). The department’s procedures contain requirements for convening and conducting AIB investigations, but according to VA officials, they also provide the flexibility to tailor an investigation to effectively meet diverse informational needs. For example, the VA official convening an AIB investigation is required to select AIB members who are impartial and objective, but has flexibility to vary the number of members appointed to each AIB based on the matter being investigated. VA is currently updating its AIB policy and procedures, but officials said the department plans to maintain flexibility in its AIB process."

the basic feasibility of using UV curing technology to produce Lithium ion battery electrodes at speeds over 200 feet per minute has been shown. A unique set of UV curable chemicals were discovered that were proven to be compatible with a Lithium ion battery environment with the adhesion qualities of PVDF.

The development of viable nuclear energy source depends on ensuring structural materials integrity. Structural materials in nuclear reactors will operate in harsh radiation conditions coupled with high level hydrogen and helium production, as well as formation of high density of point defects and defect clusters, and thus will experience severe degradation of mechanical properties. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to develop a capability that predicts aging behavior and in-service lifetime of nuclear reactor components and, thus provide an instrumental tool for tailoring materials design and development for application in future nuclear reactor technologies. Towards this end goal, the long term effort is to develop a physically based multiscale modeling hierarchy, validated and verified, to address outstanding questions regarding the effects of irradiation on materials microstructure and mechanical properties during extended service in the fission and fusion environments. The focus of the current investigation is on modern steels for use in nuclear reactors including high strength ferritic-martensitic steels (Fe-Cr-Ni alloys). The effort is to develop a predicative capability for the influence of irradiation on mechanical behavior. Irradiation hardening is related to structural information crossing different length scales, such as composition, dislocation, and crystal orientation distribution. To predict effective …

In our research, we are taking the novel approach of developing and applying high performance computing, computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based simulation tools to a modified in-situ process for production of oil from oil shale. The simulation tools being developed capture the relevant physical processes and data from a large-scale system. The modified in-situ application is a pilot-scale heat transfer process inside Red Leaf Resources’ EcoShale capsule. We demonstrate the need to understand fluid flow behavior in the convective channels of the rubblized shale bed as convective heating greatly decreases the time required to heat the oil shale to the production temperature when compared with conductive heating alone. We have developed and implemented a geometry creation strategy for a representative section of the EcoShale capsule, developed a meshing approach to deal with the complicated geometry and produce a well-behaved mesh, analyzed the effects of boundary conditions on the simulation results, and devised a new operator splitting solution algorithm that reduces computational costs by taking advantage of the differing convective and conductive time scales occurring in the simulation. These simulation tools can be applied to a wide range of processes involving convective fluid flow heating in rubblized beds.

The Cincinnati Museum Center invited a number of local stakeholders, political leaders, nationally and internationally recognized design professionals and the Design Team, that has been engaged to help shape the future of this remarkable resource, to work together in a Workshop that would begin to shape a truly sustainable future for both the Museum and its home, the Union Terminal, one of the most significant buildings in America. This report summarizes and highlights the discussions that took place during the Workshop and presents recommendations for shaping a direction and a framework for the future.

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