The Delaware Basin Drilling Surveillance Program (DBDSP) is designed to monitor drilling activities in the vicinity of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). This program is based on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements. The EPA environmental standards for the management and disposal of transuranic (TRU) radioactive waste are codified in 40 CFR Part 191 (EPA 1993). Subparts B and C of the standard address the disposal of radioactive waste. The standard requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to demonstrate the expected performance of the disposal system using a probabilistic risk assessment or performance assessment (PA). This PA must show that the expected repository performance will not release radioactive material above limits set by the EPA's standard. This assessment must include the consideration of inadvertent drilling into the repository at some future time.

A geometrical multigrid method for solving the linearized matrix equations arising from node-on-face three-dimensional finite element contact is described. The development of an efficient implementation of this combination that minimizes both the memory requirements and the computational cost requires careful construction and storage of the portion of the coarse mesh stiffness matrices that are associated with the contact stiffness on the fine mesh. The multigrid contact algorithm is parallelized in a manner suitable for distributed memory architectures: results are presented that demonstrates the scheme's scalability. The solution of a large contact problem derived from an analysis of the factory joints present in the Space Shuttle reusable solid rocket motor demonstrates the usefulness of the general approach.

This report documents completion of Milestone A.4-1 "Issue Tank Lay-Up Strategies for WVDP Final Report," in Technical Task Plan RL3-WT21A, "Post-Retrieval and Pre-Closure HLW Tank Lay-Up." This task was a collaborative effort among Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., and West Valley Nuclear Services. The primary objective of the overall task was to develop and evaluate conceptual strategies for preclosure lay-up of the two large high-level waste storage tanks at the West Valley Demonstration Project.

Determine seasonal and interannual patterns of net ecosystem CO2 flux from wet coastal and moist tussock tundra.

A superconducting cavity used in a microwave gun requires that the launcher and the pickup probes be on the same side of the cavity, which causes direct coupling between them, or crosstalk. At room temperature, the crosstalk causes serious distortion of the RF response. This note addresses the phenomenon, the simulation results and the analysis, so that one can extract the desired information from the confusing signal.

Technical information is provided herein that is required for development of a steady-state process simulation of a baseline steam reforming treatment train for Tank Farm waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). This document supercedes INEEL/EXT-2001-173, produced in FY2001 to support simulation of the direct vitrification treatment train which was the previous process baseline. A process block flow diagram for steam reforming is provided, together with a list of unit operations which constitute the process. A detailed description of each unit operation is given which includes its purpose, principal phenomena present, expected pressure and temperature ranges, key chemical species in the inlet steam, and the proposed manner in which the unit operation is to be modeled in the steady state process simulation. Models for the unit operations may be mechanistic (based on first principles), empirical (based solely on pilot test data without extrapolation) , or by correlations (based on extrapolative or statistical schemes applied to pilot test data). Composition data for the expected process feed streams is provided.

The principle objective of this project is to demonstrate the economic viability and widespread applicability of an innovative reservoir management and carbon dioxide (CO2) flood project development approach for improving CO2 flood project economics in shallow shelf carbonate (SSC) reservoirs.

Increased levels of blast furnace coal injection are needed to further lower coke requirements and provide more flexibility in furnace productivity. The direct injection of high temperature oxygen with coal in the blast furnace blowpipe and tuyere offers better coal dispersion at high local oxygen concentrations, optimizing the use of oxygen in the blast furnace. Based on pilot scale tests, coal injection can be increased by 75 pounds per ton of hot metal (lb/thm), yielding net savings of $0.84/tm. Potential productivity increases of 15 percent would yield another $1.95/thm. In this project, commercial-scale hot oxygen injection from a ''thermal nozzle'' system, patented by Praxair, Inc., has been developed, integrated into, and demonstrated on two tuyeres of the U.S. Steel Gary Works no. 6 blast furnace. The goals were to evaluate heat load on furnace components from hot oxygen injection, demonstrate a safe and reliable lance and flow control design, and qualitatively observe hot oxygen-coal interaction. All three goals have been successfully met. Heat load on the blowpipe is essentially unchanged with hot oxygen. Total heat load on the tuyere increases about 10% and heat load on the tuyere tip increases about 50%. Bosh temperatures remained within the usual operating range. …

The recognition that a new major HEP facility must receive international support and that its execution would benefit from worldwide interaction from design through operation has given rise to the term Global Accelerator Network (GAN). A welcome consequence has been a more permissive attitude toward remote operation of existing facilities.For roughly thirty years, the computer has been the principal operator interface to the beam,and, through the development of the Internet, the operator can be literally anywhere. In this note, the authors describe their approach to enabling a sufficient degree of operation of the photoinjector from afar in order to carry out investigations in beam physics. The goal was to do so on a time scale of a few months and at minimal cost. At this writing, remote shifts are routinely scheduled involving DESY and LBL, limited in frequency only by the requests of the collaborators and by the need for time to interpret the data.

This feasibility study has indicated that of the approximately 120,000 tons of steel available to be recycled from used oil filters (UOF's), a maximum blast furnace charge of 2% of the burden may be anticipated for short term use of a few months. The oil contained in the most readily processed UOF's being properly hot drained and crushed is approximately 12% to 14% by weight. This oil will be pyrolized at a rate of 98% resulting in additional fuel gas of 68% and a condensable hydrocarbon fraction of 30%, with the remaining 2% resulting as carbon being added into the burden. Based upon the writer's collected information and assessment, there appears to be no operational problems relating to the recycling of UOF's to the blast furnace. One steel plant in the US has been routinely charging UOF's at about 100 tons to 200 tons per month for many years. Extensive analysis and calculations appear to indicate no toxic consideration as a result of the pyrolysis of the small contained oil ( in the 'prepared' UOFs) within the blast furnace. However, a hydrocarbon condensate in the ''gasoline'' fraction will condense in the blast furnace scrubber water and may require additional processing …

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), is currently investigating various novel materials (single crystal silicon, <100>, <110> and <111>) for use as electron-beam transmission windows in a KrF excimer laser system. The primary function of the window is to isolate the active medium (excimer gas) from the excitation mechanism (field-emission diodes). Chosen window geometry must accommodate electron energy transfer greater than 80% (750 keV), while maintaining structural integrity during mechanical load (1.3 to 2.0 atm base pressure differential, approximate 0.5 atm cyclic pressure amplitude, 5 Hz repetition rate) and thermal load across the entire hibachi area (approximate 0.9 W {center_dot} cm superscript ''-2''). In addition, the window must be chemically resistant to attack by fluorine free-radicals (hydrofluoric acid, secondary). In accordance with these structural, functional, and operational parameters, a 22.4 mm square silicon prototype window, coated with 500 nm thin-film silicon nitride (Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}), has been fabricated. The window consists of 81 square panes with a thickness of 0.019 mm {+-} 0.001 mm. Stiffened (orthogonal) sections are 0.065 mm in width and 0.500 mm thick (approximate). Appended drawing (Figure 1) depicts the window configuration. Assessment of silicon (and silicon nitride) material …

Neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) can lead to disruption and loss of confinement. Previous analysis of these modes used large aspect ratio, low beta (plasma pressure/magnetic pressure) approximations to determine the effect of NTMs on tokamak plasmas. A more accurate tool is needed to predict the onset of these instabilities. As a follow-up to recent theoretical work, a code has been written which computes the tearing mode island growth rate for arbitrary tokamak geometry. It calls PEST-3 [A. Pletzer et al., J. Comput. Phys. 115, 530 (1994)] to compute delta prime, the resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) matching parameter. The code also calls the FLUXGRID routines in NIMROD [A.H. Glasser et al., Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 41, A747 (1999)] for Dnc, DI and DR [C.C. Hegna, Phys. Plasmas 6, 3980 (1999); A.H. Glasser et al., Phys. Fluids 18, 875 (1975)], which are the bootstrap current driven term and the ideal and resistive interchange mode criterion, respectively. In addition to these components, the NIMROD routines calculate alphas-H, a new correction to the Pfirsch-Schlter term. Finite parallel transport effects were added and a National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) [M. Ono et al., Nucl. Fusion 40, 557 (2000)] equilibrium was analyzed. Another program takes the output …

The authors have performed a number of imbibition tests with the treated and untreated cores in nC{sub 10}, nC{sub 14}, and nC{sub 16} and a natural gas condensate liquid. Imbibition tests for nC{sub 14} and nC{sub 16} were also carried out at elevated temperatures of 100 C and 140 C. An experimental polymer synthesized for the purpose of this project was used in core treatment. Imbibition results are very promising and imply liquid condensate mobility enhancement in the treated core. They also performed flow tests to quantify the increase in well deliverability and to simulate flow under realistic field conditions. In the past we have performed extensive testing of wettability alteration in intermediate gas wetting for polymer FC759 at temperatures of 24 C and 90 C. The results were promising for the purpose of gas well deliverability improvement in gas condensate wells. We used FC759 to lower the surface energy of various rocks. The model fluids nC{sub 10}, and nC{sub 14} were used to represent condensate liquid, and air was used as the gas phase. A new (L-16349) polymer, which has been recently synthesized for the purpose of the project, was used in the work to be presented here. L-16349 …

This report gives results on use of a minipermeameter on cores to study very finescale trends in permeability, and use of neural networks to predict permeability in logged, uncored wells.

The objective of the Advanced High-Temperature Reactor (AHTR) is to provide the very high temperatures necessary to enable low-cost (1) efficient thermochemical production of hydrogen and (2) efficient production of electricity. The proposed AHTR uses coated-particle graphite fuel similar to the fuel used in modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (MHTGRs), such as the General Atomics gas turbine-modular helium reactor (GT-MHR). However, unlike the MHTGRs, the AHTR uses a molten salt coolant with a pool configuration, similar to that of the PRISM liquid metal reactor. A multi-reheat helium Brayton (gas-turbine) cycle, with efficiencies >50%, is used to produce electricity. This approach (1) minimizes requirements for new technology development and (2) results in an advanced reactor concept that operates at essentially ambient pressures and at very high temperatures. The low-pressure molten-salt coolant, with its high heat capacity and natural circulation heat transfer capability, creates the potential for (1) exceptionally robust safety (including passive decay-heat removal) and (2) allows scaling to large reactor sizes [{approx}1000 Mw(e)] with passive safety systems to provide the potential for improved economics.

This project was undertaken to understand fundamental aspects of carbon dioxide (CO2) induced asphaltene precipitation. Oil and asphaltene samples from the Rangely field in Colorado were used for most of the project. The project consisted of pure component and high-pressure, thermodynamic experiments, thermodynamic modeling, kinetic experiments and modeling, targeted corefloods and compositional modeling.

Compact quasi-axisymmetric stellarators offer the possibility of combining the steady-state low-recirculating power, external control, and disruption resilience of previous stellarators with the low-aspect ratio, high beta-limit, and good confinement of advanced tokamaks. Quasi-axisymmetric equilibria have been developed for the proposed National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) with average aspect ratio approximately 4.4 and average elongation approximately 1.8. Even with bootstrap-current consistent profiles, they are passively stable to the ballooning, kink, vertical, Mercier, and neoclassical-tearing modes for b > 4%, without the need for external feedback or conducting walls. The bootstrap current generates only 1/4 of the magnetic rotational transform at b = 4% (the rest is from the coils). Transport simulations show adequate fast-ion confinement and thermal neoclassical transport similar to equivalent tokamaks. Modular coils have been designed which reproduce the physics properties, provide good flux surfaces, and allow flexible variation of the plasma shape to control the predicted MHD stability and transport properties.

The ability of a device to provide adiabatic motion of charged particles is crucial for magnetic confinement. As the magnetic field in the present-day spherical tori, e.g., MAST and NSTX, is much lower than in the conventional tokamaks, effects of the finite Larmor radius (FLR) on the motion of fast ions are of importance in these devices, affecting the stochasticity threshold for the interaction of the ions with electromagnetic perturbations. In addition, FLR by itself may result in non-conservation (jumps) of the magnetic moment of particles [4]. In this work we propose a Lagrangian approach to description of the resonant collisionless motion of charged particles under a perturbation, allowing for FLR. The work generalizes results of Ref. [1], where only time-independent perturbations were considered. The approach is used to find the stochasticity thresholds for the Goldston-White-Boozer (GWB) diffusion [2] and the cyclotron-resonance-induced (CRI) diffusion (for the case of the firs t cyclotron resonance, the latter was discovered in Ref. [3]). In addition, a new expression for the magnetic moment variation caused by FLR is found.

This Performance Management Plan describes the approach for accelerating cleanup activities of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Operations Office (NNSA/NV) Environmental Management (EM) Program. This approach accelerates the reduction of risk at NNSA/NV sites while performing the work responsibly, effectively, and more efficiently. In May 2002, NNSA/NV EM and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection signed a Letter of Intent formalizing an agreement to pursue accelerated risk reduction and cleanup for activities within the State of Nevada. This Performance Management Plan provides the strategic direction for implementing the Letter of Intent.

The major mechanisms of radioactive material transport and fate in surface water are sources, dilution, advection and dispersion of radionuclides by flow and surface waves, radionuclide decay, and interaction between sediment and radionuclides. STREAM II, an aqueous transport module of the Savannah River Site emergency response WIND system, accounts for the source term, and the effects of dilution, advection and dispersion. Although the model has the capability to account for nuclear decay, due to the short time interval of interest for emergency response, the effect of nuclear decay is very small and so it is not employed. The interactions between the sediment and radionuclides are controlled by the flow conditions and physical and chemical characteristics of the radionuclides and the sediment constituents. The STREAM II version used in emergency response must provide results relatively quickly; it therefore does not model the effects of sediment deposition/resuspension. This study estimates the effects of sediment deposition/resuspension on aqueous plutonium transport in Fourmile Branch. There are no measured data on plutonium transport through surface water available for direct model calibration. Therefore, a literature search was conducted to find the range of plutonium partition coefficients based on laboratory experiments and field measurements. A sensitivity study …

The objectives of this work were to characterize and performance test the vitrified product and to provide RPP-WTP personnel with the results from these studies. This is the final report for the small scale active vitrification testing on the AN-102 sample.

Although the general environment of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain is expected to be oxidizing in nature, the local chemistry within fuel canisters may be otherwise. The combination of low dissolved oxygen and corrosion of metallic fuels, such as Hanford's N-Reactor inventory, may produce reducing conditions. This condition may persist for periods sufficient to affect the corrosion and paragenesis of fuels and their reaction products. Starting in September 2001, unirradiated metallic uranium fuel was examined during batch tests under anoxic conditions. A series of tests carried out under inert atmosphere highlighted the rapid corrosion of the metallic uranium in EJ-13 water at 90 C. During the oxidation of the uranium, uranium dioxide fines spilled from the fuel surface generating copious amounts of colloids. The proportion of uranium-associated colloids accounted for nearly 50% to >99% of the uranium in solution after a brief period where no colloids were detected. The colloids were identified as individual (<10nm) and agglomerated uranium dioxide spheres as large as a few hundred nanometers in size. Silicate and alumino-silicate clays of diverse size and shape were also identified. The bulk size distribution as measured by dynamic light scattering was consistent with the microscopy observations in that …

The segregation of alloying and impurity elements to prior austenite grain boundaries (PAGBs) in low-alloy steels controls temper-embrittlement although the precise microchemical and microstructural interactions are, as yet, unclear because of the many variables involved. Competing segregation and de-segregation phenomena are observed. For example, Auger analyses of fracture surfaces indicate that brittle fracture is caused by the segregation of P to the PAGB. The addition of small amounts ({approx} 0.5 wt%) of Mo appears to regard, but not stop, temper-embrittlement, possibly due to Mo{sub 2}C precipitates that form at elevated temperatures causing de-segregation of Mo from the PAGB. The relationship between segregation and temper embrittlement is further complicated in commercial alloys by both the number of segregating elements and the complex, multi-stage heat treatments. Auger analysis pre-selects the most embrittled boundaries and so the complete distribution of segregants across all PAGBs cannot be determined by this technique. Previous work has shown how X-ray mapping (XRM) in a field-emission gun scanning transmission electron microscope (FEG-STEM) offers a more complete view of the distribution of segregants on both non-embrittled and embrittled PAGBs. XRM was used to observe the evolution of the segregation and desegregation of five elements during four successive heat-treatment stages …

This report discusses the accomplishments of the environmental protection program at Argonne National Laboratory-East (ANL-E) for calendar year 2001. The status of ANL-E environmental protection activities with respect to the various laws and regulations that govern waste handling and disposal is discussed, along with the progress of environmental corrective actions and restoration projects. To evaluate the effects of ANL-E operations on the environment, samples of environmental media collected on the site, at the site boundary, and off the ANL-E site were analyzed and compared with applicable guidelines and standards. A variety of radionuclides were measured in air, surface water, on-site groundwater, and bottom sediment samples. In addition, chemical constituents in surface water, groundwater, and ANL-E effluent water were analyzed. External penetrating radiation doses were measured, and the potential for radiation exposure to off-site population groups was estimated. Results are interpreted in terms of the origin of the radioactive and chemical substances (i.e., natural, fallout, ANL-E, and other) and are compared with applicable environmental quality standards. A U.S. Department of Energy dose calculation methodology, based on International Commission on Radiological Protection recommendations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's CAP-88 (Clean Air Act Assessment Package-1988) computer code, was used in preparing this …