None

None

A complete understanding of actinide interactions in the geosphere is paramount for developing a rational Nuclear and Environmental Materials Management Policy. One of the key challenges towards understanding the fate and transport of actinides is determining their speciation (i.e., oxidation state and structure). Since an element's speciation directly dictates physical properties such as toxicity and solubility, this information is critical for evaluating and controlling the evolution of an actinide element through the environment. Specific areas within nuclear and environmental management programs where speciation is important are (1) waste processing and separations; (2) wasteform materials for long-term disposition; and (3) aqueous geochemistry. The goal of this project was to develop Actinide X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy ( U S ) as a core capability at LLNL and integrate it with existing facilities, providing a multi-technique approach to actinide speciation. XAS is an element-specific structural probe which determines the oxidation state and structure for most atoms. XAS can be more incisive than other spectroscopies because it originates from an atomic process and the information is always attainable, regardless of an element's speciation. Despite the utility, XAS is relatively complex due to the need for synchrotron radiation and significant expertise with data acquisition and analysis. …

None

The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is currently involved in a 1/5 scale testing program on the Mark I BWR pressure suppression system. A key element of the test setup is a pressure vessel that is a 90/sup 0/ sector of a torus. Proper performance of the 90/sup 0/ torus depends on its structural integrity and structural dynamic characteristics. It must sustain the internal pressurization of the planned tests, and its dynamic response to the transient test loads should be minimal. If the structural vibrations are too great, interpretation of important load cell and pressure transducer data will be difficult. The purpose of the report is to bring together under one cover calculations pertaining to the structural dynamic characteristics and structural integrity of 90/sup 0/ torus. The report is divided into the following sections: (1) system description in which the torus and associated hardware are briefly described; (2) structural dynamics in which calculations of natural frequency and dynamic response are presented; and (3) structural integrity in which stress calculations for design purposes are presented; and an appendix which contains an LLL internal report comparing the expected load cell response for a three and four-point supported torus.

This development project addressed the need for a faster, less expensive method of transmission ultrasound. It utilized the principle of frustrated total internal reflection to transduce acoustic pressure into optical modulation. These data were acquired an entire 2D plane at a time. This report described the modeling and verification of a final sensor design.

The primary purpose of the verification enhancement review was for the DOE Richland Operations Office (RL) to verify contractor readiness for the independent DOE Integrated Safety Management System Verification (ISMSV) on the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP). Secondary objectives included: (1) to reinforce the engagement of management and to gauge management commitment and accountability; (2) to evaluate the ''value added'' benefit of direct public involvement; (3) to evaluate the ''value added'' benefit of direct worker involvement; (4) to evaluate the ''value added'' benefit of the panel-to-panel review approach; and, (5) to evaluate the utility of the review's methodology/adaptability to periodic assessments of ISM status. The review was conducted on December 6-8, 1999, and involved the conduct of two-hour interviews with five separate panels of individuals with various management and operations responsibilities related to PFP. A semi-structured interview process was employed by a team of five ''reviewers'' who directed open-ended questions to the panels which focused on: (1) evidence of management commitment, accountability, and involvement; and, (2) consideration and demonstration of stakeholder (including worker) information and involvement opportunities. The purpose of a panel-to-panel dialogue approach was to better spotlight: (1) areas of mutual reinforcement and alignment that could serve as good examples …

None

This System Design Description provides: (1) statements of the Spent Nuclear Fuel Projects (SNFP) needs requiring sampling of fuel in the K East and K West Basins, (2) the sampling equipment functions and requirements, (3) a general work plan and the design logic being followed to develop the equipment, and (4) a summary description of the design for the sampling equipment. The report summarizes the integrated application of both the subject equipment and the canister sludge sampler in near-term characterization campaigns at K Basins.

This report summarizes information on the historical uses, current status, and sampling and analysis results of waste stored in single-shell underground tank 241-BY-108.

The central research problem of this project is the effective representation and display of surfaces, interpolating to given information, in three or more dimensions. In a typical problem, we wish to create a surface from some discrete information. If this information is itself on another surface, the problem is to determine a ``surface defined on a surface,`` which is discussed below. Often, properties of an already constructed surface are desired: such ``geometry processing`` is described below. The Summary of Proposed Research from our original proposal describes the aims of this research project. This Summary and the Table of Contents from the original proposal are enclosed as an Appendix to this Progress Report. The broad sweep from constructive mathematics through algorithms and computer graphics displays is utilized in the research. The wide range of activity, directed in both theory and applications, makes this project unique. Last month in the first Ardent Titan delivered in the State of Arizona came to our group, funded by the DOE and Arizona State University. Although the Titan is a commercial product, its newness requires our close collaboration with Ardent to maximize results. During the past year, four faculty members and several graduate research assistants have …

The central research problem of this project is the effective representation and display of surfaces, interpolating to given information, in three or more dimensions. In a typical problem, we wish to create a surface from some discrete information. If this information is itself on another surface, the problem is to determine a surface defined on a surface,'' which is discussed below. Often, properties of an already constructed surface are desired: such geometry processing'' is described below. The Summary of Proposed Research from our original proposal describes the aims of this research project. This Summary and the Table of Contents from the original proposal are enclosed as an Appendix to this Progress Report. The broad sweep from constructive mathematics through algorithms and computer graphics displays is utilized in the research. The wide range of activity, directed in both theory and applications, makes this project unique. Last month in the first Ardent Titan delivered in the State of Arizona came to our group, funded by the DOE and Arizona State University. Although the Titan is a commercial product, its newness requires our close collaboration with Ardent to maximize results. During the past year, four faculty members and several graduate research assistants have …

A major challenge in the recently awarded River Corridor Closure (RCC) Contract at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site is decontaminating and demolishing (D&D) facilities in the 300 Area. Located along the banks of the Columbia River about one mile north of Richland, Washington, the 2.5 km{sup 2} (1 mi{sup 2})300 Area comprises only a small part of the 1517 km{sup 2} (586 mi{sup 2}) Hanford Site. However, with more than 300 facilities ranging from clean to highly contaminated, D&D of those facilities represents a major challenge for Washington Closure Hanford (WCH), which manages the new RCC Project for DOE's Richland Operations Office (RL). A complicating factor for this work is the continued use of nearly a dozen facilities by the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Most of the buildings will not be released to WCH until at least 2009--four years into the seven-year, $1.9 billion RCC Contract. The challenge will be to deactivate, decommission, decontaminate and demolish (D4) highly contaminated buildings, such as 324 and 327, without interrupting PNNL's operations in adjacent facilities. This paper focuses on the challenges associated with the D4 of the 324 Building and the 327 Building.

A scientific demonstration of a Cs laser is described in which the measured slope efficiency is as high as 0.59 W/W using a Ti:Sapphire laser as a surrogate diode-pump. In addition to presenting experimental data, a laser energetics model that accurately predicts laser performance is described and used to model a power-scaled, diode-pumped system.

None

It is desired at this time to present in summary form a factual history of the Building 234-5 operations, encompassing not only the immediate pre-start-up period from April to July, 1949, but including the major obstacles encountered in the succeeding interval to the end of 1949. This report is intended to serve not only as a review of 234-5 operations during this period but also as a documentary evidence of the difficulties experienced and the manner in which they impeded the start-up. This report presupposes a certain familiarity with the background of the 234-5 Building. To one unacquainted with the scope of this project, or for those desiring a background review, reference should be made to Document HM-253, ``234-5 Building Program Review``, by D.D. Streid, dated April 22, 1949. It must be realized that any attempt to discuss in detail all the circumstances and difficulties contributing to the start-up period would be disconcerting to the reader, and would very likely be repetitive. Therefore, although it is far from the writer`s intent that a cursory review will suffice, the presentation will be as nearly as practicable, chronological and comparative. For the sake of clarity it will be necessary to present several …

Concepts were evaluated for the storage of unreprocessed spent fuel in a retrievable surface storage facility. This document provides a systematic format for making a concept selection from the seven alternative concepts presented in RHO-LD-2. Results of the evaluation was that the Drywell concept was rated highest with the Water Basin Concept and the Sealed Storage Cask concept with multiple canisters of SURF coming in a close second and third. (DLC)

The thermodynamics and kinetics of the fcc (delta) to monoclinic (alpha-prime) phase transformation and its reversion in a plutonium-gallium alloy have been studied using differential scanning calorimetry, resistometry, and dilatometry. Under ambient conditions, the delta phase is metastable in a Pu-2.0 at% Ga alloy. Thermal cycling to below the ambient temperature results in a partial transformation to the alpha-prime phase; this transformation is composition-invariant and exhibits martensitic behavior. Because this transformation results in an unusually invariant large 25% volume contraction that cannot be fully accommodated by purely elastic adjustments, the transformation mode is expected to involve burst formation of individual alpha-prime particles. However, upon cooling, these individual bursts were not resolved by the above techniques, although signals corresponding to the overall accumulation of many alpha-prime particles were observed. On the other hand, upon heating, signals from differential scanning calorimetry, resistometry, and dilatometry showed a series of discrete changes occurring in periodic increments beginning at approximately 32 C. These features correspond to the cooperative reversion of many alpha-prime particles to the delta phase; they appear to be the result of an interplay between the autocatalytically driven reversion of a cascade of individual martensite units, and self-quenching caused by small changes of …

In a Pu-2.0 at% Ga alloy, it is observed experimentally that the amount of the martensitic alpha-prime product formed upon cooling the metastable delta phase below the martensite burst temperature (M{sub b}) is a function of the holding temperature and holding time of a prior conditioning (''annealing'') treatment. Before subjecting a sample to a cooling and heating cycle to form and revert the alpha-prime phase, it was first homogenized for 8 hours at 375 C to remove any microstructural memory of prior transformations. Subsequently, conditioning was carried out in a differential scanning calorimeter apparatus at temperatures in the range between -50 C and 370 C for periods of up to 70 hours to determine the holding time and temperature that produced the largest volume fraction of alpha-prime upon subsequent cooling. Using transformation peak areas (i.e., the heats of transformation) as a measure of the amount of alpha-prime formed, the largest amount of alpha-prime was obtained following holding at 25 C for at prime least 6 hours. Additional time at 25 C, up to 70 hours, did not increase the amount of subsequent alpha-prime formation. At 25 C, the Pu-2.0 at% Ga alloy is below the eutectoid transformation temperature in the …

The production of supersonic jets of material via the interaction of a strong shock wave with a spatially localized density perturbation is a common feature of inertial confinement fusion and astrophysics. The behavior of two-dimensional (2D) supersonic jets has previously been investigated in detail [J. M. Foster et. al, Phys. Plasmas 9, 2251 (2002)]. In three-dimensions (3D), however, there are new aspects to the behavior of supersonic jets in compressible media. In this paper, the commissioning activities on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [J. A. Paisner et al., Laser Focus World 30, 75 (1994)] to enable hydrodynamic experiments will be presented as well as the results from the first series of hydrodynamic experiments. In these experiments, two of the first four beams of NIF are used to drive a 40 Mbar shock wave into millimeter scale aluminum targets backed by 100 mg/cc carbon aerogel foam. The remaining beams are delayed in time and are used to provide a point-projection x-ray backlighter source for diagnosing the three-dimensional structure of the jet evolution resulting from a variety of 2D and 3D features. Comparisons between data and simulations using several codes will be presented.

The time scale for irreversible mixing in a charged-particle bunch as a consequence of time-independent, nonlinear space-charge forces is estimated analytically to be a few plasma periods, much shorter than the two-body relaxation time. The basis for the estimate is a metric tensor inferred from Hamilton's least-action principle. Geodesics derived from the metric tensor correspond to particle trajectories. Their behavior reflects the properties of the curvilinear manifold in which they are embedded, among which irregularities associated with parametric resonances are of foremost importance. Exponential separation of nearby chaotic trajectories is thereby accessible to the geometrodynamic approach. The e-folding time associated with dispersing an initially localized perturbation throughout the bunch characterizes the process of irreversible mixing. It thereby constrains both the placement and size of hardware for emittance compensation that may be needed, for example, to undo phase-space degradation arising from coherent synchrotron radiation in magnetic bends. These constraints are estimated for linacs powering modern infrared and x-ray free-electron lasers.

The present research program is centered on the experimental and numerical study of two instabilities that develop at the interface between two different fluids when the interface experiences an impulsive or a constant acceleration. The instabilities, called the Richtmyer-Meshkov and Rayleigh-Taylor instability, respectively, adversely affect target implosion in experiments aimed at the achievement of nuclear fusion by inertial confinement by causing the nuclear fuel contained in a target and the shell material to mix, leading to contamination of the fuel, yield reduction or no ignition at all. The laboratory experiments summarized in this report include shock tube experiments to study a shock-accelerated bubble and a shock-accelerated 2-D sinusoidal interface; and experiments based on the use of magnetorheological fluids for the study of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Computational experiments based on the shock tube experimental conditions are also reported.

NASA's Stardust mission returned to Earth in January 2006 with ''fresh'' cometary particles from a young Jupiter family comet. The cometary particles were sampled during the spacecraft flyby of comet 81P/Wild-2 in January 2004, when they impacted low-density silica aerogel tiles and aluminum foils on the sample tray assembly at approximately 6.1 km/s. This LDRD project has developed extraction and sample recovery methodologies to maximize the scientific information that can be obtained from the analysis of natural and man-made nano-materials of relevance to the LLNL programs.

We describe recent, energetics performance results on the engineering preamplifier module (PAM) prototype located in the front end of the 1.8MJ National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser system. Three vertically mounted subsystem located in the PAM provide laser gain as well as spatial beam shaping. The first subsystem in the PAM prototype is a diode pumped, Nd:glass, linear, TEM{sub 00}, 4.5m long regenerative amplifier cavity. With a single diode pumped head, we amplify a 1nJ, mode matched, temporally shaped ({approx} 20ns) seed pulse by a factor of approximately 10{sup 7} to 20mJ. The second subsystem in the PAM is the beam shaping module, which magnifies the gaussian output beam of the regenerative amplifier to provide a 30mm x 30mm square beam that is spatially shaped in two dimensions to pre-compensate for radial gain profiles in the main amplifiers. The final subsystem in the PAM is the 4-pass amplifier which relay images the 1mJ output of the beam shaper through four gain passes in a {phi}5cm x 48cm flashlamp pumped rod amplifier, amplifying the energy to 175. The system gain of the PAM is 10{sup 10}. Each PAM provides 35 of injected energy to four separate main amplifier chains which in turn …