The project scope of work included the complete decontamination and decommissioning (D and D) of the Westinghouse ARD Fuel Laboratories at the Cheswick Site in the shortest possible time. This has been accomplished in the following four phases: (1) preparation of documents and necessary paperwork; packaging and shipping of all special nuclear materials in an acceptable form to a reprocessing agency; (2) decontamination of all facilities, glove boxes and equipment; loading of generated waste into bins, barrels and strong wooden boxes; (3) shipping of all bins, barrels and boxes containing waste to the designated burial site; removal of all utility services from the laboratories; and (4) final survey of remaining facilities and certification for nonrestricted use; preparation of final report. These four phases of work were conducted in accordance with applicable regulations for D and D of research facilities and applicable regulations for packaging, transportation, and burial and storage of radioactive materials. The final result is that the Advanced Fuel Laboratories now meet requirements of ANSI 13.12 and can be released for unrestricted use. The four principal documents utilized in the D and D of the Cheswick Site were: (1) Plan for Fully Decontaminating and Decommissioning, Revision 3; (2) Environmental …

A process to photochemically remove tritium from heavy water has been described previously. Order-of-magnitude cost estimates for this process have been made, based on the specifications, assumptions, and parameters. The estimated costs of each unit and of the complete system are given. The total capital cost (excluding laser cost) of $650,000 corresponds to a cost of $0.08/Ci tritium removed, for plant amortization over one year. The electrical load is about 154 kW; this is equal to a cost of $0.01/Ci tritium removed (80% capacity factor, $0.05/kWh). Therefore the order-of-magnitude total cost of tritium removal is about $0.09/Ci. Experimental data on the D/sub 2/0/DTO/CDCl/sub 3/ system are needed to permit a detailed design of the exchange unit; the necessary experiments will soon be performed by a summer student. The stripper concept must also be better defined. With a good understanding of these units, the crucial parameters and tradeoffs can be identified and balanced in a final process design. The collaborative effort with the Savannah River Laboratory will help with process development, and will ensure that all Savannah River Plant requirements are met.

Recent events, such as Three Mile Island-2, Brown's Ferry-3, and Crystal River-3, have demonstrated that complex accidents can occur as a result of dependent (common-cause/mode) failures. These events are now being called Systems Interactions. A procedure for the identification and evaluation of Systems Interactions is being developed by the NRC. Several national laboratories and utilities have contributed preliminary procedures. As a result, there are several important views of the Systems Interaction problem. This report reviews some fundamental mathematical background of both fault-oriented and success-oriented risk analyses in order to bring out the advantages and disadvantages of each. In addition, it outlines several fault-oriented/dependency analysis approaches and several success-oriented/digraph-matrix approaches. The objective is to obtain a broad perspective of present options for solving the Systems Interaction problem.

As the search for more and more rare processes accelerates, the need for more and more effective event triggers also accelerates. In the earliest experiments, a simple coincidence often sufficed not only as the event trigger, but as the complete record of an event of interest. In today's experiments, not only has the fast trigger become more sophisticated, but one or more additional level of trigger processing precedes writing event data to magnetic tape for later analysis. Further search experiments will certainly require further expansion in the number of trigger levels required to filter those rare events of particular interest.

The metal hydride/chemical heat pump (MHHP) is a chemical heat pump containing two hydrides for the storage and/or recovery of thermal energy. It utilizes the heat of reaction of hydrogen with specific metal alloys. The MHHP design can be tailored to provide heating and/or cooling or temperature upgrading over a wide range of input and ambient temperatures. The system can thus be used with a variety of heat sources including waste heat, solar energy or a fossil fuel. The conceptual design of the MHHP was developed. A national market survey including a study of applications and market sectors was conducted. The technical tasks including conceptual development, thermal and mechanical design, laboratory verification of design and material performance, cost analysis and the detailed design of the Engineering Development Test Unit (EDTU) were performed. As a result of the market study, the temperature upgrade cycle of the MHHP was chosen for development. Operating temperature ranges for the upgrader were selected to be from 70 to 110/sup 0/C (160 to 230/sup 0/F) for the source heat and 140 to 190/sup 0/C (280 to 375/sup 0/F) for the product heat. These ranges are applicable to many processes in industries such as food, textile, paper …

The Borehole Televiewer is a data logging tool that was developed to inspect boreholes and evaluate geological formations. Window failures were observed after the manufacturer of the tool replaced the elastomeric windows with windows made from polyimide (Vespel), a plastic material noted for its high thermal stability. In this work, it was demonstrated that while Vespel was quite stable thermally at 250/sup 0/C in an inert environment (argon), stress cracking occurred in the presence of brine at these temperatures over a period of 2 to 3 hours. Somewhat longer exposures to brine (24 hours) at 260/sup 0/C and 20.7 MPa resulted in extensive chemical reversion of polyimides. Acids and amines were detected by infrared analysis. In contrast, the mechanical and chemical properties of Teflon (poly(tetrafluorethylene)) were unaffected after exposure to brine under the same conditions. On the basis of these results, it was recommended that acoustic windows for the Borehole Televiewer be made of Teflon. It was also recommended that the configuration of the window be modified to allow for the tendency of Teflon to flow under stress.

A data acquisition research program, entitled "Ultimate Heat Sink Performance Field Experiments," has been brought to completion. The primary objective is to obtain the requisite data to characterize thermal performance and water utilization for cooling ponds and spray ponds at elevated temperature. Such data are useful for modeling purposes, but the work reported here does not contain modeling efforts within its scope. The water bodies which have been studied are indicative of nuclear reactor ultimate heat sinks, components of emergency core cooling systems. The data reflect thermal performance and water utilization for meteorological and solar influences which are representative of worst-case combinations of conditions. Constructed water retention ponds, provided with absolute seals against seepage, have been chosen as facilities for the measurement programs; the first pond was located at Raft River, Idaho, and the second at East Mesa, California. The data illustrate and describe, for both cooling ponds and spray ponds, thermal performance and water utilization as the ponds cool from an initially elevated temperature. To obtain the initial elevated temperature, it has been convenient to conduct the measurements at geothermal sites having large supplies and delivery rates of hot geothermal fluid. The data are described and discussed in the …

Research progress in briefly described, and details are presented in the attached preprints and reprints: (1) precision mass differences in light rubidium and krypton isotopes utilizing beta endpoint measurements; (2) precision mass measurements utilizing beta endpoints; (3) Monte Carlo calculations predicting the response of intrinsic GE detectors to electrons and positrons; and (4) reactor antineutrino spectra and nuclear spectroscopy of isotopes far from beta stability. (WHK)

An automated system has been developed to perform ion beam analysis with in situ temperature programming from approx. 120K to approx. 770K.

This report summarizes a series of analyses of the magnitude and biological significance of the impingement of white perch at the Indian Point Nuclear Generating Station and other Hudson River power plants. Included in these analyses were evaluations of: (1) two independent lines of evidence relating to the magnitude of impingement impacts on the Hudson River white perch population; (2) the additional impact caused by entrainment of white perch; (3) data relating to density-dependent growth among young-of-the-year white perch; (4) the feasibility of performing population-level analyses of impingement impacts on the white perch populations of Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River; and (5) the feasibility of using simple food chain and food web models to evaluate community-level effects of impingement and entrainment. Estimated reductions in the abundances of the 1974 and 1975 white perch year classes, caused by impingement and entrainment, were high enough that the possibility of adverse long-term effects cannot be excluded.

Sufficient discussion of the elements of the leasing and permitting programs is included to place the information developed in proper context. A table and process flow diagram developed previously which outline the steps in the non-competitive leasing process, is reprinted. Computer printout profiles are presented on 195 identifiable areas in the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Sufficient information on the boundaries of these areas is contained in the report to permit identification of their general location on any map of the appropriate state which shows township and range locations.

Quantitative predictions are presented for a specific hard-scattering reaction ..pi..N ..-->.. ..gamma..X in which both the incident meson and the produced prompt photon couple directly in the QCD amplitude. The process leads to a highly constrained class of events at large p/sub T/ in which the photon momentum is balanced by that of a recoil quark jet, with no spectator jet of final-state particles emerging along the beam axis. Normalized absolutely in terms of the electromagnetic form factor of the pion, F/sub ..pi../(Q/sup 2/), the cross section provides a lower bound on the total p/sub T//sup -6/ high twist contribution to the inclusive prompt-photon yield.

A method and apparatus are disclosed for removing airborne contaminants entrained in a gas or airstream. The apparatus includes an electric filter characterized by a movable endless belt electrode, a grounded electrode, and a filter medium sandwiched therebetween. Inclusion of the movable, endless belt electrode provides the driving force for advancing the filter medium through the filter, and reduces frictional drag on the filter medium, thereby permitting a wide choice of filter medium materials. Additionally, the belt electrode includes a plurality of pleats in order to provide maximum surface area on which to collect airborne contaminants.

The use of magnetic switches to generate high power pulses has opened up a whole new spectrum of possibilities. Here we describe an investigation into the maximum repetition rates possible with these devices.

Tests have been performed to explore the effects of extended exposure of tuffs from the southwestern portion of the Nevada Test Site to temperatures and pressures similar to those that will be encountered in a high-level nuclear waste repository. Tuff samples ranging from highly welded, nonzeolitized to unwelded, highly zeolitized varieties were subjected to temperatures of 80, 120, and 180{sup 0}C; confining pressures of 9.7 and 19.7 MPa; and water-pore pressures of 0.5 to 19.7 MPa for durations of 2 to 6 months. The following basic properties were measured before and after exposure and compared: tensile strength, uniaxial compressive strength, grain density, porosity, mineralogy, permeability, thermal expansion, and thermal conductivity. Depending on rock type and exposure conditions, significant changes in ambient tensile strength, compressive strength, grain density, and porosity were measured. Mineralogic examination, permeability, and thermal property measurements remain to be completed.

A Hamiltonian formalism is developed for the drift orbit trajectories of particles in toroidal systems in the presence of stochastic fields. The equations of motion are integrated numerically to investigate the modification of neoclassical diffusion in a Tokamak due to the onset of stochasticity. Quasilinear diffusion is observed for fields with well developed stochasticity. A significant increase in the diffusion coefficient is observed below the stochastic threshold for electrons, whereas ions are typically not affected until the magnetic field has become quite stochastic.

A bagging device for transferring material from a first chamber through an opening in a wall to a second chamber includes an outer housing communicating with the opening and having proximal and distal ends relative to the wall. An inner housing having proximal and distal ends corresponding to those of the outer housing is mounted in a concentrically spaced, sealed manner with respect to the distal end of the outer housing. The inner and outer housings and mounting means therebetween define an annular chamber, closed at its distal end and open at its proximal end, in which a pliable tube is slidably positioned in sealed engagement with the housings. The pliable tube includes a sealed end positioned adjacent the proximal end of the inner housing so as to maintain isolation between the first and second chambers. Displacement of the material to be bagged from the first chamber along the inner housing so as to contact the sealed portion of the pliable bag allows the material to be positioned within the pliable bag in the second chamber. The bag is then sealed and severed between where the material is positioned therein and the wall in providing a sealed container for handling …

A bagging device for transferring material from a first chamber through an opening in a wall to a second chamber includes an outer housing communicating with the opening and having proximal and distal ends relative to the wall. An inner housing having proximal and distal ends corresponding to those of the outer housing is mounted in a concentrically spaced, sealed manner with respect to the distal end of the outer housing. The inner and outer housings and mounting means therebetween define an annular chamber, closed at its distal end and open at its proximal end, in which a pliable tube is slidably positioned in sealed engagement with the housings. The pliable tube includes a sealed end positioned adjacent the proximal end of the inner housing so as to maintain isolation between the first and second chambers. Displacement of the material to be bagged from the first chamber along the inner housing so as to contact the sealed portion of the pliable bag allows the material to be positioned within the pliable bag in the second chamber. The bag is then sealed and severed between where the material is positioned therein and the wall in providing a sealed container for handling …

This technical monthly report covers studies related to the use of /sup 238/PuO/sub 2/ in radioisotope power systems carried out for the Office of Coordination and Special Projects of the US Department of Energy by los Alamos National Laboratory. Most of the studies discussed here are ongoing. Results and conclusions described may change as the work continues. Published reference of the results cited in this report should not be made without the explicit permission of the person in charge of the work.

This technical monthly report covers studies related to the use of /sup 238/PuO/sub 2/ in radioisotope power systems carried ot for the Office of Coordination and Special Projects of the US Department of Energy by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Most of the studies discussed here are ongoing. Results and conclusions described may change as the work continues. Published reference of the results cited in this report should not be made without the explicit permission of the person in charge of the work.

A models was developed to aid in the design and interpretation of explosive generator-driven dense plasma focus experiments. Several models were investigated, but the one presented here employs a plane sheath propagating along the barrel of a Mather-type gun, entraining a constant fraction of the swept-up gas and carrying the return current between the electrodes. The motion of the sheath is determined from the momentum equation using the integrated magnetic force on the sheath. The solutions are obtained both numerically and by an approximate analytic procedure, and the performance of the system has been determined as a funtion of the switching time when the generator is connected to the dense plasma focus.

The finite element method is used to determine the temperatures, displacements, stresses, and strains in axisymmetric solids with orthotropic, temperature-dependent material properties under axisymmetric thermal and mechanical loads. The mechanical loads can be surface pressures, surface shears, and nodal point forces as well as an axial or centripetal acceleration. The continuous solid is replaced by a system of ring elements with triangular or quadrilateral cross sections. Accordingly, the method is valid for solids that are composed of many different materials and that have complex geometry. Nonlinear mechanical behavior as typified by plastic, locking, or creeping materials can be approximated. Two dimensional mesh generation, plotting, and editing features allow the computer program to be readily used. In addition to a stress analysis program that is based on a modified version of the SAAS code, TSAAS can carry out a transient thermal analysis with the finite element mesh used in stress analysis. An implicit time differencing scheme allows the use of arbitrary time steps with consequent fast running times. At specified times, the program will return to SAAS for thermal stress analysis. Nonlinear thermal properties and Arrhenius reaction kinetics are also incorporated into TSAAS. Several versions of TSAAS are in use at …

Fits to Langmuir probe measurements made near the midplanes of the PDX and PLT tokamaks imply density and electron temperature profiles. In ohmically heated plasmas with either circular or diverted configurations, the edge densities decrease approximately exponentially with e-folding lengths of 1-4cm. Electron temperatures are low (5 to 50 eV) and decrease more gradually than the density profiles in the outer edge.

The costs for the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, which were developed as part of the Nonproliferation Alternative Systems Assessment Program (NASAP), are presented. Total fuel cycle costs are given for the pressurized water reactor once-through and fuel recycle systems, and for the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor system. These calculations show that fuel cycle costs are a small part of the total power costs. For breeder reactors, fuel cycle costs are about half that of the present once-through system. The total power cost of the breeder reactor system is greater than that of light-water reactor at today's prices for uranium and enrichment.