This project aspires to increase the productivity and reserves in the Uinta Basin by demonstration of improved completion techniques. Subsurface studies were performed this period.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has developed radar and imaging technologies with potential applications in mine detection by the armed forces and other agencies involved in determining efforts. These new technologies use a patented ultra-wideband (impulse) radar technology that is compact, low-cost, and low power. Designated as Micropower hnpulse Radar, these compact, self-contained radars can easily be assembled into arrays to form complete ground penetrating radar imaging systems. LLNL has also developed tomographic reconstruction and signal processing software capable of producing high-resolution 2-D and 3-D images of objects buried in materials like soil or concrete from radar data. Preliminary test results have shown that a radar imaging system using these technologies has the ability to image both metallic and plastic land mine surrogate targets buried in 5 to 10 cm of moist soil. In dry soil, the system can detect buried objects to a depth of 30 cm and more. This report describes our initial test results and plans for future work.

This documents Phase 1 determinations on sampler induced bias for four sampler types used in tank characterization. Each sampler, grab sampler or bottle-on-a-string, auger sampler, sludge sampler and universal sampler, is briefly discussed and their physical limits noted. Phase 2 of this document will define additional testing and analysis to further define Sampler Bias.

Timely and repeatable alignment of the 192 beam National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser will require an automatic system. Demanding accuracy requirements must be met with high reliability at low cost while minimizing the turnaround time between shots. We describe an approach for internally self-consistent alignment of the mirrors in the laser chains using a network of local light sources that serve as near field and far field alignment references. It incorporates a minimum number of alignment lasers, handles many beams in parallel, and utilizes simple control algorithms.

The purpose of this document is to provide the design support information for the Vertical Fuel Handling Tools, developed for the removal of N Reactor fuel elements from their storage canisters in the K Basins storage pool and insertion into the Single Fuel Element Can for subsequent shipment to a Hot Cell for examination. Examination of these N Reactor fuel elements is part of the overall characterization effort. These new hand tools are required since previous fuel movement has involved grasping the fuel in a horizontal position. These tools are required to lift an element vertically from the storage canister. Additionally, a Mark II storage canister Lip Seal Protector was designed and fabricated for use during fuel retrieval. This device was required to prevent damage to the canister lip should a fuel element accidentally be dropped during its retrieval, using the handling tools. Supporting documentation for this device is included in this document.

The proposed National Ignition Facility is a 192 beam Nd:glass laser system capable of driving targets to fusion ignition by the year 2005. A key factor in the flexibility and performance of the laser is a front-end system which provides a precisely formatted beam to each beamline. Each of the injected beams has individually controlled energy, temporal pulseshape, and spatial shape to accommodate beamline-to-beamline variations in gain and saturation. This flexibility also gives target designers the options for precisely controlling the drive to different areas of the target. The design of the Front-End laser is described, and initial results are discussed.

Optical damage that results in large scale fracture has been observed in the large, high-fluence, fused-silica, spatial filter lenses on the Nova and Beamlet lasers. In nearly all cases damage occurs on the vacuum side of the lenses and because the vacuum side of the lens is under tensile stress this damage can lead to catastrophic crack growth if the flaw (damage) size exceeds the critical flaw size for SiO{sub 2}. The damaged 52 cm Nova lenses fracture into two and sometimes three large pieces. Although under full vacuum load at the time they fracture, the Nova lenses do not implode. Rather the authors have observed that the pieces lock together and air slowly leaks into the vacuum spatial filter housing through the lens cracks. The Beamlet lenses have a larger aspect ratio and peak tensile stress than Nova. The peak tensile stress at the center of the output surface of the Beamlet lens is 1,490 psi versus 810 psi for Nova. During a recent Beamlet high energy shot, a damage spot on the lens grew to the critical flaw size and the lens imploded. Post shot data indicate the lens probably fractured into 5 to 7 pieces, however, unlike …

This document presents sampling data resulting from the March 14, 1995, sampling of SST 241-S-102 Using the Vapor Sampling System.

This document presents sampling data resulting from the January 18, 1995, sampling of SST 241-T-107 Using the Vapor Sampling System.

This document presents sampling data resulting from the November 16, 1994, sampling of SST 241-BY-111 Using the Vapor Sampling System.

Attention is drawn to the possibility of regarding the cerebral cortex as a physical system whose only excitations are topological. An attractive feature of such a hypothesis is that it is possible to understand how local dynamics could spontaneously give rise to a large scale organization of neurons and synapses that one might associate with sophisticated cognitive capabilities. It is suggested that the spontaneous appearance of topological disorder in the topological phases of 2-D and 4-D quantum gravity illustrates how the topological complexity of the human brain can develop. In particular the cooperative behavior of different neural circuits in the cerebral cortex may be closely related to the topology of certain 4-manifolds.

The inductively coupled plasma is an electrodeless discharge in a gas (usually Ar) at atmospheric pressure. Radio frequency energy generated by a RF power source is inductively coupled to the plasma gas through a water cooled load coil. In ICP-MS the {open_quotes}Fassel{close_quotes} TAX quartz torch commonly used in emission is mounted horizontally. The sample aerosol is introduced into the central flow, where the gas kinetic temperature is about 5000 K. The aerosol is vaporized, atomized, excited and ionized in the plasma, and the ions are subsequently extracted through two metal apertures (sampler and skimmer) into the mass spectrometer. In ICP-MS, the matrix effects, or non-spectroscopic interferences, can be defined as the type of interferences caused by dissolved concomitant salt ions in the solution. Matrix effects can be divided into two categories: (1) signal drift due to the deposition of solids on the sampling apertures; and/or (2) signal suppression or enhancement by the presence of the dissolved salts. The first category is now reasonably understood. The dissolved salts, especially refractory oxides, tend to deposit on the cool tip of the sampling cone. The clogging of the orifices reduces the ion flow into the ICP-MS, lowers the pressure in the first stage …

Thermal embrittlement of static-cast CF-8 stainless steel components from the decommissioned Shippingport reactor has been characterized. Cast stainless steel materials were obtained from four cold-leg check valves, three hot-leg main shutoff valves, and two pump volutes. The actual time-at-temperature for the materials was {approx}13 y at {approx}281 C (538 F) for the hot-leg components and {approx}264 C (507 F) for the cold-leg components. Baseline mechanical properties for as-cast material were determined from tests on either recovery-annealed material, i.e., annealed for 1 h at 550 C and then water quenched, or material from the cooler region of the component. The Shippingport materials show modest decreases in fracture toughness and Charpy-impact properties and a small increase in tensile strength because of relatively low service temperatures and ferrite content of the steel. The procedure and correlations developed at Argonne National Laboratory for estimating mechanical properties of cast stainless steels predict accurate or slightly lower values for Charpy-impact energy, tensile flow stress, fracture toughness J-R curve, and JIC of the materials. The kinetics of thermal embrittlement and degree of embrittlement at saturation, i.e., the minimum impact energy achieved after long-term aging, were established from materials that were aged further in the laboratory. The results …

This paper develops and characterizes mixed direct-iterative methods for boundary integral formulations of continuum dielectric solvation models. We give an example, the Ca{sup ++}{hor_ellipsis}Cl{sup {minus}} pair potential of mean force in aqueous solution, for which a direct solution at thermal accuracy is difficult and, thus for which mixed direct-iterative methods seem necessary to obtain the required high resolution. For the simplest such formulations, Gauss-Seidel iteration diverges in rare cases. This difficulty is analyzed by obtaining the eigenvalues and the spectral radius of the non-symmetric iteration matrix. This establishes that those divergences are due to inaccuracies of the asymptotic approximations used in evaluation of the matrix elements corresponding to accidental close encounters of boundary elements on different atomic spheres. The spectral radii are then greater than one for those diverging cases. This problem is cured by checking for boundary element pairs closer than the typical spatial extent of the boundary elements and for those cases performing an ``in-line`` Monte Carlo integration to evaluate the required matrix elements. These difficulties are not expected and have not been observed for the thoroughly coarsened equations obtained when only a direct solution is sought. Finally, we give an example application of hybrid quantum-classical methods to …

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Technic, Inc. have entered into a CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) with the goal of providing industry with an environmentally benign alternative to the presently used silver cyanide plating process. This project has been in place for about six months and results are quite promising. The main objective, that of deposition of deposits as thick as 125 um (5 mils), has been met. Property data such as stress and hardness have been obtained and the structure of the deposit has been analyzed via metallography and x-ray diffraction. These results will be presented in this paper, along with plans for future work.

LLNL plans to specify optical components for the National Ignition Facility according to ISO 10110, the new international standard for preparation of optics drawings. The standards have been approved by the international optics community and represent a fairly comprehensive language for describing optical components. We will describe our plan for implementation and experience to date in doing so.

This report is a compilation of system change requests processed during the development of the Data Acquisition and Control System for the Tank 241-SY-101 hydrogen mitigation project. Tank 241-SY-101 is on the Hydrogen Watch List. The disposition of the request, date the change was installed, date verified, and whether an Acceptance Test Procedure was required and completed are described for each request change.

The second Keck ten meter telescope (Keck-11) is slated to have an infrared-optimized adaptive optics system in the 1997--1998 time frame. This system will provide diffraction-limited images in the 1--3 micron region and the ability to use a diffraction-limited spectroscopy slit. The AO system is currently in the preliminary design phase and considerable analysis has been performed in order to predict its performance under various seeing conditions. In particular we have investigated the point-spread function, energy through a spectroscopy slit, crowded field contrast, object limiting magnitude, field of view, and sky coverage with natural and laser guide stars.

AISI 1020 carbon steel was exposed to air at various relative humidities at 65{degrees}C. A ``critical relative humidity`` (CRH) of 75--85% was determined. The CRH is the transitional relative humidity where oxidation/corrosion changes from dry oxidation to aqueous film electrochemical corrosion. Short term testing suggests that aqueous film electrochemical corrosion results in the formation of an inner oxide of Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4}, and an outer oxide of a powdery Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} and/or Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3}{center_dot}xH{sub 2}O.

A number of discriminants have been developed for seismic monitoring. These include the Ms-mb discriminant which measures differences in surface and body wave magnitudes (e.g., Marshall and Basham, 1972), short period P to S wave amplitude ratio discriminants (e.g., Blandford, 1981) and spectral ratios discriminants (e.g., Murphy and Bennett, 1982). Unfortunately, existing discrimination capabilities are insufficient to meet the needs that will be required by a comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT). Of particular concern are limitations of current capabilities for discriminating small magnitude (mb<4) seismic events such as earthquakes, mining explosions, and mining related seismicity (rockbursts and collapse events) from small magnitude nuclear explosions (both coupled and decoupled). In this report, we summarize our work on the development of new methods for discriminating such small magnitude events.

Spectrophotometry of elliptical galaxies spanning a large rang in luminosity is analyzed for cosmic variations in color and line strength. The results are used to construct a base sequence spectral energy distribution as a function line strength, color, and velocity dispersion, representing old, red, uniform elliptical galaxy stellar populations. The sequence can be used as the starting point for investigating and modeling the stellar populations of other systems such as dwarf ellipticals, merger remnants, and, eventually, high redshift ellipticals.

Programming parallel computers for performance is a difficult task that requires careful attention to both single-node performance and data exchange between processors. This paper discusses some of the sources of poor performance, ways to identify them in an application, and a few ways to address these issues.

This report talks about the Analysis of Eddy Currents in a Resistive Coating of the Injection Kicker Beam Tube

A series of mixing tests were performed to identify the range of liquid levels and overall dispersed (organic) concentrations where a constant agitator speed representative of plant operations could eliminate a separate organic layer on the liquid surface. The test runs were made in a transparent, baffled, paddle-agitated, Plexiglas vessel which was fitted with three concentric cooling coils. A visual observation method was used without taking any samples to determine the quality of mixing in the agitated vessel as a function of the total liquid level in the vessel at a given dispersed phase concentration (8 vol %) and various organic phase concentrations at a constant water content. The observations have determined that gross uniform dispersion throughout a canyon tank can be achieved with the current plant impeller speed when the total liquid level is near the vicinity of the second (top) impeller. These observations were recorded in a video tape.