A benchmarking study was conducted on behalf of the Department of Energy to determine the critical factors in successful utility geothermal heat pump programs. A Successful program is one that has achieved significant market penetration. Successfully marketing geothermal heat pumps has presented some major challenges to the utility industry. However, select utilities have developed programs that generate significant GHP sales. This benchmarking study concludes that there are three factors critical to the success of utility GHP marking programs: (1) Top management marketing commitment; (2) An understanding of the fundamentals of marketing and business development; and (3) An aggressive competitive posture. To generate significant GHP sales, competitive market forces must by used. However, because utilities have functioned only in a regulated arena, these companies and their leaders are unschooled in competitive business practices. Therefore, a lack of experience coupled with an intrinsically non-competitive culture yields an industry environment that impedes the generation of significant GHP sales in many, but not all, utilities.

Twenty one hundred metric tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored in two concrete pools on the Hanford Site, known as the K Basins, near the Columbia River. The deteriorating conditions of the fuel and the basins provide engineering and management challenges to assure safe current and future storage. DE and S Hanford, Inc., part of the Fluor Daniel Hanford, Inc. lead team on the Project Hanford Management Contract, is constructing facilities and systems to move the fuel from current wet pool storage to a dry interim storage facility away from the Columbia River, and to treat and dispose of K Basins sludge, debris and water. The process starts in the K Basins where fuel elements will be removed from existing canisters, washed, and separated from sludge and scrap fuel pieces. Fuel elements will be placed in baskets and loaded into Multi-Canister Overpacks (MCOs) and into transportation casks. The MCO and cask will be transported into the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility, where free water within the MCO will be removed under vacuum at slightly elevated temperatures. The MCOs will be sealed and transported via the transport cask to the Canister Storage Building (CSB) in the 200 Area for staging prior …

The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) has been proposed as a production facility for tritium and medical isotopes. A range of postulated accidents related to ex-reactor irradiated fuel and target handling were identified and evaluated using new source terms for the higher fuel enrichment and for the tritium and medical isotope targets. In addition, two in-containment sodium spill accidents were re-evaluated to estimate effects of increased fuel enrichment and the presence of the Rapid Retrieval System. Radiological and toxicological consequences of the analyzed accidents were found to be well within applicable risk guidelines.

High-density TiN (>98% of theoretical) has been prepared by hot pressing TiN powder with 2-4 wt.% Li{sub 2}C0{sub 3} at temperatures between 1150-1550 C and pressures of {approx}40-50 MPa. The Li{sub 2}C0{sub 3} served as a fugitive sintering aid, enabling attainment of high density at low temperatures without adversely affecting the inherently good properties. Variation in processing variables and TiN powder characteristics resulted in material with various porosities. Measurement of mechanical properties such as flexural strength and fracture toughness showed that the high-density material has mechanical properties that are superior to those of several oxide ceramics. We have also quantified the effects of porosity on mechanical properties. In addition, adhesion and chemical stability tests were used to investigate graphite coated with TiN by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Pin-pull tests were used to determine coating adhesion and failure stresses were analyzed by Weibull statistics. All pin-pull tests resulted in fracture of the graphite substrate, rather than separation at the TiN/graphite interface. The data showed a good fit to the two-parameter Weibull expression, with a failure strength of 16.4 MPa and Weibull modulus of 9.3. Both the high-density TiN and the TiN coating on the graphite were exposed to a corrosive molten …

Recent advances in reverse engineering have focused on recovering a boundary representation (b-rep) of an object, often for integration with rapid prototyping. This boundary representation may be a 3-D point cloud, a triangulation of points, or piecewise algebraic or parametric surfaces. This paper presents work in progress to develop an algorithm to extend the current state of the art in reverse engineering of mechanical parts. This algorithm will take algebraic surface representations as input and will produce a constructive solid geometry (CSG) description that uses solid primitives such as rectangular block, pyramid, sphere, cylinder, and cone. The proposed algorithm will automatically generate a CSG solid model of a part given its algebraic b-rep, thus allowing direct input into a CAD system and subsequent CSG model generation.

As high-speed networks make it easier to use distributed resources, it becomes increasingly common that applications and their data are not colocated. Users have traditionally addressed this problem by manually staging data to and from remote computers. We argue instead for a new remote I/O paradigm in which programs use familiar parallel I/O interfaces to access remote file systems. In addition to simplifying remote execution, remote I/O can improve performance relative to staging by overlapping computation and data transfer or by reducing communication requirements. However, remote I/O also introduces new technical challenges in the areas of portability, performance, and integration with distributed computing systems. We propose techniques designed to address these challenges and describe a remote I/O library called RIO that we have developed to evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques. RIO addresses issues of portability by adopting the quasi-standard MPI-IO interface and by defining a RIO device and RIO server within the ADIO abstract I/O device architecture. It addresses performance issues by providing traditional I/O optimizations such as asynchronous operations and through implementation techniques such as buffering and message forwarding to off load communication overheads. RIO uses the Nexus communication library to obtain access to configuration and security mechanisms …

'This project fits well within the overall objectives established by the Environmental Management and Science Program to promote long-term basic research that will provide the tools for more effective and lower cost remediation efforts at DOE sites where hazardous and radioactive wastes or contamination zones are present. In order to develop the necessary remediation technology it has been recognized that a fundamental understanding of the various chemical and physical factors associated with waste treatment and contaminant transport must be established. Some of the specific topics include waste pretreatment, volume reduction, immobilization, separation methods, the interactions of actinides and heavy metals with surfaces in the presence of organic residues and co-contaminants, contaminant transport in the environment, and long-term storage site assessment. This project has direct and potential application in all these areas. The interaction and partitioning of contaminant metals and radionuclides between solution and solid- surface phases is a fundamental issue for waste treatment and predicting contaminant transport in the environment. Many factors are involved in the functional relationships describing chemical reactivity and physical distribution of chemical species. These include modification of chemical behavior by the suite of chemical co-contaminants in a system. Organic complexing agents are common components of waste …

The cleanup of high level defense nuclear waste at the Hanford site presents several progressive challenges. Among these is the removal and disposal of various components from buried active waste tanks to allow new equipment insertion or hazards mitigation. A unique automated retrieval system at the tank provides for retrieval, high pressure washing, inventory measurement, and containment for disposal. Key to the inventory measurement is a three detector HPGe high performance gamma spectroscopy system capable of recovering data at up to 90% saturation (200,000 counts per second). Data recovery is based on a unique embedded electronic pulser and specialized software to report the inventory. Each of the detectors have different shielding specified through Monte Carlo simulation with the MCNP program. This shielding provides performance over a dynamic range of eight orders of magnitude. System description, calibration issues and operational experiences are discussed.

The purpose of this work was to investigate the utility of electronic aroma detection technologies for the detection and identification of accelerant residues in suspected arson debris. Through the analysis of known accelerant residues, a trained neural network was developed for classifying suspected arson samples. Three unknown fire debris samples were classified using this neural network. The item corresponding to diesel fuel was correctly identified every time. For the other two items, wide variations in sample concentration and excessive water content, producing high sample humidities, were shown to influence the sensor response. Sorbent sampling prior to aroma detection was demonstrated to reduce these problems and to allow proper neural network classification of the remaining items corresponding to kerosene and gasoline.

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The report documents the maximum exposure for transfer of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) Isotopic Heat Sources from the 324 Building and placed in interim storage at the Central Waste Complex (CWC). These results are to be reported in the Environmental Assessment DOE-EA- 1 21 1.

We describe the use of automatic differentiation (AD) to enhance a compressible Navier-Stokes model. With the solver, AD is used to accelerate convergence by more than an order of magnitude. Outside the solver, AD is used to compute the derivatives needed for optimization. We emphasize the potential for performance gains if the programmer does not treat AD as a black box, but instead utilizes high-level knowledge about the nature of the application.

Given the events of the past 25 years concerning energy and environmental issues and our reaction to them, what lessons can we learn? First, the individual American consumer wants and expects energy to be a stable commodity with low prices and easy availability. As evidenced by the heated debate over increasing the federal gasoline tax by $.05 per gallon (which would still leave Americans paying only one-third of what Europeans pay for gasoline), increases in energy prices elicit very strong public and political opposition. As further evidence, it has been argued that the general public support of the Gulf War was due, in part, to a recognition of the need to maintain a stable source of cheap oil from the region. The American public wants to maintain the benefits of cheap and abundant energy and expects its political leaders to make it happen. A second lesson is that if constraints on the energy supply do occur (e.g., the OPEC-imposed oil embargo) ardor environmental impacts from energy use do appear to be significant (e.g., SO{sub 2} and CO{sub 2} emissions), the preference is for a technology fix rather than a behavioral change. This is evidenced by our reliance on moving low-sulfur …

An allegation was made to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) that the integrity of the Department of Energy`s (DOE) unsolicited proposal review process may have been compromised by the actions of a former Deputy Secretary of Energy and his Executive Assistant during the review of an unsolicited proposal received from Chevron U.S.A. Production Company (Chevron) in may 1993. The Chevron unsolicited proposal was for the management and operation of DOE`s Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve (Elk Hills), located near Bakersfield, California. Chevron submitted the unsolicited proposal on May 19, 1993. DOE formally rejected Chevron`s unsolicited proposal in May 1995. Although Chevron`s unsolicited proposal was eventually rejected by DOE, the complainant specifically alleged that the {open_quotes}sanctity, integrity, and sensitivity{close_quotes} of the unsolicited proposal review process had been breached in meetings during the Fall of 1993 between Chevron officials, the Deputy Secretary of Energy (Deputy Secretary), and his Executive Assistant. Based on our review of the allegation, we identified the following issue as the focus of our inspection.

This dissertation describes two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance theory and experiments which have been developed to study quadruples in the solid state. The technique of multiple-quantum magic-angle spinning (MQMAS) is extensively reviewed and expanded upon in this thesis. Specifically, MQMAS is first compared with another technique, dynamic-angle spinning (DAS). The similarity between the two techniques allows us to extend much of the DAS work to the MQMAS case. Application of MQMAS to a series of aluminum containing materials is then presented. The superior resolution enhancement through MQMAS is exploited to detect the five- and six-coordinated aluminum in many aluminosilicate glasses. Combining the MQMAS method with other experiments, such as HETCOR, greatly expands the possibility of the use of MQMAS to study a large range of problems and is demonstrated in Chapter 5. Finally, the technique switching-angle spinning (SAS) is applied to quadrupolar nuclei to fully characterize a quadrupolar spin system in which all of the 8 NMR parameters are accurately determined. This dissertation is meant to demonstrate that with the combination of two-dimensional NMR concepts and new advanced spinning technologies, a series of multiple-dimensional NMR techniques can be designed to allow a detailed study of quadrupolar nuclei in the solid state.

This paper describes the development of a frequency sensitive acoustic transducer that operates in the 10 Hz to 10 kHz regime. This device uses modem silicon microfabrication techniques to form mechanical tines that resonate at specified frequencies. This high-sensitivity device is intended for low-power battery powered applications.

We demonstrate a wavelength division multiplexing approach for byte-wide optical interconnects over multimode fiber optic ribbon cable using filters based on common plastic ferrules. A dual wavelength link with eight cascaded filter stages exhibits bit error rates {le}l0{sup -l4}.

A series of experiments to explore Ge opacity at temperatures where the M-shell is almost filled will be discussed. Data are obtained at lower temperatures than previously explored and allow us to investigate the role of atomic structure calculations and their impact on opacity scalings. The experiment uses the Nova laser to irradiate a gold hohlraum within which a CH-tamped Ge sample is radiatively heated. A Nd backlight probes the sample 2 ns later to produce Ge spectral absorption features in the 1.2-1.5 keV energy range. Temperature is monitored by the use of an Al dopant and density is monitored by measuring the edge-on expansion of the sample. Temporal resolution of about 200 ps is obtained by using a short pulse backlight. Calculations in this photon energy region show significant changes in the spectral features.

The effect of oxygen on the copper-catalyzed hydrolysis of phenyl borates containing from one to four phenyl groups was studied in 1 M aqueous sodium hydroxide solution at 59 degrees C. The results are tentatively explained if the effective catalyst for each of the reactions is either cupric or cuprous ion, with the latter being present in significant concentration only in the absence of air.

The overall results of this project suggest that is situ treatment with biosurfactants has the potential to be an effective,economical, and nontoxic remediation technology. Specifically, we have demonstrated that a rhamnolipid biosurfactant may be used to increase the apparent solubility and biodegradation rate of organic compounds.

As part of joint project between the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC), radioactive waste from four different ORNL tank farms will be immobilized. This work, which is funded by the DOE Office of Science and Technology, is designed to create a direct comparison between grouting and vitrification technologies. SRTC efforts have been focused on developing and testing glass formulations for the vitrification of the tank wastes. The radioactive waste is from four different ORNL tank farms: Melton Valley Storage Tanks (MVST), Bethel Valley Evaporator Service Tanks (BVEST), Gunite and Associated Tanks (GAAT), and Old Hydrafracture Tanks (OHF). The sludges in these tanks contain transuranic radionuclides at levels which will make the final waste form (at reasonable waste loadings) TRU. Glass is an acceptable waste form because of its ability to accept a wide variety of components into its network structure. This is important since the waste varies significantly from tank to tank and from tank farm to tank farm. Therefore, glass formulation efforts have centered on developing a formulation that is robust enough to handle large fluctuations in waste composition. Crucible studies have been performed with simulated GAAT, MVST and BVEST sludges. The …

This report contains appendices to the study of three prototype multi-metals continuous emission monitors (CEMs). The appendices are: Diagnostic Instrumentation and Analytical Laboratory daily logbook pages and CEM data; Navy/Thermo Jarrell Ash Corp. daily logbook pages and CEM data; Sandia National Laboratories daily logbook pages and CEM data; Measurement data from Insitec particle counter, sizers, velocimeter.

An exhaustive set of Beamlet and Nova laser system simulations were performed over a wide range of power levels in order to gain understanding about the statistical trends in Nova and Beamlet`s experimental data sets, and to provide critical validation of propagation tools and design ``rules`` applied to the 192-arm National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The experiments considered for modeling were at 220-ps FWHM duration with unpumped booster slabs on Beamlet, and 100-ps FWHM with pumped 31.5-cm and 46-cm disk amplifiers on Nova. Simulations indicated that on Beamlet, the AB (the intensity pendent phase shift parameter characterizing the tendency towards beam filamentation) for the booster amplifier stage without pumping, would be nearly identical to the AB expected on NIF at the peak of a typical 20-ns long shaped pulse intended for ICF target irradiation. Therefore, with energies less than I kJ in short-pulses, we examined on Beamlet the comparable AB-driven filamentation conditions predicted for long ICF pulseshapes in the 18 kJ regime on the NIF, while avoiding fluence dependent surface damage. Various spatial filter pinhole configurations were examined on Nova and Beamlet. Open transport spatial filter pinholes were used in some experiments to allow the …

In the first quarter report, comparison was made between measured water compositions obtained from Hole 16, interval 4 (16-4), and preliminary simulations of that water chemistry. This report describes additional data collected since that sampling, as well as the results of refined simulations that provide a better approximation of the reaction path followed by the water. Also, during this period waters were extracted from pads placed on SEAMIST liners in boreholes specifically for chemical sampling. Several pads exhibited evidence of having collected moisture, so they were removed and the water analyzed. However, for reasons discussed below, analytical problems were encountered. As a result, refined sampling techniques will be used in the future Drift Scale Test, when employing sample pads on the liners.