This report summarizes the achievements and final results of this program. The objective of this program is to develop a comprehensive systems approach to integrated design of sensing and control systems for an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant, using advanced model-based techniques. In particular, this program is focused on the model-based sensing and control system design for the core gasification section of an IGCC plant. The overall approach consists of (i) developing a first-principles physics-based dynamic model of the gasification section, (ii) performing model-reduction where needed to derive low-order models suitable for controls analysis and design, (iii) developing a sensing system solution combining online sensors with model-based estimation for important process variables not measured directly, and (iv) optimizing the steady-state and transient operation of the plant for normal operation as well as for startup using model predictive controls (MPC). Initially, available process unit models were implemented in a common platform using Matlab/Simulink{reg_sign}, and appropriate model reduction and model updates were performed to obtain the overall gasification section dynamic model. Also, a set of sensor packages were developed through extensive lab testing and implemented in the Tampa Electric Company IGCC plant at Polk power station in 2009, to measure temperature …

Isotope effects in the non-dissociative photoionization of molecular nitrogen (N2 + h nu -> N2+ + e-) may play a role in determining the relative abundances of isotopic species containing nitrogen in interstellar clouds and planetary atmospheres but have not been previously measured. Measurements of the photoionization efficiency spectra of 14N2, 15N14N, and 15N2 from 15.5 to 18.9 eV (65.6-80.0 nm) using the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory show large differences in peak energies and intensities, with the ratio of the energy-dependent photoionization cross-sections, sigma(14N2)/sigma(15N14N), ranging from 0.4 to 3.5. Convolving the cross-sections with the solar flux and integrating over the energies measured, the ratios of photoionization rate coefficients are J(15N14N)/J(14N2)=1.00+-0.02 and J(15N2)/J(14N2)=1.00+-0.02, suggesting that isotopic fractionation between N2 and N2+ should be small under such conditions. In contrast, in a one-dimensional model of Titan's atmosphere, isotopic self-shielding of 14N2 leads to values of J(15N14N)/J(14N2) as large as ~;;1.17, larger than under optically thin conditions but still much smaller than values as high as ~;;29 predicted for N2 photodissociation. Since modeled photodissociation isotope effects overpredict the HC15N/HC14N ratio in Titan's atmosphere, and since both N atoms and N2+ ions may ultimately lead to the formation of HCN, …

The Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) of the U.S. DOE has initiated a multi-lab/university collaboration to quantify the plutonium (Pu) mass in, and detect the diversion of pins from, spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies with non-destructive assay (NDA). The 14 NDA techniques being studied include several that require an external neutron source: Delayed Neutrons (DN), Differential Die-Away (DDA), Delayed Gammas (DG), and Lead Slowing-Down Spectroscopy (LSDS). This report provides a survey of currently available neutron sources and their underlying technology that may be suitable for NDA of SNF assemblies. The neutron sources considered here fall into two broad categories. The term 'neutron generator' is commonly used for sealed devices that operate at relatively low acceleration voltages of less than 150 kV. Systems that employ an acceleration structure to produce ion beam energies from hundreds of keV to several MeV, and that are pumped down to vacuum during operation, rather than being sealed units, are usually referred to as 'accelerator-driven neutron sources.' Currently available neutron sources and future options are evaluated within the parameter space of the neutron generator/source requirements as currently understood and summarized in section 2. Applicable neutron source technologies are described in section 3. Commercially available neutron generators …

The steel industry's Technology Roadmap Program (TRP) is a collaborative R&D effort jointly sponsored by the steel industry and the United States Department of Energy. The TRP program was designed to develop new technologies to save energy , increase competitiveness, and improve the environment. TRP ran from July, 1997 to December, 2008, with a total program budget of $38 million dollars. During that period 47 R&D projects were performed by 28 unique research organizations; co-funding was provided by DOE and 60 industry partners. The projects benefited all areas of steelmaking and much know-how was developed and transferred to industry. The American Iron and Steel Institute is the owner of all intellectual property developed under TRP and licenses it at commercial rates to all steelmakers. TRP technologies are in widespread use in the steel industry as participants received royalty-free use of intellectual property in return for taking the risk of funding this research.

Ultraviolet-Visible Spectroscopy (UV-Visible) and Time Resolved Laser Fluorescence Spectroscopy (TRLFS) optical techniques can permit on-line, real-time analysis of the actinide elements in a solvent extraction process. UV-Visible and TRLFS techniques have been used for measuring the speciation and concentration of the actinides under laboratory conditions. These methods are easily adaptable to multiple sampling geometries, such as dip probes, fiber-optic sample cells, and flow-through cell geometries. To fully exploit these techniques for GNEP applications, the fundamental speciation of the target actinides and the resulting influence on 3 spectroscopic properties must be determined. Through this effort detection limits, process conditions, and speciation of key actinide components can be establish and utilized in a range of areas of interest to GNEP, especially in areas related to materials accountability and process control.

The representative concentration pathway to be delivered is a scenario of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and other radiatively important atmospheric species, along with land-use changes, derived from the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). The particular representative concentration pathway (RCP) that the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) has been responsible for is a not-to-exceed pathway that stabilizes at a radiative forcing of 4.5Wm-2 in the year 2100.

Much has been written about Edward TEller, but little of it is objective. Given, on the one hand, his position as one of the most inventive theoretical physicists of the 20th century, and on the other, his central role in the development and advocacy of thermonuclear weapons, one might imagine it impossible at this point in history to write a scholarly, impartial account of Teller's life and his impact. Now, however, Istvan Hargittai, a prominent Hungarian physical chemist and historian of science, has written a balanced, thoughtful, and beautifully research biography that comes closest. Hargittai is uniquely qualified for this difficult task. Coming a generation and a half later from a similar Hungarian-Jewish background, Hargittai understands well the influences and terrible events that shaped Teller. The advent of virulent, political anti-Semitism, first in Hungary and then in Germany, made Teller twice a refugee. Both Teller and Hargittai lost close family in the Holocaust; Hargittai was himself liberated from a Nazi concentration camp as a child. While Teller was in the US by then, his and Hargittai's surviving family members in Hungary suffered mistreatment at the hands of the postwar Hungarian Communist dictatorship. Hargittai's informed Eastern European perspective also provides a …

2 Project Summary: The Multi-University Southeast INIE Consortium (MUSIC) was established in response to the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Innovations in Nuclear Infrastructure and Education (INIE) program. MUSIC was established as a consortium composed of academic members and national laboratory partners. The members of MUSIC are the nuclear engineering programs and research reactors of Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT), North Carolina State University (NCSU), University of Maryland (UMD), University of South Carolina (USC), and University of Tennessee (UTK). The University of Florida (UF), and South Carolina State University (SCSU) were added to the MUSIC membership in the second year. In addition, to ensure proper coordination between the academic community and the nation’s premier research and development centers in the fields of nuclear science and engineering, MUSIC created strategic partnerships with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) including the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) project and the Joint Institute for Neutron Scattering (JINS), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). A partnership was also created with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) with the aim of utilizing their reactor in research if funding becomes available. Consequently, there are three university research reactors (URRs) within MUSIC, which are located at …

This is a very exciting period for photon sciences at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It is also a time of unprecedented growth for the Photon Sciences Directorate, which operates the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) and is constructing NSLS-II, both funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Reflecting the quick pace of our activities, we chose the theme 'Discovery at Light Speed' for the directorate's 2010 annual report, a fiscal year bookended by October 2009 and September 2010. The year began with the news that NSLS users Venki Ramakrishnan of Cambridge University (also a former employee in Brookhaven's biology department) and Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University were sharing the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Every research project has the potential for accolades. In 2010, NSLS users and staff published close to 900 papers, with about 170 appearing in premiere journals. Those are impressive stats for a facility nearly three decades old, testament to the highly dedicated team keeping NSLS at peak performance and the high quality of its user community. Our NSLS users come from a worldwide community of scientists using photons, or light, to carry out research …

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This report and an associated Excel file(a) summarizes the investigations and results of previous chamber and controlled studies(b) to characterize the performance of methods for collecting, storing and/or transporting, extracting, and analyzing samples from surfaces contaminated by Bacillus anthracis (BA) or related simulants. This report and the Excel are the joint work of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate. The report was originally released as PNNL-SA-69338, Rev. 0 in November 2009 with limited distribution, but was subsequently cleared for release with unlimited distribution in this Rev. 1. Only minor changes were made to Rev. 0 to yield Rev. 1. A more substantial update (including summarizing data from other studies and more condensed summary tables of data) is underway

Some diagnostics at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), including the Gamma Reaction History (GRH) diagnostic, require multiple channels of data to achieve the required dynamic range. These channels need to be stitched together into a single time series, and they may have non-uniform and redundant time samples. We chose to apply the popular cubic smoothing spline technique to our stitching problem because we needed a general non-parametric method. We adapted one of the algorithms in the literature, by Hutchinson and deHoog, to our needs. The modified algorithm and the resulting code perform a cubic smoothing spline fit to multiple data channels with redundant time samples and missing data points. The data channels can have different, time-varying, zero-mean white noise characteristics. The method we employ automatically determines an optimal smoothing level by minimizing the Generalized Cross Validation (GCV) score. In order to automatically validate the smoothing level selection, the Weighted Sum-Squared Residual (WSSR) and zero-mean tests are performed on the residuals. Further, confidence intervals, both analytical and Monte Carlo, are also calculated. In this paper, we describe the derivation of our cubic smoothing spline algorithm. We outline the algorithm and test it with simulated and experimental data.

The focus of the CEHMM award was alternative energy research and education. The objective of the CEHMM algae to biodiesel project was to determine the viability and feasibility of using algae as a feedstock for commercial biodiesel production. The project investigated the propagation, harvesting and extraction of oil from a salt/brine water algae in open raceway ponds.

We have used the TOUGH2-MP/ECO2N code to perform numerical simulation studies of the long-term behavior of CO{sub 2} stored in an aquifer with a sloping caprock. This problem is of great practical interest, and is very challenging due to the importance of multi-scale processes. We find that the mechanism of plume advance is different from what is seen in a forced immiscible displacement, such as gas injection into a water-saturated medium. Instead of pushing the water forward, the plume advances because the vertical pressure gradients within the plume are smaller than hydrostatic, causing the groundwater column to collapse ahead of the plume tip. Increased resistance to vertical flow of aqueous phase in anisotropic media leads to reduced speed of updip plume advancement. Vertical equilibrium models that ignore effects of vertical flow will overpredict the speed of plume advancement. The CO{sub 2} plume becomes thinner as it advances, yet the speed of advancement remains constant over the entire simulation period of up to 400 years, with migration distances of more than 80 km. Our simulations include dissolution of CO{sub 2} into the aqueous phase and associated density increase, and molecular diffusion. However, no convection develops in the aqueous phase because it …

At-tank supplemental pretreatment including both filtration and small column ion exchange is currently under evaluation to facilitate salt waste retrieval and processing in the Hanford tank farms. Spherical resorcinol formaldehyde (sRF) resin is the baseline ion exchange resin for use in the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). This document provides background and technical rationale to assist in determining whether spherical resorcinol formaldehyde (sRF) is also the appropriate ion exchange resin for supplemental LAW pretreatment processes and compares sRF with crystalline silicotitanate (CST) as potential supplemental pretreatment ion exchange media.

About 50 million gallons of high-level mixed waste is currently stored in underground tanks at The United States Department of Energy's (DOE's) Hanford site in the State of Washington. The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) will provide DOE's Office of River Protection (ORP) with a means of treating this waste by vitrification for subsequent disposal. The tank waste will be separated into low- and high-activity waste fractions, which will then be vitrified respectively into Immobilized Low Activity Waste (ILAW) and Immobilized High Level Waste (IHLW) products. The ILAW product will be disposed in an engineered facility on the Hanford site while the IHLW product will likely be directed to a national deep geological disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste. The ILAW and IHLW products must meet a variety of requirements with respect to protection of the environment before they can be accepted for disposal. The Office of River Protection is currently examining options to optimize the Low Activity Waste (LAW) Facility and LAW glass waste form. One option under evaluation is to enhance the waste processing rate of the vitrification plant currently under construction. It is likely that the capacity of the LAW vitrification plant can be …

The overall objective of the project is to design, develop and demonstrate a technically feasible and commercially viable system to produce ammonia along with recovery of the products by adsorption separation methods and significantly decrease the energy requirement in ammonia production. This is achieved through a significantly more efficient ammonia psa recovery system. The new ammonia recovery system receives the reactor effluents and achieves complete ammonia recovery, (which completely eliminates the energy intensive refrigeration and condensation system currently used in ammonia production). It also recovers the unused reactants and recycles them back to the reactor, free of potential reactor contaminants, and without the need for re-compression and re-heat of recycle stream thereby further saving more energy. The result is a significantly lower energy consumption, along with capital cost savings.

The Hanford Seismic Assessment Program (HSAP) provides an uninterrupted collection of high-quality raw and processed seismic data from the Hanford Seismic Network for the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors. The HSAP is responsible for locating and identifying sources of seismic activity and monitoring changes in the historical pattern of seismic activity at the Hanford Site. The data are compiled, archived, and published for use by the Hanford Site for waste management, natural phenomena hazards assessments, and engineering design and construction. In addition, the HSAP works with the Hanford Site Emergency Services Organization to provide assistance in the event of a significant earthquake on the Hanford Site. The Hanford Seismic Network and the Eastern Washington Regional Network consist of 44 individual sensor sites and 15 radio relay sites maintained by the Hanford Seismic Assessment Team. During FY 2010, the Hanford Seismic Network recorded 873 triggers on the seismometer system, which included 259 seismic events in the southeast Washington area and an additional 324 regional and teleseismic events. There were 210 events determined to be local earthquakes relevant to the Hanford Site. One hundred and fifty-five earthquakes were detected in the vicinity of Wooded Island, located about eight miles north …

Human biospecimens are subjected to collection, processing, and storage that can significantly alter their molecular composition and consistency. These biospecimen preanalytical factors, in turn, influence experimental outcomes and the ability to reproduce scientific results. Currently, the extent and type of information specific to the biospecimen preanalytical conditions reported in scientific publications and regulatory submissions varies widely. To improve the quality of research that uses human tissues, it is crucial that information on the handling of biospecimens be reported in a thorough, accurate, and standardized manner. The Biospecimen Reporting for Improved Study Quality (BRISQ) recommendations outlined herein are intended to apply to any study in which human biospecimens are used. The purpose of reporting these details is to supply others, from researchers to regulators, with more consistent and standardized information to better evaluate, interpret, compare, and reproduce the experimental results. The BRISQ guidelines are proposed as an important and timely resource tool to strengthen communication and publications on biospecimen-related research and to help reassure patient contributors and the advocacy community that their contributions are valued and respected.

Samples have been prepared from a softwood fiberboard lower subassembly. Physical, mechanical and thermal properties have been measured following varying periods of conditioning in each of several environments. These tests have been conducted in the same manner as previous testing on cane fiberboard samples. Overall, similar aging trends are observed for softwood and cane fiberboard samples, with a few differences. On the positive side, the softwood fiberboard data to date shows less sample-to-sample variation in physical properties than cane fiberboard, and the thermal conductivity decreases at a slower rate at 250F for softwood fiberboard than for cane fiberboard. On the other hand, the softwood fiberboard physical property samples generally show degradation rates greater than cane fiberboard samples in the 185F 30%RH environment. Testing following additional conditioning will continue and the addition of samples in other elevated humidity environment(s) will be pursued to identify the extent of these trends. Post-conditioning data have been measured on samples from a single softwood fiberboard assembly, and baseline data are also available from a limited number of vendor-provided samples. This provides minimal information on the possible sample-to-sample variation exhibited by softwood fiberboard. Data to date are generally consistent with the range seen in cane fiberboard, …

There are three types of future neutrino facilities currently under study, one based on decays of stored beta-unstable ion beams (?Beta Beams?), one based on decays of stored muon beams (?Neutrino Factory?), and one based on the decays of an intense pion beam (?Superbeam?). In this paper we discuss the challenges each design team must face and the R&D being carried out to turn those challenges into technical opportunities. A new program, the Muon Accelerator Program, has begun in the U.S. to carry out the R&D for muon-based facilities, including both the Neutrino Factory and, as its ultimate goal, a Muon Collider. The goals of this program will be briefly described.

Previous RF experiments with normal-conducting cavities have demonstrated that there is a significant degradation in maximum gradient when the cavity is subjected to a strong axial magnetic field. We have developed a model suggesting that a cavity with beryllium walls may perform better than copper cavities. In this paper we outline the issues that led us to propose fabricating a Be-wall cavity. We also discuss a concept for fabricating such a cavity and mention some of the manufacturing issues we expect to face.

Forestry is one of the most important sectors in the context of climate change. It lies at the center-stage of global mitigation and adaptation efforts. Yet, it is one of the least understood sectors, especially in tropical zones, which constitute a significant portion of the global forests. Recently, there has been a growing interest in forests in addressing global climate change. The IPCC Assessment Report 4 (2007) Chapters related to forests have highlighted the limited number of studies on the impact of climate change on forests at the regional, national and sub-national level, while policy makers need information at these scales. Further, implication of projected climate change on mitigation potential of forest sector is only briefly mentioned in the IPCC report, with limited literature to support the conclusions. India is one among the top ten nations in the world in terms of forest cover. It is also sixth among the tropical countries in terms of forested area. As IPCC Assessment Report 5 work is about to be initiated soon, studies on the impact of climate change on forests as well as the mitigation potential of the forest sector, particularly at regional and national level, will be of great interest to …

The modification of particle distributions by low amplitude magnetohydrodynamic modes is an important topic for magnetically confined plasmas. Low amplitude modes are known to be capable of producing significant modification of injected neutral beam profiles, and the same can be expected in burning plasmas for the alpha particle distributions. Flattening of a distribution due to phase mixing in an island or due to portions of phase space becoming stochastic is a process extremely rapid on the time scale of an experiment but still very long compared to the time scale of guiding center simulations. Thus it is very valuable to be able to locate significant resonances and to predict the final particle distribution produced by a given spectrum of magnetohydrodynamic modes. In this paper we introduce a new method of determining domains of phase space in which good surfaces do not exist and use this method for quickly determining the final state of the particle distribution without carrying out the full time evolution leading to it.