The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate impacts to the retrieval concept presented in the Design Analysis ''Retrieval Equipment and Strategy'' (Reference 6), from abnormal events based on Design Basis Events (DBE) and Beyond Design Basis Events (BDBE) as defined in two recent analyses: (1) DBE/Scenario Analysis for Preclosure Repository Subsurface Facilities (Reference 4); and (2) Preliminary Preclosure Design Basis Event Calculations for the Monitored Geologic Repository (Reference 5) The objective of this task is to determine what impacts the DBEs and BDBEs have on the equipment developed for retrieval. The analysis lists potential impacts and recommends changes to be analyzed in subsequent design analyses for developed equipment, or recommend where additional equipment may be needed, to allow retrieval to be performed in all DBE or BDBE situations. This analysis supports License Application design and therefore complies with the requirements of Systems Description Document input criteria comparison as presented in Section 7, Conclusions. In addition, the analysis discusses the impacts associated with not using concrete inverts in the emplacement drifts. The ''Retrieval Equipment and Strategy'' analysis was based on a concrete invert configuration in the emplacement drift. The scope of the analysis, as presented in ''Development Plan for Retrieval …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Army's study of its master plan for implementing its Workload Performance System, focusing on the: (1) Army's progress in developing and implementing the workload performance system; and (2) extent to which the Army's April 1999 report to the House Committee on National Security addresses an overall master plan for implementing the system, including the system's future applications and funding requirements."

Efficient extraction of deeply buried natural resources is dependent upon accurate geologic models. The model becomes the basis for developing plans for extraction of the resource. Geoscientists working in geothermal and hydrocarbon recovery have a great deal in common with fellow geoscientists working in the mining industry. They appreciate the intractable problem of increasing the depth of investigation to tens of meters from the wellbore. The goal of this project was to develop a borehole radar tool to acquire data within tens of meters from the wellbore. For geothermal and hydrocarbon applications, the tool was to acquire data for mapping fractures surrounding the wellbore. In mining of coal, the radar acquires data for determining coal seam thickness and detecting geologic anomalies ahead of mining.

Mice homozygous for the autosomal recessive wasted mutation (wst/wst) have abnormalities in T-lymphocytes and in the anterior motor neuron cells of the spinal cord, leading to sensitivity to low doses of ionizing radiation, hind limb paralysis, and immunodeficiency. This defect results in a failure to gain weight by 20 days and death at 28 days of age. The wasted mutation (previously mapped to mouse chromosome 2) is shown to be a 3-bp deletion in a T-cell-specific (and perhaps motor-neuron-specific) regulatory region (promoter) of the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) gene on mouse chromosome 2. A regulatory element is also shown to be important in PCNA expression in T-lymphocytes and motor neuron cells afflicted by the 3-bp deletion in the PCNA promoter. The model is as follows: Absence of PCNA expression in the thymuses (and motor neurons) of wasted mice causes cellular apoptosis; this absence of expression is mediated by a positive transactor that can bind to the wild-type but not the wasted mutant PCNA promoter; the bound protein induces late expression of PCNA in T-lymphocytes and prevents onset of radiation sensitivity in the cells.

In a reactivity-initiated accident (RIA), a control rod ejection or drop causes a sudden increase in reactor power, which in turn deposits a large amount of energy into the fuel. The resulting thermal expansion and fission gas release loads the cladding into the plastic regime and may cause it to fail. In order to predict cladding survivability, there has been considerable interest and effort in supplementing integral WA tests with separate-effects ring tests of cladding tubes. Such tests can give one insight into failure mechanisms and measure relevant mechanical properties (such as yield strength, uniform elongation, uniaxial stress-strain curve, etc.), for use in computer codes that attempt to predict cladding response during an RIA. The accuracy of such model predictions obviously depends on appropriate and accurate failure data. This study concerns itself with the proper development of ring tensile tests that (i) are similar to the loading conditions present in an RIA, (ii) measure the relevant mechanical properties and (iii) provide insight regarding the influence of the strain paths on the failure mechanisms present if Zircaloy cladding. Based on both experiments and computational modeling, the authors investigate the failure of Zircaloy tubing as a function of specimen geometry, and discuss …

V-Cr-Ti alloys are among the leading candidate materials for the frost wall and other structural materials applications in fusion power reactors because of several important advantages including inherently low irradiation-induced activity, good mechanical properties, good compatibility with lithium, high thermal conductivity and good resistance to irradiation-induced swelling and damage [1]. However, weldability of these alloys in general must be demonstrated, and laser welding, specifically, must be developed. Laser welding is considered to be an attractive process for construction of a reactor due to its high penetrating power and potential flexibility. This paper reports on a systematic study which was conducted to examine the use of a pulsed Nd:YAG laser to weld sheet materials of V-Cr-Ti alloys and to characterize the microstructural and mechanical properties of the resulting joints. Deep penetration and defect-free welds were achieved under an optimal combination of laser parameters including focal length of lens, pulse energy, pulse repetition rate, beam travel speed, and shielding gas arrangement. The key for defect-free welds was found to be the stabilization of the keyhole and providing an escape path for the gas trapped in the weld. An innovative method was developed to obtain deep penetration and oxygen contamination free welds. Oxygen …

A flow stress model was developed for predicting failure of Electrosleeved PWR steam generator tubing under severe accident transients. The Electrosleeve, which is nanocrystalline pure nickel, loses its strength at temperatures greater than 400 C during severe accidents because of grain growth. A grain growth model and the Hall-Petch relationship were used to calculate the loss of flow stress as a function of time and temperature during the accident. Available tensile test data as well as high temperature failure tests on notched Electrosleeved tube specimens were used to derive the basic parameters of the failure model. The model was used to predict the failure temperatures of Electrosleeved tubes with axial cracks in the parent tube during postulated severe accident transients.

Building America houses in Las Vegas, Nevada, are using state-of-the-art building materials and systems to provide residents with much lower energy bills than standard construction. The houses use unvented roofs, high-performance windows, and combo domestic hot-water and air-conditioning units.

Thermal fatigue due to beam interruptions has been investigated in a sodium cooled ATW using the Advanced Liquid Metal mod B design as a basis for the subcritical source driven reactor. A k{sub eff} of 0.975 was used for the reactor. Temperature response in the primary coolant system was calculated, using the SASSYS- 1 code, for a drop in beam current from full power to zero in 1 microsecond.. Temperature differences were used to calculate thermal stresses. Fatigue curves from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code were used to determine the number of cycles various components should be designed for, based on these thermal stresses.

The technical feasibility of separating mineral matter and pyrite from coal as it is transported from pulverizers to burners in pulverized coal combustion units is examined. The charge imparted on coal during pulverization and transport to pulverized coal (PC) burners in a utility boiler is quantified. In addition to field charge measurements, an existing computational model is extended to numerically simulate charged particle motion in a turbulent gas through coal transport pipes and triboelectrostatic separation zone. Results from the field tests and numerical modeling are employed in a conceptual design and a 4--40 kg/hr laboratory-scale separator is constructed and tested. This laboratory unit is used to quantify the magnitude and differential charge imparted on coals during pulverization and transport typical in utility PC units. An electrostatic separator, designed for in-line operation between pulverizers and PC boilers, will be used to clean prepulverized coals. Theoretical and experimental data are to be used in preparing a preliminary and conceptual design for a 15 ton/hr, in-line, electrostatic coal cleaning device. Finally, the economic potential for applications to PC units is assessed.

A simplified semi-empirical model predicting fission gas release form UO{sub 2+x} fuel to the fuel rod plenum as a function of stoichiometry excess (x) is developed to apply to the fuel of a defective LWR fuel rod in operation. The effect of fuel oxidation in enhancing gas diffusion is included as a parabolic dependence of the stoichiometry excess. The increase of fission gas release in a defective BWR fuel rod is at the most 3 times higher than in an intact fuel rod because of small extent of UO{sub 2} oxidation. The major enhancement contributor in fission gas release of UO{sub 2+x} fuel is the increased diffusivity due to stoichiometry excess rather than the higher temperature caused by degraded fuel thermal conductivity.

Binary intermetallic compounds containing lithium, or lithium alloys, such as Li{sub x}Al, Li{sub x}Si and Li{sub x}Sn have been investigated in detail in the past as negative electrode materials for rechargeable lithium batteries. It is generally acknowledged that the major limitation of these systems is the large volumetric expansion that occurs when lithium reacts with the host metal. Such large increases in volume limit the practical use of lithium-tin electrodes in electrochemical cells. It is generally recognized that metal oxide electrodes, MO{sub y}, in lithium-ion cells operate during charge and discharge by means of a reversible lithium insertion/extraction process, and that the cells offer excellent cycling behavior when the crystallographic changes to the unit cell parameters and unit cell volume of the Li{sub x}MO{sub y} electrode are kept to a minimum. An excellent example of such an electrode is the spinel Li{sub 4}Ti{sub 5}O{sub 12}, which maintains its cubic symmetry without any significant change to the lattice parameter (and hence unit cell volume) during lithium insertion to the rock-salt composition Li{sub 7}Ti{sub 5}O{sub 12}. This spinel electrode is an example of a ternary Li{sub x}MO{sub y} system in which a binary MO{sub y} framework provides a stable host structure for …

For physics measurements with polarized colliding beams, beam polarizations and relative luminosities must both be determined. Predictions for spin observables of many interesting physics processes at RHIC are quite small in magnitude. This requires high statistics measurements of relative luminosities and careful control of systematic errors. Discussions about the polarized beams at RHIC often presume that the polarization and intensity of each bunch within a will be known quite well from measurements by the RHIC polarimeters. The purpose of this note is to give a description of the knowledge that can actually be obtained from these polarimeters.

For both power generation and pipeline-quality gas applications, the projected performance of the membrane currently under development is economically attractive. Aspects of membrane development include hollow fiber substrate production, reproducibility of membrane synthesis, chemical vapor deposition as a post treatment technique, and testing of membrane thermal and hydrothermal stability.

In our Petawatt laser experiments several hundred joules of 1 {micro}m laser light in 0.5-5.0 ps pulses with intensities up to 3 x 10{sup 20}Wcm{sup -2} were incident on solid targets producing a strongly relativistic interaction. The energy content, spectra, and angular patterns of the photon, electron, and ion radiations were diagnosed in a number of ways, including several novel (to laser physics) nuclear activation techniques. From the beamed bremsstrahlung we infer that about 40-50% of the laser energy is converted to broadly beamed hot electrons. Their direction centroid varies from shot to shot, but the beam has a consistent width. Extraordinarily luminous ion beams almost precisely normal to the rear of various targets are seen--up to 3 x 10{sup 13} protons with kT{sub ion} {approx} several MeV representing {approx}6% of the laser energy. We observe ion energies up to at least 55 MeV. The ions appear to originate from the rear target surfaces. The edge of the ion beam is very sharp, and collimation increases with ion energy. At the highest energies, a narrow feature appears in the ion spectra, and the apparent size of the emitting spot is smaller than the full back surface area. Any ion emission …

In the absence of any federal regulations that specifically address the handling and disposal of wastes containing naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM), individual states have taken responsibility for developing their own regulatory programs for NORM. A key issue in developing NORM rules is defining exemption levels--specific levels or concentrations that determine which waste materials are subject to controlled management. In general, states have drawn upon existing standards and guidelines for similar waste types in establishing exemption levels for NORM. Simply adopting these standards may not be appropriate for oil and gas NORM for several reasons. The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission's NORM Subcommittee has summarized the issues involved in setting exemption levels in a report titled ``Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM): Issues from the Oil and Gas Point of View''. The committee has also recommended a set of exemption levels for controlled practices and for remediation activities on the basis of the issues discussed.

Key features of fusion energy relate primarily to potential advantages associated with safety and environmental considerations and the near endless supply of fuel. However, it is generally concluded that high performance fusion power systems will be required in order to be economically competitive with other energy options. As in most energy systems, structural materials operating limits pose a primary constraint to the performance of fusion power systems. It is also recognized that for the case of fusion power, the first-wall/blanket system will have a dominant impact on both the economic and safety/environmental attractiveness of fusion energy. The first-wall blanket structure is particularly critical since it must maintain high integrity at relatively high temperatures during exposure to high radiation levels, high surface heat fluxes, and significant primary stresses. The performance limits of the first-wall/blanket structure will be dependent on the structural material properties, the coolant/breeder system, and the specific design configuration. Key factors associated with high performance structural materials include (1) high temperature operation, (2) a large operating temperature window, and (3) a long operating lifetime. High temperature operation is necessary to provide for high power conversion efficiency. As discussed later, low-pressure coolant systems provide significant advantages. A large operating temperature …