On June 8, 1994, the Office of Inspections, Office of Inspector General (OIG), Department of Energy (DOE), received a letter dated May 31, 1994, from a complainant concerning the Nuclear Materials Storage Facility (NMSF) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The complainant alleged that the NMSF, completed in 1987, was so poorly designed and constructed that it was never usable and that DOE proposed to gut the entire facility and sandblast the walls. According to the complainant, ``these errors are so gross as to constitute professional malpractice in a commercial design setting.`` The complainant further stated that ``DOE proposes to renovate this facility to store large amounts of plutonium (as much as 30 metric tons, by some accounts), and it is imperative that the public receive some assurance that this waste will not recur and that the facility will be made safe.`` The purpose of our inspection was to determine if the allegations regarding the design and construction of the NMSF were accurate, and if so, to determine if the Government could recover damages from the Architect/Engineer and/or the construction contractor. We also reviewed the Department`s proposed actions to renovate the NMSF.

Electron beam curing of composites is a nonthermal, nonautoclave curing process offering the following advantages compared to conventional thermal curing: substantially reduced manufacturing costs and curing times; improvements in part quality and performance; reduced environmental and health concerns; and improvements in material handling. In 1994 a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), sponsored by the Department of Energy Defense Programs and 10 industrial partners, was established to advance electron beam curing of composites. The CRADA has successfully developed hundreds of new toughened and untoughened resins, offering unlimited formulation and processing flexibility. Several patent applications have been filed for this work. Composites made from these easily processable, low shrinkage material match the performance of thermal cured composites and exhibit: low void contents comparable to autoclave cured composites (less than 1%); superb low water absorption values in the same range as cyanate esters (less than 1%); glass transition temperatures rivaling those of polyimides (greater than 390 C); mechanical properties comparable to high performance, autoclave cured composites; and excellent property retention after cryogenic and thermal cycling. These materials have been used to manufacture many composite parts using various fabrication processes including hand lay-up, tow placement, filament winding, resin transfer molding and vacuum assisted …

This Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) will test and verify that the Exhauster meets the specified functional requirements, safety requirements, operating requirements, and provide a record of the functional test results. The system/functions that will be tested are listed in the scope section of the Acceptance Test Procedure.

We study budget constrained optimal network upgrading problems. Such problems aim at finding optimal strategies for improving a network under some cost measure subject to certain budget constraints. A general problem in this setting is the following. We are given an edge weighted graph G = (V, E) where nodes represent processors and edges represent bidirectional communication links. The processor at a node v {element_of} V can be upgraded at a cost of c(v). Such an upgrade reduces the delay of each link emanating from v. The goal is to find a minimum cost set of nodes to be upgraded so that the resulting network has the best performance with respect to some measure. We consider the problem under two measures, namely, the weight of a minimum spanning tree and the bottleneck weight of a minimum bottleneck spanning tree. We present approximation and hardness results for the problem. Our results are tight to within constant factors. We also show that these approximation algorithms can be used to construct good approximation algorithms for the dual versions of the problems where there is a budget constraint on the upgrading cost and the objectives are minimum weight spanning tree and minimum bottleneck weight …

The objective is to develop proposals to obtain funding for development of a 2nd Generation Flywheel Battery Prototype designed for a specific application.

The objectives of this cooperative agreement are to develop the oxyhydrochlorination (OHC) process for the conversion of methane to methyl chloride. In the first Phase of the project, Dow Corning has developed a stable selective catalyst and demonstrated the technology on a laboratory and a pilot plant scale. Specific tasks to achieve these objectives have been developed as follows: TASK 1 Fundamental Technical and Economic Evaluation TASK 2 Catalyst Selection Optimization and Characterization Studies TASK 3 Pilot Plant Design TASK 4 Pilot Plant Detailed Engineering, Procurement and Construction TASK 5 Pilot Plant Startup and Operation TASK 6 Pilot Plant Process Optimization TASK 7 Pilot Plant Extended Operation TASK 8 Pilot Plant Economic Evaluation/Scale-up Decision Significant progress has been completed in Task 1 with the objective to complete a fundamental technical and economic evaluation of learning gathered the Phase I effort of this project. A decision to proceed with the project will be made after completion of this Task. A computer model of the reactor system has been developed, which includes heat and mass transfer effects as well as reactions. Model validation is in progress. The Absorber/Stripper technology evaluated and implemented on the Phase I PDU to recover chlorocarbons (including methyl …

A phase separated (amorphous) glass has been developed which allows very efficient recovery of +4 valence actinides. The total amount of crystal formation in a heat treated vycor-type glass can be controlled with time, temperature and loading. Heat treatments at lower temperatures and for less time inhibit crystal formation while still allowing significant phase separation. If the Thorium loading exceeds 10 weight percent oxide, crystal formation during heat treatment may not be avoided. The total amount of crystal growth has a direct affect on thorium leachability. An increase in crystal formation limits the Th recovery significantly. High thorium loaded glasses (15 weight percent) with heat treatments (increased crystal formation) leach at approximately the same rate as non-heat treated glasses. A phase separated (amorphous) glass has been produced using thorium as a surrogate for neptunium. Two different homogeneous vycor compositions targeting 10 and 15 weight percent thorium oxide have been processed, heat treated and leached with concentrated nitric acid at 110{degrees}C. Thorium recovery rates have been shown to be considerably better when the glass has been heat treated inducing phase separation that is relatively crystal free. Non-heat treated and crystalline (due to heat treatment) glasses have similar Th recovery rates with …

On November 1, 1996 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Richland Operations Office (RL) approved the Flammable Gas Unreviewed Safety Question (USQ) (Wagoner 1996). The Tank Waste Remediation System issued (Hall 1996) two standing orders (96-36 East; and 96-34 West) to implement the requirements and authorization for continued operations included in the RL letter (Wagoner 199E). These standing orders included several requirements for the control of ignition sources (Appendix B, Section 7.0 ``Ignition Source Controls``) that include requirements for the design and operation of ``...equipment and materials used in the conduct of work...`` in Tank Farms. A verbatim compliance review of these ignition source controls identified several pieces of equipment and materials which have been used routinely in Tanks Farms for many years in support of safe operation that either could not: meet the equivalent design or safety provisions included in the standing orders (Hall 1996), or 21. be modified in a timely manner to meet safety and programmatic commitments. When the standing order was prepared it was anticipated that there would be a need to approve temporary exceptions. Appendix B, Section 7.0 of the standing order (Hall 1996) reads in part as follows: ``For activities where compliance will require …

Adding the Standard Hydrogen Monitoring Systems, VTP-PNL- 105K and VTP-PNL-205K to the Acceptance for Beneficial Use document, WHC-SD-WM-ABU-002.

The purpose of the Air Mobility Command (AMC) Deployment Analysis System (ADANS) Database Specification (DS) is to describe the database organization and storage allocation and to provide the detailed data model of the physical design and information necessary for the construction of the parts of the database (e.g., tables, indexes, rules, defaults). The DS includes entity relationship diagrams, table and field definitions, reports on other database objects, and a description of the ADANS data dictionary. ADANS is the automated system used by Headquarters AMC and the Tanker Airlift Control Center (TACC) for airlift planning and scheduling of peacetime and contingency operations as well as for deliberate planning. ADANS also supports planning and scheduling of Air Refueling Events by the TACC and the unit-level tanker schedulers. ADANS receives input in the form of movement requirements and air refueling requests. It provides a suite of tools for planners to manipulate these requirements/requests against mobility assets and to develop, analyze, and distribute schedules. Analysis tools are provided for assessing the products of the scheduling subsystems, and editing capabilities support the refinement of schedules. A reporting capability provides formatted screen, print, and/or file outputs of various standard reports. An interface subsystem handles message traffic …