The Naval Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal Container System supports the confinement and isolation of waste within the Engineered Barrier System of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR). Disposal containers/waste packages are loaded and sealed in the surface waste handling facilities, transferred underground through the access drifts using a rail mounted transporter, and emplaced in emplacement drifts. The Naval Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal Container System provides long term confinement of the naval spent nuclear fuel (SNF) placed within the disposal containers, and withstands the loading, transfer, emplacement, and retrieval operations. The Naval Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal Container System provides containment of waste for a designated period of time and limits radionuclide release thereafter. The waste package maintains the waste in a designated configuration, withstands maximum credible handling and rockfall loads, limits the waste form temperature after emplacement, resists corrosion in the expected handling and repository environments, and provides containment of waste in the event of an accident. Each naval SNF disposal container will hold a single naval SNF canister. There will be approximately 300 naval SNF canisters, composed of long and short canisters. The disposal container will include outer and inner cylinder walls and lids. An exterior label will provide a means …

The Uncanistered Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Disposal Container System supports the confinement and isolation of waste within the Engineered Barrier System of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR). Disposal containers are loaded with intact uncanistered assemblies and/or individually canistered SNF assemblies and sealed in the surface waste handling facilities, transferred to the underground through the access drifts, and emplaced in emplacement drifts. The Uncanistered SNF Disposal Container provides long-term confinement of the commercial SNF placed inside, and withstands the loading, transfer, emplacement, and retrieval loads and environments. The Uncanistered SNF Disposal Container System provides containment of waste for a designated period of time, and limits radionuclide release. The disposal container maintains the waste in a designated configuration, withstands maximum handling and rockfall loads, limits the individual SNF assembly temperatures after emplacement, limits the introduction of moderator into the disposal container during the criticality control period, resists corrosion in the expected handling and repository environments, and provides containment of waste in the event of an accident.

Provides consumers with home energy and money savings tips such as insulation, weatherization, heating, cooling, water heating, energy efficient windows, landscaping, lighting, and energy efficient appliances.

With growing interest in and demonstrated cases of inorganic hydrothermal synthesis of reduced or organic carbon compounds from CO and CO{sub 2}, it becomes crucial to establish geochemical criteria to distinguish reduced/organic carbon compounds of abiogenic origin from those of biogenic origin with overwhelming abundances on the surface and in subsurface of the Earth. Chemical and isotopic compositions, particularly {sup 13}C/{sup 12}C ratios, of reduced/organic carbon compounds have been widely utilized for deducing the origins and formation pathways of these compounds. An example is isotopic and C{sub 1}/(C{sub 2}+C{sub 3}) ratios of natural gases, which have been used to distinguish bacterial, thermogenic, and possible abiogenic origins. Another example is that ancient graphitic carbon with {delta}{sup 13}C values c-25per thousand has been considered of biogenic origin. Although these criteria could be largely valid, growing data including those from our hydrothermal experiments suggest that a great caution must be exercised.

This report covers the 1996-1998 Natural Rearing Enhancement System (NATURES) research for increasing hatchery salmon postrelease survival and producing fish with more wild-like behavior, physiology, and morphology prior to release. Experiments were conducted evaluating automatic subsurface feeders; natural diets; exercise systems; seminatural raceway habitat enriched with cover, structure, and substrate; and predator avoidance conditioning for hatchery salmonids. Automatic subsurface feed delivery systems did not affect chinook salmon depth distribution or vulnerability to avian predators. Live-food diets only marginally improved the ability of chinook salmon to capture prey in stream enclosures. A prototype exercise system that can be retrofitted to raceways was developed, however, initial testing indicated that severe amounts of exercise may increase in culture mortality. Rearing chinook salmon in seminatural raceway habitat with gravel substrate, woody debris structure, and overhead cover improved coloration and postrelease survival without impacting in-culture health or survival. Steelhead fry reared in enriched environments with structure, cover, and point source feeders dominated and outcompeted conventionally reared fish. Exposing chinook salmon to caged predators increased their postrelease survival. Chinook salmon showed an antipredator response to chemical stimuli from injured conspecifics and exhibited acquired predator recognition following exposure to paired predator-prey stimuli. The report also includes the …

Single-crystal neutron diffraction measures the elastic Bragg reflection intensities from crystals of a material, the structure of which is the subject of investigation. A single crystal is placed in a beam of neutrons produced at a nuclear reactor or at a proton accelerator-based spallation source. Single-crystal diffraction measurements are commonly made at thermal neutron beam energies, which correspond to neutron wavelengths in the neighborhood of 1 Angstrom. For high-resolution studies requiring shorter wavelengths (ca. 0.3-0.8 Angstroms), a pulsed spallation source or a high-temperature moderator (a ''hot source'') at a reactor may be used. When complex structures with large unit-cell repeats are under investigation, as is the case in structural biology, a cryogenic-temperature moderator (a ''cold source'') may be employed to obtain longer neutron wavelengths (ca. 4-10 Angstroms). A single-crystal neutron diffraction analysis will determine the crystal structure of the material, typically including its unit cell and space group, the positions of the atomic nuclei and their mean-square displacements, and relevant site occupancies. Because the neutron possesses a magnetic moment, the magnetic structure of the material can be determined as well, from the magnetic contribution to the Bragg intensities. This latter aspect falls beyond the scope of the present unit; for …

The Accelerator Collider Department (CAD) at Brookhaven National Laboratory is operating the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which includes the dual-ring, 3.834 km circumference superconducting collider and the venerable AGS as the last part of the RHIC injection chain. CAD is planning on a luminosity upgrade of the machine under the designation RHIC II. One important component of the RHIC II upgrade is electron cooling of RHIC gold ion beams. For this purpose, BNL and the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk entered into a collaboration aimed initially at the development of the electron cooling conceptual design, resolution of technical issues, and finally extend the collaboration towards the construction and commissioning of the cooler. Many of the results presented in this paper are derived from the Electron Cooling for RHIC Design Report [1], produced by the, BINP team within the framework of this collaboration. BNL is also collaborating with Fermi National Laboratory, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and the University of Indiana on various aspects of electron cooling.

The Building 830 Gamma Irradiation Facility (GIF) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) was decommissioned because its design was not in compliance with current hazardous tank standards and its cobalt-60 sources were approaching the end of their useful life. The facility contained 354 stainless steel encapsulated cobalt-60 sources in a pool, which provided shielding. Total cobalt-60 inventory amounted to 24,000 Curies when the sources were shipped for disposal. The decommissioning project included packaging, transport, and disposal of the sources and dismantling and disposing of all other equipment associated with the facility. Worker exposure was a major concern in planning for the packaging and disposal of the sources. These activities were planned carefully according to ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principles. As a result, the actual occupational exposures experienced during the work were within the planned levels. Disposal of the pool water required addressing environmental concerns, since the planned method was to discharge the slightly contaminated water to the BNL sewage treatment plant. After the BNL evaluation procedure for discharge to the sewage treatment plant was revised and reviewed by regulators and BNL's Community Advisory Council, the pool water was discharged to the Building 830 sanitary system. Because the sources were …

A novel design for an electron beam focusing column has been developed at LBNL. The design is based on a low-energy spread multicusp plasma source which is used as a cathode for electron beam production. The focusing column is 10 mm in length. The electron beam is focused by means of electrostatic fields. The column is designed for a maximum voltage of 50 kV. Simulations of the electron trajectories have been performed by using the 2-D simulation code IGUN and EGUN. The electron temperature has also been incorporated into the simulations. The electron beam simulations, column design and fabrication will be discussed in this presentation.

The objective of this project is to characterize the fluid properties and fluid-rock interactions that are needed for formation evaluation by NMR well logging. This is the first annual progress report submitted to the DOE. It reports on the work completed during the reporting period even if it may have started before this period. This project is a partnership between Professor George J. Hirasaki at Rice University and Professor Kishore Mohanty at University of Houston. In addition to the DOE, this project is supported by a consortium of oil companies and service companies. The fluid properties characterization has emphasized the departure of live oils from correlations based on dead oils. Also, asphaltic components can result in a difference between the T1 and T2 relaxation time distributions as well as reduce the hydrogen index. The fluid rock characterizations that are reported here are the effects of wettability and internal magnetic field gradients. A pore reconstruction method ha s been developed to recreate three-dimensional porous media from two-dimensional images that reproduce some of their key statistical properties. A Monte Carlo simulation technique has been developed to calculate the magnetization decay in fluid saturated porous media given their pore structure.

At the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington, the path to site cleanup involves vitrification of the majority of the wastes that currently reside in large underground tanks. A Joule-heated glass melter is the equipment of choice for vitrifying the high-level fraction of these wastes. Even though this technology has general national and international acceptance, opportunities may exist to improve or change the technology to reduce the enormous cost of accomplishing the mission of site cleanup. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Energy requested the staff of the Tanks Focus Area to review immobilization technologies, waste forms, and modifications to requirements for solidification of the high-level waste fraction at Hanford to determine what aspects could affect cost reductions with reasonable long-term risk. The results of this study are summarized in this report.

Knowledge of aerosol chemical composition is key to understanding a number of properties of ambient aerosol particles including sources, size/number distribution, chemical evolution, optical properties and human health effects. Although filter based techniques have been widely used to determine aerosol chemical constituents, they generally cannot provide sufficiently fast time resolution needed to investigate sources and chemical evolution that effect aerosol chemical, size and number changes. In order to gain an ability to describe and predict the life cycles of ambient aerosols as a basis for ambient air quality control, fast and sensitive determination of the aerosol chemical composition must be made available. To help to achieve this goal, we deployed a newly developed technique, referred to as PILS (particle-into-liquid-sampler), on the DOE G1 aircraft during the 2000 Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS 2000) to characterize the major ionic species of aerosol particles with aerodynamic size smaller than 2.5 {micro}m (PM 2.5). The results obtained are examined in the context of other simultaneously collected data for insights into the measurement capability of the PILS system.

The threat to American interests from terrorists is not limited to attacks against humans. Terrorists might seek to inflict damage to the U.S. economy by attacking our agricultural sector. Infection of commodity crops by bacterial or fungal crop pathogens could adversely impact U.S. agriculture, either directly from damage to crops or indirectly from damage to our ability to export crops suspected of contamination. Recognizing a terrorist attack against U.S. agriculture, to be able to prosecute the terrorists, is among the responsibilities of the members of Hazardous Material Response Unit (HMRU) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Nucleic acid analysis of plant pathogen strains by the use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification techniques is a powerful method for determining the exact identity of pathogens, as well as their possible region of origin. This type of analysis, however, requires that PCR assays be developed specific to each particular pathogen strain, an d analysis protocols developed that are specific to the particular instrument used for detection. The objectives of the work described here were threefold: (1) to assess the potential terrorist threat to U.S. agricultural crops, (2) to determine whether suitable assays exist to monitor that threat, and (3) where assays …

A characterization study of the Fernald Silo 3 waste was performed at the request of Rocky Mountain Remedial Services, LLC (RMRS) to support treatment of the waste with the Envirobond reagents and Envirobrick process. The Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) performed the characterization under a Work for Others Agreement WOF-00-007. Physical property testing was subcontracted to the Clemson Environmental Technologies Laboratory (CETL). This report is intended to transmit the results of the physical property testing conducted at the CETL. Results of the physical property testing are summarized in a final report from Steve Hoeffner, CETL.

This report contains the results of the Bench Scale evaporation of a large sample of pretreated Envelope C (AN102).

Project Gnome was the first nuclear experiment conducted under the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), predecessor to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Plowshare Program. Gnome was part of a joint government-industry experiment focused on developing nuclear devices exclusively for peaceful purposes. The intent of the Gnome experiment was to evaluate the effects of a nuclear detonation in a salt medium. Historically, Project Gnome consisted of a single detonation of a nuclear device on December 10, 1961. Since the Gnome detonation, the AEC/DOE has conducted surface restoration, site reconnaissance, and decontamination and decommissioning activities at the site. In addition, annual groundwater sampling is performed under a long-term hydrological monitoring program begun in 1980. Coach, an experiment to be located near the Gnome project, was initially scheduled for 1963. Although construction and rehabilitation were completed for Coach, the experiment was canceled and never executed. Known collectively as Project Gnome-Coach, the site is situated within the Salado Formation approximately 25 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in Eddy County, and is comprised of nearly 680 acres, of which 60 acres are disturbed from the combined AEC/DOE operations. The scope of this work plan is to document the environmental objectives and the proposed …

The advent of coupled earth system models has raised an important question in parallel computing: What is the most effective method for coupling many parallel models to form a high-performance coupled modeling system? We present our solution to this problem--The Model Coupling Toolkit (MCT). We explain how our effort to construct the Next-Generation Coupler for NCAR Community Climate System Model motivated us to create this toolkit. We describe in detail the conceptual design of the MCT and explain its usage in constructing parallel coupled models. We present preliminary performance results for the toolkit's parallel data transfer facilities. Finally, we outline an agenda for future development of the MCT.

For Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, clear regulatory guidance exists for structuring radiological air emissions monitoring programs. However, there are no parallel regulations for radiological liquid effluent monitoring programs. In order to bridge this gap and to technically justify liquid effluent monitoring decisions at DOE's Savannah River Site, a graded, risk-basked approach has been established to determine the monitoring and sampling criteria to be applied at each liquid discharge point.

Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) is used as a key decision-making tool for the potential geologic repository for high level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, USA. Because of the complexity and uncertainty involved in a post-closure performance assessment, an important goal is to produce a transparent document describing the assumptions, the intermediate steps, the results, and the conclusions of the analyses. An important objective for a TSPA analysis is to illustrate confidence in performance projections of the potential repository given a complex system of interconnected process models, data, and abstractions. The methods and techniques used for the recent TSPA analyses demonstrate an effective process to portray complex models and results with transparency and credibility.

An important component of EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) is iocCore, which is the core software in the IOC (input/output controller) front-end processors. At ICALEPCS 1999 a paper was presented describing plans to port iocCore to multiple operating systems. At that time iocCore only supported vxWorks, but now it also supports RTEMS, Solaris, Linux, and WinNT. This paper describes some key features of how iocCore supports multiple operating systems.

High temperature filtration can serve to improve the economic, environmental, and energy performance of chemical processes. This project was designed to evaluate the stability of filtration materials in the environments of the production of dimethyldichlorosilane (DDS). In cooperation with Dow Corning, chemical environments for the fluidized bed reactor where silicon is converted to DDS and the incinerator where vents are cornbusted were characterized. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) an exposure system was developed that could simulate these two environments. Filter samples obtained from third parties were exposed to the environments for periods up to 1000 hours. Mechanical properties before and after exposure were determined by burst-testing rings of filter material. The results indicated that several types of filter materials would likely perform well in the fluid bed environment, and two materials would be good candidates for the incinerator environment.

At Argonne National Laboratory we have developed a high performance regional climate modeling simulation capability based on the NCAR MM5v3.4. The regional climate simulation system at Argonne currently includes a Java-based interface to allow rapid selection and generation of initial and boundary conditions, a high-performance version of MM5v3.4 modified for long climate simulations on our 512-processor Beowulf cluster (Chiba City), an interactive Web-based analysis tool to facilitate analysis and collaboration via the Web, and an enhanced version of the CAVE5d software capable of working with large climate data sets. In this paper we describe the application of this modeling system to investigate the role of model resolution in predicting extreme events such as the ''Hurricane Huron'' event of 11-15 September 1996. We have performed a series of ''Hurricane Huron'' experiments at 80, 40, 20, and 10 km grid resolution over an identical spatiotemporal domain. We conclude that increasing model resolution leads to dramatic changes in the vertical structure of the simulated atmosphere producing significantly different representations of rainfall and other parameters critical to the assessment of impacts of climate change.

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This document summarizes environmental information which has been collected up to June 1983 at Savannah River Plant. Of particular interest is an updating of dose estimates from changes in methodology of calculation, lower cesium transport estimates from Steel Creek, and new sports fish consumption data for the Savannah River. The status of various permitting requirements are also discussed.