This report describes the results from laboratory tests performed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) EM-31 Support Program (EMSP) subtask, “Production and Long-Term Performance of Low Temperature Waste Forms” to provide additional information on technetium (Tc) speciation characterization in the Cast Stone waste form. To support the use of Cast Stone as an alternative to vitrification for solidifying low-activity waste (LAW) and as the current baseline waste form for secondary waste streams at the Hanford Site, additional understanding of Tc speciation in Cast Stone is needed to predict the long-term Tc leachability from Cast Stone and to meet the regulatory disposal-facility performance requirements for the Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF). Characterizations of the Tc speciation within the Cast Stone after leaching under various conditions provide insights into how the Tc is retained and released. The data generated by the laboratory tests described in this report provide both empirical and more scientific information to increase our understanding of Tc speciation in Cast Stone and its release mechanism under relevant leaching processes for the purpose of filling data gaps and to support the long-term risk and performance assessments of Cast Stone in the IDF at the …

The Hanford Tank Operations Contractor (TOC) and the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) contractor are both engaged in demonstrating mixing, sampling, and transfer system capability using simulated Hanford High-Level Waste (HL W) formulations. This work represents one of the remaining technical issues with the high-level waste treatment mission at Hanford. The TOC must demonstrate the ability to adequately mix and sample high-level waste feed to meet the WTP Waste Acceptance Criteria and Data Quality Objectives. The sampling method employed must support both TOC and WTP requirements. To facilitate information transfer between the two facilities the mixing and sampling demonstrations are led by the One System Integrated Project Team. The One System team, Waste Feed Delivery Mixing and Sampling Program, has developed a full scale sampling loop to demonstrate sampler capability. This paper discusses the full scale sampling loops ability to meet precision and accuracy requirements, including lessons learned during testing. Results of the testing showed that the Isolok(R) sampler chosen for implementation provides precise, repeatable results. The Isolok(R) sampler accuracy as tested did not meet test success criteria. Review of test data and the test platform following testing by a sampling expert identified several issues regarding the sampler …

A history of the evolution and the design development of Extended Reach Sluicer System (ERSS) is presented. Several challenges are described that had to be overcome to create a machine that went beyond the capabilities of prior generation sluicers to mobilize waste in Single Shell Tanks for pumping into Double Shell Tank receiver tanks. Off-the-shelf technology and traditional hydraulic fluid power systems were combined with the custom-engineered components to create the additional functionality of the ERSS, while still enabling it to fit within very tight entry envelope into the SST. Problems and challenges inevitably were encountered and overcome in ways that enhance the state of the art of fluid power applications in such constrained environments. Future enhancements to the ERSS design are explored for retrieval of tanks with different dimensions and internal obstacles.

In 2006, the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) signed the Federal Leadership in High Performance and Sustainable Buildings Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), along with 21 other agencies. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is exceeding this requirement and, currently, about 25 percent of its buildings are High Performance and Sustainable Buildings. The pages that follow document the Guiding Principles conformance effort for the Radiochemical Processing Laboratory (RPL) at PNNL. The RPL effort is part of continued progress toward a building inventory that is 100 percent compliant with the Guiding Principles.

Preplanning scope for the Hanford tank transuranic (TRU) waste project was authorized in 2013 by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP) after a project standby period of eight years. Significant changes in DOE orders, Hanford contracts, and requirements at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) have occurred during this time period, in addition to newly implemented regulatory permitting, re-evaluated waste management strategies, and new commercial applications. Preplanning has identified the following key approaches for reactivating the project: qualification of tank inventory designations and completion of all environmental regulatory permitting; identifying program options to accelerate retrieval of key leaking tank T-111; planning fully compliant implementation of DOE Order 413.3B, and DOE Standard 1189 for potential on-site treatment; and re-evaluation of commercial retrieval and treatment technologies for better strategic bundling of permanent waste disposal options.

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A proof-of-principle test is underway near the Hanford Site 241-SX Tank Farm. The test will evaluate a potential remediation technology that will use tank farm-deployable equipment to remove contaminated pore water from vadose zone soils. The test system was designed and built to address the constraints of working within a tank farm. Due to radioactive soil contamination and limitations in drilling near tanks, small-diameter direct push drilling techniques applicable to tank farms are being utilized for well placement. To address space and weight limitations in working around tanks and obstacles within tank farms, the aboveground portions of the test system have been constructed to allow deployment flexibility. The test system utilizes low vacuum over a sealed well screen to establish flow into an extraction well. Extracted pore water is collected in a well sump,and then pumped to the surface using a small-diameter bladder pump.If pore water extraction using this system can be successfully demonstrated, it may be possible to target local contamination in the vadose zone around underground storage tanks. It is anticipated that the results of this proof-of-principle test will support future decision making regarding interim and final actions for soil contamination within the tank farms.

The Office of River Protection under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is pursuing closure of the Single-Shell Tank (SST) Waste Management Area 0NMA) C as stipulated by the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (HFFACO) under federalrequirements and work tasks will be done under the State-approved closure plans and permits. An initial step in meeting the regulatory requirements is to develop a baseline risk assessment representing current conditions based on available characterization data and information collected at the WMA C location. The baseline risk assessment will be supporting a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) Field Investigation (RFI)/Corrective Measures Study (CMS) for WMA closure and RCRA corrective action. Complying with the HFFACO conditions also involves developing a long-term closure Performance Assessment (PA) that evaluates human health and environmental impacts resulting from radionuclide inventories in residual wastes remaining in WMA C tanks and ancillary equipment. This PAis being developed to meet the requirements necessary for closure authorization under DOE Order 435.1 and Washington State Hazardous Waste Management Act. To meet the HFFACO conditions, the long-term closure risk analysis will include an evaluation of human health and environmental impacts from hazardous chemical inventories along with other performance Comprehensive …

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Our research program was aimed at elucidating the nature of proton transport in ionomer membranes by means of a combination of analytical theory and molecular modeling. There were two broad thrusts. The first of these was directed towards understanding the equilibrium structure of Nafion and related polymers at various levels of hydration. The second thrust was concerned with the transport of protons through a membrane of this type. The research on structure proceeded by building on existing work, but with the introduction of some novel techniques, among which is a hybrid Molecular Dynamics--Monte Carlo approach. This method permits rapid computations by temporarily decoupling the motion of the polar side chains from that of the perfluorinated backbone, while still retaining the essential aspects of the constraint that phase separation can only continue to a very limited degree. Competition between an elastic energy due to this constraint and the tendency to phase separation lead to the equilibrium structure, which turns out to be qualitatively different at different levels of hydration. The use of a carefully formulated dielectric function was necessary to achieve accurate results. The work on transport of protons in Nafion-like membranes also involved a combination of theory and simulation. Atomistic …

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami caused loss of offsite power and disabled the emergency diesel generators, leading to a prolonged station blackout at the Fukushima Daiichi site. After successful reactor trip for all operating reactors, the inability to remove decay heat over an extended period led to boil-off of the water inventory and fuel uncovery in Units 1-3. A significant amount of metal-water reaction occurred, as evidenced by the quantities of hydrogen generated that led to hydrogen explosions in the auxiliary buildings of the Units 1 & 3, and in the de-fuelled Unit 4. Although it was assumed that extensive fuel damage, including fuel melting, slumping, and relocation was likely to have occurred in the core of the affected reactors, the status of the fuel, vessel, and drywell was uncertain. To understand the possible evolution of the accident conditions at Fukushima Daiichi, a Markov model of the likely state of one of the reactors was constructed and executed under different assumptions regarding system performance and reliability. The Markov approach was selected for several reasons: It is a probabilistic model that provides flexibility in scenario construction and incorporates time dependence of different model states. …

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The Jefferson Laboratory Hall B PrimEx Collaboration is using tagged photons to perform an absolute 1.4% level cross section measurement of the photoproduction of neutral pions in the Coulomb field of a nucleus. The absolute cross section for this process is directly proportional to the neutral pion radiative decay width and consequently the uncertainty in the luminosity is directly reflected in the final error bar of the measurement. The PI has taken primary responsibility for the photon flux determination and in this technical report, we outline the steps taken to limit the uncertainty in the tagged photon flux to the 1% level. These include the use of a total absorption counter for absolute flux calibration, a pair spectrometer for online relative flux monitoring, and updated procedures for postbremsstrahlung electron counting. The photon tagging technique has been used routinely in its various forms to provide quasimonochromatic photons for absolute photonuclear cross section measurements. The analysis of such experiments in the context of bremsstrahlung photon tagging was summarized by Owens in 1990. Since then, a number of developments have made possible significant improvements in the implementation of this technique. Here, we describe the steps taken by the PrimEx Collaboration in Hall B …

This report provides information about environmental programs during the calendar year of 2010 at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, California. Activities that overlap the calendar year - i.e., stormwater monitoring covering the winter season of 2010/2011 (October 2010 through May 2011) are also included. SLAC is a federally-funded research and development center with Stanford University as the M&O contractor. Under Executive Order (EO) 13423, Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management, EO 13514, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance, and DOE Order 450.1A, Environmental Protection Program, SLAC effectively implements and integrates the key elements of an Environmental Management System (EMS) to achieve the site's integrated safety and environmental management system goals. For normal daily activities, SLAC managers and supervisors are responsible for ensuring that policies and procedures are understood and followed so that: (1) Worker safety and health are protected; (2) The environment is protected; and (3) Compliance is ensured. Throughout 2010, SLAC continued to improve its management systems. These systems provided a structured framework for SLAC to implement 'greening of the government' initiatives such as EO 13423, EO 13514, and DOE Orders 450.1A and 430.2B. Overall, management systems at SLAC are effective, supporting compliance …

Tank 50H is the feed tank for the Saltstone Production Facility (SPF). In the summer of 2011, Tank 50H contained two standard slurry pumps and two quad volute slurry pumps. Current requirements for mixing operation is to run three pumps for one hour prior to initiating a feed transfer to SPF. Savannah River Site (SRS) Liquid Waste moved both of the Quad Volute pumps from Tank 50H to Tank 51H to replace pumps in Tank 51H that were failing. In addition, one of the standard pumps in Tank 50H exhibits high seal leakage and vibration. SRS Liquid Waste requested Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to conduct a study to evaluate the feasibility of mixing the contents of Tank 50H with one to three standard slurry pumps. To determine the pump requirements to mix solids with liquids in Tank 50H, the author reviewed the pilot-scale blending work performed for the Small Column Ion Exchange Process (SCIX), SRNL computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, Tank 50H operating experience, and the technical literature, and applied the results to Tank 50H to determine the number, size, and operating parameters of pumps needed to mix the solid particles with the liquid in Tank 50H. The analysis …

To address this potential deflagration/explosion hazard, Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) reviewed and evaluated existing experimental and analytical studies of this issue to determine if any process constraints are necessary.

This paper proposes a new way to do event generation and analysis in searches for new physics at the LHC. An abstract notation is used to describe the new particles on a level which better corresponds to detector resolution of LHC experiments. In this way the SUSY discovery space can be decomposed into a small number of eigenmodes each with only a few parameters, which allows to investigate the SUSY parameter space in a model-independent way. By focusing on the experimental observables for each process investigated the Bottom-Up Approach allows to systematically study the boarders of the experimental efficiencies and thus to extend the sensitivity for new physics.

We have carried out a wide study of Cold Nuclear Matter (CNM) effects on J/{Psi} = production in dAu, CuCu and AuAu collisions at {radical}s{sub NN} = 200 GeV. We have studied the effects of three different gluon-shadowing parameterizations, using the usual simplified kinematics for which the momentum of the gluon recoiling against the J/{Psi} is neglected as well as an exact kinematics for a 2 {yields} 2 process, namely g + g {yields} J/{psi} + g as expected from LO pQCD. We have shown that the rapidity distribution of the nuclear modification factor R{sub dAu}, and particularly its anti-shadowing peak, is systematically shifted toward larger rapidities in the 2 {yields} 2 kinematics, irrespective of which shadowing parameterization is used. In turn, we have noted differences in the effective final-state nuclear absorption needed to fit the PHENIX dAu data. Taking advantage of our implementation of a 2 {yields} 2 kinematics, we have also computed the transverse momentum dependence of the nuclear modification factor, which cannot be predicted with the usual simplified kinematics. All the corresponding observables have been computed for CuCu and AuAu collisions and compared to the PHENIX and STAR data. Finally, we have extracted the effective nuclear absorption …

A sample of tritiated lanthanum nickel aluminum alloy (LaNi4.25Al0.75 or LANA.75) similar to that used at the Savannah River Site Tritium Facilities was analyzed to estimate the particle size distribution of this metal tritide powder and the rate, at which this material dissolves in the human respiratory tract after it is inhaled. This information is used to calculate the committed effective dose received by a worker after inhaling the material. These doses, which were calculated using the same methodology given in the DOE Tritium Handbook, are presented as inhalation intake-to-dose conversion factors (DCF). The DCF for this metal tritide is less than the DCF for tritiated water and radiation worker bioassay programs designed for tritiated water are adequate to monitor for intakes of this material.

The overall aim of this research was to develop genomic and genetic tools in foxtail millet that will be useful in improving biomass production in bioenergy crops such as switchgrass, napier grass, and pearl millet. A variety of approaches have been implemented, and our lab has been primarily involved in genome analysis and quantitative genetic analysis. Our progress in these activities has been substantially helped by the genomic sequence of foxtail millet produced by the Joint Genome Institute (Bennetzen et al., in prep). In particular, the annotation and analysis of candidate genes for architecture, biomass production and flowering has led to new insights into the control of branching and flowering time, and has shown how closely related flowering time is to vegetative architectural development and biomass accumulation. The differences in genetic control identified at high and low density plantings have direct relevance to the breeding of bioenergy grasses that are tolerant of high planting densities. The developmental analyses have shown how plant architecture changes over time and may indicate which genes may best be manipulated at various times during development to obtain required biomass characteristics. This data contributes to the overall aim of significantly improving genetic and genomic tools in …

This report discusses radiation protection and dose reporting requirements, presents the 2010 occupational radiation dose data trended over the past 5 years, and includes instructions to submit successful ALARA projects.