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Saari, Alexandra

Publications and source records attributed to Saari, Alexandra.

Stack Test Summary for TA-59-0001

The Radioactive Air Emissions Management (RAEM) team performed stack flow characterization tests at Technical Area (TA) 59 Building 0001 Exhaust Stack (ES) 8. These tests were completed in accordance with Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 61, Subpart H and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) N13.1-1999 required by the Clean Air Act. Subpart H of the regulation is the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for radionuclides, which compliance with is maintained by the REAM team.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Annual Performance Testing of Tracer Gas Detectors for use in Radionuclide NESHAP Compliance Testing

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL’s) compliance with Radionuclide NESHAP0F 1 regulations is managed by the Radioactive Air Emissions Management (RAEM) team, part of LANL’s Compliance Programs group (EPC-CP). One area of the Radionuclide NESHAP addresses requirements for siting a stack sample system. Prior to commissioning a new stack sampling system, the ANSI Standard for stack sampling requires that the stack sample location must meet several criteria, including uniform mixing of tracer gas (sulfur hexafluoride, SF 6 ) and tracer aerosol (liquid oil droplets) in the air stream. This memorandum will specifically focus on the tracer gas portion of the ANSI Standard. For these mix tests, tracer gas is injected into the stack air stream and the resulting air concentrations are measured across the plane of the stack at the proposed sampling location. The coefficient of variation of the media concentration must be under 20% when evaluated over the central 2/3 area of the stack or duct.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Summary of Stack Tests at TA-16-Bldg 205: Horizontal Duct on WETF Roof

In late 2023 and early 2024, testing was done at the Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility (WETF) rooftop exhaust duct to verify that the stack sample location was in compliance with the ANSI standard for stack sampling, ANSI N13.1-1999. This ANSI standard is called out by the Clean Air Act rules for airborne radionuclide emissions from DOE facilities, 40 CFR 61 Subpart H. This sample location is designated 16020504, indicating Technical Area 16, Building 0205. The rooftop duct formerly discharged to Exhaust Stack 04, but in 2007 it was re-routed to exhaust out Building 0450, Exhaust Stack 05. For continuity, we have kept the 16020504 designation to represent this duct sample location.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Deployable sensor system using mesh networking and satellite communication

A sensor system may be configured for continuous operation in a low resource environment and/or in extreme environmental conditions. The sensor system may have sufficient processing capabilities to provide scientific computing for pre-processing, quality control, statistical analysis, event classification, data compression and corrections (e.g., spikes in the data), autonomous decisions and actions, triggering other nodes, and information assurance functions that provide data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. The hardware may have both mesh networking and satellite and cellular communication capability, and may be available for relatively low cost. Such a network provides the flexibility to have potentially any number of nodes be completely independent from one another. Thus, the network may scale across a diverse terrain.

Frigo, Janette↗

Deployable sensor system using mesh networking and satellite communication

A sensor system may be configured for continuous operation in a low resource environment and/or in extreme environmental conditions. The sensor system may have sufficient processing capabilities to provide scientific computing for pre-processing, quality control, statistical analysis, event classification, data compression and corrections (e.g., spikes in the data), autonomous decisions and actions, triggering other nodes, and information assurance functions that provide data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. The hardware may have both mesh networking and satellite and cellular communication capability, and may be available for relatively low cost. Such a network provides the flexibility to have potentially any number of nodes be completely independent from one another. Thus, the network may scale across a diverse terrain.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Using SDI-12 with ST microelectronics MCU's

ST Microelectronics microcontrollers and processors are readily available, capable and economical processors. Unfortunately they lack a broad user base like similar offerings from Texas Instrument, Atmel, or Microchip. All of these devices could be useful in economical devices for remote sensing applications used with environmental sensing. With the increased need for environmental studies, and limited budgets, flexibility in hardware is very important. To that end, and in an effort to increase open support of ST devices, I am sharing my teams' experience in interfacing a common environmental sensor communication protocol (SDI-12) with ST devices.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Control of an External Microcontroller using the Android Operating System

There is a critical need for rugged and portable control systems for field-deployable sensors. Since the Android is an open-source operating system, a smartphone can potentially be modified to serve as a communications device to interface with a controller and many types of experiments/sensors in the field. The communications can be wireless or via USB cables. Through this project, we have demonstrated two-way communication and control of an external Arduino microcontroller, as well as real time data acquisition, through an easy to operate GUI on an Android OS phone operating through Bluetooth wireless communication.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗