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At least 181 records · Page 10

Software Verification and Validation Plan Activities, 2011 – SAPHIRE 8 Quality Assurance

SV&V Updates through FY11 An official update was released in February 2011. This update was to add a new automated test, to revise the SV&V wording to indicate the operational life cycle that SAPHIRE 8 has entered, and to provide design documentation for Inspection Planning Reports (which evolved into the Plant Risk Information e-Book (PRIB)) and Analysis Speed Improvements. Another update to the SV&V will be released in conjunction with this report in September 2011 to include the following: two new automated tests, the inclusion of metrics into the testing regime and references to the addition of the Preliminary Design Review and Critical Design Review processes.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Results for the Fourth Quarter 2011 Tank 50 WAC Slurry Sample: Chemical and Radionuclide Contaminant Results

The Saltstone Facility is designed and permitted to immobilize and dispose of low-level radioactive and hazardous liquid waste (salt solution) remaining from the processing of radioactive material at the Savannah River Site. Low-level waste (LLW) streams from the Effluent Treatment Project (ETP), H-Canyon, and the decontaminated salt solution product from the Actinide Removal Process/Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) Unit (ARP/MCU) process are stored in Tank 50 until the LLW can be transferred to the Saltstone Facility for treatment and disposal. The LLW must meet the specified waste acceptance criteria (WAC) before it is processed into saltstone. The specific chemical and radionuclide contaminants and their respective WAC limits are in the current Saltstone WAC. Waste Solidification Engineering (WSE) requested that Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) perform quarterly analysis on saltstone samples. The concentrations of chemical and radionuclide contaminants are measured to ensure the saltstone produced during each quarter is in compliance with the current WAC. This report documents the concentrations of chemical and radionuclide contaminants for the 2011 Fourth Quarter samples collected from Tank 50 on October 12, 2011 and discusses those results in further detail than the previously issued results report.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

2011 Annual Industrial Wastewater Reuse Report for the Idaho National Laboratory Site's Materials and Fuels Complex Industrial Waste Ditch and Industrial Waste Pond

This report describes conditions, as required by the state of Idaho Industrial Wastewater Reuse Permit (LA-000160-01), for the wastewater reuse site at the Idaho National Laboratory Site's Materials and Fuels Complex Industrial Waste Ditch and Industrial Waste Pond from November 1, 2010 through October 31, 2011. The report contains the following information: (1) Facility and system description; (2) Permit required effluent monitoring data and loading rates; (3) Groundwater monitoring data; (4) Status of special compliance conditions; and (5) Discussion of the facility's environmental impacts. During the 2011 reporting year, an estimated 6.99 million gallons of wastewater were discharged to the Industrial Waste Ditch and Pond which is well below the permit limit of 13 million gallons per year. Using the dissolved iron data, the concentrations of all permit-required analytes in the samples from the down gradient monitoring wells were below the Ground Water Quality Rule Primary and Secondary Constituent Standards.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

2011 Annual Wastewater Reuse Report for the Idaho National Laboratory Site’s Central Facilities Area Sewage Treatment Plant

This report describes conditions, as required by the state of Idaho Wastewater Reuse Permit (LA-000141-03), for the wastewater land application site at Idaho National Laboratory Site's Central Facilities Area Sewage Treatment Plant from November 1, 2010, through October 31, 2011. The report contains the following information: (1) Site description; (2) Facility and system description; (3) Permit required monitoring data and loading rates; (4) Status of special compliance conditions and activities; and (5) Discussion of the facility's environmental impacts. During the 2011 permit year, approximately 1.22 million gallons of treated wastewater was land-applied to the irrigation area at Central Facilities Area Sewage Treatment plant.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Accelerator/Experiment Operations - FY 2011

This Technical Memorandum (TM) summarizes the Fermilab accelerator and accelerator experiment operations for FY 2011. It is one of a series of annual publications intended to gather information in one place. In this case, the information concerns the FY 2011 Run II at the Tevatron Collider, the MINOS and MINERvA experiments using the Main Injector Neutrino Beam (NuMI), the MiniBooNE experiment running in the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), and the Meson Test Beam (MTest) activities in the 120 GeV external Switchyard beam (SY120).

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

2011 Performance Assessment Community of Practice Technical Exchange – Summary

The Performance Assessment Community of Practice (PA CoP) was developed in 2008 to improve consistency and quality in the preparation of performance assessments (PAs) and risk assessments across the Department of Energy (DOE) Complex. The term, PA, is used to represent all of these modeling applications in this report. The PA CoP goals are to foster the exchange of information among PA practitioners and to share lessons learned from PAs conducted for DOE, commercial disposal facilities, and international entities. Technical exchanges and workshops are a cornerstone of PA CoP activities. Previous technical exchanges have addressed Engineered Barriers (2009 - http://www.cresp.org/education/workshops/pacop/), the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management and the Cementitious Barriers Partnership (2010 - http://srnl.doe.gov/copexchange/links.htm). Each technical exchange also includes summary presentations regarding activities at DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and other organizations (e.g., International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)) as well as a number of presentations from selected sites to provide insight and perspective from on-going modeling activities. Through the deployment of PA Assistance Teams, the PA CoP has also been engaged in the development of new PAs across the DOE Complex. As a way of improving consistency in the preparation of new PAs, the teams provide technical advice and share experiences, noteworthy practices, and lessons learned from previous Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility Federal Review Group (LFRG) reviews. Teams have provided support for PAs at Hanford, Idaho, Paducah and Portsmouth. The third annual PA CoP Technical Exchange was held on May 25-26, 2011 in Atlanta, GA. The PA CoP Steering Committee Meeting held its first meeting on May 24 prior to the Technical Exchange. Decision making using models and software quality assurance were the topical emphasis for the exchange. A new feature at the 2011 technical exchange was the use of panel discussions to solicit feedback from regulators and practitioners. This report summarizes discussions and recommendations from the steering committee meeting and presentations and feedback obtained at the technical exchange. Appendix I includes the steering committee meeting agenda and Appendix II includes the agenda for the technical exchange and a screenshot of the presentations and video files that are available online.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Evaluation of Low-Level Waste Disposal Receipt Data for Los Alamos National Laboratory Technical Area 54, Area G Disposal Facility - Fiscal Year 2011

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Laboratory) generates radioactive waste as a result of various activities. Operational or institutional waste is generated from a wide variety of research and development activities including nuclear weapons development, energy production, and medical research. Environmental restoration (ER), and decontamination and decommissioning (D and D) waste is generated as contaminated sites and facilities at LANL undergo cleanup or remediation. The majority of this waste is low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and is disposed of at the Technical Area 54 (TA-54), Area G disposal facility. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Order 435.1 (DOE, 2001) requires that radioactive waste be managed in a manner that protects public health and safety, and the environment. To comply with this order, DOE field sites must prepare and maintain site-specific radiological performance assessments for LLW disposal facilities that accept waste after September 26, 1988. Furthermore, sites are required to conduct composite analyses that account for the cumulative impacts of all waste that has been (or will be) disposed of at the facilities and other sources of radioactive material that may interact with the facilities. Revision 4 of the Area G performance assessment and composite analysis was issued in 2008 (LANL, 2008). These analyses estimate rates of radionuclide release from the waste disposed of at the facility, simulate the movement of radionuclides through the environment, and project potential radiation doses to humans for several on-site and off-site exposure scenarios. The assessments are based on existing site and disposal facility data and on assumptions about future rates and methods of waste disposal. The accuracy of the performance assessment and composite analysis depends upon the validity of the data used and assumptions made in conducting the analyses. If changes in these data and assumptions are significant, they may invalidate or call into question certain aspects of the analyses. For example, if the volumes and activities of waste disposed of during the remainder of the disposal facility's lifetime differ significantly from those projected, the doses projected by the analyses may no longer apply. DOE field sites are required to implement a performance assessment and composite analysis maintenance program. The purpose of this program is to ensure the continued applicability of the analyses through incremental improvement of the level of understanding of the disposal site and facility. Site personnel are required to conduct field and experimental work to reduce the uncertainty in the data and models used in the assessments. Furthermore, they are required to conduct periodic reviews of waste receipts, comparing them to projected waste disposal rates. The radiological inventory for Area G was updated in conjunction with Revision 4 of the performance assessment and composite analysis (Shuman, 2008). That effort used disposal records and other sources of information to estimate the quantities of radioactive waste that have been disposed of at Area G from 1959, the year the facility started receiving waste on a routine basis, through 2007. It also estimated the quantities of LLW that will require disposal from 2008 through 2044, the year in which it is assumed that disposal operations at Area G will cease. This report documents the fourth review of Area G disposal receipts since the inventory was updated and examines information for waste placed in the ground during fiscal years (FY) 2008 through 2011. The primary objective of the disposal receipt review is to ensure that the future waste inventory projections developed for the performance assessment and composite analysis are consistent with the actual types and quantities of waste being disposed of at Area G. Toward this end, the disposal data that are the subject of this review are used to update the future waste inventory projections for the disposal facility. These projections are compared to the future inventory projections that were developed for Revision 4 of the performance assessment and composite analysis. The approach used to characterize the FY 2008 through 2011 waste is generally the same as that used to characterize the inventory for the Revision 4 analyses (Shuman, 2008). This methodology is described in Section 2. The results of the disposal receipt review are presented in Section 3 and discussed in terms of their significance to the Area G analyses.

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Annual Report for Los Alamos National Laboratory Technical Area 54, Area G Disposal Facility – Fiscal Year 2011

As a condition to the Disposal Authorization Statement issued to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Laboratory) on March 17, 2010, a comprehensive performance assessment and composite analysis maintenance program must be implemented for the Technical Area 54, Area G disposal facility. Annual determinations of the adequacy of the performance assessment and composite analysis are to be conducted under the maintenance program to ensure that the conclusions reached by those analyses continue to be valid. This report summarizes the results of the fiscal year 2011 annual review for Area G. Revision 4 of the Area G performance assessment and composite analysis was issued in 2008 and formally approved in 2009. These analyses are expected to provide reasonable estimates of the long-term performance of Area G and, hence, the disposal facility's ability to comply with Department of Energy (DOE) performance objectives. Annual disposal receipt reviews indicate that smaller volumes of waste will require disposal in the pits and shafts at Area G relative to what was projected for the performance assessment and composite analysis. The future inventories are projected to decrease modestly for the pits but increase substantially for the shafts due to an increase in the amount of tritium that is projected to require disposal. Overall, however, changes in the projected future inventories of waste are not expected to compromise the ability of Area G to satisfy DOE performance objectives. The Area G composite analysis addresses potential impacts from all waste disposed of at the facility, as well as other sources of radioactive material that may interact with releases from Area G. The level of knowledge about the other sources included in the composite analysis has not changed sufficiently to call into question the validity of that analysis. Ongoing environmental surveillance activities are conducted at, and in the vicinity of, Area G. However, the information generated by many of these activities cannot be used to evaluate the validity of the performance assessment and composite analysis models because the monitoring data collected are specific to operational releases or address receptors that are outside the domain of the performance assessment and composite analysis. In general, applicable monitoring data are supportive of some aspects of the performance assessment and composite analysis. Several research and development (R and D) efforts have been initiated under the performance assessment and composite analysis maintenance program. These investigations are designed to improve the current understanding of the disposal facility and site, thereby reducing the uncertainty associated with the projections of the long-term performance of Area G. The status and results of R and D activities that were undertaken in fiscal year 2011 are discussed in this report. Special analyses have been conducted to determine the feasibility of disposing of specific waste streams, to address proposed changes in disposal operations, and to consider the impacts of changes to the models used to conduct the performance assessment and composite analysis. These analyses are described and the results of the evaluations are summarized in this report. The Area G disposal facility consists of Material Disposal Area (MDA) G and the Zone 4 expansion area. To date, all disposal operations at Area G have been confined to MDA G. Material Disposal Area G is scheduled to undergo final closure in 2015; disposal of waste in the pits and shafts is scheduled to end in 2013. In anticipation of the closure of MDA G, plans are being made to ship the majority of the waste generated at LANL to off-site locations for disposal. It is not clear at this time if waste that will be disposed of at LANL will be placed in Zone 4 or if disposal operations will move to a new location at the Laboratory. Separately, efforts to optimize the final cover used in the closure of MDA G are underway; a final cover design different than that adopted for the performance assessment and composite analysis will likely emerge from that investigation. All of these changes will require re-examination of the assumptions upon which the performance assessment and composite analysis are based and, in all likelihood, revision of those analyses.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Nevada National Security Site: Site-Directed Research and Development (Fiscal Year 2011 Annual Report)

This fiscal year 2011 annual report of the Site-Directed Research and Development program, the 10th anniversary edition, recognizes a full decade of innovative R&D accomplishments in support of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). Last year the NNSS itself was renamed to reflect a diversifying mission, and our R&D program has contributed significantly to shape emerging missions that will continue to evolve. New initiatives in stockpile stewardship science, nonproliferation, and treaty verification and monitoring have had substantial successes in FY 2011, and many more accomplishments are expected. SDRD is the cornerstone on which many of these initiatives rest. Historically supporting our main focus areas, SDRD is also building a solid foundation for new, and non-traditional, emerging national security missions. The program continues its charter to advance science and technology for a broad base of agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and many others.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

NEAMS Update: Quarterly Report for October - December 2011

The Advanced Modeling and Simulation Office within the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) has been charged with revolutionizing the design tools used to build nuclear power plants during the next 10 years. To accomplish this, the DOE has brought together the national laboratories, U.S. universities, and the nuclear energy industry to establish the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Program. The mission of NEAMS is to modernize computer modeling of nuclear energy systems and improve the fidelity and validity of modeling results using contemporary software environments and high-performance computers. NEAMS will create a set of engineering-level codes aimed at designing and analyzing the performance and safety of nuclear power plants and reactor fuels. The truly predictive nature of these codes will be achieved by modeling the governing phenomena at the spatial and temporal scales that dominate the behavior. These codes will be executed within a simulation environment that orchestrates code integration with respect to spatial meshing, computational resources, and execution to give the user a common 'look and feel' for setting up problems and displaying results. NEAMS is building upon a suite of existing simulation tools, including those developed by the federal Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing and Advanced Simulation and Computing programs. NEAMS also draws upon existing simulation tools for materials and nuclear systems, although many of these are limited in terms of scale, applicability, and portability (their ability to be integrated into contemporary software and hardware architectures). NEAMS investments have directly and indirectly supported additional NE research and development programs, including those devoted to waste repositories, safeguarded separations systems, and long-term storage of used nuclear fuel. NEAMS is organized into two broad efforts, each comprising four elements. The quarterly highlights October-December 2011 are: (1) Version 1.0 of AMP, the fuel assembly performance code, was tested on the JAGUAR supercomputer and released on November 1, 2011, a detailed discussion of this new simulation tool is given; (2) A coolant sub-channel model and a preliminary UO{sub 2} smeared-cracking model were implemented in BISON, the single-pin fuel code, more information on how these models were developed and benchmarked is given; (3) The Object Kinetic Monte Carlo model was implemented to account for nucleation events in meso-scale simulations and a discussion of the significance of this advance is given; (4) The SHARP neutronics module, PROTEUS, was expanded to be applicable to all types of reactors, and a discussion of the importance of PROTEUS is given; (5) A plan has been finalized for integrating the high-fidelity, three-dimensional reactor code SHARP with both the systems-level code RELAP7 and the fuel assembly code AMP. This is a new initiative; (6) Work began to evaluate the applicability of AMP to the problem of dry storage of used fuel and to define a relevant problem to test the applicability; (7) A code to obtain phonon spectra from the force-constant matrix for a crystalline lattice has been completed. This important bridge between subcontinuum and continuum phenomena is discussed; (8) Benchmarking was begun on the meso-scale, finite-element fuels code MARMOT to validate its new variable splitting algorithm; (9) A very computationally demanding simulation of diffusion-driven nucleation of new microstructural features has been completed. An explanation of the difficulty of this simulation is given; (10) Experiments were conducted with deformed steel to validate a crystal plasticity finite-element code for bodycentered cubic iron; (11) The Capability Transfer Roadmap was completed and published as an internal laboratory technical report; (12) The AMP fuel assembly code input generator was integrated into the NEAMS Integrated Computational Environment (NiCE). More details on the planned NEAMS computing environment is given; and (13) The NEAMS program website (neams.energy.gov) is nearly ready to launch.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility Discharges in 2011

This report documents radioactive discharges from the TA50 Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facilities (RLWTF) during calendar 2011. During 2011, three pathways were available for the discharge of treated water to the environment: discharge as water through NPDES Outfall 051 into Mortandad Canyon, evaporation via the TA50 cooling towers, and evaporation using the newly-installed natural-gas effluent evaporator at TA50. Only one of these pathways was used; all treated water (3,352,890 liters) was fed to the effluent evaporator. The quality of treated water was established by collecting a weekly grab sample of water being fed to the effluent evaporator. Forty weekly samples were collected; each was analyzed for gross alpha, gross beta, and tritium. Weekly samples were also composited at the end of each month. These flow-weighted composite samples were then analyzed for 37 radioisotopes: nine alpha-emitting isotopes, 27 beta emitters, and tritium. These monthly analyses were used to estimate the radioactive content of treated water fed to the effluent evaporator. Table 1 summarizes this information. The concentrations and quantities of radioactivity in Table 1 are for treated water fed to the evaporator. Amounts of radioactivity discharged to the environment through the evaporator stack were likely smaller since only entrained materials would exit via the evaporator stack.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

2011 World Materials Summit: Panel Discussion Report

The 2011 World Materials Summit, held on 10/9-12/2011 in Washington DC, provided a forum for top decision makers and energy experts from aropund the world to focus on the materials research needs for the growing energy economy. Organized jointly by the Materials Research Society (MRS), the European MRS (E-MRS), and the Chinese MRS (C-MRS), the goal of the Summit was to explore how the different regions of the world can work together on the critical issue of clean energy, including its relation to environmental sustainability and water. The participants considered the area of materials research as well as advocacy, economics, outreach, and education. Realizing that the concerns are long-term and that young players will ultimately be the ones who are going to need to solve the energy challenges, the chairs of the Summit inaugurated a Student Congress, a program for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in fields directly related to energy and environmental science, engineering, and/or policy. The top 45 candidates coming from 18 countries were selected on a competititve basis to participate in the Student Congress. The four-day effort culminated in a 2011 Worlds Materials Summit Declaration delineating materials directions related to global access to clean energy and water in a sustainable way.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Annual Transuranic Waste Inventory Report - 2011(Rev. 0)

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) began accepting defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste on March 26, 1999, becoming the nation’s first deep geologic repository for the permanent disposal of defense-generated TRU waste. TRU waste generation has occurred at both large quantity and small quantity sites (LQSs and SQSs) across the country. Many of these sites have emplaced their waste at WIPP, found other disposition pathways for the waste, or transferred the waste to other sites for further disposition. As of December 31, 2010 (the cutoff date for inventory data for this report), there have been 9,207 shipments (8,761 contact-handled [CH] and 446remote-handled [RH]) of TRU waste to WIPP for emplacement since WIPP’s opening(DOE 2011).This Annual Transuranic Waste Inventory Report – 2011 (ATWIR-2011) (hereafter referred to as “this report” or “ATWIR-2011”) reflects the changes that have occurred and provides an update to the defense-related TRU waste inventory data since the last published report, the Annual Transuranic Waste Inventory Report – 2010 (ATWIR-2010)(DOE 2010a).

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Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies 2011 Annual Report

We are pleased to share with you this 2011 edition of the Annual Report from the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) and the growing excitement we feel around cementing our brand as a leader in integration nanoscience. This can be seen most readily in the momentum we have achieved in our signature Integration Focus Activities (IFAs). These efforts unite our scientists across our four scientific Thrust areas with our users to concentrate research on larger-scale nanoscience integration challenges for specific classes of nanomaterials, systems, and phenomena. All three of our current IFAs (p. 10) now have a full head of steam, and nearly 30% of our current user projects map in some meaningful way to one of these IFAs. As part of our redoubled effort to increase our industrial user base, we are also looking to leverage these IFAs to build a stronger link to and spur recruitment within our industrial user community. We believe that the IFAs are a natural community-building tool with an intrinsic value proposition for industry; an R&D pipeline that can lead to more mature, more commercially well-positioned technologies. Finally, as nanoscience and nanotechnology are maturing, we as a research community are beginning to see our efforts extend in many exciting new directions. Our focus on nanoscience integration positions us very well to capitalize on new opportunities including the emerging Mesoscale Initiative within the DOE Office of Science. Many aspects of mesoscale science are embodied in the integration of nanoscale building blocks. We are equally proud of our continuing strong performance in support of our user program. We have fully transitioned to our new user proposal database providing enhanced convenience and flexibility for proposal submission and review. In our two regular proposal calls this year we received a total of 225 proposals, an increase of 10% over our 2010 performance. Our official count on number of users for the period remains at {approx}350 and continues to reflect full engagement of our scientific staff. We are also seeing a steady increase in our industrial user base, with the number of industrial proposals (including Rapid Access proposals) doubling in 2011. We attribute this in part of our outreach efforts including our focused industrial session in each of our past two annual User Conferences. The Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) is a Department of Energy/Office of Science Nanoscale Science Research Center (NSRC) operating as a national user facility devoted to establishing the scientific principles that govern the design, performance, and integration of nanoscale materials. Jointly operated by Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, CINT explores the continuum from scientific discovery to use-inspired research, with a focus on the integration of nanoscale materials and structures to achieve new properties and performance and their incorporation into the micro- and macro worlds. Through its Core Facility at Sandia National Laboratories and its Gateway Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory, CINT provides open access to tools and expertise needed to explore the continuum from scientific discovery to the integration of nanostructures into the micro- and macro worlds. In its overall operations, CINT strives to achieve the following goals common to all Nanoscale Science Research Centers: (1) Conduct forefront research in nanoscale science; (2) Operate as a user facility for scientific research; (3) Provide user access to the relevant BES-supported expertise and capabilities at the host national laboratory; and (4) Leverage other relevant national laboratory capabilities to enhance scientific opportunities for the nanoscience user community. These additional goals are specific to the unique CINT mission: (5) Establish and lead a scientific community dedicated to solving nanoscale science integration challenges; and (6) Create a single user facility program that combines expertise and facilities at both Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. The CINT user program provides the international scientific community with open access to world-class scientific staff and state-of-the-art facilities for theory and simulation, nanomaterials synthesis and characterization, and unique capabilities for nanoscale materials integration, from the level of nanoscale synthesis to the fabrication of micro- and macroscale structures and devices. The staff of CINT includes laboratory scientists, postdocs and technical support staff who are leaders in the nanoscience research programs in CINT scientific thrust areas: (1) Nanoscale Electronics and Mechanics, (2) Nanophotonics and Optical Nanomaterials, (3) Soft, Biological and Composite Nanomaterials, and (4) Theory and Simulation of Nanoscale Phenomena.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

Ecological Monitoring and Compliance Program 2011 Report

The Ecological Monitoring and Compliance (EMAC) Program, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office, monitors the ecosystem of the Nevada National Security Site and ensures compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to NNSS biota. This report summarizes the program's activities conducted by National Security Technologies, LLC, during calendar year 2011. Program activities included (a) biological surveys at proposed construction sites, (b) desert tortoise compliance, (c) ecosystem monitoring, (d) sensitive plant species monitoring, (e) sensitive and protected/regulated animal monitoring, (f) habitat restoration monitoring, and (g) monitoring of the Nonproliferation Test and Evaluation Complex. During 2011, all applicable laws, regulations, and permit requirements were met, enabling EMAC to achieve its intended goals and objectives.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Characterization and evaluation of caustic wash tank and solvent hold tank samples from MCU from august to september 2011

During processing of Salt Batches 3 and 4 in the Modular Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU), the decontamination efficiency for cesium declined from historical values and from expectations based on laboratory testing. This report documents efforts to analyze samples of solvent and process solutions from MCU in an attempt to understand the cause of the reduced performance and to recommend mitigations. CWT Solutions from MCU from the time period of variable decontamination factor (DF) performance which covers from April 2011 to September 2011 (during processing of Salt Batch 4) were examined for impurities using chromatography and spectroscopy. The results indicate that impurities were found to be of two types: aromatic containing impurities most likely from Modifier degradation and aliphatic type impurities most likely from Isopar{reg_sign} L and tri-n-octylamine (TOA) degradation. Caustic washing the Solvent Hold Tank (SHT) solution with 1M NaOH improved its extraction ability as determined from {sup 22}Na uptake tests. Evidence from this work showed that pH variance in the aqueous solutions within the range of 1M nitric acid to 1.91M NaOH that contacted the solvent samples does not influence the analytical determination of the TOA concentration by GC-MS.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Payment Of the New Mexico Environment Department- Hazardous Waste Bureau Annual Business and Generation Fees Calendar Year 2011

The purpose of this letter is to transmit to the New Mexico Environment Department-Hazardous Waste Bureau (NMED-HWB), the Los alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Annual Business and Generation Fees for calendar year 2011. These fees are required pursuant to the provisions of New Mexico Hazardous Waste Act, Chapter 74, Article 4, NMSA (as amended). The Laboratory's Fenton Hill Facility did not generate any hazardous waste during the entire year, and is not required to pay a fee for calendar year 2011. The enclosed fee represents the amount for a single facility owned by the Department of Energy and co-operated by the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS).

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗