Lessons Learned Nuclear Material Container Safety [PowerPoint]
A sub-par container packaging instance was evaluated and lessons learned shared.
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A sub-par container packaging instance was evaluated and lessons learned shared.
In Germany, rock salt formations are a possible host rock taken into account for the safe disposal of heat-emitting radioactive waste. With respect to crushed salt will be used in the repository for backfilling of open cavitied (using dry material). With time, the crushed salt will be compacted by the convergence of the host rock and reaches porosities comparable with the rock salts. The compaction behaviour of crushed salt has been investigated within the last 40 years, however, its behaviour at low porosities and the resulting low permeabilities becomes relevant with the introduction of the approach of the containment providing rock zone. In the current state, the database and process understanding have some important gaps in knowledge referring the material behaviour, existing laboratory and numerical models, especially for the porosity range. The objective of this project was the development of methods and strategies for the reduction of deficits in the prediction of crushed salt compaction leading to an improvement of the prognosis quality. It includes the development of experimental methods for determining crushed salt properties in the range of low porosities, the enhancement of process understanding and the investigation and development of existing numerical models.
This procedure provides instructions for the inspection and transfer of Transuranic (TRU) Waste containers within the Transuranic Waste Facility (TWF) (Waste Storage Buildings [WSBs], Characterization Waste Storage Building [CWSB]) and Characterization Trailers. This also includes the preparation to transfer to other LANL facilities. Performance of this procedure meets the requirements of SR 4.2.1.1, 4.2.1.2, 4.2.1.4, 4.2.1.5, 4.3.4.1, SAC 5.9.1, SAC 5.9.3 and AC 5.8.13 2nd bullet, as well as requirements set forth in the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Hazardous Waste Facility Permit (HWFP).
This procedure provides instructions for the receipt, inspection, and transfer of transuranic (TRU) waste containers within the Radioassay and Nondestructive Testing (RANT) Facility. Performance of this procedure meets the Surveillance Requirements (SRs) 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 4.1.3, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3 and 4.2.4.
NCS design and evaluation of new high-density storage containers
The National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) has proposed repurposing the U12n Vent Hole #2 (SHPO Resource S2488) and the U12n.10 Vent Hole (S2489) for water sampling in the U12n Tunnel. The vent holes are part of the historic ventilation system for the tunnel and are contributing elements to the U12n Tunnel Historic District (D84). In consultation with the SHPO, NNSA/NFO determined the undertaking will have an adverse effect on the vent holes. The NNSA/NFO and the SHPO negotiated a memorandum of (MOA) with stipulations to mitigate adverse effects. This submission is to comply with the stipulations in the executed Memorandum of Agreement Between the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office, Environmental Management Nevada Program Office, and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer Regarding Repurposing of Portions of the Ventilation System of the U12n Tunnel Complex Located in Area 12 at the Nevada National Security Site. In accordance with the MOA, the manuscript provides a historic context that describes the development and functioning of the historic U12n Tunnel ventilation system for underground nuclear tests (Stipulation III.C). High resolution digital color images of the vent hole containment doors, nearby elements, and overviews were obtained and keyed to a map and a photo index (Stipulation III.A) (Appendix A). Lastly, Architectural Resource Assessment (ARA) forms were completed for each of the vent holes and Historic District D84 (Stipulation III.B) (Appendix B). The documentation including the historic context report, photographs, image files, and resource forms produced to fulfill the terms of the MOA will be archived with the Nuclear Testing Archive in Las Vegas (Stipulation III.D).
The File Transfer Service (FTS3) is a data movement service developed at CERN which is used to distribute the majority of the Large Hadron Collider's data across the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) infrastructure. At Fermilab, we have deployed a couple of FTS3 instances for Intensity Frontier experiments (e.g. DUNE) to transfer data in America and Europe, using a container-based strategy. During this talk, we are going to present the two different configurations currently running at Fermilab, comparing and contrasting a Docker-based OKD deployment against a traditional RPM-based deployment and giving an overview of the possible issues encountered. In addition, we discuss our method of certificate management and maintenance utilizing Kubernetes cronjobs.
The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) package within LAMMPS is explored as a possible tool for simulating the motion of bubbles in a vibrating liquid-filled container. As an initial test case, the unphysical but computationally less intense situation of a two-dimensional single bubble rising in a quiescent liquid under the influence of gravity is considered herein. Although physically plausible behavior was obtained under certain conditions, this behavior depends strongly on the system parameters. Moreover, the large density ratio between the liquid and bubble requires extremely small timesteps, which make the simulations undesirably computationally expensive. Ultimately, it was determined that this method is not feasible for providing quantitatively accurate results for the desired application.
The goal of the Augmented Monitoring and Condition Assessment Program (AMCAP) program is to provide a condition assessment of the storage containers for non-aluminum-clad spent nuclear fuel (NASNF) in L Basin and demonstrate continued safe storage of all NASNF pending retrieval for ultimate disposition. The storage configuration of NASNF is vulnerable to inside-out corrosion attack. The approach being used in AMCAP is to develop and deploy examination methods for remote, in-situ inspection of the bundle storage in VTS and for OSC storage in the OSC racks. A method for Visual Examination (VE) using video-recording cameras was readied as part of the full-scale mockup development, and was deployed in L Basin for the initial condition assessment work. This report describes the development and the deployment of the VE for inspection of selected bundles in L Basin. The first deployment of the VE system was for visually examining five spent fuel bundles. Bundles were chosen based on their vulnerability in terms of inner fuel contents, history, storage duration, storage configuration, and possibility of inside out corrosion due to galvanic coupling of fuel cladding with the aluminum bundle wall.
Prior to 2021, Hagan containers were examined on an ad hoc basis as part of the SAVY-4000 surveillance plan. Given the size, aging horizon, and unique potential failure mechanisms of the Hagan population, the authors identified the need for Hagan-specific surveillance (Kelly, et al., 2020) and have developed this surveillance plan to meet that need.
This work will discuss evaluation and design of new and modified facility level radiological containment, transfer, and handling systems in support of the United States’ American Medical Isotope Production Act. In the United States alone, Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is used as a precursor to locally generate its decay product, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), for use in approximately 40,000 medical procedures every day to detect cancer and heart disease. Currently, however, Mo-99 is primarily produced overseas and typically requires highly enriched uranium (HEU) which is classified as weapon -usable. This poses a serious security risk to the United States and, in 2012, Congress passed the American Medical Isotope ACT which aimed to cease all Mo-99 production that requires HEU and support American based companies who have found safer production methods. Through this effort, a system was designed and developed to access irradiated material in processing hot cells for ease of material introduction and removal in the confined area. The proposed solution uses a double-door design that allows for easy access to material while also providing shielding through a mechanically manipulated carousel. A system was also designed to transport irradiated materials from target reactors to a target receipt box using a rail guide system, pneumatic motor, and lead screw drive.
The commercial software package Barracuda, developed by CPFD Software for simulating particle-laden fluid flows, is evaluated as a means to simulate the motion of bubbles in vibrating liquid-filled containers. Demonstration simulations of bubbles rising due to buoyancy forces in a cylinder filled with silicone oil and angled at 0, 30, 45, and 60 degrees from the vertical were performed by CPFD Software. The results of these simulations are discussed, and the capabilities of Barracuda for simulating bubble motion are assessed. It was determined that at present Barracuda does not meet the needs of the desired application. Further developments that would enable its use for this application are highlighted.
High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments entail an abundance of computing resources, i.e. sites, to run simulations and analyses by processing data. This requirement is fulfilled by local batch farms, grid sites, private/commercial clouds, and supercomputing centers via High Throughput Computing (HTC). The growing needs of such experiments and resources being prone to trends of heterogeneity make it difficult for physicists to handle these resources directly. Additionally, HEP collaborations heavily rely on data and software releases, typically in the order of tens of gigabytes, while conducting simulations and analyses. Hence, aspects of scalability, reliability, and maintenance become crucial with regards to the distribution of the necessary data and software stack. The GlideinWMS [4] framework helps with the resource management problem by using pilot jobs, aka Glideins, to provision reliable elastic virtual clusters. Glideins are submitted to unreliable heterogeneous resources which are validated and customized by the Glideins to make the worker nodes available for end-user job execution. On the other hand, the CernVM File System (CernVM-FS or CVMFS) [1] helps with data distribution. It is a write-once, read-everywhere filesystem used to deploy scientific software to thousands of nodes on a worldwide distributed computing infrastructure. CVMFS is based on the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and has been widely used within the particle physics community for (1) distributing experiment software and data such as calibrations, and (2) facilitating containerization by efficiently hosting container images along with providing containerization software, especially Singularity [3] GlideinWMS relies on CVMFS installed locally on the computing resources to satisfy the experiments' software needs. This requires system administrators' effort to install and maintain CVMFS at the sites and limits the use of sites, especially HPC resources, that do not have CVMFS installed. This poster presents a solution, taking advantage of Glideins to provide CVMFS at most sites without the need for a local installation. Doing so expands the pool of resources available for HEP experiments and reduces the effort of system administrators for current resources. Additionally, the proposed solution allows GlideinWMS to also start Singularity [3], a containerization software that can run unprivileged, on sites where neither CVMFS nor Singularity are available, including HPC sites. The benefits provided by this solution are: (1) lower overhead for site administrators in that they have less software to install, (2) an expanded pool of resources that run user jobs with easy access to software and data provided by CVMFS, thus making life easier for the scientists, and (3) improved flexibility to use HPC resources by enabling GlideinWMS pilot jobs to support HPC sites.
The File Transfer Service (FTS3) is a data movement service developed at CERN which is used to distribute the majority of the Large Hadron Collider's data across the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) infrastructure. At Fermilab, we have deployed FTS3 instances for Intensity Frontier experiments (e.g. DUNE) to transfer data in America and Europe, using a container-based strategy. In this article we summarize our experience building docker images based on work from the SLATE project (slateci.io) and deployed in OKD, the community distribution of Red Hat OpenShift. Additionally, we discuss our method of certificate management and maintenance utilizing Kubernetes CronJobs. Finally, we also report on the two different configurations currently running at Fermilab, comparing and contrasting a Docker-based OKD deployment against a traditional RPM-based deployment.
This letter is in response to the October 18, 2021 letter from David Gray, Acting Regional Administrator, to Mr. Theodore Wyka, Manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office (NA-LA). That letter requested additional information regarding the Application for remediation of the Flanged Tritium Waste Containers (FTWCs) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Technical Area 54, Area G. The Emissions Management Plan for the FTWC Venting Project is attached.
Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a revolutionary and reliable new tamper evident container (TEC) to monitor and protect the health, security, and distribution of high-value assets, technological advancements, products, materials and more that are critical to the operations of businesses and government organizations. Unlike traditional tamper evident seals, the entire TEC serves as a seal, with encrypted on-board electronics able to continuously monitor and log structural health data including but not limited to force, temperature, pressure, humidity, orientation, radiation, acceleration, or vibration as needed. Analog and encrypted digital boards safely stored inside the TEC permanently record the complete integrity history of the protected items and have the ability to alert the TEC owners or take immediate defensive actions should a disruptive or tamper event take place.
Estimation of two-phase fluid flow properties is important to understand and predict water and gas movement through the vadose zone for agricultural, hydrogeological, and engineering applications, such as for vapor-phase contaminant transport and/or containment of noble gases in the subsurface. In this second progress report of FY22, we present two ongoing activities related to imbibition testing on volcanic rock samples. We present the development of a new analytical solution predicting the temperature response observed during imbibition into dry samples, as discussed in our previous first progress report for FY22. We also illustrate the use of a multi-modal capillary pressure distribution to simulate both early- and late-time imbibition data collected on tuff core that can exhibit multiple pore types. These FY22 imbibition tests were conducted for an extended period (i.e., far beyond the time required for the wetting front to reach the top of the sample), which is necessary for parameter estimation and characterization of two different pore types within the samples.
This work is to be conducted in support of the American Made Challenges Solar Prize. The intent is to connect competitor teams with national laboratories that can help accelerate the development of innovative solutions and products. Teams who have won the Set! and Go! Contests are eligible to utilize vouchers at national laboratories to advance their ideas. Laboratory and field characterization of the electrical response of modules containing Configurable Current Cells (C3) under non-optimal conditions such as shading.