Publications

In February of 2005, a joint exercise involving Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) was conducted in Albuquerque, NM. The SNL participants included the team developing the Building Restoration Operations and Optimization Model (BROOM), a software product developed to expedite sampling and data management activities applicable to facility restoration following a biological contamination event. Integrated data-collection, data-management, and visualization software improve the efficiency of cleanup, minimize facility downtime, and provide a transparent basis for reopening. The exercise was held at an SNL facility, the Coronado Club, a now-closed social club for Sandia employees located on Kirtland Air Force Base. Both NIOSH and SNL had specific objectives for the exercise, and all objectives were met.

This multinational, multi-phase spent fuel sabotage test program is quantifying the aerosol particles produced when the products of a high energy density device (HEDD) interact with and explosively particulate test rodlets that contain pellets of either surrogate materials or actual spent fuel. This program has been underway for several years. This program provides data that are relevant to some sabotage scenarios in relation to spent fuel transport and storage casks, and associated risk assessments. The program also provides significant technical and political benefits in international cooperation. We are quantifying the Spent Fuel Ratio (SFR), the ratio of the aerosol particles released from HEDD-impacted actual spent fuel to the aerosol particles produced from surrogate materials, measured under closely matched test conditions, in a contained test chamber. In addition, we are measuring the amounts, nuclide content, size distribution of the released aerosol materials, and enhanced sorption of volatile fission product nuclides onto specific aerosol particle size fractions. These data are the input for follow-on modeling studies to quantify respirable hazards, associated radiological risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, and potential cask physical protection design modifications. This document includes an updated description of the test program and test components for all work and plans made, or revised, during FY 2004. It also serves as a program status report as of the end of FY 2004. All available test results, observations, and aerosol analyses plus interpretations--primarily for surrogate material Phase 2 tests, series 2/5A through 2/9B, using cerium oxide sintered ceramic pellets are included. Advanced plans and progress are described for upcoming tests with unirradiated, depleted uranium oxide and actual spent fuel test rodlets. This spent fuel sabotage--aerosol test program is coordinated with the international Working Group for Sabotage Concerns of Transport and Storage Casks (WGSTSC) and supported by both the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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Smoke is known to cause electrical equipment failure, but the likelihood of immediate failure during a fire is unknown. Traditional failure assessment techniques measure the density of ionic contaminants deposited on surfaces to determine the need for cleaning or replacement of electronic equipment exposed to smoke. Such techniques focus on long-term effects, such as corrosion, but do not address the immediate effects of the fire. This document reports the results of tests on the immediate effects of smoke on electronic equipment. Various circuits and components were exposed to smoke from different fields in a static smoke exposure chamber and were monitored throughout the exposure. Electrically, the loss of insulation resistance was the most important change caused by smoke. For direct current circuits, soot collected on high-voltage surfaces sometimes formed semi-conductive soot bridges that shorted the circuit. For high voltage alternating current circuits, the smoke also tended to increase the likelihood of arcing, but did not accumulate on the surfaces. Static random access memory chips failed for high levels of smoke, but hard disk drives did not. High humidity increased the conductive properties of the smoke. The conductivity does not increase linearly with smoke density as first proposed; however, it does increase with quantity. The data can be used to give a rough estimate of the amount of smoke that will cause failures in CMOS memory chips, dc and ac circuits. Comparisons of this data to other fire tests can be made through the optical and mass density measurements of the smoke.

Falling water drops can collect particles and soluble or reactive vapor from the gas through which they fall. Rain is known to remove particles and vapors by the process of rainout. Water sprays can be used to remove radioactive aerosol from the atmosphere of a nuclear reactor containment building. There is a potential for water sprays to be used as a mitigation technique to remove chemical or bio- logical agents from the air. This paper is a quick-look at water spray removal. It is not definitive but rather provides a reasonable basic model for particle and gas removal and presents an example calcu- lation of sarin removal from a BART station. This work ~ a starting point and the results indicate that further modeling and exploration of additional mechanisms for particle and vapor removal may prove beneficial.

The On-Line Aerosol Monitor (OLAM) is a light attenuation device designed and built at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) by EG&G Idaho. Its purpose is to provide an on-line indication of aerosol concentration in the PHEBUS-FP tests. It does this by measuring the attenuation of a light beam across a tube through which an aerosol is flowing. The OLAM does not inherently give an absolute response and must be calibrated. A calibration has been performed at Sandia National Laboratories` (SNL) Sandia Aerosol Research Laboratory (SARL) and the results are described here. Ammonium chloride and sodium chloride calibration aerosols are used for the calibration and the data for the sodium chloride aerosol is well described by a model presented in this report. Detectable instrument response is seen over a range of 0.1 cm{sup 3} of particulate material per m{sup 3} of gas to 10 cm{sup 3} of particulate material per m{sup 3} of gas.

Gas holdup data for oleci acid at 291 K and for 1018 steel at 1823 K has been taken for nitrogen sparging gas. The liquid levels have been measured using a real time x-ray technique. The data have been compared to correlations from the literature to assess the appropriate correlations for use in calculating gas holdup for molten core debris in reactor accident calculations. A suitable correlation has been determined as well as coefficients for use in a drift flux model. The correlation is in the form {alpha} = 0.128 M{sup -0.0207} jg*{sup 0.584} where {alpha} is holdup, M is the Morton Number and jg* is the dimensionless gas flux through the liquid. 19 refs., 9 figs., 9 tabs.

A method to determine the dynamic shape factor of an aerosol from cascade impactor and TSI Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS) distribution measurements is presented and demonstrated. The response of the APS to nonspherical, porous particles is derived after the fashion of Wang and John (1987). This method does not require microscopy or chemical analytical techniques and as such is an improvement over previous methods. 37 refs., 13 figs., 1 tab.