Education and training are the foundation for a state's development and maintenance of an indigenous capability to conduct a nuclear energy and research program, from both the regulatory perspective and the licensee or operator perspective. The International Training Course on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Facilities and Materials (ITC) is the original international training program in the area of physical protection of nuclear material, which the United States has been conducting since 1978. This course focuses on a systems engineering performance-based approach to requirements definition, design, and evaluation for physical protection systems. During the first twenty-one presentations of ITC, more than 600 national experts from more than sixty International Atomic Energy Agency member states were trained. This paper describes the content, structure, and process of ITC.
Carbon-manganese steels are candidates for the structural materials in hydrogen gas pipelines, however it is well known that these steels are susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement. Decades of research and industrial experience have established that hydrogen embrittlement compromises the structural integrity of steel components. This experience has also helped identify the failure modes that can operate in hydrogen containment structures. As a result, there are tangible ideas for managing hydrogen embrittement in steels and quantifying safety margins for steel hydrogen containment structures. For example, fatigue crack growth aided by hydrogen embrittlement is a key failure mode for steel hydrogen containment structures subjected to pressure cycling. Applying appropriate structural integrity models coupled with measurement of relevant material properties allows quantification of safety margins against fatigue crack growth in hydrogen containment structures. Furthermore, application of these structural integrity models is aided by the development of micromechanics models, which provide important insights such as the hydrogen distribution near defects in steel structures. The principal objective of this project is to enable application of structural integrity models to steel hydrogen pipelines. The new American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) B31.12 design code for hydrogen pipelines includes a fracture mechanics-based design option, which requires material property inputs such as the threshold for rapid cracking and fatigue crack growth rate under cyclic loading. Thus, one focus of this project is to measure the rapid-cracking thresholds and fatigue crack growth rates of line pipe steels in high-pressure hydrogen gas. These properties must be measured for the base materials but more importantly for the welds, which are likely to be most vulnerable to hydrogen embrittlement. The measured properties can be evaluated by predicting the performance of the pipeline using a relevant structural integrity model, such as that in ASME B31.12. A second objective of this project is to enable development of micromechanics models of hydrogen embrittlement in pipeline steels. The focus of this effort is to establish physical models of hydrogen embrittlement in line pipe steels using evidence from analytical techniques such as electron microscopy. These physical models then serve as the framework for developing sophisticated finite-element models, which can provide quantitative insight into the micromechanical state near defects. Understanding the micromechanics of defects can ensure that structural integrity models are applied accurately and conservatively.
Sandia National Laboratories, California (SNL/CA) is a government-owned/contractor-operated laboratory. Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, operates the laboratory for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA Sandia Site Office oversees operations at the site, using Sandia Corporation as a management and operating contractor. This Site Environmental Report for 2009 was prepared in accordance with DOE Order 231.1A (DOE 2004a). The report provides a summary of environmental monitoring information and compliance activities that occurred at SNL/CA during calendar year 2009. General site and environmental program information is also included. The Site Environmental Report is divided into ten chapters. Chapter 1, the Executive Summary, highlights compliance and monitoring results obtained in 2009. Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction to SNL/CA and the existing environment found on site. Chapter 3 summarizes SNL/CA's compliance activities with the major environmental requirements applicable to site operations. Chapter 4 presents information on environmental management, performance measures, and environmental programs. Chapter 5 presents the results of monitoring and surveillance activities in 2009. Chapter 6 discusses quality assurance. Chapters 7 through 9 provide supporting information for the report and Chapter 10 is the report distribution list.
The Advanced Engineering Environment (AEE) project identifies emerging engineering environment tools and assesses their value to Sandia National Laboratories and our partners in the Nuclear Security Enterprise (NSE) by testing them in our design environment. This project accomplished several pilot activities, including: the preliminary definition of an engineering bill of materials (BOM) based product structure in the Windchill PDMLink 9.0 application; an evaluation of Mentor Graphics Data Management System (DMS) application for electrical computer-aided design (ECAD) library administration; and implementation and documentation of a Windchill 9.1 application upgrade. The project also supported the migration of legacy data from existing corporate product lifecycle management systems into new classified and unclassified Windchill PDMLink 9.0 systems. The project included two infrastructure modernization efforts: the replacement of two aging AEE development servers for reliable platforms for ongoing AEE project work; and the replacement of four critical application and license servers that support design and engineering work at the Sandia National Laboratories/California site.
Are your employees unhappy with internal corporate search? Frequent complaints include: too many results to sift through; results are unrelated/outdated; employees aren't sure which terms to search for. One way to improve intranet search is to implement a controlled vocabulary ontology. Employing this takes the guess work out of searching, makes search efficient and precise, educates employees about the lingo used within the corporation, and allows employees to contribute to the corpus of terms. It promotes internal corporate search to rival its superior sibling, internet search. We will cover our experiences, lessons learned, and conclusions from implementing a controlled vocabulary ontology at Sandia National Laboratories. The work focuses on construction of this ontology from the content perspective and the technical perspective. We'll discuss the following: (1) The tool we used to build a polyhierarchical taxonomy; (2) Examples of two methods of indexing the content: traditional 'back of the book' and folksonomy word-mapping; (3) Tips on how to build future search capabilities while building the basic controlled vocabulary; (4) How to implement the controlled vocabulary as an ontology that mimics Google's search suggestions; (5) Making the user experience more interactive and intuitive; and (6) Sorting suggestions based on preferred, alternate and related terms using SPARQL queries. In summary, future improvements will be presented, including permitting end-users to add, edit and remove terms, and filtering on different subject domains.
A sensitivity study was performed utilizing a three dimensional finite element model to assess allowable cavern field sizes in strategic petroleum reserve salt domes. A potential exists for tensile fracturing and dilatancy damage to salt that can compromise the integrity of a cavern field in situations where high extraction ratios exist. The effects of salt creep rate, depth of salt dome top, dome size, caprock thickness, elastic moduli of caprock and surrounding rock, lateral stress ratio of surrounding rock, cavern size, depth of cavern, and number of caverns are examined numerically. As a result, a correlation table between the parameters and the impact on the performance of a storage field was established. In general, slower salt creep rates, deeper depth of salt dome top, larger elastic moduli of caprock and surrounding rock, and a smaller radius of cavern are better for structural performance of the salt dome.