230,083 research outputs found
Microbial Effects on Repository Performance
This report presents a critical review of the international literature on microbial effects
in and around a deep geological repository for higher activity wastes. It is aimed at
those who are familiar with the nuclear industry and radioactive waste disposal, but
who are not experts in microbiology; they may have a limited knowledge of how
microbiology may be integrated into and impact upon radioactive waste disposal
safety cases and associated performance assessments (PA)
The Development of a School Management Software Module
In the near future, Jim Corbett School will have a larger number of students as the number of students is increasing every year as the population of the city grows. Key to Jim Corbett School success will be to have an automated system which can take care of most of tedious manual efforts put in by the personnel. We need to adopt a quick and efficient system to take care of all our manual time consuming exercises. The development and implementation of an automated system will lead to better time management. On the other hand it will also bring in the efficiency in most of the covered fields. This solution will involve the development of a relational database in the FileMaker Pro software platform. To achieve this goal, significant efforts will need to be invested in the development of an all-encompassing process flow diagram. This development will lead to the development of repository tables in which data will be collected and stored. The integration of these repository tables into the process flow diagram will lead the developer to the establishment of a data relationship map; hence a relational database has been proposed as a potential solution to the management of the school with respect to development growth. Successful completion of the relational database solution will involve the development of agile scripting, a software development style in which the developer controls the userâs fate through clever manipulation of the userâs navigational and transactional options within the database dashboard
PADAMOT : project overview report
Background and relevance to radioactive waste management
International consensus confirms that placing radioactive wastes and spent nuclear fuel deep
underground in a geological repository is the generally preferred option for their long-term
management and disposal. This strategy provides a number of advantages compared to leaving it
on or near the Earthâs surface. These advantages come about because, for a well chosen site, the
geosphere can provide:
⢠a physical barrier that can negate or buffer against the effects of surface dominated natural
disruptive processes such as deep weathering, glaciation, river and marine erosion or
flooding, asteroid/comet impact and earthquake shaking etc.
⢠long and slow groundwater return pathways from the facility to the biosphere along which
retardation, dilution and dispersion processes may operate to reduce radionuclide
concentration in the groundwater.
⢠a stable, and benign geochemical environment to maximise the longevity of the engineered
barriers such as the waste containers and backfill in the facility.
⢠a natural radiation shield around the wastes.
⢠a mechanically stable environment in which the facility can be constructed and will
afterwards be protected.
⢠an environment which reduces the likelihood of the repository being disturbed by inadvertent
human intrusion such as land use changes, construction projects, drilling, quarrying and
mining etc.
⢠protection against the effects of deliberate human activities such as vandalism, terrorism and
war etc.
However, safety considerations for storing and disposing of long-lived radioactive wastes must
take into account various scenarios that might affect the ability of the geosphere to provide the
functionality listed above. Therefore, in order to provide confidence in the ability of a repository
to perform within the deep geological setting at a particular site, a demonstration of geosphere
âstabilityâ needs to be made. Stability is defined here to be the capacity of a geological and
hydrogeological system to minimise the impact of external influences on the repository
environment, or at least to account for them in a manner that would allow their impacts to be
evaluated and accounted for in any safety assessments.
A repository should be sited where the deep geosphere is a stable host in which the engineered
containment can continue to perform according to design and in which the surrounding
hydrogeological, geomechanical and geochemical environment will continue to operate as a
natural barrier to radionuclide movement towards the biosphere. However, over the long periods
of time during which long-lived radioactive wastes will pose a hazard, environmental change at
the surface has the potential to disrupt the stability of the geosphere and therefore the causes of
environmental change and their potential consequences need to be evaluated.
As noted above, environmental change can include processes such as deep weathering,
glaciation, river and marine erosion. It can also lead to changes in groundwater boundary
conditions through alternating recharge/discharge relationships. One of the key drivers for
environmental change is climate variability. The question then arises, how can geosphere stability be assessed with respect to changes in climate? Key issues raised in connection with
this are:
⢠What evidence is there that 'going underground' eliminates the extreme conditions that
storage on the surface would be subjected to in the long term?
⢠How can the additional stability and safety of the deep geosphere be demonstrated with
evidence from the natural system?
As a corollary to this, the capacity of repository sites deep underground in stable rock masses to
mitigate potential impacts of future climate change on groundwater conditions therefore needs to
be tested and demonstrated. To date, generic scenarios for groundwater evolution relating to
climate change are currently weakly constrained by data and process understanding. Hence, the
possibility of site-specific changes of groundwater conditions in the future can only be assessed
and demonstrated by studying groundwater evolution in the past. Stability of groundwater
conditions in the past is an indication of future stability, though both the climatic and geological
contexts must be taken into account in making such an assertion
CHORUS Deliverable 3.4: Vision Document
The goal of the CHORUS Vision Document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area and to highlight trends and challenges in this domain. The vision of CHORUS is strongly connected to the CHORUS Roadmap Document (D2.3). A concise document integrating the outcomes of the two deliverables will be prepared for the end of the project (NEM Summit)
Open Access Policy: Numbers, Analysis, Effectiveness
The PASTEUR4OA project analyses what makes an Open Access (OA) policy
effective. The total number of institutional or funder OA policies worldwide is
now 663 (March 2015), over half of them mandatory. ROARMAP, the policy
registry, has been rebuilt to record more policy detail and provide more
extensive search functionality. Deposit rates were measured for articles in
institutions' repositories and compared to the total number of WoS-indexed
articles published from those institutions. Average deposit rate was over four
times as high for institutions with a mandatory policy. Six positive
correlations were found between deposit rates and (1) Must-Deposit; (2)
Cannot-Waive-Deposit; (3) Deposit-Linked-to-Research-Evaluation; (4)
Cannot-Waive-Rights-Retention; (5) Must-Make-Deposit-OA (after allowable
embargo) and (6) Can-Waive-OA. For deposit latency, there is a positive
correlation between earlier deposit and (7) Must-Deposit-Immediately as well as
with (4) Cannot-Waive-Rights-Retention and with mandate age. There are not yet
enough OA policies to test whether still further policy conditions would
contribute to mandate effectiveness but the present findings already suggest
that it would be useful for current and future OA policies to adopt the seven
positive conditions so as to accelerate and maximise the growth of OA.Comment: 49 pages, 21 figures, 15 tables. Pasteur4OA Work Package 3 report:
Open Access policies 201
Time scales and modes of reef lagoon infilling in the Maldives and controls on the onset of reef island formation
Faro are annular reefs, with reef flats near sea level and lagoons of variable depth, characteristic of both the perimeter and lagoons of Maldivian (Indian Ocean) atolls. Their geomorphic development remains largely unknown, but where faro lagoons (termed velu in Maldivian) have infilled and support reef islands, these provide precious habitable land. Understanding the timing and modes of velu infilling is thus directly relevant to questions about reef island development and vulnerability. Here we use a chronostratigraphic data set obtained from a range of atoll-interior faro with partially to fully filled velu (including those with reef islands) from Baa (South Maalhosmadulu) Atoll, Maldives, to determine time scales and modes of velu infilling, and to identify the temporal and spatial thresholds that control reef island formation. Our data suggest a systematic relationship between faro size, velu infilling, and island development. These relationships likely vary between atolls as a function of atoll lagoon depth, but in Baa Atoll, our data set indicates the following faro-size relationships exist: (1) faros <âź0.5 km2 have velu that were completely infilled by ca. 3000 calibrated years B.P. (cal yr B.P.) with islands having established on these deposits by ca. 2.5 cal kyr B.P.; (2) faros >0.5 km2 but <âź1.25 km2 have velu in late stages of infill, may support unvegetated sand cays and, given sufficient sand supply, may evolve into larger, more permanent islands; and (3) faros >âź1.25 km2 have unfilled (deeper) velu which might only infill over long time scales and which are thus unlikely to support new island initiation. These new observations, when combined with previously published data on Maldivian reef island development, suggest that while the velu of the largest faro are unlikely to fill over the next few centuries (at least), other faro with near-infilled velu may provide important foci for future reef-island building, even under present highstand (and slightly rising) sea levels
Critique of Architectures for Long-Term Digital Preservation
Evolving technology and fading human memory threaten the long-term intelligibility of many kinds of documents. Furthermore, some records are susceptible to improper alterations that make them untrustworthy. Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs) and Trustworthy Digital Objects (TDOs) seem to be the only broadly applicable digital preservation methodologies proposed. We argue that the TDR approach has shortfalls as a method for long-term digital preservation of sensitive information. Comparison of TDR and TDO methodologies suggests differentiating near-term preservation measures from what is needed for the long term.
TDO methodology addresses these needs, providing for making digital documents durably intelligible. It uses EDP standards for a few file formats and XML structures for text documents. For other information formats, intelligibility is assured by using a virtual computer. To protect sensitive informationâcontent whose inappropriate alteration might mislead its readers, the integrity and authenticity of each TDO is made testable by embedded public-key cryptographic message digests and signatures. Key authenticity is protected recursively in a social hierarchy. The proper focus for long-term preservation technology is signed packages that each combine a record collection with its metadata and that also bind contextâTrustworthy Digital Objects.
- âŚ