Comparison of water phase diffusion experiments in laboratory and in situ conditions

In some countries the spent nuclear fuel produced by nuclear power plants will be deposited in crystalline granitic rock formations. In Finland, a repository for the spent nuclear fuel is being built at Olkiluoto. The safety assessment of the repository requires a careful determination of the transport properties of the bedrock. The porosity of the bedrock and the effective diffusion coefficients and distribution coefficients of different radio-nuclides for the bedrock are used as the main parameters in the safety assessment calculations. It has been questioned whether the parameters determined using laboratory experiments can be used to estimate the parameters in the in situ conditions. In this study, laboratory and in situ water phase diffusion experiments (WPDEs) were performed to resolve the issue. In the experiments, the transport of tritiated water (HTO), Cl-36, and Na-22 was studied using similar experimental setups. Mathematical models were constructed and solved to determine the transport parameters from the measured breakthrough curves. On average, the in situ WPDEs resulted in 20 (+/- 6)% smaller porosities and 32 (+/- 10)% smaller effective diffusion coefficients for HTO and Cl-36 than the laboratory WPDEs. It was also found that in veined gneiss, the most dominant rock type of the Olkiluoto bedrock, anion exclusion reduced the retention parameters of Cl-36 compared with those of HTO. Furthermore, the distribution coefficient of Na-22 for veined gneiss was about one order of magnitude smaller in the in situ conditions than in previous laboratory batch sorption experiments. The effects of the results on the safety assessment were evaluated and discussed.Peer reviewe

Environmental geochemistry of radioactive contamination.

This report attempts to describe the geochemical foundations of the behavior of radionuclides in the environment. The information is obtained and applied in three interacting spheres of inquiry and analysis: (1) experimental studies and theoretical calculations, (2) field studies of contaminated and natural analog sites and (3) model predictions of radionuclide behavior in remediation and waste disposal. Analyses of the risks from radioactive contamination require estimation of the rates of release and dispersion of the radionuclides through potential exposure pathways. These processes are controlled by solubility, speciation, sorption, and colloidal transport, which are strong functions of the compositions of the groundwater and geomedia as well as the atomic structure of the radionuclides. The chemistry of the fission products is relatively simple compared to the actinides. Because of their relatively short half-lives, fission products account for a large fraction of the radioactivity in nuclear waste for the first several hundred years but do not represent a long-term hazard in the environment. The chemistry of the longer-lived actinides is complex; however, some trends in their behavior can be described. Actinide elements of a given oxidation state have either similar or systematically varying chemical properties due to similarities in ionic size, coordination number, valence, and electron structure. In dilute aqueous systems at neutral to basic pH, the dominant actinide species are hydroxy- and carbonato-complexes, and the solubility-limiting solid phases are commonly oxides, hydroxides or carbonates. In general, actinide sorption will decrease in the presence of ligands that complex with the radionuclide; sorption of the (IV) species of actinides (Np, Pu, U) is generally greater than of the (V) species. The geochemistry of key radionuclides in three different environments is described in this report. These include: (1) low ionic strength reducing waters from crystalline rocks at nuclear waste research sites in Sweden; (2) oxic water from the J-13 well at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the site of a proposed repository for high level nuclear waste (HLW) in tuffaceous rocks; and (3) reference brines associated with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The transport behaviors of radionuclides associated with the Chernobyl reactor accident and the Oklo Natural Reactor are described. These examples span wide temporal and spatial scales and include the rapid geochemical and physical processes important to nuclear reactor accidents or industrial discharges as well as the slower processes important to the geologic disposal of nuclear waste. Application of geochemical information to remediating or assessing the risk posed by radioactive contamination is the final subject of this report. After radioactive source terms have been removed, large volumes of soil and water with low but potentially hazardous levels of contamination may remain. For poorly-sorbing radionuclides, capture of contaminated water and removal of radionuclides may be possible using permeable reactive barriers and bioremediation. For strongly sorbing radionuclides, contaminant plumes will move very slowly. Through a combination of monitoring, regulations and modeling, it may be possible to have confidence that they will not be a hazard to current or future populations. Abstraction of the hydrogeochemical properties of real systems into simple models is required for probabilistic risk assessment. Simplifications in solubility and sorption models used in performance assessment calculations for the WIPP and the proposed HLW repository at Yucca Mountain are briefly described

Redovisning av humankapital -en jämförelse mellan kunskaps- och verkstadsbolag

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as “Our most valuable assets” in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013. Furthermore, the study aims to identify patterns between companies over time, and to analyse these patterns. Limitations: The comparison only includes enterprises listed on the Swedish stock exchange. Method: The study is based on a qualitative approach, however, containing some quantitative elements. A scoreboard with 31 different aspects, all connected to the human capital, has been designed in an attempt to disclose the extent of each company’s human resource disclosure. 18 different companies have been selected, 9 knowledge firms and 9 industry firms, and each company’s annual report for 2003, 2008 and 2013 has been examined. Empirical findings: The study reveals a difference for the human resource disclosure between the two company types, however not a great one. Further, the study shows an enhancement of the disclosure from 2003-2008. This enhancement eventually fades out, and by 2013, the human resource disclosure has decreased compared to 2008. Conclusions: The study confirms a distinction in human capital reporting for the different company types, however smaller than what could be expected. The study also recognizes a slightly unexpected development over time, where an increase could be detected until 2008, an increase which transcends to a decrease till 2013. Finally, a size dependence has been noted. Size seems to be an explanatory variable to company’s human capital disclosure when this matter is of smaller importance. However, when human reporting is of greater significance, company size does not seem to matter as much. For further research: A similar study can be made with a larger selection to achieve greater statistical significance. Furthermore, unlisted enterprises and listed enterprises on other than the Swedish stock exchange can be analysed. Finally, companies which have implemented integrated reporting can be studied

Att ha ett friskt syskon i en familj med ett långtidssjukt barn : en litteraturstudie

I och med utvecklad sjukvård kan nu barn leva länge med långvariga sjukdomar. Detta leder ofta till långa och frekventa sjukhusbesök som förändrar hela familjens vardag. När ett barn blir sjukt påverkas hela familjen och kan behöva stöd, dock har det uppmärksammats att det friska syskonet har en tendens att glömmas bort. Därför är syftet till denna studie att belysa hur det är att vara ett friskt syskon i en familj med ett långtidssjukt barn. En litteraturöversikt med 8 kvalitativa och 2 kvantitativa artiklar visar på att syskon ofta känner sig bortglömda både i vården och familjen. Barnets sjukdomsdiagnos bidrar ofta till känslor av rädsla och oro hos syskonet, främst relaterat till framtid och eventuell dödlig utgång. Resultatet visar på ett ökat behov av stöttning och information hos syskonet vilket ofta bidrar till en bättre hanteringsförmåga. Genom att sammanställa forskning kring syskonets upplevelser och behov kan sjukvårdspersonal få ökad kunskap inom ämnet och på så sätt bidra till bättre familjecentrerat vårdande, där syskonen blir mer uppmärksammade. Detta kan minska risken för ytterligare lidande hos syskonet samt risken för psykisk ohälsa i framtiden.

Value Relevance Effects of R&D Capitalization in US Companies

During the last few decades, investments in intangible knowledge have grown in importance. Along with this development, there has been an ongoing discussion on how to best treat such investments in the financial reports. This paper specifically focuses on expenditures labelled research & development (R&D). To this day, there are still significant differences regarding the treatment of such expenditures between the two major accounting standard-setters, FASB and IASB, and despite much critique in research, US GAAP still largely prohibits companies to recognize R&D spending as an asset in the balance sheet. Through the usage of standardized amortization schedules developed by Lev & Sougiannis (1996) and presented by Lev (1999), this paper sets out to investigate the overall value relevance effect of this prohibition. Hypothetical earnings and book values are created with the sole difference being the treatment of its R&D expenditures, and have subsequently been compared with its original counterparts in terms of ability to explain market value. The paper finds clear evidence suggesting that allowing for R&D to be capitalized increases the value relevance, however, still recognizes that all relevant factors might not be accounted for in the investigation. Furthermore, the paper continues by examining how this value relevance effect has developed over the years, but the evidence provided is weak and inconsistent, thus not completely supporting the notion that R&D accounting is an issue that has grown in importance over time.MSc in Accountin

Att ha ett friskt syskon i en familj med ett långtidssjukt barn : en litteraturstudie

I och med utvecklad sjukvård kan nu barn leva länge med långvariga sjukdomar. Detta leder ofta till långa och frekventa sjukhusbesök som förändrar hela familjens vardag. När ett barn blir sjukt påverkas hela familjen och kan behöva stöd, dock har det uppmärksammats att det friska syskonet har en tendens att glömmas bort. Därför är syftet till denna studie att belysa hur det är att vara ett friskt syskon i en familj med ett långtidssjukt barn. En litteraturöversikt med 8 kvalitativa och 2 kvantitativa artiklar visar på att syskon ofta känner sig bortglömda både i vården och familjen. Barnets sjukdomsdiagnos bidrar ofta till känslor av rädsla och oro hos syskonet, främst relaterat till framtid och eventuell dödlig utgång. Resultatet visar på ett ökat behov av stöttning och information hos syskonet vilket ofta bidrar till en bättre hanteringsförmåga. Genom att sammanställa forskning kring syskonets upplevelser och behov kan sjukvårdspersonal få ökad kunskap inom ämnet och på så sätt bidra till bättre familjecentrerat vårdande, där syskonen blir mer uppmärksammade. Detta kan minska risken för ytterligare lidande hos syskonet samt risken för psykisk ohälsa i framtiden.