Evaluation of Foaming and Antifoam Effectiveness During the WTP Oxidative Leaching Process

The River Protection Project-Waste Treatment Plant (RPP-WTP) requested Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to conduct small-scale foaming and antifoam testing using a Hanford waste simulant subjected to air sparging during oxidative leaching. The foaminess of Hanford tank waste solutions was previously demonstrated by SRNL during WTP evaporator foaming studies and in small scale air sparger studies. The commercial antifoam, Dow Corning Q2-3183A was recommended to mitigate the foam in the evaporators and in vessel equipped with pulse jet mixers and air spargers. Currently, WTP is planning to use air spargers in the HLW Lag Storage Vessels (HLP-VSL-00027A/B), the Ultrafiltration Vessels (UFP-VSL-00002A&B), and the HLW Feed Blend Vessel (HLPVSL-00028) to assist the performance of the Pulse Jet Mixers (PJM). The previous air sparger antifoam studies conducted by SRNL researchers did not evaluate the hydrogen generation rate expected from antifoam additions or the effectiveness of the antifoam during caustic leaching or oxidative leaching. The fate of the various antifoam components and breakdown products in the WTP process under prototypic process conditions (temperature & radiation) was also not investigated. The effectiveness of the antifoam during caustic leaching, expected hydrogen generation rate associated with antifoam addition, and the fate of various antifoam components are being conducted under separate SRNL research tasks

Hanford Supplemental Treatment: Literature and Modeling Review of SRS HLW Salt Dissolution and Fractional Crystallization

In order to accelerate waste treatment and disposal of Hanford tank waste by 2028, the Department of Energy (DOE) and CH2M Hill Hanford Group (CHG), Inc. are evaluating alternative technologies which will be used in conjunction with the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) to safely pretreat and immobilize the tank waste. Several technologies (Bulk Vitrification and Steam Reforming) are currently being evaluated for immobilizing the pretreated waste. Since the WTP does not have sufficient capacity to pretreat all the waste going to supplemental treatment by the 2028 milestone, two technologies (Selective Dissolution and Fractional Crystallization) are being considered for pretreatment of salt waste. The scope of this task was to: (1) evaluate the recent Savannah River Site (SRS) Tank 41 dissolution campaign and other literature to provide a more complete understanding of selective dissolution, (2) provide an update on the progress of salt dissolution and modeling activities at SRS, (3) investigate SRS experience and outside literature sources on industrial equipment and experimental results of previous fractional crystallization processes, and (4) evaluate recent Hanford AP104 boildown experiments and modeling results and recommend enhancements to the Environmental Simulation Program (ESP) to improve its predictive capabilities. This report provides a summary of this work and suggested recommendations

A Search for Jet Handedness in Hadronic Z0Z^0 Decays

We have searched for signatures of polarization in hadronic jets from $Z^0 \to q \bar{q}$ decays using the ``jet handedness'' method. The polar angle asymmetry induced by the high SLC electron-beam polarization was used to separate quark jets from antiquark jets, expected to be left- and right-polarized, respectively. We find no evidence for jet handedness in our global sample or in a sample of light quark jets and we set upper limits at the 95% C.L. of 0.063 and 0.099 respectively on the magnitude of the analyzing power of the method proposed by Efremov {\it et al.}Comment: Revtex, 8 pages, 2 figure

Measurement of the Charged Multiplicities in b, c and Light Quark Events from Z0 Decays

Average charged multiplicities have been measured separately in $b$, $c$ and light quark ($u,d,s$) events from $Z^0$ decays measured in the SLD experiment. Impact parameters of charged tracks were used to select enriched samples of $b$ and light quark events, and reconstructed charmed mesons were used to select $c$ quark events. We measured the charged multiplicities: $\bar{n}_{uds} = 20.21 \pm 0.10 (\rm{stat.})\pm 0.22(\rm{syst.})$, $\bar{n}_{c} = 21.28 \pm 0.46(\rm{stat.}) ^{+0.41}_{-0.36}(\rm{syst.})$ $\bar{n}_{b} = 23.14 \pm 0.10(\rm{stat.}) ^{+0.38}_{-0.37}(\rm{syst.})$, from which we derived the differences between the total average charged multiplicities of $c$ or $b$ quark events and light quark events: $\Delta \bar{n}_c = 1.07 \pm 0.47(\rm{stat.})^{+0.36}_{-0.30}(\rm{syst.})$ and $\Delta \bar{n}_b = 2.93 \pm 0.14(\rm{stat.})^{+0.30}_{-0.29}(\rm{syst.})$. We compared these measurements with those at lower center-of-mass energies and with perturbative QCD predictions. These combined results are in agreement with the QCD expectations and disfavor the hypothesis of flavor-independent fragmentation.Comment: 19 pages LaTex, 4 EPS figures, to appear in Physics Letters

Rituals of World Politics: On (Visual) Practices Disordering Things

Rituals are customarily muted into predictable and boring routines aimed to stabilise social orders and limit conflict. As a result, their magic lure recedes into the background, and the unexpected, disruptive and disordered elements are downplayed. Our collaborative contribution counters this move by foregrounding rituals of world politics as social practices with notable disordering effects. The collective discussion recovers the disruptive work of a range of rituals designed to sustain the sovereign exercise of violence and war. We do so through engaging a series of ‘world pictures' (Mitchell 2007). We show the worlding enacted in rituals such as colonial treaty-making, state commemoration, military/service dog training, cyber-security podcasts,algorithmically generated maps, the visit of Prince Harry to a joint NATO exercise and border ceremonies in India, respectively. We do so highlighting rituals’ immanent potential for disruption of existing orders, the fissures, failures and unforeseen repercussions. Reappraising the disordering role of ritual practices sheds light on the place of rituals in rearticulating the boundaries of the political. It emphasises the role of rituals in generating dissensus and re-divisions of the sensible rather than in imposing a consensus by policing the boundaries of the political, as Rancière might phrase it. Our images are essential to the account. They help disinterring the fundamentals and ambiguities of the current worldings of security, capturing the affective atmosphere of rituals

Imagining the Lives of Others: Empathy in Public Relations

This paper asks how we might theorise empathy in public relations (PR) in the light of a widespread ‘turn’ towards emotion in the academy, as well as in popular discourse. Two distinct notions of empathy are explored: ‘true’empathy as discussed in intercultural communication, is driven by a human concern for the other in order to understand experiences, feelings and situations that may be different from our own; whereas ‘instrumental’ empathy, reflecting a self orientation, is said to characterise much neoliberal market discourse in which corporations are urged to understand their customers better. Thus, while empathy may seem highly desirable as a means to enter into dialogue with an organisation’s publics, particularly during times of social upheaval and crisis, it is important to pay attention to empathy in public relations discourses including whose goals are served by empathetic engagement; and the type(s) of empathy called upon within a PR context. A literature review identified a socio-cultural definition of empathy as ‘imaginary effort’. A review of the public relations literature, however, found that while empathy is considered an important principle and personal attribute, notions of empathy, with a few exceptions, are under-explored. Nonfunctionalist, socio-cultural research which examines the meanings that practitioners associate with empathy is distinctly lacking; therefore in order to gain further insight into empathy, two sources of data were explored. The analysis of a popular online practitioner blog showed that other-centred empathic skill is discursively framed as instrumental in achieving clients’ business objectives. The analysis of three empathy statements drawn from 12 in-depth interviews with practitioners revealed complex empathic discourse in practitioner-client relationships. While the findings are limited to illustrative analyses only, this paper challenges researchers to develop conceptualisations and perspectives of empathy as imaginary effort in public relations

Evidence for widespread hydrated minerals on asteroid (101955) Bennu

Early spectral data from the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission reveal evidence for abundant hydrated minerals on the surface of near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu in the form of a near-infrared absorption near 2.7 µm and thermal infrared spectral features that are most similar to those of aqueously altered CM-type carbonaceous chondrites. We observe these spectral features across the surface of Bennu, and there is no evidence of substantial rotational variability at the spatial scales of tens to hundreds of metres observed to date. In the visible and near-infrared (0.4 to 2.4 µm) Bennu’s spectrum appears featureless and with a blue (negative) slope, confirming previous ground-based observations. Bennu may represent a class of objects that could have brought volatiles and organic chemistry to Earth