A comparison of surface topography characterization technologies for use in comparing spent bullet and cartridge case signatures

The Pacific Northwest Laboratory was tasked by the US Department of Energy to provide technical assistance to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in evaluating and ranking technologies potentially useful in high-speed comparison of unique spent bullet and cartridge case surface signatures. Information sources included vendor input, current relevant literature, vendor phone contacts, other FBI resources, relevant PNL reports, and personal contact with numerous PNL technical staff. A comprehensive list of technologies was reduced to a list of 38 by grouping very similar methodologies, and further reduced to a short list of six by applying a set of five minimum functional requirements. A total of 14 primary criteria, many having secondary criteria, were subsequently used to evaluate each technology. The ranked short list results are reported and supported in this document, and their scores normalized to a hypothetical ideal system are as follows: (1) confocal microscopy 82.13; (2) laser dynamic focusing 72.04; (3)moire interferometry V70.94; (4)fringe field capacitance;(5)laser triangulation 66.18; (6)structured/sectioned light 65.55. Information available within the time/budget constraints which was used for the evaluation and ranking was not sufficiently detailed to evaluate specific implementations of the technologies. Each of the technologies in the short list was judged potentially capable of meeting the minimum requirements. Clever, novel engineering solutions resulting in a more cost-effective system, or a closer fit to the ideal system,'' could result in a reordering of the short list when actual technical proposals are evaluated. Therefore, it is recommended that a Request for Proposal not be limited to only the highest ranked technology, but include all six technologies in the short list

Investigation of flammable gas and thermal safety issues for retrieval of waste from Tank 241-AN-105

The primary purpose of this report is to identify and resolve some of the flammable gas and thermal safety issues potentially associated with the retrieval of waste from Tank 241-AN-105 (AN-105), which is the first double-shell tank scheduled for waste retrieval at Hanford. The planned retrieval scenario includes the following steps in AN-105: (1) degas the tank using two submerged mixing pumps, (2) turn off the mixer pump(s) and allow any suspended solids to settle, (3) decant the supernatant to the intermediate feed staging tank(s) (IFSTs) (AP-102 and/or AP-104) using water/caustic dilution at the transfer pump inlet, (4) add the remaining dilution water/caustic to the slurry remaining in AN-105, (5) mix the tank with the mixer pump(s) until the soluble solids dissolve, (6) turn off the mixer pump(s) and let the insoluble solids settle, and (7) decant the new supernatant to the IFST(s), leaving the insoluble solids behind. Three waste retrieval safety issues are addressed in this report. They are (1) the controlled degassing of AN-105 to ensure that the headspace remains <25% of the lower flammability limit (LFL), (2) an assessment of how dissolved gas (mainly ammonia) released during the transfer of the supernatant in AN-105 to the IFSTs and the water/caustic dilution of the remaining slurry in AN-105 will affect the flammability in these tanks; and (3) an assessment of the maximum waste temperatures that might occur in AN-105 during retrieval operations