Feeling at home in an experiential research group: reflections on the research process in collaborative pluralism

This paper presents a set of reflections on the process of conducting a qualitative pluralistic group research project. As our work progressed, we began to spend as much time discussing this group work process as we did focusing on our specific research topic. We begin by giving some background to how we got started and the research study itself as well as saying something about who the group is. We then describe our process and examine how we came to see that what we were doing shared a lot of similarities with forms of pluralistic research. We discuss some of the challenges and opportunities we faced along the way and end with some final thoughts on where we might go next. We argue that it is important to pay close attention to the research process as it plays a crucial role in shaping the insights that can be gained from a piece of research. This paper contributes to the growing literature on reflexivity in qualitative psychology in general and the exploration of the research process in in collaborative pluralistic research designs in particular

Recent Process and Equipment Improvements to Increase High Level Waste Throughput at the Defense Waste Processing Facility

The Savannah River Site's (SRS) Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) began stabilizing high level waste (HLW) in a glass matrix in 1996. Over the past few years, there have been several process and equipment improvements at the DWPF to increase the rate at which the high level waste can be stabilized. These improvements have either directly increased waste processing rates or have desensitized the process to upsets, thereby minimizing downtime and increasing production. Improvements due to optimization of waste throughput with increased HLW loading of the glass resulted in a 6% waste throughput increase based upon operational efficiencies. Improvements in canister production include the pour spout heated bellows liner (5%), glass surge (siphon) protection software (2%), melter feed pump software logic change to prevent spurious interlocks of the feed pump with subsequent dilution of feed stock (2%) and optimization of the steam atomized scrubber (SAS) operation to minimize downtime (3%) for a total increase in canister production of 12%. A number of process recovery efforts have allowed continued operation. These include the off gas system pluggage and restoration, slurry mix evaporator (SME) tank repair and replacement, remote cleaning of melter top head center nozzle, remote melter internal inspection, SAS pump J-Tube recovery, inadvertent pour scenario resolutions, dome heater transformer bus bar cooling water leak repair and new Infra-red camera for determination of glass height in the canister are discussed

Giving Presentations

96 hal.;ill

Professional English

xiv.104 hal.;ill.;26 c