AN EVALUATION OF MERCURY COOLED BREEDER REACTORS

Under the New Reactor Concepts Evaluation Program sponsored by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Advanced Technology Laboratories (a Division of American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corporation) has undertaken am investigation of the technical feasibility and economic potential of the use of boiling mercury as a coolant for fast breeder reactors The investigation was performed between January 1, 1959, and October 31. 1959. This is the final report on that investigation and is submitted in compliance with the terms of the program authorization, Contract Number AT(04-3)-109, Project Agreement Number 4. (auth

Automated Coronal Hole Detection using Local Intensity Thresholding Techniques

We identify coronal holes using a histogram-based intensity thresholding technique and compare their properties to fast solar wind streams at three different points in the heliosphere. The thresholding technique was tested on EUV and X-ray images obtained using instruments onboard STEREO, SOHO and Hinode. The full-disk images were transformed into Lambert equal-area projection maps and partitioned into a series of overlapping sub-images from which local histograms were extracted. The histograms were used to determine the threshold for the low intensity regions, which were then classified as coronal holes or filaments using magnetograms from the SOHO/MDI. For all three instruments, the local thresholding algorithm was found to successfully determine coronal hole boundaries in a consistent manner. Coronal hole properties extracted using the segmentation algorithm were then compared with in situ measurements of the solar wind at 1 AU from ACE and STEREO. Our results indicate that flux tubes rooted in coronal holes expand super-radially within 1 AU and that larger (smaller) coronal holes result in longer (shorter) duration high-speed solar wind streams