Iodine Volatility and pH Control in the AP-600 Reactor

Two design-basis accidents for the AP-600 reactor are formulated and evaluate~ in which significant bypass of the principal pH control system occurs. Some iodine released from the reactor primary system is retained in the Incontainment Refaeling Water Storage Tank (IRWST) water, never entering the containment where trisodium phosphate produces a high pH. Some of this iodine is volatilized and is transported into the reactor containment airspace. in the worst case, a small fraction is released to the environment at design-basis leak rate, yielding a total cumulative iodine release at 30 days of 0.0352 mol (0.023% of core iodine inventory) due to the iodine volatilization bypassing the pH control system. No fission product removal in the containment atmosphere (i.e., natural deposition sprays) is considered

Iodine Revolatilization in a Grand Gulf Loca

The TRENDS models are applied at each time step to each control volume. Significant amounts of water occur only in the wetwell and drywell sump (the refueling pool is not a factor, as discussed earlier). In Fig. 2, we show the radiolytic acid production feeding into each of these pools. Since the water is initially neutral and no chemical additives are present, the acid additions are the major factors affecting pH. In Fig. 3, we see the downward trend of pH resulting from these acid additions. The conversion of iodide (I{sup {minus}}) to molecular iodine (I{sub 2}) is most noticeable in the wetwell, since this is the repository of most iodide and HCl. Gradually, during the transient small amounts of more volatile iodine are formed. While iodide remains the dominant form, noticeable amounts of I{sub 2} and intermediate species are created. Once produced in water, some I{sub 2} is free to evaporate into airspace. Fig. 4 indicates the increase in all airborne iodine throughout the transient. This is compared to the MELCOR result for CsI aerosol, which decreases dramatically due to containment sprays. The I{sub 2} in the airspace can be vented to the enclosure building or the environment. In the present accident sequence, the only path to the environment was through the SGTS, which was assumed to operate as in MELCOR. However, both are dwarfed by the MELCOR gaseous release during the first 12 h because MELCOR does not model spray washout of gaseous iodine. Steadily increasing throughout the transient, the revolatilization release is eventually more than an order-or-magnitude higher than the MELCOR aerosol release. Also, 99% of iodine flowing directly through the SGTS was retained in filters. The remaining 1% was released to the environment. In addition, a small flow bypassing the SGTS filters vented directly into the environment. The total released from these two paths is shown in Fig. 5

Chemical modeling of waste sludges

The processing of waste from underground storage tanks at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and other facilities will require an understanding of the chemical interactions of the waste with process chemicals. Two aspects of sludge treatment should be well delineated and predictable: (1) the distribution of chemical species between aqueous solutions and solids, and (2) potential problems due to chemical interactions that could result in process difficulties or safety concerns. It is likely that the treatment of waste tank sludge will begin with washing, followed by basic or acidic leaching. The dissolved materials will be in a solution that has a high ionic strength where activity coefficients are far from unity. Activity coefficients are needed in order to calculate solubilities. Several techniques are available for calculating these values, and each technique has its advantages and disadvantages. The techniques adopted and described here is the Pitzer method. Like any of the methods, prudent use of this approach requires that it be applied within concentration ranges where the experimental data were fit, and its use in large systems should be preceded by evaluating subsystems. While much attention must be given to the development of activity coefficients, other factors such as coprecipitation of species and Ostwald ripening must also be considered when one aims to interpret results of sludge tests or to predict results of treatment strategies. An understanding of sludge treatment processes begins with the sludge tests themselves and proceeds to a general interpretation with the aid of modeling. One could stop with only data from the sludge tests, in which case the table of data would become an implicit model. However, this would be a perilous approach in situations where processing difficulties could be costly or result in concerns for the environment or health and safety

Technical Assistance in Review of Source Term-Related Issues of Advanced Reactors

The distribution of iodine in containment during an AP-600 design-basis accident was evaluated using models in the "TRENDS" code. The AP-6003BE accident sequmce calculations showed that a pH >7 was maintained for at least 30 days. Because the pH was maintained at this level, most of the iodine was in the form of iodid~ only 3 x 10-3% was present as aqueous 12, and only 1 x 10< `/0 was present as J in the vapor phase

A Test of Rank-Dependent Utility in the Context of Ambiguity

Experimental investigations of non-expected utility have primarily concentrated on decision under risk (probability triangles). The literature suggests, however, that ambiguity is one of the main causes for deviations from expected utility (EU). This article investigates the descriptive performance of rank-dependent utility (RDU) in the context of choice under ambiguity. We use the axiomatic difference between RDU and EU to critically test RDU against EU. Surprisingly, the RDU model does not provide any descriptive improvement over EU. Our data suggest other framing factors that do provide descriptive improvements over EU

Comonotonic Independence: The Critical Test between Classical and Rank-Dependent Utility Theories

This article compares classical expected utility (EU) with the more general rank-dependent utility (RDU) models. The difference between the independence condition for preferences of EU and its comonotonic generalization in RDU provides the exact demarcation between EU and rank-dependent models. Other axiomatic differences are not essential. An experimental design is described that tests this difference between independence and comonotonic independence in its most basic form and is robust against violations of other assumptions that may confound the results, in particular the reduction principle and transitivity. It is well known that in the classical counterexamples to EU, comonotonic independence performs better than full-force independence. For our more general choice pairs, however, we find that comonotonic independence does not perform better. This is contrary to our prior expectation and suggests that rank-dependent models, in full generality, do not provide a descriptive improvement over EU. For rank-dependent models to have a future, submodels and choice situations need to be identified for which rank-dependence does contribute descriptively

Risk factors for nosocomial pneumonia comparing adult critical-care populations

The purpose of the study was to examine risk factors for nosocomial pneumonia in the surgical and medical/respiratory intensive care unit (ICU) populations. In a public teaching hospital, all cases of nosocomial pneumonia in the surgical and medical/respiratory ICUs (n = 20, respectively) were identified by prospective surveillance during a 5-yr period from 1987-1991. Each group of ICU cases was compared with 40 ICU control patients who did not acquire pneumonia, and analyzed for 25 potential risk factors. Surgical ICU patients were found to have consistently higher rates of nosocomial pneumonia than medical ICU patients (RR = 2.2). The strongest predictor for nosocomial pneumonia in both the surgical and medical/respiratory ICU groups was found to be prolonged mechanical ventilation (> 1 d) resulting in a 12-fold increase in risk over nonventilated patients. APACHE III score was found to be predictive of nosocomial pneumonia in the surgical ICU population, but not in the medical/respiratory ICU population. We conclude that certain groups deserve special attention for infection control intervention. Surgical ICU patients with high APACHE scores and receiving prolonged mechanical ventilation may be at the greatest risk of acquiring nosocomial pneumonia of all hospitalized patients

Evolution of Magnetic Fields around a Kerr Black Hole

The evolution of magnetic fields frozen to a perfectly conducting plasma fluid around a Kerr black hole is investigated. We focus on the plunging region between the black hole horizon and the marginally stable circular orbit in the equatorial plane. Adopting the kinematic approximation where the dynamical effects of magnetic fields are ignored, we exactly solve Maxwell's equations with the assumptions that the geodesic motion of the fluid is stationary and axisymmetric, the magnetic field has only radial and azimuthal components and depends only on time and radial coordinates. We show that the stationary state of the magnetic field in the plunging region is uniquely determined by the boundary conditions at the marginally stable circular orbit. If the magnetic field at the marginally stable circular orbit is in a stationary state, the magnetic field in the plunging region will quickly settle into a stationary state if it is not so initially, in a time determined by the dynamical time scale. The radial component of the magnetic field at the marginally stable circular orbit is more important than the toroidal component in determining the structure and evolution of the magnetic field in the plunging region. Even if at the marginally stable circular orbit the toroidal component is zero, in the plunging region a toroidal component is quickly generated from the radial component by the shear motion of the fluid. Finally, we show that the dynamical effects of magnetic fields are unimportant in the plunging region if they are negligible on the marginally stable circular orbit. This supports the ``no-torque inner boundary condition'' of thin disks, contrary to the claim in the recent literature.Comment: 48 pages, including 13 figures; version with full resolution Figs at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~lli/astro-ph/mag_evol.p

Sub-femto-g free fall for space-based gravitational wave observatories: LISA pathfinder results

We report the first results of the LISA Pathfinder in-flight experiment. The results demonstrate that two free-falling reference test masses, such as those needed for a space-based gravitational wave observatory like LISA, can be put in free fall with a relative acceleration noise with a square root of the power spectral density of 5.2 ± 0.1 fm s−2/√Hz or (0.54 ± 0.01) × 10−15 g/√Hz, with g the standard gravity, for frequencies between 0.7 and 20 mHz. This value is lower than the LISA Pathfinder requirement by more than a factor 5 and within a factor 1.25 of the requirement for the LISA mission, and is compatible with Brownian noise from viscous damping due to the residual gas surrounding the test masses. Above 60 mHz the acceleration noise is dominated by interferometer displacement readout noise at a level of (34.8 ± 0.3) fm/√Hz, about 2 orders of magnitude better than requirements. At f ≤ 0.5 mHz we observe a low-frequency tail that stays below 12 fm s−2/√Hz down to 0.1 mHz. This performance would allow for a space-based gravitational wave observatory with a sensitivity close to what was originally foreseen for LISA

Regulation of phosphorylase kinase by low concentrations of Ca ions upon muscle contraction: the connection between metabolism and muscle contraction and the connection between muscle physiology and Ca-dependent signal transduction

It had long been one of the crucial questions in muscle physiology how glycogenolysis is regulated in connection with muscle contraction, when we found the answer to this question in the last half of the 1960s. By that time, the two principal currents of muscle physiology, namely, the metabolic flow starting from glycogen and the mechanisms of muscle contraction, had already been clarified at the molecular level thanks to our senior researchers. Thus, the final question we had to answer was how to connect these two currents. We found that low concentrations of Ca ions (10−7–10−4 M) released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum for the regulation of muscle contraction simultaneously reversibly activate phosphorylase kinase, the enzyme regulating glycogenolysis. Moreover, we found that adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate (cyclic AMP), which is already known to activate muscle phosphorylase kinase, is not effective in the absence of such concentrations of Ca ions. Thus, cyclic AMP is not effective by itself alone and only modifies the activation process in the presence of Ca ions (at that time, cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase had not yet been identified). After a while, it turned out that our works have not only provided the solution to the above problem on muscle physiology, but have also been considered as the first report of Ca-dependent protein phosphorylation, which is one of the central problems in current cell biology. Phosphorylase kinase is the first protein kinase to phosphorylate a protein resulting in the change in the function of the phosphorylated protein, as shown by Krebs and Fischer. Our works further showed that this protein kinase is regulated in a Ca-dependent manner. Accordingly, our works introduced the concept of low concentrations of Ca ions, which were first identified as the regulatory substance of muscle contraction, to the vast field of Ca biology including signal transduction