The development of a versatile field program for measuring tritium in “real-time”

Robust sample handling and liquid scintillation counting (LSC) procedures have been developed to routinely monitor tritium in the field relative to the 20,000 pCi/L drinking water standard. This procedure allows tritium to be monitored hourly during 24 hour drilling operations at depths in the saturated zone potentially contaminated by sub-surface nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site. Using retrofitted, shock hardened, vibration damped counters and strict analytical protocols, tritium may be measured rapidly in the field under hostile conditions. Concentration standards and dead tritium backgrounds are prepared weekly in a central laboratory and delivered to remote drilling locations where they are recounted daily as a check on counter efficiency and calibration. Portable LSC counters are located in trailers and powered off a battery pack and line filter fed by mobile generator. The samples are typically groundwaters mixed with drilling fluids returned after circulation through a drill string. Fluids are aerated and de-foamed, filtered, mixed with scintillation cocktail and dark adapted before counting. Real-time monitoring affords drilling and field personnel early warning against intercepting down-gradient plumes of radioactivity. For routine operations, the tritium activity may not exceed a 10,000 pCi/L threshold.     

Hot atom chemistry of mixed cristals 35 years of research

A historical survey of the author's contribution to the progress of solid state hot atom chemistry including more personal commentaries is presented.Presented at the International Seminar on the Chemistry of High Energy Atoms, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama, Meguro-ko, Tokyo 152, Japan, October 28–30, 1992, organised by T. MATSUURA, Institute for Atomic Energy, Rikkyo University, Nagasaka, Yokosuka 240-01, co-editor of the Handbook of Hot Atom Chemistry. I thank Professor MATSUURA for the permission to publish my contribution to the seminar slightly modified compared with the version submitted in the seminar proceedings.     

Agent for chemical dissolution of oxide layers grown on heat transfer surfaces of carbon steel components of nuclear and classifical power plants

Inhibited buffer-complexing ferrous citrate+citric acid solutions, 2.5<pH<3.5, at 363±5K, is used to dissolve a compact magnetite layer grown on low alloyed steel in a nuclear plant generator. The average rate of oxide dissolution is 40 m/h. Similarly, a compact duplex layer of magnetite covered by hematite formed on a carbon steel pipe of a classical heat exchanger dissolves in less than 10 h. The mean rate of metal uniform corrosion ranges between 1 and 9 mg/cm² h depending on pH, inhibitors and citrate ion concentration.     

Investigations on the determination of NO2 with galvanic nitrate solid electrolyte cells

Solid electrolyte cells for detecting NO₂ with Ba(NO₃)₂ or Sr(NO₃)₂ partially replaced by -Al₂O₃ as solid electrolytes have been studied. The cell tension depends on the NO₂- as well as on the NO-concentration. Investigations of the establishment of the NO₂-NO-O₂-equilibrium by the catalytic effects of the used electrode materials Pt and Au have shown that a decomposition of NO₂ below 400°C cannot be expected.17th Communication on oxoanionic solid electrolytes and their possible applications; 16th Communication see Solid State Ionics 51:183–185 (1992)Extension of a part of the lecture of V. Brüser, S. Jakobs, H.-H. Möbius and U. Schönauer Galvanische NO₂-Sensoren mit Nitrat-Festelektrolyten given in Feldberg, 3. 6. 1993     

Determination of aromatic sulfonic acids in industrial waste water by ion-pair chromatography

A method for the identification and quantification of aromatic sulfonic acids in industrial waste water has been developed. The preparation of the samples comprises a clean-up step and an enrichment step, utilizing i) reversed-phase extraction and ii) ion-pair solid phase extraction. The aromatic sulfonic acids are separated by ion-pair chromatography with diode-array detection. An advantage of the developed ion-pair chromatographic method is the separation of linear alkylbenzenesulfonic acids (LAS), lignosulfonic acids and aromatic sulfonic acids in one chromatographic run. Also described is an optimized clean-up procedure for collected fractions of a preparative chromatographic run to identify monosulfonic acids with GC/MS after methylation. The detection limits for aromatic sulfonic acids in industrial waste waters are at the g/l level.     

The limit of detection in transversal photothermal deflection spectroscopy with light scattering samples

The limit of detection for the 4,6 dinitro-orthocresol (DNOC) pesticide, including small latex particles as light scattering samples in water as suspending medium, has been determined for the transversal photothermal deflection technique. The results where compared to conventional spectrophotometry. In the photothermal deflection experiments performed with a continuous Ar⁺-excitation beam (=363.8 nm) a LOD of 0.8 g/l is achieved for the DNOC in water.Awarded poster prize     

On some inequalities involving (n!)1/n,II

We prove: IfG(n) denotes the geometric mean of the firstn positive integers, then $$1< 1 + \frac{{G(n)}}{{G(n - 1)}} - \frac{{G(n + 1)}}{{G(n)}}< 1 + \frac{1}{n} - \frac{1}{{n + 1}}< n\frac{{G(n + 1)}}{{G(n)}} - (n - 1)\frac{{G(n)}}{{G(n - 1)}}$$ holds for alln≥3.     

Generalized solutions of a stochastic partial differential equation

We discuss the Cauchy problem of a certain stochastic parabolic partial differential equation arising in the nonlinear filtering theory, where the initial data and the nonhomogeneous noise term of the equation are given by Schwartz distributions. The generalized (distributional) solution is represented by a partial (conditional) generalized expectation ofT(t)° _0,t ^–1 , whereT(t) is a stochastic process with values in distributions and _s,t is a stochastic flow generated by a certain stochastic differential equation. The representation is used for getting estimates of the solution with respect to Sobolev norms.Further, by applying the partial Malliavin calculus of Kusuoka-Stroock, we show that any generalized solution is aC -function under a condition similar to Hörmander's hypoellipticity condition.     

Asymptotics of heavy atoms in high magnetic fields: II. Semiclassical regions

The ground state energy of an atom of nuclear chargeZe in a magnetic fieldB is exactly evaluated to leading order asZ in the following three regions:BZ ^4/3,BZ ^4/3 andZ ^4/3BZ³. In each case this is accomplished by a modified Thomas-Fermi (TF) type theory. We also analyze these TF theories in detail, one of their consequences being the nonintuitive fact that atoms are spherical (to leading order) despite the leading order change in energy due to theB field. This paper complements and completes our earlier analysis [1], which was primarily devoted to the regionsBZ ³ andBZ³ in which a semiclassical TF analysis is numerically and conceptually wrong. There are two main mathematical results in this paper, needed for the proof of the exactitude of the TF theories. One is a generalization of the Lieb-Thirring inequality for sums of eigenvalues to include magnetic fields. The second is a semiclassical asymptotic formula for sums of eigenvalues that isuniform in the fieldB.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY90-19433 A02Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant DMS 92-03829Work partially supported by the Heraeus Stiftung and the Research Fund of the University of Iceland.     

Brownian motion with restoring drift: The petit and micro-canonical ensembles

Letf(Q) be odd and positive near +∞. Then the non-linear wave equation ?² Q/?t ²??² Q/?x ²?f(Q)=0, considered on the circle 0≤x<L, can be written in Hamiltonian formQ ^⊙ =?H/?P, P ^⊙ =??H/?Q with $$P = Q^\cdot and H = \tfrac{1}{2}\mathop \smallint \limits_0^L (Q')^2 + \mathop \smallint \limits_0^L F(Q) + \tfrac{1}{2}\mathop \smallint \limits_0^L P^2 ;$$ the corresponding flow preserves the (suitably interpreted) “petit ensemble”e ^?H d ^∞ Qd ^∞ P; and forL↓∞,Q settles down to the stationary diffusion with infinitesimal operator 1/2 ?²/?Q ²+m(Q)?/?Q,m being the logarithmic derivative of the ground state of ?d ²/dQ ² ‖F(Q). This diffusion is the “Brownian motion with restoring drift”; see McKean-Vaninsky [1993(1)]. For reasons suggested by the paper of Lebowitz-Rose-Speer [1988] on NLS, it is interesting to study the “micro-canonical ensemble” obtained by restricting to the sphere $\int\limits_0^L {Q^2 } = N$ and makingL↓∞ with fixedD=N/L. Now, forF(Q)/Q ²→∞, the same type of diffusion appears, but with drift arising from the modified potentialF(Q)+cQ ²,c being chosen so that the mean ofQ ² is the assigned numberD. The proof employs Döblin's method of “loops” [1937] and steepest descent. The same is true forF(Q)=m ² Q ², only now the proof is elementary. The outcome is also the same ifF(Q)/Q ²→0, providedD is smaller than the petit canonical mean ofQ ²; forD larger than this mean, the matter is more subtle and the outcome is unknown.