A neutron monitor for in-situ real-time determination of transuranics in a processed waste effluent stream

A pilot plant operation at the Savannah River Site will remove ⁹⁰Sr, ¹³⁷Cs, and transuranics from a high-level liquid waste stream prior to encapsulation in a Saltstone Facility. Monitors are required to determine the concentrations of all radionuclides, including transuranics, in real-time on this processed waste stream. A neutron counter used to measure the concentration of each actinide isotope present in the stream is described. The neutron counter assembly consists of nested annular layers of shielding, reflectors, detectors, and moderators. On-line, live-time system control and calibration is provided by a time-tagged neutron source embedded in the moderator assembly.     

Resonant hydraulic sloshing in a tank of variable depth

The forced resonant oscillations of a fluid in a tank of variable depth are considered within the hydraulic approximation. It is shown that for certain bottom topographies a continuous periodic output dominated by the first normal mode is possible. This contrasts with the case of a tank of constant depth, where hydraulic jumps are a feature of the motion. The amplitude and frequency of the output are connected by a cubic equation. The fluid response can act like that of a hard or soft spring, depending on the bottom topography. There is also a critical bottom topography that yields a higher order response amplitude.     

Dynamic NMR microscopy measurement of the dynamics and flow partitioning of colloidal particles in a bifurcation

The flow and distribution of Newtonian, polymeric and colloid suspension fluids at low Reynolds numbers in bifurcations has importance in a wide range of disciplines, including microvascular physiology and microfluidic devices. A bifurcation consisting of circular capillaries laser etched into a hard polymer with inlet diameter 2.50 ± 0.01 mm, bifurcating to a small diameter outlet of 0.76 ± 0.01 mm and a large diameter outlet of 1.25 ± 0.01 mm is examined. Four distinct fluids (water, 0.25%wt xanthan gum, 8 and 22%vol hard-sphere colloidal suspensions) are flowed at flow rates from 10 to 30 ml/h corresponding to Reynolds numbers based on the entry flow from 0.001 to 8. PGSE NMR techniques are applied to obtain dynamic images of the fluids inside the bifurcation with spatial resolution of 59 × 59 μm/pixel in plane over a 200-μm-thick slice. Velocity in all three spatial directions is examined to determine the impact of secondary flows and characterize the transport in the bifurcation. The velocity data provide direct measurement of the volumetric distribution of the flow between the two channels as a function of flow rate. Water and the 8% colloidal suspension show a constant distribution with increasing flow rate, the xanthan gum shows an increase in fluid going into the larger outlet with higher flow rate, and the 22% colloidal suspension shows a decrease in fluid entering the larger channel with higher flow rate. For the colloidal particle flow, the distribution of colloid particles down the capillary is determined by examining the spectrally resolved propagator for the oil inside the core–shell particles in a direction perpendicular to the axial flow. Using dynamic magnetic resonance microscopy, the potential for using magnetic resonance for “particle counting” in a microscale bifurcation is thus demonstrated.     

Magnetic resonance analysis of capillary formation reaction front dynamics in alginate gels

The formation of heterogeneous structures in biopolymer gels is of current interest for biomedical applications and is of fundamental interest to understanding the molecular level origins of structures generated from disordered solutions by reactions. The cation-mediated physical gelation of alginate by calcium and copper is analyzed using magnetic resonance measurements of spatially resolved molecular dynamics during gel front propagation. Relaxation time and pulse-field gradient methods are applied to determine the impact of ion front motion on molecular translational dynamics. The formation of capillaries in alginate copper gels is correlated to changes in translational dynamics.