No abstract

SAND2014-17430R Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. DISCLAIMER This information was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the U.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Renewed excavations at the Neolithic site of Beisamoun (Upper Jordan Valley, Israel) has resulted in the discovery of the earliest occurrence of an intentional cremation in the Near East directly dated to 7031–6700 cal BC (Pre-Pottery Neolithic C, also known as Final PPNB, which spans ca. 7100–6400 cal BC). The funerary treatment involved in situ cremation within a pyre-pit of a young adult individual who previously survived from a flint projectile injury. In this study we have used a multidisciplinary approach that integrates archaeothanatology, spatial analysis, bioanthropology, zooarchaeology, soil micromorphological analysis, and phytolith identification in order to reconstruct the different stages and techniques involved in this ritual: cremation pit construction, selection of fuel, possible initial position of the corpse, potential associated items and funerary containers, fire management, post-cremation gesture and structure abandonment. The origins and development of cremation practices in the region are explored as well as their significance in terms of Northern-Southern Levantine connections during the transition between the 8th and 7th millennia BC. The bones are distributed throughout the bottom of the pit, partly superimposed one on the other to a thickness of 40 cm. However, the density of remains was not very marked except at the centre of the pit ( Fig 6 ). If there was an apparent anatomical disorder at first glance, by looking at the details some interesting patterning could be observed. Cranial and mandibular fragments were found only in the southern half of the structure. Next to the south wall on the upper level, we found the base of the skull (mandible reversed and occipital fragments); the rest of the cranial vault and face (frontal, maxillars, parietals and temporals) were found slightly lower down at the centre of the pit. Conversely, the cervical vertebrae were dispersed out from the centre to the northern half of the pit. The thoracic column and some of the ribs were concentrated in the centre, roughly following a west-east direction. The lumbar vertebrae were found in the middle and against the south-western wall of the structure with several vertebral fragments in close proximity to the sacrum, coccyx and the left coxal. The right coxal is found diametrically opposite to this coherent group, lying almost complete not far from the north-eastern wall of the pit. Altogether, despite an absence of articulated joints and dispersion of certain elements, the bones of the axial skeleton show some anatomical coherence.

No abstract

Livermore National Laboratory to formalize the development and documentation of repository conceptual design options for each waste form and environment combination.This report summarizes current status and plans for the remainder of FY11 and for FY12.This progress report defines the architecture and interface parameters of the DSEF Excel workbook, which contains worksheets that link to each other to provide input and document output from external codes such that concise comparisons between fuel cycles, disposal environments, repository designs and engineered barrier system materials can be performed. Collaborations between other Used Fuel Disposition Campaign work packages and US Department of Energy / Nuclear Energy campaigns are clearly identified. File naming and configuration management is recommended to allow automated abstraction of data from multiple DSEF runs. Waste forms are examined with respect to three fuel cycles: open, modified open and closed. The resulting six waste types from each cycle are identified as examples with dimensions, mass, reactor burnup and properties. Seven disposal environments were initially identified, with the four key mined and saturated repositories (granite, salt, clay/shale and deep borehole) being part of the base case for DSEF evaluations. Together with six fuel types and pre--emplacement aging times (short, moderate and extended), 24 base case models are proposed. Additionally, evaluation of the DSEF using tuff (Yucca Mountain) and salt (WIPP) will be used as validation test cases.The DSEF interfaces with more sophisticated models for thermal analysis, and is capable of efficient calculations using simplified conceptual models. The DSEF will document the thermal calculations, but will not duplicate development or calculation results done by other UFD work packages. LLNL (as part of other UFD work packages) is also developing an interface to its sophisticated finite element thermal code that was developed outside of the UFD campaign. Thermal models have been identified and initially tested within the DSEFanalytic and finite element. Finite element modeling employs TOPAZ3D (Wemhoff et al, 2007) together with TrueGrid (Rainsberger 2006) to generate geometric shapes that represent waste packages. The analytic models use Mathcad (Mathcad 15.0). This tool will be available to all the UFD participants, including the Generic Disposal System LLNL--TR--484011 iiEnvironments Performance Assessment development team, which currently does not incorporate a sophisticated thermal model. In the performance assessment area, the DSEF documents the inputs going to, and the results coming from such GDSE performance assessment models, therefore documenting and integrating results rather than generating results directly. More importantly, DSEF is a knowledge management tool that creates a reference location for PA models to be documented and compared. Material properties to be used in the performance assessment portion of DSEF are identified and follow a Features, Events and Processes methodo...