[en] The flexibility of the fusion hybrid reactor to function as a fuel production facility, power plant, waste disposal burner or combinations of all of these, as well as the reactor's ability to use proliferation resistant fuel cycles, has provided the incentive to assess the feasibility of a near-term demonstration plant. The goals for a Demonstration Tokamak Hybrid Reactor (DTHR) were established and an initial conceptual design was selected. Reactor performance and economics were evaluated and key developmental issues were assessed. The study has shown that a DTHR is feasible in the late 1980's, a significant quantity of fissile fuel could be produced from fertile thorium using present day fission reactor blanket technology, and a large number of commercially prototypical components and systems could be developed and operationally verified. The DTHR concept would not only serve as proof-of-principle for hybrid technology, but could be operated in the ignited mode and provide major advancements for pure fusion technology

[en] Work in the area of post-failure phenomena in LMFBR TOP accidents is reported. Several different TOP-related topics are treated, including radial dependence of transient fission gas behavior in LMFBR pins; modeling of flowing-sodium pin failure tests in TREAT; gas plenum region pressurization due to sodium vaporization; and the effect of ejection rates of molten fuel from pins on the potential for extensive subassembly voiding

[en] Anionic microdomains within the aortic smooth muscle cell (SMC) surface glycocalyx represent a potential barrier to the endocytosis of anionic plasma proteins. Cultured SMCs exposed briefly to cationized ferritin (CF) exhibit ultrastructural aggregations of surface anionic sites resulting in intervening areas essentially devoid of anionic charge. Preincubation of cultured aortic medial SMCs with 0.2 mg/ml CF for 1 minute at 37 C resulted in a 4-fold increase in binding and a 13-fold increase in internalization of ¹²⁵I-human serum albumin (¹²⁵I-HSA) relative to cells pretreated with native ferritin. When both the CF preincubation and the endocytosis were performed at 4 C, the influence of CF was abolished. Studies at 4 C indicated that CF pretreatment of SMC at 37 C induced high affinity (Kd = 1.5 nM) saturable ¹²⁵I-HSA binding, in addition to low-affinity nonsaturable binding. These results were further confirmed by binding competition studies using increasing concentrations of unlabeled HSA. In contrast, low-density lipoprotein, a large anionic molecule, failed to compete with ¹²⁵I-HSA for binding sites on CF-pretreated SMCs at either 4 or 37 C. Pulse-chase studies at 37 C indicated that 20-30% of internalized ¹²⁵I-HSA was degraded, and 40-50% exocytosed within 24 hours in CF-treated cells. CF pretreatment of the SMCs did not significantly enhance the uptake of ¹⁴C-sucrose as a measure of fluid-phase endocytosis at 30 and 60 minutes. The results of these studies emphasize the potentially important regulatory roles of cell-surface anionic charge distribution and cationic molecules in cellular endocytosis

[en] The AMANDA-II detector, operating since 2000 in the deep ice at the geographic South Pole, has accumulated a large sample of atmospheric muon neutrinos in the 100 GeV to 10 TeV energy range. The zenith angle and energy distribution of these events can be used to search for various phenomenological signatures of quantum gravity in the neutrino sector, such as violation of Lorentz invariance or quantum decoherence. We present the results of such searches using a likelihood method on data from 2000 to 2006. In the absence of new physics, we use the same methodology to constrain conventional models of the atmospheric neutrino flux. The next-generation IceCube detector, now over 50% complete, will provide even more sensitive tests of both conventional neutrino physics as well as physics beyond the Standard Model.

No abstract available

[en] The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is currently detecting cosmic rays of energies at and above 10¹⁷ eV at the Pierre Auger Observatory, by triggering on the radio emission produced in the associated air showers. The radio-detection technique must cope with a significant background of man-made radio-frequency interference, but can provide information on shower development with a high duty cycle. We discuss our techniques to handle the challenges of self-triggered radio detection in a low-power autonomous array, including triggering and filtering algorithms, data acquisition design, and communication systems

[en] Reconstruction of potential ultra-high-energy (UHE) neutrino events at the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) is complicated by the variable index of refraction of South Pole ice, leading to curved radio signal paths from the interaction vertex. Using a spline table framework for fast raytracing approximation, we perform a GPU-accelerated interferometric reconstruction of the event vertex. We also demonstrate how use of both direct and reflected/refracted radio signals can allow reconstruction of the distance to the interaction vertex, an important step towards neutrino energy reconstruction.

[en] In March 2011, the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor power plant was crippled by the Great Pacific earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Much of the focus in the news was on the reactor site itself as the utility company (TEPCO), the Japanese government, and experts from around the world worked to bring the damaged plants into a safe shutdown condition and stem the release of radioactivity to the environment. Most of the radioactivity released was carried out to sea with the prevailing winds. Still, as weather patterns changed and winds shifted, a significant plume of radioactive materials released from the plant deposited in the environment surrounding the plant, contaminating large land areas of the Fukushima Prefecture. The magnitude of the radiological impact to the surrounding environmental is so large that the Japanese government has had to reevaluate the meaning of 'acceptably clean'. In many respects, 'acceptably clean' cannot be a one-size-fits-all standard. The economics costs of such an approach would make impossible what is already an enormous and costly environmental response and remediation task. Thus, the Japanese government has embarked upon an approach that is both situation-specific and reasonably achievable. For example, the determination of acceptably clean for a nursery school or kindergarten play yard may be different from that for a parking lot. The acceptably clean level of residual radioactivity in the surface soil of a rice paddy is different from that in a forested area. The recognized exposure situation (scenario) thus plays a large role in the decision process. While sometimes complicated to grasp or implement, such an approach does prioritize national resources to address environment remediation based upon immediate and significant risks. In addition, the Japanese government is testing means and methods, including advanced or promising technologies, that could be proven to be effective in reducing the amount of radioactivity in the environment beyond a fixed, concentration based limit. Essentially, the definition of acceptably clean includes the concept of reasonably achievable, given the available technology, means and methods, and the cost to implement such. The Japanese government recently issued three technology demonstration contracts expressly designed to test and evaluate the available technologies, means, and methods, which, if implemented, might produce the greatest risk reduction from environmental contamination for the best value. One of the Japanese contract holders, Obayashi JV, has teamed with AMEC to demonstrate the applicability and capabilities of the Orion ScanPlot^SM and ScanSort^SM technologies in radiologically impacted towns both inside and immediately outside the 20 km restricted zone. This presentation provides some unique images and informative insight into the environmental radioactive impacts in and around the exclusion zone. It will provide a look at one element of the Japanese government?s efforts to achieve the greatest risk reduction that is reasonably achievable. The Orion ScanPlot^SM and ScanSort^SM are being used with success on the Japan Town Demonstration Project to assess pre-remedial action contamination levels, document the post-remedial action contamination levels and to precisely measure and segregate excavated soils based on their radioactive content and the prescribed segregation limits (DCS). Initial results suggest that these technologies could provide capabilities to the remedial action efforts that would result in considerable improvements in field data certainty and compliance with remedial objectives while reducing overall costs. (authors)

[en] IceCube-Gen2 is a future large-scale extension to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic-kilometer-scale neutrino detector at the geographic South Pole. The IceCube data acquisition system architecture, while running stably with over 99% uptime, will be re-optimized for IceCube-Gen2 to solve design challenges with power consumption, communications bandwidth, and cable specifications. In particular, we describe how distribution of the photomultiplier tube signal digitization and pre-trigger storage can reduce power and bandwidth requirements. Additional changes to IceCube's custom communications protocol can also relax crosstalk requirements on the copper cabling. We report on the status of these optimizations in the prototype Gen2 digital optical module design for the upcoming IceCube Upgrade. (paper)

[en] We present the results of the first IceCube search for dark matter annihilation in the center of the Earth. Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), candidates for dark matter, can scatter off nuclei inside the Earth and fall below its escape velocity. Over time the captured WIMPs will be accumulated and may eventually self-annihilate. Among the annihilation products only neutrinos can escape from the center of the Earth. Large-scale neutrino telescopes, such as the cubic kilometer IceCube Neutrino Observatory located at the South Pole, can be used to search for such neutrino fluxes. Data from 327 days of detector livetime during 2011/2012 were analyzed. No excess beyond the expected background from atmospheric neutrinos was detected. The derived upper limits on the annihilation rate of WIMPs in the Earth and the resulting muon flux are an order of magnitude stronger than the limits of the last analysis performed with data from IceCube's predecessor AMANDA. The limits can be translated in terms of a spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section. For a WIMP mass of 50 GeV this analysis results in the most restrictive limits achieved with IceCube data. (orig.)