Flexible conversion ratio fast reactors: Overview

Conceptual designs of lead-cooled and liquid salt-cooled fast flexible conversion ratio reactors were developed. The performance achievable by the unity conversion ratio cores of these reactors was compared to an existing supercritical carbon dioxide-cooled (S-CO2) fast reactor design and an uprated version of an existing sodium-cooled fast reactor. All concepts have cores rated at 2400 MWt. The cores of the liquid-cooled reactors are placed in a large-pool-type vessel with dual-free level, which also contains four intermediate heat exchangers (IHXs) coupling a primary coolant to a compact and efficient supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle power conversion system. The S-CO2 reactor is directly coupled to the S-CO2 Brayton cycle power conversion system. Decay heat is removed passively using an enhanced reactor vessel auxiliary cooling system (RVACS) and a passive secondary auxiliary cooling system (PSACS). The selection of the water-cooled versus air-cooled heat sink for the PSACS as well as the analysis of the probability that the PSACS may fail to complete its mission was performed using risk-informed methodology. In addition to these features, all reactors were designed to be self-controllable. Further, the liquid-cooled reactors utilized common passive decay heat removal systems whereas the S-CO2 uses reliable battery powered blowers for post-LOCA decay heat removal to provide flow in well defined regimes and to accommodate inadvertent bypass flows. The multiple design limits and challenges which constrained the execution of the four fast reactor concepts are elaborated. These include principally neutronics and materials challenges. The neutronic challenges are the large positive coolant reactivity feedback, small fuel temperature coefficient, small effective delayed neutron fraction, large reactivity swing and the transition between different conversion ratio cores. The burnup, temperature and fluence constraints on fuels, cladding and vessel materials are elaborated for three categories of material - materials currently available, available on a relatively short time scale and available only with significant development effort. The selected fuels are the metallic U-TRU-Zr (10% Zr) for unity conversion ratio and TRU-Zr (75% Zr) for zero conversion ratio. The principal selected cladding and vessel materials are HT-9 and A533 or A508, respectively, for current availability, T-91 and 9Cr-1Mo steel for relatively short-term availability and oxide dispersion strengthened ferritic steel (ODS) available only with significant development. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cross-comparison of fast reactor concepts with various coolants

Four fast reactor concepts using lead (LFR), liquid salt, NaCl-KCl-MgCl2 (LSFR), sodium (SFR), and supercritical CO2 (GFR) coolants are compared. Since economy of scale and power conversion system compactness are the same by virtue of the consistent 2400 MWt rating and use of the S-CO2 power conversion system, the achievable plant thermal efficiency, core power density and core specific powers become the dominant factors. The potential to achieve the highest efficiency among the four reactor concepts can be ranked from highest to lowest as follows: (1) GFR, (2) LFR and LSFR, and (3) SFR. Both the lead- and salt-cooled designs achieve about 30% higher power density than the gas-cooled reactor, but attain power density 3 times smaller than that of the sodium-cooled reactor. Fuel cycle costs are favored for the sodium reactor by virtue of its high specific power of 65 kW/kgHM compared to the lead, salt and gas reactor values of 45, 35, and 21 kW/kgHM, respectively. In terms of safety, all concepts can be designed to accommodate the unprotected limiting accidents through passive means in a self-controllable manner. However, it does not seem to be a preferable option for the GFR where the active or semi-passive approach will likely result in a more economic and reliable plant. Lead coolant with its superior neutronic characteristics and the smallest coolant temperature reactivity coefficient is easiest to design for self-controllability, while the LSFR requires special reactivity devices to overcome its large positive coolant temperature coefficient. The GFR required a special core design using BeO diluent and a supercritical CO2 reflector to achieve negative coolant void worth-one of the conditions necessary for inherent shutdown following large LOCA. Protected accidents need to be given special attention in the LSFR and LFR due to the small margin to freezing of their coolants, and to a lesser extent in the SFR. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mechanical characterisation of hydrogel materials

Interest in hydrogel materials is growing rapidly, due to the potential for hydrogel use in tissue engineering and drug delivery applications, and as coatings on medical devices. However, a key limitation with the use of hydrogel materials in many applications is their relatively poor mechanical properties compared with those of (less biocompatible) solid polymers. In this review, basic chemistry, microstructure and processing routes for common natural and synthetic hydrogel materials are explored first. Underlying structure-properties relationships for hydrogels are considered. A series of mechanical testing modalities suitable for hydrogel characterisation are next considered, including emerging test modalities, such as nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy (AFM) indentation. As the data analysis depends in part on the material's constitutive behaviour, a series of increasingly complex constitutive models will be examined, including elastic, viscoelastic and theories that explicitly treat the multiphasic poroelastic nature of hydrogel materials. Results from the existing literature on agar and polyacrylamide mechanical properties are compiled and compared, highlighting the challenges and uncertainties inherent in the process of gel mechanical characterisation. © 2014 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and ASM International.

黄土高原沟壑区王东沟流域土地利用/覆被变化过程初探

黄土高原沟壑区王东沟流域从1986年至2006年的土地利用/覆被发生了较大变化,土地利用动态指数分别为:耕地3.21%,园地-36.11%,林地-4.05%,牧草地4.24%,居民点及独立工矿用地-0.62%,交通运输用地-12.27%,未利用地1.85%;变化趋势是:耕地逐年向园地流转,园地变化烈度较大,其他各类用地变化不太显著。引起这一变化的主要因素是自然、社会、经济、技术以及政策因素。结合这一变化,针对黄土高原沟壑区的实际情况,在黄土高原沟壑区土地利用经营与管理方面,应重视土地产出效益与粮食安全的关系,在保障区域粮食安全的基础上实现效益最大化。

黄土高原(陕西部分)雨水资源化潜力初步分析

根据黄土高原（ 陕西部分） 的１４５ 个雨量观测站的３０ａ 逐月降水资料，分析了陕西雨水资源的时空分布特征，并在次基础上，分别对西北地区的作物地土壤拦蓄潜力，陕北、渭北、关中３ 地区居民工矿与交通用地的雨水汇流潜力进行了测算。初步结果为：两北地区作物地年总无效蒸发耗水达３３ ×１０８ ｍ３ ，若采取集流保墒措施，年可减少蒸发损失６－４ ×１０８ ｍ３ ；３ 地区居民工矿与交通用地年可汇流６－２７ ×１０８ ｍ ３ ，若一半用于粮食生产，并采取节水灌溉，初步推算黄土高原地区可增产粮食约２８－８ ×１０８ ｋｇ。

松辽盆地古龙地区葡萄花油层组沉积成岩相研究

The sediment and diagenesis process of reservoir are the key controlling factors for the formation and distribution of hydrocarbon reservoir. For quite a long time, most of the research on sediment-diagenesis facise is mainly focusing on qualitative analysis. With the further development on exploration of oil field, the qualitative analysis alone can’t meet the requirements of complicated requirements of oil and gas exploreation, so the quantitative analysis of sediment-diagenesis facise and related facies modling have become more and more important. On the basis of the research result from stratum and sediment on GuLong Area Putaohua Oil Layer Group, from the basic principles of sedimentology, and with the support from the research result from field core and mining research results, the thesis mainly makes the research on the sediment types, the space framework of sands and the evolution rules of diagenesis while mainly sticking to the research on sediment systement analysis and diagenetic deformation, and make further quantitative classification on sediment-diageneses facies qualitatively, discussed the new way to divide the sediment-diagenesis facies, and offer new basis for reservoir exploration by the research. Through using statistics theory including factor analysis, cluster analysis and discriminant analysis, the thesis devided sediment-diagenesis facies quantitatively. This research method is innovative on studying sediment-diagenesis facies. Firstly, the factor analysis could study the main mechanism of those correlative variables in geologic body, and then could draw a conclusion on the control factors of fluid and capability of reservoir in the layer of studying area. Secondly, with the selected main parameter for the cluster analysis, the classification of diagenesis is mainly based on the data analysis, thus the subjective judgement from the investigator could be eliminated, besides the results could be more quantitative, which is helpful to the correlative statistical analysis, so one could get further study on the quantitative relations of each sediment-diagenesis facies type. Finally, with the reliablities of discriminant analysis cluster results, and the adoption of discriminant probability to formulate the chart, the thesis could reflect chorisogram of sediment-diagenesis facies for planar analysis, which leads to a more dependable analytic results.According to the research, with the multi-statistics analysis methods combinations, we could get quantitative analysis on sediment-diagenesis facies of reservoir, and the final result could be more reliable and also have better operability.

内蒙古克什克腾旗小东沟斑岩型钼矿床的成矿作用

In this paper, the Xiaodonggou porphyry molybdenum deposit located in the Xarmoron molybdenum metallogenic belt is chose as the research area. We have analyzed the petrology of the Xiaodonggou pluton in detail and made chemical analysis of the major and trace elements, Rb-Sr and Sm-Nd isotope, common lead isotope and SHRIMP zircon U-Pb dating et al; in the other hand, we use the molybdenite to make common lead analysis and Re-Os isotopic dating. The Xiaodonggou pluton is rich in silicon, potass, zirconium, and low in REE. In addition, it has no minus Eu abnormity and show a isotopic composition high in εNd(t) and low in Sri, indicating its magma origining from the melting of juvenile thicken lower crust. In the meanwhile, it contained the features of high temperature, quick melting, quick segregation and quick emplacement. The common lead analysis of the pluton orthoclase and molybdenite show that the former transfer from orogen to mantle and the latter come from mantle, which is consistent to the molybdenite sulfur isotopic and quartz oxygen isotopic composition, demonstrating that the rock and ore-forming materials of deposit having different sources, magma from the lower crust mixing with mantle fluid. In plus, we use the physical experiments results of the water-magma reaction to explain the interaction of magma and mantle fluid. In the deep crust, these two systems uplifted in a immiscible state; when they reached low depth, the stream film between fluid-magma collapsed, and the magma was broken into small agglomerates by the fluid, then they mixed thoroughly. The SHRIMP zircon U-Pb dating gave a result of 142±2Ma and the molybdenite Re-Os dating result is 138.1±2.8Ma, corresponding to the big tectonic transition period of 140Ma, when the major stress field changing from south and north to west and east. At this time, the Da Hinggan ling ranges area was under an extensive background, underplating proceeded and mantle materials could add into the magmas forming in the lower crust. So, from the above analysis, we propose the following model for the Xiaodonggou porphyry molybdenum deposit: in the early Cretaceous period, the Da Hinggan ling ranges area was under a extensive background, the adding of mantle fluid containing ore materials into heated lower crust made it melting to produce magmas. Following more mantle fluid got into the magma room and urged the magma to segregate from the source quickly. The fluid and magma uplifted together, when they arrived at shallow depth, the fluid-magma became unstable and the latter was broken into many small agglomerates with fluid connecting them in the interspaces. Because of the H+, K+ and various elements existing in the fluid, it would reacted with the magma and the rock through alteration and ore minerals crystallized out, forming the Xiaodonggou porphyry deposit with disseminated mineralization phenomenon.

西秦岭晚古生代弧前盆地沉积与成矿作用

The Western Qinling Orogenie belt in the Taibai-Fengxian and Xihe-Lixian areas can be subdivided into three units structurally from north to south, which are the island-arc, forearc basin and accretionary wedge, respectively. The forearc basin developed in the Late Paleozoic mainly controls sedimentation and some larger lead-zinc and gold deposits in the western Qinling. Stratigraphically, the island arc is dissected into the Liziyuan Group, the Danfeng Group and the Luohansi Group. The metavolcanic rocks include basic, intermediate and acidic rocks, and their geochemistry demonstrates that these igneous rocks generated in an island arc. Where, the basalts are subalkaline series charactered by low-medium potassium, with enriched LREE, negative Eu anomaly, and positive Nd anomaly. Cr-content of volcanic rocks is 2-3 times higher than that of island arc tholeiite all over the world. In addition, the lightly metamorphosed accretionary wedge in the areas of Huixian, Chengxian, Liuba and Shiqun is dominated by terrigenous sediments with carbonatite, chert, mafic and volcanic rocks. The age of the wedge is the Late Palaeozoic to the Trassic, while previous work suggested that it is the Silurian. The Upper Paleozoic between the island arc belt and accretionary wedge are mainly the sediments filled in the fore arc basin. The fillings in the forearc basin were subdivided into the Dacaiotan Group, the Tieshan Group, the Shujiaba Group and the Xihanshui Group, previously. They outcropped along the southern margins of the Liziyuan Group. The Dacaotan Group, the Upper Devonian, is close to the island arc complex, and composed of a suite of red and gray-green thick and coarse terrestrial elastics. The Shujiaba Group, the Mid-Upper Devonian, is located in the middle of the basin, is mainly fine-grained elastics with a few intercalations of limestone. The Xihanshui Group, which distributes in the southern of the basin, is mainly slates, phyllites and sandstones with carbonatite and reef blocks. The Tieshan Group, the Upper Devonian, just outcrops in the southwest of the basin, is carbonatite and clastic rocks, and deposited in the shallow -sea environment. The faults in the basin are mainly NW trend. The sedimentary characteristics, slump folds, biological assemblages in both sides of and within those faults demonstrate that they were syn-sedimentary faults with multi-period activities. They separated the forearc basin into several sub-basins, which imbricate in the background of a forearc basin with sedimentary characteristics of the piggyback basin. The deep hydrothermal fluid erupted along the syn-sedimentary faults, supported nutrition and energy for the reef, and resulted in hydrothermal-sedimentary rocks, reef and lead-zinc deposits along these faults. The sedimentary facies in the basin varies from the continental slope alluvial fan, to shallow-sea reef facies, and then to deep-water from north to south, which implies that there was a continental slope in the Devonian in the west Qinling. The strata overlap to north and to east respectively. Additionally, the coeval sedimentary facies in north and south are significantly different. The elastics become more and more coarser to north in the basin as well as upward coarsing. These features indicate prograding fillings followed by overlaps of the different fans underwater. The paleocurrent analyses show that the forearc basin is composed of thrust-ramp-basins and deep-water basins. The provenance of the fillings in the basin is the island arc in the north. The lead-zinc deposits were synchronous with the Xihanshui Group in the early stage of development of the forearc basin. They were strongly constrained by syn-sedimentary faults and then modified by the hydrothermal fluids. The gold deposits distributed in the north of the basin resulted from the tectonic activities and magmatism in the later stage of the basin evolution, and occurred at the top of the lead-zinc deposits spatially. The scales of lead-zinc deposits in the south of the basin are larger than that of the gold-deposits. The Pb-Zn deposits in the west of the basin are larger than those in the east, while the Gold deposits in the west of the basin are smaller than those in the east. Mineralizing ages of these deposits become younger and younger to west.

溶蚀岩体渗透水力学特性研究

Seepage control in karstic rock masses is one of the most important problems in domestic hydroelectric engineering and mining engineering as well as traffic engineering. At present permeability assessment and leakage analysis of multi-layer karstic rock masses are mainly qualitative, while seldom quantitative. Quantitative analyses of the permeability coefficient and seepage amount are conducted in this report, which will provide a theoretical basis for the study of seepage law and seepage control treatment of karstic rocks. Based on the field measurements in the horizontal grouting galleries of seepage control curtains on the left bank of the Shuibuya Hydropower Project on the Qingjiang river, a hydraulic model is established in this report, and the computation results will provide a scientific basis for optimization of grouting curtain engineering. Following issues are addressed in the report. (1) Based on the in-situ measurements of fissures and karstic cavities in grouting galleries, the characteristics of karstic rock mass is analyzed, and a stochastic structural model of karstic rock masses is set up, which will provide the basis for calculation of the permeability and leakage amount of karstic rock mass. (2) According to the distribution of the measured joints in the grouting galleries and the stochastic results obtained from the stochastic structural model of karstic rock mass between grouting galleries, a formula for computation of permeability tensor of fracturing system is set up, and a computation program is made with Visual Basic language. The computation results will be helpful for zoning of fissured rock masses and calculation of seepage amount as well as optimization of seepage control curtains. (3) Fractal theory is used to describe quantitatively the roughness of conduit walls of karstic systems and the sinuosity of karstic conduits. It is proposed that the roughness coefficient of kastic caves can be expressed by both fractal dimension Ds and Dr that represent respectively the extension sinuosity of karstic caves and the roughness of the conduit walls. The existing formula for calculating the seepage amount of karstic conduits is revised and programmed. The seepage amount of rock masses in the measured grouting galleries is estimated under the condition that no seepage control measures are taken before reservoir impoundment, and the results will be helpful for design and construction optimization of seepage curtains of the Shuibuya hydropower project. This report is one part of the subject "Karstic hydrogeology and the structural model and seepage hydraulics of karstic rock masses", a sub-program of "Study on seepage hydraulics of multi-layer karstic rock masses and its application in seepage control curtain engineering", which is financially supported by the Hubei Provincial key science and technology programme.

社会困境中的行为决策――社会身份与地位的影响

Social dilemmas are defined as such situations in which short-term individual and long-term collective interests are at odds (Hardin, 1968; Messick & Brewer, 1983). Severe social problems lead more and more researchers to pay attention to the issue of social dilemmas. Until now, research has widely examined the factors influencing cooperation in social dilemmas, and provided solutions to social dilemmas. In the need of theory development, previous research generally simplified the situation of realistic social dilemmas. Therefore, few studies have explored the issue of cooperation in social dilemmas in an intergroup situation. On the other hand, there has been little empirical attention for such issues in countries outside of United States and Western Europe. To meet this gap, the present study grounded itself in social identity theories and examined the effect of unequal group status on behavioral decision making in social dilemmas. To this end, the study designed three experiments to examine how individuals with different group status response psychologically and behaviorally to cooperation in intragroup and intergroup social dilemmas. In experiment 1, the study examined how independent and interdependent self- construals affect cooperative behavior in an intragroup social dilemma. The results showed that when individuals were primed with interdependent (as opposed to independent) self-construal, they consistently contributed highly, regardless of context manipulation. In contrast, those primed with independent self-construal contributed less in the investment game but only when placed in a context where group members were encouraged to think about their individual (versus shared) fate. Results supported the idea that independent self-construal in a low interdependent context produces the most competitive behavior and that this effect was partially mediated by the feeling of interaction within a group. In experiment 2, the study examined how the effect of group status on different level of cooperation in a nested social dilemma was moderated by individual status, and what roles ingroup and superordinate identifications played in the above effect. Results found that individuals in higher status groups tended to allocate more to private account and less to subgroup account compared to those in lower status group; individuals in higher status groups allocated more to higher level accounts than to private account, whereas those in lower status acted in a reverse way. The results indicated that group status (compared to individual status) exerted a positive influence on behavioral decision making in social dilemmas, with higher group status contributing more to subgroup as well as collective interests. Results also found that the effect of group status and/or individual status on cooperation in social dilemmas was moderated by sex. As for individual status, results showed that the effect of individual status on subgroup interest was significantly moderated only by the combination of higher ingroup identification and lower superordinate identification. In experiment 3, the study explored how group stability and cognitive categorization interactively influenced the relationship between group status and behavioral decision making in a social dilemma. Results did not support the prediction that group status and stability interactively affected behavioral decision-making in social dilemmas. However, it was found that this relationship was moderated by which level individuals categorized themselves at. When categorization at the individual level was salient, individuals in high status group contributed more to subgroup account than those in low status group if they perceived a stable status hierarchy; whereas they contributed more to private account and less to collective account if they perceived that the status was instable. On the other hand, when categorization at the subgroup level was salient, individuals in high status group contributed less to collective account than those in low status group if they perceived that the status was stable; whereas they contributed less to private account and more to subgroup account if they perceived an instable status relation. In summary, the present study suggests that cooperation with ingroup forms the basis of social harmony, and higher status for everyone in any given group is a necessary for social development. On the other hand, individuals in higher status group tend to be more selfish once they realize that their current status hierarchy is unstable. However, activating their collective identity will to some degree increase the level of their cooperation with the collective. The study thus provides psychological explanations on how to construct group harmony and management suggestions on how to solve social conflicts.

Data Reduction with Rough Sets

R. Jensen, Q. Shen, Data Reduction with Rough Sets, In: Encyclopedia of Data Warehousing and Mining - 2nd Edition, Vol. II, 2008.

Determinação de cádmio e chumbo em brinquedos para crianças com idade inferior a 3 anos

Projeto de Pós-Graduação/Dissertação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências Farmacêuticas

Time-dependent transport through molecular junctions.

We investigate transport properties of molecular junctions under two types of bias--a short time pulse or an ac bias--by combining a solution for Green's functions in the time domain with electronic structure information coming from ab initio density functional calculations. We find that the short time response depends on lead structure, bias voltage, and barrier heights both at the molecule-lead contacts and within molecules. Under a low frequency ac bias, the electron flow either tracks or leads the bias signal (resistive or capacitive response) depending on whether the junction is perfectly conducting or not. For high frequency, the current lags the bias signal due to the kinetic inductance. The transition frequency is an intrinsic property of the junctions.