[en] Officials say their understanding of nuclear systems is now better than it was during the era of underground testing

[en] The Australian Health Protection Committee oversees national health protection priorities in: communicable disease outbreaks; chemical, biological or radiological incidents; mass casualty incidents; and deployment of Australian health teams overseas. The Australian Clinical Guidelines for a Radiological Event to complement existing national guidelines on chemical agents, anthrax, and smallpox. Other prompts included the need to revise the ARPANSA Guidance Manual, Medical Management of Individuals Involved in Radiation Accidents, 2000, and the requirement for specific therapeutic information regarding the indications and use of radiological decorporation agents held as part of the National Medical Stockpile. Matters identified by clinicians requiring specific guidance included: basic understanding of radiation; an approach to dose assessment; specific thresholds for initiating decorporation and other therapy; the role of gastric lavage, as contemporary practice considers this ineffective for other toxicological indications. rationale for, and detailed description of pulmonary lavage; advice on prenatal exposure to radiation; protocols for biodosimetry and other laboratory analysis. The objective was to produce a plain language guidance document for Australian clinicians on the diagnosis and management of radiation injury. It was to be based on evaluation of existing Australian documents, a literature review and consultation of appropriate specialists. Content areas included human health effects of radiation, scenario-based risk assessment and risk management, pre-hospital and hospital systems of care, management of specific injury types, radionuclide pathophysiology and decorporation protocols, biodosimetry options, individual psychological support 'and public health information, and Australian responsibilities under the Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Assistance Network, of the World Health Organization. The range of resources utilised in preparing the guidelines, and the process of development and review will be described.

[en] Stewardship science is research important to national security interests that include stockpile stewardship science, homeland security, nuclear forensics, and non-proliferation. To help address challenges in stewardship science and workforce development, the Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) was inaugurated ten years ago by the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U. S. Department of Energy. The goal was to enhance connections between NNSA laboratories and the activities of university scientists and their students in research areas important to NNSA, including low-energy nuclear science. This paper presents an overview of recent research in low-energy nuclear science supported by the Stewardship Science Academic Alliances and the applications of this research to stewardship science.

[en] Current work on the Integrated Stockpile Evaluation (ISE) project is evidence of Sandia's commitment to maintaining the integrity of the nuclear weapons stockpile. In this report, we undertake a key element in that process: development of an analytical framework for determining the reliability of the stockpile in a realistic environment of time-variance, inherent uncertainty, and sparse available information. This framework is probabilistic in nature and is founded on a novel combination of classical and computational Bayesian analysis, Bayesian networks, and polynomial chaos expansions. We note that, while the focus of the effort is stockpile-related, it is applicable to any reasonably-structured hierarchical system, including systems with feedback

[en] The CBMTS community last received an overview of the United States Strategic National Stockpile in Dubrovnik during the Spring of 2001. The events that occurred later that year and the ensuing response have resulted in a dramatic expansion of both the scope and complexity of the Strategic National Stockpile. These changes are seen not only in the scope of the Materiel holdings which have grown by several orders of magnitude, but in the increasingly complex operational designs which can rapidly bring the materiel to bear in a clinically relevant time frame. Mr. Adams, Deputy Director of the program from the time of its 1999 inception, will provide a detailed overview of the current program highlighting many of the changes and evolutions which have occurred during the past 8 years.(author)

[en] This paper tests the theory of storage in North American natural gas markets, using the Fama and French (1988) indirect test. In particular, we test the theory's prediction that when inventory is high, large inventory responses to shocks imply roughly equal changes in spot and futures prices, whereas when inventory is low, smaller inventory responses to shocks imply larger changes in spot prices than in futures prices. Our tests on spot and futures North American natural gas prices confirm these predictions of the theory of storage. (Author)

[en] The world's future oil price is affected by many factors. The challenge, therefore, is how to select optimal stockpile acquisition strategies to minimize the cost of maintaining a reserve. This paper provides a new method for analyzing this problem using an uncertain dynamic programming model to analyze stockpile acquisition strategies for strategic petroleum reserve. Using this model, we quantify the impact of uncertain world oil price on optimal stockpile acquisition strategies of China's strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2007-2010 and 2011-2020. Our results show that the future stockpile acquisition is related to oil prices and their probability and, if not considering the occurrence of oil supply shortage, China should at least purchase 25 million barrels when world oil price is at an optimal level. The optimal price of stockpile acquisition of every year has a stronger relationship with the probability of high price; and the optimal expected price and size of stockpile acquisition is different in each year. (author)

[en] The methods outlined in the Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Site Investigation Manual (MARSSIM) were used to characterize and release large volumes of stockpiled materials.[1] As MARSSIM applies directly to the release of land areas and structures, the survey and sampling approach had to be modified to address the release of material stockpiles. MARRSIM-based principles such as survey unit classifications, statistically-derived sampling approaches, and scanning, sampling, and survey approaches were used. Methodologies described in Draft NUREG-1767, 'Radiological Surveys for Controlling Release of Solid Materials' were also used. (authors)

[en] The research performed by the University of Florida (UF) is directed to the development of technologies that can be utilized at a micro-scale in varied environments. Work is focused on micro-scale energy systems, visualization, and mechanical devices. This work will impact the NNSA need related to micro-assembly operations. The URPR activities are executed in a University environment, yet many applications of the resulting technologies may be classified or highly restrictive in nature. The NNSA robotics technologists apply an NNSA needs focus to the URPR research, and actively work to transition relevant research into the deployment projects in which they are involved. This provides a ''Research to Development to Application'' structure within which innovative research has maximum opportunity for impact without requiring URPR researchers to be involved in specific NNSA projects. URPR researchers need to be aware of the NNSA applications in order to ensure the research being conducted has relevance, the URPR shall rely upon the NNSA sites for direction

[en] The long-term fundamentals for nuclear remain strong. Climate change and clean air concerns remain high on the agenda of national energy policies, as both developing and developed economies pursue a strategy of energy diversity and energy security. A global industry of 435 reactors is expected to grow to more than 639 reactors within the next 20 years with the potential for even more rapid expansion. This nuclear generating capacity relies on an international fuel cycle that can ensure stable and secure supply for decades to come. As the first step in the fuel cycle, the uranium industry has received various price signals over the past 5 decades, from the birth of an industry with strong demand and stock pile building and the associated robust pricing and new production stimulation, to an industry in decline and a period marked by liquidation of large inventories, to the recent resurgence of nuclear and the associated uranium price signals. In many ways, understanding the current uranium environment and the outlook for the industry requires some understanding of these phases of nuclear. The global nuclear fleet today needs about 65,000 tonnes of uranium per year to meet reactor feed requirements. Primary production meets about two thirds of this requirement while the remainder is drawn from secondary supply. Secondary supply can essentially be described as stockpiles of previously produced uranium. However, secondary supplies are finite and more primary production will be needed. From a long-term perspective, there is no question that there are sufficient uranium resources to support the nuclear industry for many years to come. The IAEA's 'Red Book' estimates that more than 5 million tonnes of known resources could potentially be developed at today's prices. This is enough to supply the global reactor fleet for almost 80 years at current usage rates. Recently higher uranium prices have resulted in some production increases although the rate of growth has been held back by, among other factors, technical complexities and infrastructure constraints. More recently, price volatility along with global financial turmoil have given rise to the shelving of projects or planned production being reduced. There are however signs that additional capacity is being developed. Many of the large uranium operations are adopting a broad view of today's uranium market and are continuing to advance expansions and new mining projects. This paper will look at factors influencing the uranium market over the last 60 years, and describe how those factors have affected the evolution of uranium production