Department of Energy FY 2012 Congressional ... - The FIRE Place

FY 2010 Accomplishments
Advanced Certification
• Successfully designed and executed two, dual-axis hydrodynamic tests at DARHT exploring surety
mechanisms and options for retrofitting the current stockpile.
• Conducted a first ever early assessment of a proposed re-use option for a future LEP.
• Obtained Equation of State (EOS) data required to evaluate surety options.
• Demonstrated the quantitative effect of model-form uncertainty on prediction uncertainty (QMU
development goal).
• Accomplished a complete catalog of observed failures in historical underground tests and the
associated first generation explanations of mechanisms, metrics, and thresholds without testing.
• Demonstrated the validity of an expanded application of a metric for primary failure to
multiple device classes.
• Successfully explained a series of three related historic underground tests. Based on this
analysis, proposed a new QMU metric for the failure mechanism and proposed a threshold on
that metric. Supported the use of this new metric through the analysis of a suite of
simulations of a class of devices.
Primary Assessment Technology
• Reached resolution on a long-standing discrepancy in the understanding of fission-spectra induced
fission-product yields. This improved understanding of the issue brings the radiochemical
interpretation of the number of fissions for a fissioning system made by Los Alamos (LANL) and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) into agreement.
• Acquired EOS data on Sandia National Laboratories’ (SNL) Z machine relevant to a stockpile issue.
• Tested a new fission chamber - the Parallel Plate Avalanche Counter-in the Los Alamos Neutron
Science Center (LANSCE) Weapons Neutron Research beam and resulted in improving the timing
of fission events by an order of magnitude.
• Replacing a 40+ year old method, a tool was created to assess the uncertainty associated with
radiochemical information; the tool was generated in 2009 and validated and initiated in
2010.
• Completed multiple (classified) weapons physics experiments on proton radiography (pRad)
at LANSCE.
Dynamic Materials Properties
• Completed the Barolo Experimental Series Contractor Operational Readiness Review (ORR)
and Federal ORR for Category 3 nuclear operations in the U1a.05 drift at the NNSS.
• Completed experiments and preliminary simulations to demonstrate the effect of shock
geometry on spallation. Results demonstrate strong dependency between shock-wave profile
and stress-state.
• Completed a series of thermal explosion experiments on PBX-9501 and PBXN-9,
HMX-based explosives pressed to a low density.
Weapons Activities/
Science Campaign Page 84
FY 2012 Congressional Budget