Kennard V. Wilson

Surveillance and Monitoring Program Full-Scale Experiments to Evaluate the Potential for Corrosion in 3013 Containers

A set of six long-term, full-scale experiments were initiated to determine the type and extent of corrosion that occurs in 3013 containers packaged with chloride-bearing plutonium oxide materials. The materials were exposed to a high relative humidity environment representative of actual packaging conditions for the materials in storage. The materials were sealed in instrumented, inner 3013 containers with corrosion specimens designed to test the corrosiveness of the environment inside the containers under various conditions. This report focuses on initial loading conditions that are used to establish a baseline to show how the conditions change throughout the storage lifetime of the containers.

Polymer-Silica Nanocomposite Aerogels with Enhanced Mechanical Properties Using Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) of Cyanoacrylates

Aerogels were structurally modified using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of cyanoacrylate monomers to afford polycyanoacrylate-aerogel nanocomposites. Silica aerogels are low density, high surface area materials whose applications are limited by their fragility. Cyanoacrylate CVD allowed us to deposit a film of organic polymer throughout fragile porous monoliths within hours. Our experiments have shown that polymerization of the cyanoacrylate monomers was initiated by the adsorbed water on the surface of the silica permitting the nanocomposites structures to be formed with little or no sample preparation. We found that the strength of the polycyanoacrylate-aerogel nanocomposites increased thirty two-fold over the untreated aerogels with only a three-fold increase in density and an eight-fold decrease in surface area. Along with the improvement in mechanical properties, the aerogels became less hydrophilic than un-modified aerogels. Polycyanoacrylate-coated aerogels were placed directly into water and did not suffer catastrophic fragmentation as observed with un-modified silica aerogels.