Special Working Group Research Articles

Report of ITER special working group 1

ITER Special Working Group 1 (SWG-1) was established by the terms of the ITER-EDA Agreement. According to that agreement {open_quotes}SWG-1 shall, based on the (ITER) Conceptual Design Report, review the detailed technical objectives along with the technical approaches to determine the best practicable way to achieve the programmatic objective of ITER, as described in Article 1 of the Agreement...SWG-1 shall submit, not later than three months after entry into force of the Agreement, its findings in a Review Report to the Council for its approval.{close_quotes} The ITER Council subsequently provided to SWG-1, as `a general guideline,` that detailed technical objectives and technical approaches, including appropriate safety margins, should be compatible with the aim of maintaining the cost of the device within the limits comparable to those indicated in the final report of the ITER CDA (Conceptual Design Activities), as well as keeping its impact in the long-range fusion program. The Council asked the Director to present an outline of the design within about 10 months, at the time when a draft agreement of Protocol 2 should have been prepared by SWG-2. This paper is the varbatim report of SWG-1.

Report of ITER special working group 2

ITER Special Working Group 2 (SWG-2) was established by the terms of the ITER-EDA Agreement. According to that agreement, {open_quotes}SWG-2 shall submit guidelines for implementation of task assignments by the Home Teams to the Council for approval at its second meeting. This SWG shall also draft Protocol 2 to the ITER-EDA Agreement and submit a draft to the Council not later than by 21 May 1993.{close_quotes} The members of SWG-2 for Protocol 2 drafting are listed. The rest of this paper is the verbatim report of SWG-2 on Protocol 2.

Hospital Waste Management: An International Viewpoint

Management of waste from hospitals, other health care facilities and health‐related research laboratories, whilst not a new issue, has gained increased attention in recent years. Unfortunately, the management procedures and practices in many European facilities, not to mention those in other, less‐developed, parts of the world, leave a lot to be desired. Having recognized the need for improvement already in the late 1970s, particularly with respect to the hazardous component of the waste, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe has convened a special working group of experts to prepare a short manual of good practice, conducted training courses at the request of national health authorities, supported and co‐sponsored conferences and, in co‐operation with other organizations concerned, is planning to prepare and publish a handbook for worldwide use.

Behind the disappearances: Argentina's dirty war against human rights and the United Nations

Drawing on confidential Argentinian documents and memoranda, Behind the Disappearances documents a seven-year diplomatic war by one of the twentieth century's most brutal regimes. It relates how, starting in 1976, Argentina's military government tried to cripple the UN's human rights machinery in an effort to prevent international condemnation of its policy of disappearances. Initially this attempt succeeded, but in 1980-with encouragement from the Carter administration-UN officials regained the initiative and created a special working group on disappearances that rejuvenated the UN's efforts. This progress was abruptly halted in 1981 when the Reagan administration sided with the Argentinian regime. The result, claims the author, not only undercut the UN's actions against disappearances but also weakened its chances of playing a positive role in aiding Latin America's transition from dictatorship to democracy.

The Promise of Advanced Naval Vehicles for NATO

Advanced naval vehicles (ANVs), defined here as surface effect ships (SES), hydrofoils, and small-waterplane-area twin-hull ships (SWATHs), hold significant promise for a number of naval missions, offering advantages in many operational areas. These advantages can extend to life-cycle costs when total force requirements are considered. NATO Special Working Group 6 (SWG/6), of which the United States is a member, has been particularly active in the evaluation of ANVs for various missions. A number of the participating nations have ongoing ANV development programs or have developed point designs for evaluation by SWG/6. This paper describes the SWG/6 organization and provides an introduction to some of these ANV programs. It presents the highlights of a series of antisubmarine warfare (ASW) corvette point designs developed as part of one of the SWG/6 initiatives and describes aspects of their assessment against conventional hull forms. The paper concludes with a description of some new SWG/6 programs.

MECANISMO DE RIFTEAMENTO DA PORÇÃO OCIDENTAL DA MARGEM NORTE BRASILEIRA, BACIA DO PARÁ-MARANHÃO

The Para-Maranhao basin has been intensely studied during the past year by a special work group created in Petrobras. Its tectonics evolution shows the key processes acting on the Equatorial Margin of Brazil of which it occupies part of its western portion. The basin is bordered to the south by a shallow offshore basement high, the Para-Maranhao Platform, limited at the W by largely E-W trending and at the E by largely NW trending faults. Faults within the basin and bordering inner or external basement lighs (MAS-9, and 1-PAS-19) follow the orientation of faults along the basin margin of the respective (eastern and western) segments. Between the two portions, the NNE trending Gurupi high may mark the NE extremity of a major intracontinental fault; lesser faults trend NNW in the western and NNE in the eastern segment of the basin. The Mesozoic tectonic evolution of the area is proposed to have taken place in four stages. ln Triassic-Jurassic time, contemporaneously with the intrusion of NNW trending basalt dikes along the Amapa margin to the west, the area was submitted to NNW-SSE compression and ENE-WSW extension characteristic of the break-up of Pangea. This compression is increased in early Cretaceous (Neocomian) time by the clockwise rotation of South America as the South Atlantic rift opened. During Alagoas (Aptian) time rifting along the Equatorial Margin reactivated NW-trending strike slipe and E-W trending reverse faults of this compressional phase as normal faults, within NE- trending major strike slipe faults of the compressional phase separate the E and the W portions of the basin. In Albian-Cenomanian time, right lateral movement between NW Africa and Brazil along the early Equatorial fracture zones reactivated the E-W faults as strike slip and the NW trending faults as normal faults, thus enhancing normal faulting and subsidence in the eastern relative to the western portion of the basin, from late Cretaceous time, thermal subsidence dominates.

軽水炉圧力容器の健全性監視試験データの解析法に関する国際相互比較「ＰＳＦ‐Ｂｌｉｎｄ‐Ｔｅｓｔ」

As a course of research program of Light Water Reactor Pressure Vessel Surveillance Dosim-etry Improvement Program (LWR-PV-SDIP), the intercomparison study has been done on the surveillance data processing procedure using the same input data, that is called as the PSF Blind Test. This technical report shows the Japanese replies to this Blind Test, that have been made by the special working group members of the AESJ research committee on Data Evaluation of Neutron Irradiation. Main contents of this report are description of the PSF experiment as the data-origin of the PSF Blind Test, description of the open data for this Blind Test that cover physics-dosimetry data and metallurgy data of irradiated specimen (tensile-data, Charpy-V test results and fracture toughness test results) with our data analysis procedure adopted. In addition, preliminary comparison was made between the measured and predicted (answered) values from several partici pants including Japan. From the results obtained, it can be pointed out that the accuracies for the evaluation of neutron irradiation embrittlement were known under the current procedure and some of the items were extracted for the accuracy improvement of the reactor pressure vessel surveil lance procedure in future.

The protection of rescue craft in periods of armed conflict

The National Lifeboat Societies and State-maintained rescue services, members of the International Lifeboat Conference (ILC), unanimously adopted the report by their special working group on the protection of rescue craft in periods of armed conflicts. The report was drawn up after the meeting in Geneva from 16 to 18 April 1984 of that working group, comprising representatives of the ILC, of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It contains recommendations for improving the protection of rescue craft and their crews and of fixed coastal installations and staff of lifeboat institutions in periods of armed conflict.

An Infrared Search in our Solar System as Part of a More Flexible Search Strategy

One of several explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that the whole Galaxy, including our Solar System, has already been colonized, but that for a variety of reasons the extraterrestrials have chosen not to reveal their presence. In a universal search for extraterrestrial intelligence, it seems prudent to check-out also our own backyard. IRAS has obtained a large volume of infrared data at 12, 25, 60 and 100 microns from which a special working group at JPL, of which the author is a member, is trying to establish a special catalogue of Solar System objects, the vast majority of which are asteroids. A careful search through this data bank for objects with peculiar infrared spectra would be the first step in the search for major artificial objects, such as space stations or materials processing plants, in our Solar System. The asteroid belt is an ideal source of raw materials for space colonies, which could have easily escaped detection lost among the many thousands of natural asteroids. Checking them out for excesses in the infrared is an ideal screening test for artificial objects in our Solar System.

High‐latitude radiowaves

The first International URSI Symposium covering high‐latitude radiowave studies of the atmosphere from the troposphere to the magnetosphere was held at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, August 9–13, 1982. The symposium was directed toward the new radio techniques that have been developed, many in the past two or three years, for probing the atmosphere from high geomagnetic latitudes. These systems include the VHF Mesosphere/Stratosphere/Troposphere (MST) radar, the European scatter radars, a new generation of HF digital ionospheric sounders, HF ionospheric ‘heaters’ and VHF coherent oblique backscatter radars (STARE and SABRE).The purpose of this URSI symposium was to present and discuss results obtained with these new techniques and to work toward putting together coherent, consistent models of a high‐latitude atmospheric structure and dynamics using these new results. It also provided an opportunity for meetings of special URSI working groups.

Les géographes et les activités commerciales

It is a very short time since geographers begun to study retail geography. However its localization as well as its organization offers a very good field of research espacially to geographers. So, at the present time, in France, a certain number of specialists try to improve our knowledge about different aspects of retail business. A special working group has been created on this purpose : the following papers have been written by some of the participants.

Evaluation of the Capacity of Risk Carriers by Means of Stochastic-Dynamic Programming

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, being the Supervising Office of Insurance in Finland, has established a special working group to investigate the problems involved with the solvency of insurers. A report will be compiled in a near future. The capacity of risk carriers is one of the problems dealt with, and it will be preliminarily reviewed in this paper.The problem was treated by the working group parallelly by means of1. an empirical approach observing actual fluctuations in underwriting gains of insurers, and2. a theoretical approach, constructing a stochastic-dynamic model and studying its behaviour, especially its sensitivity to numerous background factors.First the methods of investigation are described and their application is then demonstrated using some numerical data. Because a comprehensive report will be published by the working group separately, only the main schedule is given. For the same reason the consideration is limited here to stochastic risks, omitting the fact that the solvency of an insurer is also jeopardized by numerous “non-stochastic” risks such as failure in investments, political interference of the authorities, mismanagement of the company, or misappropriation of its property.

The bacteria stop system of Meierhans-Weber as room air technical alternative to laminar-air-flow and its air hygienic effectiveness

Statistics of wound infections demonstrate the linear dependence between postoperative wound infection and the quantity of bacteria in the air of operating theatres. In the most extensive examination series we have made as yet with a special work group of DGOT the quantity of bacteria in the air of non air-conditioned operating theatres and such fitted out with different aircleaning systems was determined. Non air-conditioned operating theatres proved so extremely infected that the risk of wound infection cannot be borne any more in the future. Also air-conditioned systems according to DIN 1946/4 with an average of 190 bacteria/m3 are not sufficiently secure for bone and joint surgery. In Switzerland for such operations a value of 10/m3 at the most is admissible. Such equivalents have been attained only with LAF until today. After extensive air tests the so-called "Keimstop"-system by Meierhans and Weber is to be considered the sole system suitable to supplement air conditioning DIN 1946/4. This combination yields the same effect as the expensive LAF systems.

Work Environment Standards: The Ergonomic Approach

Work environment standards are the task of SC-5, whose creation was proposed during the first meeting of TC-159 “Ergonomics”. More specifically this sub-committee shall consider: the gaseous characteristics of the surrounding air, aerodynamical and thermal factors and effects; light and vision; non visible electromagnetic waves; sound and hearing; accelerations, impacts and vibrations. One working group will be in charge of each one of these categories of environmental factors, considering not only the work environment but also environmental problems faced by man as user of housing, public transport, hospitals, schools, etc. A special working group shall propose a common terminology to the other working groups. The inventory of existing standards in the field of environmental factors shows that for some of them an important work has been done already, which the corresponding working groups will have to consider for approval, amendment or implementation.

Soil disenfection and potato growth in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, soil disinfection, along with the use of resistant varieties, is nowadays an acceptable measure for control of the potato cyst eelworm. Heterodera rostochiensis Woll. Support and guidance for this control measure are given by the Plant Protection Service. Efficiency of fumigation depends to a large extent on the type of soil. Data collected between 1969 and 1972 gave rise to the conclusion that effective treatment with low dosages of a common soil fumigant can be achieved on soils with a clay content (particle size <2 μ) of about 20% or less. The type of injection technique used is also important. The question of unfavourbale after-effects of fumigation cannot be forgotten and at the present time, a special working group in The Netherlands is studying this problem.

The Organization of Seaborne Traffic

The Safety of Life at Sea Conference, 1960, recognized the special danger of the concentration of maritime traffic in converging areas and entrusted shipping companies with the responsibility of establishing the channels to be followed in these areas. The three Institutes of Navigation may be helpful to the companies in this respect through the competence and prestige of their special working groups. The problem consists in defining one-way channels and cross-overs for different streams of traffic. In entrusting this responsibility to the companies, the London conference implicitly agreed that the organization of converging areas was a simple application of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea to the particular conditions of each area.In converging areas ships will remain entirely and solely subject to the Collision Regulations. Agreements on the channels to be used will be covered by Rule 29 which refers to the ‘Ordinary Practice of Seamen’.