This study of competitiveness has three objectives. The first objective is to explain how macroeconomic and microeconomic factors can affect structural change in the US economy and how energy is linked to these factors. The second objective is to provide an explanation of how many individual decision makers, in responding to higher energy prices, have changed the structure of the economy. This structural change, and the effect it has had on energy use, is estimated for the US economy. A major component of these changes results from changes in US trade with other countries, which gives rise to the third objective. The third objective is to develop a research design that will allow a better understanding of the role that energy plays in the competitiveness of goods in world trade. 30 refs., 11 figs., 5 tabs.

This report discusses: Cryogenic technology; polymer shell fabrication; glass shell fabrication and characterization; coating technology; development of characterization techniques; laser technology; and plasma research and instrumentation.

In 1982, the US Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to initiate the process of choosing a location to permanently store high-level nuclear waste from the designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only location to be studied as a candidate site for such a repository. The original acts and its amendments had established the grant mechanism by which the state of Nevada could finance an investigation of the potential socioeconomic impacts that could result from the installation and operation of this facility. Over the past three years, the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM or RW) in the US Department of Energy (DOE) has approved grant requests by Nevada to perform this investigation. This report is intended to update and enhance a literature review conducted by the Human Affairs Research Center (HARC) for the Basalt Waste Isolation Project that dealt with the psychological and sociological processes underlying risk perception. It provides addition information on the HARC work, covers a subsequent step in the impact-estimation process, and translates risk perception into decisions and behaviors with economic consequences. It also covers recently developed techniques for assessing the nature and magnitude of impacts caused by environmental changes focusing on those impacts …

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We review the published data on the optical properties of beryllium for the spectral region from 0.03 to 300 eV. In the visible and infrared spectral regions, where published data from various authors show very large variations, we have performed experiments that identify the most probable sources of error, and use this information to select the best data from published sources. The effects of surface oxide overlayers have also been studied. In the far infrared spectral region, where only normal incidence reflectance data are available, and in the extreme ultraviolet, where only transmission data are available, there is insufficient information to fully determine the optical properties at each photon energy. Between 0.06 and 26 eV, however, a normal incidence reflectance curve is fully determined. This curve has been used for a Kramers{endash}Kronig analysis to determine the optical properties in this spectral range. 10 refs., 13 figs., 3 tabs.