A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) New Starts program has provided state and local agencies with more than $6 billion in the last eight years to help design and construct transit projects. Although the funding for this program is higher than it has ever been, the demand for these resources is also extremely high. FTA was directed to prioritize projects for funding by evaluating, rating, and recommending potential projects on the basis of specific financial and project justification criteria. This report discusses (1) the refinements made to FTA's evaluation and rating process since last year, (2) how New Starts projects were selected for FTA's New Starts report and budget request for fiscal year 2002, and (3) FTA's remaining New Starts commitment authority. GAO found that FTA made several refinements to its rating process. For instance, potential grantees were more strictly assessed on their ability to build and operate proposed projects than in the past. FTA also made several technical changes and established new performance measures to evaluate the program. New Starts projects were selected by evaluating 40 new projects for 2002 and developing ratings for 26 of …

This report discusses the use of committees as crucial centers of policymaking, oversight of federal agencies, and public education is an organizing principle of the contemporary Congress.

Deposit summary of $35.00 made on August 9, 2001.

Radionuclide and metal contaminants are present in the vadose zone and groundwater throughout the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) weapons complex. Demonstrating in situ immobilization of these contaminants in vadose zones or groundwater plumes is a cost-effective remediation strategy. However, the implementation of in situ remediation requires definition of the mechanism that controls sequestration of the contaminants. One such mechanism for metals and radionuclides is co-precipitation of these elements in authigenic calcite and calcite overgrowths. Calcite, a common mineral in many aquifers and vadose zones in the arid western U.S., can incorporate divalent metals such as strontium, cadmium, lead, and cobalt into its crystal structure by the formation of solid solutions. The rate at which trace metals are incorporated into calcite is a function of calcite precipitation kinetics, adsorption interactions between the calcite surface and the trace metal in solution, solid solution properties of the trace metal in calcite, and also the surfaces upon which the calcite is precipitating. A fundamental understanding of the coupling of calcite precipitation and trace metal partitioning and how this may occur in aquifers and vadose environments is lacking. The focus of the research proposed here is to investigate the facilitated partitioning of metal and …

This report details the history of the three federal transfer taxes, tracing their development from their eighteenth century roots to the present.

Absorption of fast Alfven waves by the minority fundamental ion-cyclotron resonance, coupled with finite banana width physics, generates torque distributions and ultimately rotational shear layers in the bulk plasma, even when the toroidal wavenumber k(subscript ''phi'') = n/R of the fast wave vanishes (n=0) and cyclotron absorption introduces no angular momentum nor canonical angular momentum [F.W. Perkins, R.B. White, P.T. Bonoli, and V.S. Chan, Phys. Plasmas 8 (2001) 2181]. The present work extends these results to travelling waves with non-zero n where heating directly introduces angular momentum. Since tokamak fast-wave antennas have approximately one wavelength per toroidal field coil, the toroidal mode number n lies in the range n = 10-20, independent of machine size. A zero-dimensional analysis shows that the rotation rate arising from direct torque is comparable to that of the rotational shear layer and has the same scaling. Nondimensional rotation profiles for n = (-10, 10) show modest changes from the n = 0 case in the expected direction. For a balanced antenna spectrum, the nondimensional rotational profile (averaged over n = -10, 10) lies quite close to the n = 0 profile.

This study indicates that the chemical purity of the fuel used presently to fabricate fueled clad vent sets will not present any special problems to the performance of the fueled clad vent sets as intended. However, cation impurities in the fuel can have a deleterious effect on the iridium cladding and vents and should be minimized as much as practical.

This report summaries the computer modeling studies and how the results of these studies were used to estimate contaminant releases to the groundwater. These modeling studies were used to improve saltstone landfill designs and are the basis for the current reference design. With the reference landfill design, EPA Drinking Water Standards can be met for all chemicals and radionuclides contained in Savannah River Plant waste salts.

This paper describes a new algorithm for the computation of two-dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and two-fluid studies of magnetic reconnection in plasmas. It has been implemented on several parallel platforms and shows good scalability up to 32 CPUs for reasonable problem sizes. A fixed, nonuniform rectangular mesh is used to resolve the different spatial scales in the reconnection problem. The resistive MHD version of the code uses an implicit/explicit hybrid method, while the two-fluid version uses an alternating-direction implicit (ADI) method. The technique has proven useful for comparing several different theories of collisional and collisionless reconnection.

This report discusses two tasks: (1) introduction of the Mark 15-MARCO library within the context of an overview of the methodology of MARCO and (2) assessment of the accuracy of MARCO calculations of the Mark 15 MOC at beginning of cycle.

Technical and transient protection limits are specified on the nominal burnout safety factor, BOSFN, to avoid significant release of fission products caused by local film boiling burnout. The risk of fission product release, BOR, due to film boiling burnout is statistically determined where allowances are made to account for differences between the nominal assembly and the actual assembly. This report describes the calculational model behind BOR and how the specific numerical values were estimated. The data listed in this report enable damage calculations with COBAD to be performed for the Mark 15 assembly.

The study of high-harmonic fast-wave (HHFW) heating and current drive is being conducted on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) device to determine the physics of applying radio-frequency (rf) waves at high harmonics (approximately 10-20) of the ion cyclotron frequency in this high-beta plasma regime and to extend the performance of the NSTX plasma. The magnetic field of this low aspect ratio device is lower (less than or equal to 0.35 T for this work) than that for the typical moderate aspect ratio tokamak regime by about an order of magnitude and the plasma densities achieved are typically in the mid 10(superscript ''19'') m(superscript ''-3'') range. Thus, the dielectric constant of the plasma, epsilon always equals omega (subscript ''pe'')(superscript ''2'') divided by omega (subscript ''ce'')(superscript ''2''), is of order approximately 50-100 resulting in wave physics properties which favor electron heating by TTMP and Landau damping. Radio-frequency power is applied on NSTX at 3 0 MHz using an antenna array with 12 current straps aligned in the poloidal direction. The antenna can be phased to launch waves with toroidal wave numbers, k(subscript ''T'') between 2 m(superscript ''-1'') and 14 m(superscript ''-1'') and can be phased for current drive with peak toroidal …

The objective of this calculation is to determine the structural response of the Naval SNF (spent nuclear fuel) Waste Package (WP) and the emplacement pallet (EP) subjected to the rock fall DBE (design basis event) dynamic loads. The scope of this calculation is limited to reporting the calculation results in terms of stress intensities and residual stresses in the WP, and stress intensities and maximum permanent downward displacements of the EP-lifting surface. The information provided by the sketches (Attachment I) is that of the potential design of the type of WP and EP considered in this calculation, and all obtained results are valid for those designs only. This calculation is associated with the waste package design and is performed by the Waste Package Design Section in accordance with Reference 24. AP-3.124, ''Calculations'', is used to perform the calculation and develop the document.

This report describes the shielding model development for the JB-Line Upgrade project. The product of this effort is a simple-to-use but accurate method of estimating the personnel dose expected for various operating conditions on the line. The current techniques for shielding calculations use transport codes such as ANISN which, while accurate for geometries which can be accurately approximated as one dimensional slabs, cylinders or spheres, fall short in calculating configurations in which two-or three-dimensional effects (e.g., streaming) play a role in the dose received by workers.

This report discusses private actions to sue for civil rights violations in federally assisted programs following the Alexander v. Sandoval case. The report discusses the Sandoval decision as well as the implications the case can have in future perils.

In this report, the history of the federal transfer taxes, has been divided into four parts: (1) the federal death and gift taxes utilized in the period 1789 to 1915; (2) the development of the modern estate and gift taxes from 1916 through 1975; (3) the creation and refinement of a unified estate and gift tax system, supplemented by a generation-skipping transfer tax; and (4) the phase out and repeal of the estate and generation-skipping taxes, with the gift tax being retained as a device to protect the integrity of the income tax.