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SRTC performed small-scale tests to determine the behavior associated with blending streams in the High-level Waste (HLW) Lag Storage and Feed Blending Process System for the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The work reported here was planned and designed in response to the test specification. The Office of River Protection Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant consists of three primary facilities: a Pretreatment Facility and two facilities for low-activity and high-level waste vitrification. The Pretreatment Facility contains unit operations which receive waste feed from the Hanford Tank Farms and separate it into two treated waste streams: a low-activity, liquid waste stream stripped of most solids and radioisotopes (processed through the Low-Activity Waste Vitrification Facility) and a high-level waste slurry containing most of the solids and radioisotopes (processed through the High-Level Waste Vitrification Facility). Blending of the later solids a nd radioisotopes streams and their resulting properties is the subject of this report. These mixtures are shown to be unreactive and pumpable by using statistically designed combinations of nonradioactive simulants for the process streams. Properties of the mixtures are also predicted numerically (with the Environmental Simulation Program) and compared with the experimental results. The results did not reveal any …

The Pennsylvania State University, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory will establish, promote, and manage a national industry-driven Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) that will be focused on improving the production performance of domestic petroleum and/or natural gas stripper wells. The consortium creates a partnership with the U.S. petroleum and natural gas industries and trade associations, state funding agencies, academia, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This report serves as the tenth quarterly technical progress report for the SWC. Key activities for this reporting period include: (1) release of the 2003 request-for-proposal (RFP), (2) planning the spring SWC meeting in Pearl River New York, and (3) tentatively plan the SWC 2003 fall technology transfer meetings. During this reporting period, the efforts were focused primarily on the organizing and hosting the fall technology transfer meetings. Simultaneously, administrative issues such as modifying the SWC Constitution and By-Laws and creating a block membership tier to promote further industrial involvement were areas of concentration. The SWC is poised to enter its third year with a growing, diversifying membership.

Because of tight requirements on beam quality longitudinal single-bunch instabilities are a serious concern for the damping rings of the next generation of linear colliders. Unlike multi-bunch instabilities they cannot be damped using feed-back systems and need to be avoided altogether. We present an analysis of these instabilities for the current Feb. 03 NLC main damping ring design, with attention paid to coherent synchrotron radiation and vacuum chamber effects, with the latter including the main components (RF cavities, BPM's, and resistive wall). The study is carried out by solving the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation for the longitudinal motion numerically. Comparison is made, whenever possible, with linear theory. We find that collective effects are dominated by coherent synchrotron radiation and estimate the instability threshold to be safely above 6 times the design current.

The Pennsylvania State University, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory will establish, promote, and manage a national industry-driven Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) that will be focused on improving the production performance of domestic petroleum and/or natural gas stripper wells. The consortium creates a partnership with the U.S. petroleum and natural gas industries and trade associations, state funding agencies, academia, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This report serves as the eleventh quarterly technical progress report for the SWC. Key activities for this reporting period include: (1) organizing and hosting the Spring SWC meeting in Pearl River, New York, (2) working with successful applicants and Penn State's Office of Sponsored Research to get subcontracts in place, and (3) planning three SWC technology transfer meetings to take place in the fall of 2003. During this reporting period, the efforts were focused primarily on the organizing and hosting the SWC Spring proposal meeting and organizing the fall technology transfer meetings.

New thermoelectric materials using Quantum Well (QW) technology are expected to increase the energy conversion efficiency to more than 25% from the present 5%, which will allow for the low cost conversion of waste heat into electricity. Hi-Z Technology, Inc. has been developing QW technology over the past six years. It will use Caterpillar, Inc., a leader in the manufacture of large scale industrial equipment, for verification and life testing of the QW films and modules. Other members of the team are Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who will sputter large area QW films. The Scope of Work is to develop QW materials from their present proof-of-principle technology status to a pre-production level over a proposed three year period. This work will entail fabricating the QW films through a sputtering process of 50 {micro}m thick multi layered films and depositing them on 12 inch diameter, 5 {micro}m thick Si substrates. The goal in this project is to produce a basic 10-20 watt module that can be used to build up any size generator such as: a 5-10 kW Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), a multi kW Waste Heat Recovery Generator (WHRG) for a class 8 truck or as small as a 10-20 …

In the second quarter of this DOE NETL project, we have continued Phase I and Phase II activities for researching and developing new technology to quantitatively model the rock physics effects of CO{sub 2}-oil-water systems. These activities included completing a literature search of currently available equation-of-state methods, initiating work in molecular dynamics modeling, and building a prototype seismic modeling code for predicting time-lapse CO{sub 2} changes in well-log models. We have also received permission to use the Sleipner time-lapse CO{sub 2} data set from the North Sea for the current NETL project, and have issued a formal request for the data.

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An estimated 41.2 million people were without health insurance in 2001. Legislation under consideration by the 108th and earlier Congresses is intended to assist small employers in offering health insurance as a benefit to their workers. A new bill, H.R. 4281, introduced on May 5, 2004, The Small Business Health Fairness Act of 2003 (H.R. 6601s. 545), and a number of bills from the earlier Congresses include provisions creating new groups for small firms to join or encouraging the growth of existing groups so that small employers can band together to offer coverage to their employees.

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Report detailing the attempts to regulate mercury emissions from electric utilities, including an investigation, potential challenges, and more.