This report discusses the class action and proposed reform in the 107th congress, in four different categories: (I) Background, (II) the legislation, (III) Section 1-7 and (IV) Possible Objections.

This report provides information required to be reported annually by the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 173-303-071 (3)(r)(ii)(F) and (3)(s)(ix) on the treatability studies conducted on the Hanford Site in 2000. These studies were conducted as required by WAC 173-303-071, "Excluded Categories of Waste," sections (3)(r) and (s). Unless otherwise noted, the waste samples were provided by and the treatability studies were performed for the U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office, P.O. Box 550, Richland, Washington 99352. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identification number for these studies is WA7890008967.

This Facility Effluent Monitoring Plan (FEMP) has been prepared for the 331 Building Life Sciences Laboratory and associated support facilities at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to meet the requirements in DOE Order 5400.1, "General Environmental Protection Programs." This FEMP has been prepared for the 331 Complex primarily because it has a ?major? (potential to emit > 0.1 mrem/yr) emission point for radionuclide air emissions according to the annual National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) assessment performed. The FEMP includes characterization of effluent streams, monitoring/sampling design criteria, a description of the monitoring systems and sample analysis, and quality assurance requirements.

The structure of the low-density lipoprotein receptor extracellular portion has been determined. The document proposes a mechanism for the release of lipoprotein in the endosome. Without this release, the mechanism of receptor recycling cannot function.

Detailed analysis of the HOMO bandshape in the photoelectron spectrum of gaseous C60 reveals a dynamic Jahn-Teller effect in the ground state of C60+. The direct observation of three tunneling states asserts a D3d geometry for the isolated cation, originating from a strong vibronic coupling. These results show that the ionic motion of the ions plays an important role in the electron-phonon interaction.

What constitutes 'dangerous anthropogenic interference' is a value judgment arrived at through a socio-political process, taking issues like equity and sustainability into account. Science provides key information needed to arrive at an informed judgment. However, that judgment is primarily a political one, and not a purely scientific decision. Such judgments are based on risk assessment, and lead to risk management choices by decision makers, about actions and policies.

The purpose of the Ventilation Model is to simulate the heat transfer processes in and around waste emplacement drifts during periods of forced ventilation. The model evaluates the effects of emplacement drift ventilation on the thermal conditions in the emplacement drifts and surrounding rock mass, and calculates the heat removal by ventilation as a measure of the viability of ventilation to delay the onset of peak repository temperature and reduce its magnitude. The heat removal by ventilation is temporally and spatially dependent, and is expressed as the fraction of heat carried away by the ventilation air compared to the fraction of heat produced by radionuclide decay. One minus the heat removal is called the wall heat fraction, or the remaining amount of heat that is transferred via conduction to the surrounding rock mass. Downstream models, such as the ''Multiscale Thermohydrologic Model'' (BSC 2001), use the wall heat fractions as outputted from the Ventilation Model to initialize their post-closure analyses. The Ventilation Model report was initially developed to analyze the effects of preclosure continuous ventilation in the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) emplacement drifts, and to provide heat removal data to support EBS design. Revision 00 of the Ventilation Model included documentation …

We have field-tested an apparatus for measuring the electromagnetic impedance above the ground at a plurality of frequencies in the 0.3 - 30 MHz range. This window in the frequency spectrum, which lies between frequencies used for GPR and those used for conventional loop-loop EM soundings, has not been used because of difficulties in fielding equipment for making absolute and accurate measurements. Model and physical parameter studies however confirm that data in this frequency band can be used to construct high-resolution maps of electrical conductivity and permittivity of near-surface material. Our equipment was assembled using commercial electric and magnetic antennas. The magnetic loop source is excited by a conventional signal generator - power amplifier assembly. Signal detection is accomplished using RF lock-in amplifiers. All system elements are appropriately isolated by optic - fiber links. We estimate a measurement accuracy of about {+-} 10% for an 8-m separation between source and detector. Field tests were done at the University of California Richmond Field Station where the near surface electrical structure is well known. The experimental data at this site are mainly a function of electrical conductivity. In this context, we have obtained good agreement with the known local variations in resistivity …

The current paradigm for cancer initiation and progression rests on the groundbreaking discoveries of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. This framework has revealed much about the role of genetic alterations in the underlying signaling pathways central to normal cellular function and to tumor progression. However, it is clear that single gene theories or even sequential acquisition of mutations underestimate the nature of the genetic and epigenetic changes in tumors, and do not account for the observation that many cancer susceptibility genes (e.g. BRCA1, APC) show a high degree of tissue specificity in their association with neoplastic transformation. Therefore, the cellular and tissue context itself must confer additional and crucial information necessary for mutated genes to exert their influence. A considerable body of evidence now shows that cell - cell and cell - extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions are essential organizing principles that help define the nature of the tissue context, and play a crucial role in regulating homeostasis and tissue specificity. How this context determines functional integrity, and how its loss can lead to malignancy, appears to have much to do with tissue structure and polarity.

A multidisciplined team led by the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) and consisting of Pratt & Whitney Power Systems (PWPS), the University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), KraftWork Systems, Inc. (kWS), and the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA) has evaluated a variety of gasified biomass fuels, integrated into advanced gas turbine-based power systems. The team has concluded that a biomass integrated gasification combined-cycle (BIGCC) plant with an overall integrated system efficiency of 45% (HHV) at emission levels of less than half of New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) is technically and economically feasible. The higher process efficiency in itself reduces consumption of premium fuels currently used for power generation including those from foreign sources. In addition, the advanced gasification process can be used to generate fuels and chemicals, such as low-cost hydrogen and syngas for chemical synthesis, as well as baseload power. The conceptual design of the plant consists of an air-blown circulating fluidized-bed Advanced Transport Gasifier and a PWPS FT8 TwinPac{trademark} aeroderivative gas turbine operated in combined cycle to produce {approx}80 MWe. This system uses advanced technology commercial products in combination with components in advanced development or demonstration stages, thereby maximizing the opportunity for early implementation. …

Appliance ownership and production has increased dramatically in China in the past two decades. From extremely low levels in 1980, China's appliance industry has become one of the largest in the world, with sales topping U.S. $14.4 billion in 2000. In 1981, less than 1 percent of urban Chinese households owned a refrigerator; by 1998, that number had increased to over 75 percent. This dramatic increase in sales and ownership leads to an excellent opportunity to impact energy consumption in China by affecting the energy efficiency of appliances being bought and sold. In general, Chinese consumers value energy efficiency and are knowledgeable about the operating costs of major appliances. However, the Chinese marketplace does not provide information that consumers trust about the energy consumption of specific products. Thus, several interdependent organizations have emerged in China to provide information and market supports for energy efficiency. This paper describes the appliance market in China and the evolution of its standards and labeling programs and the agencies that implement them. It discusses the authors' work with these organizations in developing energy efficiency criteria and supporting an energy efficiency endorsement labeling program in China. It describes how the authors have used their experience with …

Technetium, as pertechnetate (TcO4 -), is a mobile species in the environment. This characteristic, along with its long half-life, (99Tc, t1/2 = 213,000 a) makes technetium a major contributor to the long-term hazard associated with low level waste (LLW) disposal. Technetium partitioning from the nuclear waste at DOE sites will be required so that the LLW forms meet DOE performance assessment criteria. Technetium separations assume that technetium exists as TcO4 - in the waste. However, years of thermal, chemical, and radiolytic digestion in the presence of organic material, has transformed much of the TcO4 - into unidentified, stable, reduced, technetium complexes. To successfully partition technetium from tank wastes, it will be necessary to either remove these technetium species with a new process, or reoxidize them to TcO4 - so that conventional pertechnetate separation schemes will be successful.

We describe here a study of a single bunch Beam Break Up (BBU) instability for a proposed Berkeley fast x-ray facility based on a recirculating linac [1]. The recirculating linac employs a 600 MeV superconducting RF linear accelerator and the electron beam energy of {approx} 2.5 GeV is reached over four beam passes through the linac. A 120 MeV superconducting RF linear accelerator is used as an injector to the recirculating linac. The machine parameters are listed in Appendix A. The equation describing the transverse displacement x(s,z) of the electrons in an accelerated bunch, as a function of their longitudinal position within the bunch z, can be written in the form [2]: d/ds[{gamma}(s) dx/ds] + k{sup 2}(s){gamma}(s)x(s,z) = r{sub 0}{integral}{sub z}{sup {infinity}}{rho}(z')W{sub {perpendicular}}(z'-z)x(s,z')dz' (1) where {gamma} is the relativistic factor, k the focusing strength, r{sub 0} the classical electron radius, {rho} the bunch density, W{sub {perpendicular}} the transverse wake function per unit length and s indicates the position along the linac. We assume infinitesimally small transverse beam dimensions (a good approximation, when the bunch dimensions are much less than the size of the beam pipe), so that x has to be interpreted as the displacement of the centre of a …

The field of relativistic heavy ion physics entered a new era with the start of the physics program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. This dedicated facility allows extensive studies of the nuclear matter phase diagram at the highest temperatures so far available in the laboratory. The goal of the program is to conclusively establish the existence of the deconfined state of nuclear matter predicted by QCD, the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), and study its properties.

The production of hydrogen for fuel cell applications requires cost and energy efficient technologies. The Absorption Enhanced Reforming (AER), developed at ZSW with industrial partners, is aimed to simplify the process by using a high temperature in situ CO2 absorption. The in situ CO2 removal results in shifting the steam reforming reaction equilibrium towards increased hydrogen concentration (up to 95 vol%). The key part of the process is the high temperature CO2 absorbent. In this contribution results of Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA) investigations on natural minerals, dolomites, silicates and synthetic absorbent materials in regard of their CO2 absorption capacity and absorption/desorption cyclic stability are presented and discussed. It has been found that the inert parts of the absorbent materials have a structure stabilizing effect, leading to an improved cyclic stability of the materials.

19th Edition of TOP500 List of World's Fastest Supercomputers Released MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.;&BERKELEY, Calif. In what has become a much-anticipated event in the world of high-performance computing, the 19th edition of the TOP500 list of the worlds fastest supercomputers was released today (June 20, 2002). The recently installed Earth Simulator supercomputer at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan, is as expected the clear new number 1. Its performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (trillions of calculations per second) running the Linpack benchmark is almost five times higher than the performance of the now No.2 IBM ASCI White system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (7.2 Tflop/s). This powerful leap frogging to the top by a system so much faster than the previous top system is unparalleled in the history of the TOP500.

At the beginning of the design and construction of the STAR Detector, the collaboration assigned a team of physicists and engineers the responsibility of coordinating the construction of the detector. This group managed the general space assignments for each sub-system and coordinated the assembly and planning for the detector. Furthermore, as this group was the only STAR group with the responsibility of looking at the system as a whole, the collaboration assigned it several tasks that spanned the different sub-detectors. These items included grounding, rack layout, cable distribution, electrical, power and water, and safety systems. This paper describes these systems and their performance.

The present investigation intends to add to the fundamental process design know-how for dry flue gas cleaning, especially with respect to process flexibility, in cases where variations in the type of fuel and thus in concentration of contaminants in the flue gas require optimization of operating conditions. In particular, temperature effects of the physical and chemical processes occurring simultaneously in the gas-particle dispersion and in the filter cake/filter medium are investigated in order to improve the predictive capabilities for identifying optimum operating conditions. Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO{sub 3}) and calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH){sub 2}) are known as efficient sorbents for neutralizing acid flue gas components such as HCl, HF, and SO{sub 2}. According to their physical properties (e.g. porosity, pore size) and chemical behavior (e.g. thermal decomposition, reactivity for gas-solid reactions), optimum conditions for their application vary widely. The results presented concentrate on the development of quantitative data for filtration stability and overall removal efficiency as affected by operating temperature. Experiments were performed in a small pilot unit with a ceramic filter disk of the type Dia-Schumalith 10-20 (Fig. 1, described in more detail in Hemmer 2002 and Hemmer et al. 1999), using model flue gases containing SO{sub 2} and HCl, flyash …

This work describes the first approach to use High Pressure Mass Spectrometry (HPMS) for the quantification and analysis of alkali species in a gas stream downstream a sorbent bed of different tested alumosilicates.

A major concern for power systems that use coal as an energy source is the air emissions from the plant. Although certain air emissions are currently regulated, the emergence of new regulations for other pollutants are on the horizon. Gasification is an important strategy for increasing the utilization of abundant domestic coal reserves. The Department of Energy envisions increased use of gasification in the United States during the next twenty years. As such, the DOE Gasification Technologies Program will strive to approach a near-zero emissions goal with respect to pollutants. The mercury research detailed in this proposal addresses the Gas Cleaning and Conditioning program technology area.

The overall objective of this project is to develop technologies for cleaning/conditioning IGCC generated syngas to meet contaminant tolerance limits for fuel cell and chemical production applications. The specific goals are to develop processes for (1) removal of reduced sulfur species to sub-ppm levels using a hybrid process consisting of a polymer membrane and a regenerable ZnO-coated monolith or a mixed metal oxide sorbent; (2) removal of hydrogen chloride vapors to sub-ppm levels using an inexpensive, high-surface-area material; and (3) removal of NH3 with acidic adsorbents followed by conversion of this NH3 into nitrogen and water. Existing gasification technologies can effectively and efficiently convert a wide variety of carbonaceous feedstocks (coal, petcoke, resids, biomass, etc.) into syngas, which predominantly contains carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Unfortunately, the impurities present in these carbonaceous feedstocks are converted to gaseous contaminants such as H2S, COS, HCl, NH3, alkali macromolecules and heavy metal compounds (such as Hg) during the gasification process. Removal of these contaminants using conventional processes is thermally inefficient and capital intensive. This research and development effort is focused on investigation of modular processes for removal of sulfur, chlorine, nitrogen and mercury compounds from syngas at elevated temperature and pressures at significantly lower …

Sixty-four scientists from universities, national laboratories, and other research institutions worldwide met to evaluate the feasibility and potential of the Biosphere2 Laboratory (B2L) as an inclusive multi-user scientific facility (i.e., a facility open to researchers from all institutions, according to agreed principles of access) for earth system studies and engineering research, education, and training relevant to the mission of the United States Department of Energy (DOE).

The aim of this project is to support the development of a concept for a successful alkali removal. Two strategies are possible: optimizing the alkali retention potential of the coal ash slag in the combustion chamber and the liquid slag separators and separate alkali removal with solid sorbents (getters) at temperatures below 1450 C. Therefore in a first step the alkali partial pressure over coal ash slag should be determined in order to get information about the retention potential of the slag. The influence of additives on the retention potential of the slag should be investigated. The measurements should show if the alkali partial pressure over the slag is generally low enough in case of thermodynamic equilibrium. In case of too high alkali partial pressures a separate alkali removal is needed. Therefore in a second step commercial sorbent materials should be investigated concerning their sorption potential for alkalis. To get information about the influence of getter components on the sorption potential some mixtures of pure components, predicted by thermodynamic modeling to be most effective, should be investigated.

The Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation (SWPC) has proposed a novel scheme for polishing sulfur species, halides, and particulate from syngas to meet stringent cleaning requirements, the ''Ultra-Clean syngas polishing process.'' The overall development objective for this syngas polishing process is to economically achieve the most stringent cleanup requirements for sulfur species, halide species and particulate expected for chemical and fuel synthesis applications (total sulfur species < 60 ppbv, halides < 10 ppbv, and particulate < 0.1 ppmw). A Base Program was conducted to produce ground-work, laboratory test data and process evaluations for a conceptual feasibility assessment of this novel syngas cleaning process. Laboratory testing focused on the identification of suitable sulfur and halide sorbents and operating temperatures for the process. This small-scale laboratory testing was also performed to provide evidence of the capability of the process to reach its stringent syngas cleaning goals. Process evaluations were performed in the Base Program to identify process alternatives, to devise process flow schemes, and to estimate process material & energy balances, process performance, and process costs. While the work has focused on sulfur, halide, and particulate control, considerations of ammonia, and mercury control have also been included.