This report is an introduction to selected House rules and practices governing the consideration of offset amendments to appropriations measures considered in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union (or Committee of the Whole).

This report looks at four issues dominating wildfire funding debates: the high cost of fire management, funding for fuel reduction, the federal role in protecting nonfederal lands, and post-fire rehabilitation. The Forest Service (FS) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) are responsible for protecting most federal lands from wildfires, however, many in Congress are concerned that wildfire costs are spiraling upward without a reduction in damages.

The I-O Model 1030 carbon analyzer has been qualified for use at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). The qualification was a side-by-side comparison of the Model 1030 system with the currently used Model 1010 Analyzer. This recommendation is based on side-by-side comparisons of the new unit to the currently used Model 1010 analyzer that are presented in this report. The side-by-side testing included standards and process samples. The standards, which were used for instrument calibration verifications in the measurement of total inorganic carbon (TIC) and of total organic carbon (TOC), were traceable back to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The process samples included TIC analyses of Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank samples and TOC analyses for Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) samples. After the Model 1030 has been used for production reporting, DWPF should consider an investigation into the uncertainties associated with the TOC measurements to determine how far below the 18,916 ppm limit DWPF must control the average of the measurements for a set of SME samples to account for the uncertainties of the measurements from this new analyzer. Based upon the results presented in this report, it is recommended that the Model 1030 carbon analyzer is …

This is a final report covering work done at University of Maryland to develop a Ballistic Electron Emission Luminescence (BEEL) microscope. This technique was intended to examine the carrier transport and photon emission in deeply buried optically-active layers and thereby provide a means for materials science to unmask the detailed consequences of experimentally controllable growth parameters, such as quantum dot size, statistics and orientation, and defect density and charge recombination pathways.

The process of recovering the waste in storage tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS) typically requires mixing the contents of the tank to ensure uniformity of the discharge stream. Mixing is accomplished with one to four slurry pumps located within the tank liquid. The slurry pump may be fixed in position or they may rotate depending on the specific mixing requirements. The high-level waste in Tank 48 contains insoluble solids in the form of potassium tetraphenyl borate compounds (KTPB), monosodium titanate (MST), and sludge. Tank 48 is equipped with 4 slurry pumps, which are intended to suspend the insoluble solids prior to transfer of the waste to the Fluidized Bed Steam Reformer (FBSR) process. The FBSR process is being designed for a normal feed of 3.05 wt% insoluble solids. A chemical characterization study has shown the insoluble solids concentration is approximately 3.05 wt% when well-mixed. The project is requesting a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) mixing study from SRNL to determine the solids behavior with 2, 3, and 4 slurry pumps in operation and an estimate of the insoluble solids concentration at the suction of the transfer pump to the FBSR process. The impact of cooling coils is not considered …

The ICS-3000 Ion Chromatography (IC) system installed in 221-S M-13 has been qualified for use. The qualification was a head to head comparison of the ICS-3000 with the currently used DX-500 IC system. The crosscheck work included standards for instrument calibration and calibration verifications and standards for individual anion analysis, where the standards were traceable back to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In addition the crosscheck work included the analysis of simulated Sludge Receipt Adjustment Tank (SRAT) Receipt, SRAT Product, and Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) samples, along with radioactive Sludge Batch 5 material from the SRAT and SME tanks. Based upon the successful qualification of the ICS-3000 in M-13, it is recommended that this task proceed in developing the data to qualify, by a head to head comparison of the two ICS-3000 instruments, a second ICS-3000 to be installed in M-14. The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) requires the analysis of specific anions at various stages of its processing of high level waste (HLW). The anions of interest to the DWPF are fluoride, formate, chloride, nitrite, nitrate, sulfate, oxalate, and phosphate. The anion analysis is used to evaluate process chemistry including formic acid/nitric acid additions to establish …

The vertical emittance of the low energy ring (LER) in the PEP-II B-Factory was reduced by using skew quadrupoles consisting of permanent magnet material. The advantages over electric quadrupoles or rotating existing normal quadrupoles are discussed. To assure a high field quality, a Biot-Savart calculation was used to cancel the natural 12-pole component by using different size poles over a few layers. A magnetic measurement confirmed the high quality of the magnets. After installation and adjusting the original electric 12 skew and 16 normal quadrupoles the emittance contribution from the region close to the interaction point, which was the biggest part in the original design, was considerably reduced. To strengthen the vertical behavior of the LER beam, a low emittance lattice was developed. It lowered the original vertical design emittance from 0.54 nm-rad to 0.034 nm-rad. In order to achieve this, additional skew quadrupoles were required to bring the coupling correction out of the arcs and closer to the detector solenoid in the straight (Fig. 1). It is important, together with low vertical dispersion, that the low vertical emittance is not coupled into the horizontal, which is what we get if the coupling correction continues into the arcs. Further details …

The Nippon Mercury/RA-3000 system installed in 221-S M-14 has been qualified for use. The qualification was a side-by-side comparison of the Nippon Mercury/RA-3000 system with the currently used Bacharach Mercury Analyzer. The side-by-side testing included standards for instrument calibration verifications, spiked samples and unspiked samples. The standards were traceable back to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The side-by-side work included the analysis of Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) Receipt, SRAT Product, and Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) samples. With the qualification of the Nippon Mercury/RA-3000 system in M-14, the DWPF lab will be able to perform a head to head comparison of a second Nippon Mercury/RA-3000 system once the system is installed. The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) analyzes receipt and product samples from the Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) to determine the mercury (Hg) concentration in the sludge slurry. The SRAT receipt is typically sampled and analyzed for the first ten SRAT batches of a new sludge batch to obtain an average Hg concentration. This average Hg concentration is then used to determine the amount of steam stripping required during the concentration/reflux step of the SRAT cycle to achieve a less than 0.6 wt% Hg …

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Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

This report describes statutory requirements for allocating congressional nominations to service academies. It also identifies the qualifications that must be met by potential nominees, as established by statute and each academy. Finally, sample documents that could be used by congressional offices at various stages of the nomination selection process are included.

This report covers steps taken by the Obama Administration, in conjunction with Department of Energy, to terminate the Yucca Mountain project.

The purpose of this report was to develop a comprehensive set of models for the City's main drainage-way system, to be utilized in developing flood protection alternatives, both structural and non-structural.