A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the economic and democratic assistance that the United States has provided to the Central Asian Republics (CAR) of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, focusing on: (1) what the Agency for International Development's (AID) economic and democratic reform initiatives in the CAR were designed to achieve, what has been accomplished, and what factors, if any, have limited the implementation of reforms; (2) whether lessons learned from similar AID programs in Central Europe and Russia have been applied in CAR; and (3) how AID ensures that its assistance funds in CAR are spent for intended purposes."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the status of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) X-33 Program, focusing on: (1) whether the X-33 Program is meeting the cost, schedule, and performance objectives established in the X-33 cooperative agreement; (2) how NASA's oversight responsibility was changed by the cooperative agreement; and (3) potential issues NASA may face as it moves toward a decision on whether to use Venture Star reusable launch vehicles (RLV) to service the International Space Station."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army's development and acquisition plans for command and control systems that will be part of future digitized battlefield units, focusing on the Army protection plan to determine whether it ensures sufficient assessments to test and develop the defensibility of the digitized battlefield against command and control warfare attacks."

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We performed temperature programmed desorption up to 500K on silica-reinforced polysiloxane in both solid and foamed forms (M9787 and M9750 respectively). Our data show that H{sub 2}O was the dominant desorbing species in both forms of silicone (on the order of 100 {micro}g of physisorbed water and 900 {micro}g of chemisorbed water per gram of polymer), which are expected to be very hydrophilic when dehydrated. Detailed studies of the TPD spectra of H{sub 2}O from the silicones and from the fumed silica fillers suggest that H{sub 2}O molecules preferentially adsorbed on the surface of silica particles contained in the silicones with activation energies of desorption of 15 {+-} 3 kcal/mol and 50 {+-} 10 kcal/mol. There was strong evidence of H{sub 2} desorption below 400K from the silicones. The equivalent concentration of H{sub 2} in the silicones was 0.44 {micro}g of H{sub 2} per gram of silicone. Other species desorbing from the silicones were CO, and CO{sub 2} with concentrations on the order of 2.5 {micro}g, and 1.6 {micro}g per gram of silicone and activation energies of desorption of 10 {+-} 2 kcal/mol and 9.5 {+-} 1.5 kcal/mol, respectively.

This document presents the Project's position on compliance with the SNF Project NRC Equivalency Criteria--HNF-SD-SNF-DE-003, Spent Nuclear Fuel Project Path Forward Additional NRC Requirements. No non-compliances are shown The compliance statements have been reviewed and approved by DOE. Open items are scheduled to be closed prior to project completion.

Cesium-137 has contaminated a large area of the wetlands on the Savannah River Site. Remediation of the contaminated wetlands is problematic because current techniques destroy the sensitive ecosystem and generate a higher dose to workers. To address this problem, we proposed a non-trusive, in situ technology to sequester 137Cs in sediments. One intention of this study was to provide information regarding a go/no go decision for future work. Since the proof-of-concept was successful and several minerals were identified as potential candidates for this technology, a go decision was made.

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Approximately 15,000 L of solution containing isotopes of americium and curium (Am/Cm) will undergo stabilization by vitrification at the Savannah River Site (SRS). Prior to vitrification, an in-tank pretreatment will be used to remove metal impurities from the solution using an oxalate precipitation process. Material balance calculations for this process, based on solubility data in pure nitric acid, predict approximately 80 percent of the plutonium in the solution will be lost to waste. Due to the uncertainty associated with the plutonium losses during processing, solubility experiments were performed to measure the recovery of plutonium during pretreatment and a subsequent precipitation process to prepare a slurry feed for a batch melter. A good estimate of the plutonium content of the glass is required for planning the shipment of the vitrified Am/Cm product to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).The plutonium solubility in the oxalate precipitation supernate during pretreatment was 10 mg/mL at 35 degrees C. In two subsequent washes with a 0.25M oxalic acid/0.5M nitric acid solution, the solubility dropped to less than 5 mg/mL. During the precipitation and washing steps, lanthanide fission products in the solution were mostly insoluble. Uranium, and alkali, alkaline earth, and transition metal impurities were soluble as …

High, best estimate, and low values are given for particulate inventories within an MCO basket containing freshly cleaned Mark 1A fuel. The findings are compared with the estimates of particulate inventories for an MCO basket containing freshly cleaned Mark IV fuel.

The procedure determines the energy production of a PV module for five reference days. The reference days represent possible operating environments and are qualitatively described as Hot Sunny, Cold Sunny, Hot Cloudy, Cold Cloudy, and Nice. Based on statistical weather criteria, these days were selected from the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). Besides the hourly solar radiation and meteorological data from the NSRDB, the reference days include air mass, angle of incidence, plane of array, and spectral irradiance for a south-facing PV module at latitude tilt, battery-charging voltage, and parameters f1 and f2 for determining PV module temperature. Indoor I-V curve measurements over a range of temperatures and irradiances characterize the electrical performance of a PV module and are used to determine factors to correct for non-linear performance when irradiance and temperature vary. They also serve as a matrix of reference I-V curves for translating to reference-day condition s. The sensitivity of a PV module to variations in the spectral distribution of the incident radiation is accounted for by using an incident irradiance. Differences in PV module thermal characteristics are accounted for by using a PV module's installed nominal operating cell temperature (INOCT) for input to the Fuentes temperature model. …

The water-filled K-Basins in the Hanford 100 Area have been used to store N-Reactor spent nuclear fuel (SNF) since the 1970s. Because some leaks in the basin have been detected and some of the fuel is breached due to handling damage and corrosion, efforts are underway to remove the fuel elements from wet storage. An Integrated Process Strategy (IPS) has been developed to package, dry, transport, and store these metallic uranium fuel elements in an interim storage facility on the Hanford Site (WHC 1995). Information required to support the development of the drying processes, and the required safety analyses, is being obtained from characterization tests conducted on fuel elements removed from the K-Basins. A series of whole element drying tests (reported in separate documents, see Section 8.0) have been conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)on several intact and damaged fuel elements recovered from both the K-East and K-West Basins. This report documents the results of the eighth of those tests, which was conducted on an N-Reactor outer fuel element removed from K-West canister 6513U. This element (referred to as Element 6513U) was stored underwater in the K-West Basin from 1983 until 1996. Element 6513U was subjected to a combination …

The purpose of this document is to determine the air emissions inventory of the Savannah River Site. To satisfy regulatory requirements, a new equation has been developed to determine original inventory amounts from unmonitored radionuclide emissions.

This Test Plan provides a test method to dedicate the leak detection relays used on the new Pumping and Instrumentation Control (PIC) skids. The new skids are fabricated on-site. The leak detection system is a safety class system per the Authorization Basis.

The water-filled K-Basins in the Hanford 100 Area have been used to store N-Reactor spent nuclear fuel (SNF) since the 1970s. Because some leaks in the basin have been detected and some of the fuel is breached due to handling damage and corrosion, efforts are underway to remove the fuel elements from wet storage. An Integrated Process Strategy (IPS) has been developed to package, dry, transport, and store these metallic uranium fuel elements in an interim storage facility on the Hanford Site (WHC 1995). Information required to support the development of the drying processes, and the required safety analyses, is being obtained from characterization tests conducted on fuel elements removed from the K-Basins. A series of whole element drying tests (reported in separate documents, see Section 7.0) have been conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)(a)on several intact and damaged fuel elements recovered from both the K-East and K-West Basins. This report documents the results of a test ''dry-run'' conducted prior to the eighth and last of those tests, which was conducted on an N-Reactor outer fuel element removed from K-West canister6513U. The system used for the dry-run test was the Whole Element Furnace Testing System, described in Section 2.0, …

Free fall drop testing of unloaded SP981 reservoirs was conducted by Savannah River Technology Center in the Materials Test Facility. The testing consisted of dropping eight aged and two unaged reservoirs on their stems at impact angles of 88 degrees and 70 degrees from heights of approximately 4 and 6 foot above a hardened steel surface.

Due to several interesting findings on both adaptive survival responses (ASRs) and DNA mismatch repair (MMR), this grant was separated into two discrete Specific Aim sets (each with their own discrete hypotheses). The described experiments were simultaneously performed.

We report results from experiments on the evaporative chemical evolution of synthetic J13 water, representative of water from well J13, a common reference water in the Yucca Mountain Project. Data include anion and cation analysis and qualitative mineral identification for a series of open system experiments, with and without crushed tuff present, conducted at sub-boiling temperatures. Ca and Mg precipitated readily as carbonates and anions Cl, F, NO{sub 3} and SO{sub 4} remained in solution in nearly identical ratios. The pH stabilized at about 10. After {approx} 1000x concentration, the minerals formed were amorphous silica, aragonite and calcite. The presence of tuff appears to have very little effect on the relative distribution of the anions in solution, except for possibly F, which had a relatively lower concentration ratio. The Si was lower in the solutions with tuff present suggesting that the tuff enhances SiO{sub 2} precipitation. Even though the tools to model highly-concentrated salt solutions are limited, we compare our experimental results with the results of geochemical models, with (perhaps) surprising good results. In response to different assumed CO{sub 2} levels, pH varied, but anion concentrations were not greatly affected.

This report details the efforts by engineers at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) to evaluate the reliability of water-cooled radiation absorbers used in the NSLS X-ray ring. The absorbers on this report are part of the X-9 and X-29 dipole vacuum chambers. The absorbers are located at the intersection (crotch) of the beamline exit ports with the electron beam chamber, and are generally referred to as ''crotches''. The purpose of this analysis was to demonstrate the thermal reliability of the crotches under operating conditions that will be present over the expected life of the ring. The efforts described include general engineering layouts, engineering calculations, finite element analysis (FEA), results and conclusions of the analysis, and future design recommendations.

At near neutral pH and at applied potentials above the threshold potential for localized breakdown of the passive film, virtually all of the dissolved chromium appeared to be in the hexavalent oxidation state (Cr(VI)). In acidic environments, such as crevice solutions formed during the crevice corrosion of 316L and C-22 samples in 4 M NaCl, virtually all of the dissolved chromium appeared to be in the trivalent oxidation state (Cr(III)). These general observations appear to be consistent with the Pourbaix diagram for chromium (Pourbaix 1974), pp. 307-321. At high pH and high anodic polarization (pH {approximately} 8 and 800 mV vs. SHE), the predominate species is believed to be the soluble chromate anion (CrO{sub 4}{sup 2{minus}}). At the same pH, but lower polarization (pH {approximately} 8 and 0 mV vs. SHE), the predominate species are believed to be precipitates such as trivalent Cr(OH){sub 3} {center_dot} n(H{sub 2}O) and hexavalent Cr{sub 2}O{sub 3}. In acidified environments such as those found in crevices (pH < 3), soluble Cr{sup 3+} is expected to form over a wide range of potential extending from 400 mV vs. SHE to approximately 1200 mV vs. SHE. Again, this is consistent with the observations from the creviced samples. …