A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Concerned that Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) had not significantly improving the educational achievements of children at risk, Congress mandated major changes in 1994. States were required to adopt or develop challenging curriculum content and performance standards, assessments aligned with content standards, and accountability systems to measure progress in raising student achievement. In return, states were given greater flexibility in the use of Title I and other federal funds. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 augments the assessment and accountability requirements that states must implement and increases the stakes for schools that fail to make adequate progress. The 1994 legislation required states to comply with the requirements by January 2001 but allowed the Department of Education to extend that deadline. Education has granted waivers to 30 states to give them more time to meet all requirements. If states fail to meet the extended timeliness, they are subject to the withholding of some Title I administrative funds. Title I directors indicated that a state's ability to meet the 1994 requirements improved when both state leaders and state agency staff made …

The purpose of this report is to present analogue studies and literature reviews designed to provide qualitative and quantitative information to test and provide added confidence in process models abstracted for performance assessment (PA) and model predictions pertinent to PA. This report provides updates to studies presented in the Yucca Mountain Site Description (CRWMS M&O 2000 [151945], Section 13) and new examples gleaned from the literature, along with results of quantitative studies conducted specifically for the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project (YMP). The intent of the natural analogue studies was to collect corroborative evidence from analogues to demonstrate additional understanding of processes expected to occur during postclosure at a potential Yucca Mountain repository. The report focuses on key processes by providing observations and analyses of natural and anthropogenic (human-induced) systems to improve understanding and confidence in the operation of these processes under conditions similar to those that could occur in a nuclear waste repository. The process models include those that represent both engineered and natural barrier processes. A second purpose of this report is to document the various applications of natural analogues to geologic repository programs, focusing primarily on the way analogues have been used by the YMP. This report …

This report summarizes work performed by Argonne National Laboratory on fatigue and environmentally assisted cracking (EAC) in light water reactors (LWRs) from July 2000 to December 2000. Topics that have been investigated include (a) environmental effects on fatigue S-N behavior of primary pressure boundary materials, (b) irradiation-assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC) of austenitic stainless steels (SSs), and (c) EAC of Alloys 600 and 690. The fatigue strain-vs.-life data are summarized for the effects of various material, loading, and environmental parameters on the fatigue lives of carbon and low-alloy steels and austenitic SSs. Effects of the reactor coolant environment on the mechanism of fatigue crack initiation are discussed. Two methods for incorporating the effects of LWR coolant environments into the ASME Code fatigue evaluations are presented. Slow-strain-rate tensile tests and posttest fractographic analyses were conducted on several model SS alloys irradiated to {approx}0.9 x 10{sup 21} n {center_dot} cm{sup -2} (E > 1 MeV) in He at 289 C in the Halden reactor. The results were used to determine the influence of alloying and impurity elements on the susceptibility of these steels to IASCC. A fracture toughness J-R curve test was conducted on a commercial heat of Type 304 SS that …

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

Monthly report written by the Texas Daily Newspaper Association's (TDNA's) office manager, Darla Thompson, to Phil Berkebile providing a summary of revenues and account balances, programs, meetings, and other activities in the office during the previous month.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Site Seismic Safety Program was conceived in 1979 during the preparation of the site Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The impetus for the program came from the development of new methodologies and geologic data that affect assessments of geologic hazards at the LLNL site; it was designed to develop a new assessment of the seismic hazard to the LLNL site and LLNL employees. Secondarily, the program was also intended to provide the technical information needed to make ongoing decisions about design criteria for future construction at LLNL and about the adequacy of existing facilities. This assessment was intended to be of the highest technical quality and to make use of the most recent and accepted hazard assessment methodologies. The basic purposes and objectives of the current revision are similar to those of the previous studies. Although all the data and experience assembled in the previous studies were utilized to their fullest, the large quantity of new information and new methodologies led to the formation of a new team that includes LLNL staff and outside consultants from academia and private consulting firms. A peer-review panel composed of individuals from academia (A. Cornell, Stanford University), the Department …

Report documenting the partnership between DOEs Office of Industrial Technologies and the U.S. glass industry.

Green power marketing--the act of differentially selling electricity generated wholly or in part from renewable sources--has emerged in more than a dozen countries around the world. This report reviews green power marketing activity abroad to gain additional perspective on consumer demand and to discern key factors or policies that affect the development of green power markets. The objective is to draw lessons from experience in other countries that could be applicable to the U.S. market.

A hybrid configuration of a heat capacity laser (HCL) and a moving slab laser (MSL) has been studied. Multiple volumes of solid-state laser material are sequentially diode-pumped and their energy extracted. When a volume reaches a maximum temperature after a ''sub-magazine depth'', it is moved out of the pumping region into a cooling region, and a new volume is introduced. The total magazine depth equals the submagazine depth times the number of volumes. The design parameters are chosen to provide high duty factor operation, resulting in effective use of the diode arrays. The concept significantly reduces diode array cost over conventional heat capacity lasers, and it is considered enabling for many potential applications. A conceptual design study of the hybrid configuration has been carried out. Three concepts were evaluated using CAD tools. The concepts are described and their relative merits discussed. Because of reduced disk size and diode cost, the hybrid concept may allow scaling to average powers on the order of 0.5 MW/module.

Two different structural solutions have been proposed and studied for the D0 Run2b stave (Figure 1 and Figure 3). The way the stave structural stiffness is achieved in both designs is essentially the same: the structural material is displaced as far as possible from the neutral axis in order to increase the bending moment of the stave. The agreement of the measured data with what has been theoretically predicted is excellent. The C channel stave with dog-bones glued on top of the sensor (stave No.2) has outperformed the other mockups with a predicted sag of 51 {micro}m for a distributed load of 2.28 N/m [0.013 lbf/in] and a consequent natural frequency of 89.2Hz. The other three C channel staves with the dog-bones not glued on the sensor have a bending stiffness that is -19.0%, -10.8%, +4.0% of that of stave No.2, being 11.0%, 7.8%, 15.1% lighter respectively. An optimized stave structural proposal with 130.5% of the design stiffness within the mass budget is presented at the end of this paper.

The main objective of this study is to perform nonlinear dynamic earthquake time history analyses on Morrow Point Dam, which is located 263 km southwest of Denver, Colorado. This project poses many significant technical challenges, one of which is to model the entire Morrow Point Dam/Foundation Rock/Reservoir system which includes accurate geology topography. In addition, the computational model must be initialized to represent the existing dead loads on the structure and the stress field caused by the dead loads. To achieve the correct dead load stress field due to gravity and hydrostatic load, the computer model must account for the manner in which the dams were constructed. Construction of a dam finite element model with the correct as-built geometry of the dam structure and simply ''turning on'' gravity in the computer model will generally lead to an incorrect initial stress field in the structure. The sequence of segmented lifts typical of dam construction has a significant impact on the static stress fields induced in the dam. In addition, the dam model must also account for the interaction between the adjacent dam segments across the dam contraction joints. As a result of these challenges, it was determined that a significant amount …

Since October 2001 the development of the facility diagnostics for NIF has been funded by the NIF Director through the National NIF Diagnostic Program (NNDP). The current emphasis of the NNDP is on diagnostics for the early NIF quad scheduled to be available for experiment commissioning in FY03. During the past six months the NNDP has set in place processes for funding diagnostics, developing requirements for diagnostics, design reviews and monthly status reporting. Those processes are described in an interim management plan for diagnostics (''National NIF Diagnostic Program Interim Plan'', NIF-0081315, April 2002) and a draft Program Execution Plan (''Program Execution Plan for the National NlF Diagnostic Program'', NIF-0072083, October 2001) and documents cited therein. Work has been funded at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Bechtel Nevada at Los Alamos and Santa Barbara. There are no major technical risks with the early diagnostics. The main concerns relate to integration of the diagnostics into the facility, all such issues are being worked. This report is organized to show the schedule and budget status and a summary of Change Control Board actions for the past six months. The following …

A detailed description of the history of EPAct's State & Alternative Fuel Provider Program and what fleets need to do to comply to its regulations.

The BEFlux VAP directly compares data from the three Normal Incidence Perheliometers, shaded pyranometers, and shaded pyrgeometers at the SGP CF. Extensive analysis with several years of data has produced limits of typical ranges of agreement when these instruments are performing as expected. These limits are used to screen the data, and then the average is taken of the two that agree best, given that at least two instruments agree to within the established limits. This is done for the downwelling direct normal and diffuse shortwave, and the downwelling longwave. The total (global) downwelling shortwave is then the sum of the direct and diffuse components.

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This report makes observations or shows trends in the response and does not specifically provide conclusions or predict the onset of bulk uranium oxidation safety margins based on hole size. Comprehensive analysis will be provided in the future. The report should animate discussions about the results and what should be analyzed further in the final analysis. This report intends only to show the response of the breached multi-canister overpack (MCO) as a function of event time using the GOTH_SNF computer code. The response will be limited to physical quantities available on the exterior of the MCO. The GOTH_SNF model is approximate, because not all physical phenomenon was included in the model. Error estimates in the response are not possible at this time, because errors in the actual physical data are not known. Sensitivities in the results from variations in the physical data have not been pursued at this time, either. This effort was undertaken by the National Spent Nuclear Fuel Program to evaluate potential chemical reactivity issues of a degraded uranium metal spent nuclear fuel using the MCO fully loaded with Mark IV N-reactor fuel as the evaluation model. This configuration is proposed for handling in the Yucca Mountain Project …

Large numbers of fluid elastic structures are part of many power plant systems and vibration of these systems sometimes are responsible for plant shut downs. Earlier research at Cornell in this area had centered on nonlinear dynamics of fluid-elastic systems with low degrees of freedom. The focus of current research is the study of the dynamics of thousands of closely arrayed structures in a cross flow under both fluid and impact forces. This research is relevant to two areas: (1) First, fluid-structural problems continue to be important in the power industry, especially in heat exchange systems where up to thousands of pipe-like structures interact with a fluid medium. [Three years ago in Japan for example, there was a shut down of the Monju nuclear power plant due to a failure attributed to flow induced vibrations.] (2) The second area of relevance is to nonlinear systems and complexity phenomena; issues such as spatial temporal dynamics, localization and coherent patterns entropy measures as well as other complexity issues. Early research on flow induced vibrations in tube row and array structures in cross flow goes back to Roberts in 1966 and Connors in 1970. These studies used linear models as have many of …

During 2000, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) continued to develop techniques to rear chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha to sexual maturity in captivity and to monitor their reproductive performance under natural conditions. Eyed-eggs were collected to establish captive cohorts from three study streams and included 503 eyed-eggs from East Fork Salmon River (EFSR), 250 from the Yankee Fork Salmon River, and 304 from the West Fork Yankee Fork Salmon River (WFYF). After collection, the eyed-eggs were immediately transferred to the Eagle Fish Hatchery, where they were incubated and reared by family group. Juveniles collected the previous summer were PIT and elastomer tagged and vaccinated against vibrio Vibrio spp. and bacterial kidney disease before the majority (approximately 75%) were transferred to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Manchester Marine Experimental Station for saltwater rearing through sexual maturity. Smolt transfers included 158 individuals from the Lemhi River (LEM), 193 from the WFYF, and 372 from the EFSR. Maturing fish transfers from the Manchester facility to the Eagle Fish Hatchery included 77 individuals from the LEM, 45 from the WFYF, and 11 from the EFSR. Two mature females from the WFYF were spawned in captivity with four males in 2000. Only one …

Understanding the configuration of the eastern Snake River Plain aquifer's water table is made difficult, in part, due to borehole deviation in aquifer wells. A borehole has deviation if it is not vertical or straight. Deviation impairs the analysis of water table elevation measurements because it results in measurements that are greater than the true distance from the top of the well to the water table. Conceptual models of the water table configuration are important to environmental management decision-making at the INEEL; these models are based on measurements of depth to the water table taken from aquifer wells at or near the INEEL. When accurate data on the amount of deviation in any given borehole is acquired, then measurements of depth-to-water can be adjusted to reflect the true depth so more accurate conceptual models can be developed. Collection of additional borehole deviation data with gyroscopic logging is planned for selected wells to further our confidence in the quality of water level measurements. Selection of wells for the planned logging is based on qualitative and quantitative screening criteria. An existing data set from magnetic deviation logs was useful in establishing these criteria however, are considered less accurate than gyroscopic deviation logs …

Although robotic machines are routinely used for welding, such machines do not normally incorporate intelligent capabilities. We are studying the general problem of formulating usable levels of intelligence into welding machines. From our perspective, an intelligent machine should: incorporate knowledge of the welding process, know if the process is operating correctly, know if the weld it is making is good or bad, have the ability to learn from its experience to perform welds, and be able to optimize its own performance. To this end, we are researching machine architecture, methods of knowledge representation, decision making and conflict resolution algorithms, methods of learning and optimization, human/machine interfaces, and various sensors. This paper presents work on the machine architecture and the human/machine interface specifically for a robotic, gas metal arc welding cell. Although the machine control problem is normally approached from the perspective of having a central body of control in the machine, we present a design using distributed agents. A prime goal of this work is to develop an architecture for an intelligent machine that will support a modular, plug and play standard. A secondary goal of this work is to formulate a human/machine interface that treats the human as an …

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), Nexant Inc. and the Oregon State University (OSU) have developed a Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR) concept. The MASLWR is a small, safe and economic natural circulation pressurized light water reactor. MASLWR reactor module consists of an integral reactor/steam generator located in a steel cylindrical containment. The entire module is to be entirely shop fabricated and transported to site on most railways or roads. Two or more modules are located in a reactor building, each being submersed in a common, below grade cavity filled with water. For the most severe postulated accident, the volume of water in the cavity provides a passive ultimate heat sink for 3 or more days allowing the restoration of lost normal active heat removal systems. MASLWR thermal power of a single module is 150 MWt, primary system pressure 10.5 MPa, steam pressure1.52 MPa and the net electrical output is 35 - 50 MWe.

The usual strategy for solving the neutron diffusion equation in two or three dimensions by nodal methods is to reduce the multidimensional partial differential equation to a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) in the separate spatial coordinates. This reduction is accomplished by “transverse integration” of the equation.1 For example, in three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates, the three-dimensional equation is first integrated over x and y to obtain an ODE in z, then over x and z to obtain an ODE in y, and finally over y and z to obtain an ODE in x. Then the ODEs are solved to obtain onedimensional solutions for the neutron fluxes averaged over the other two dimensions. These solutions are found in regions (“nodes”) small enough for the material properties and cross sections in them to be adequately represented by average values. Because the solution in each node is an exact analytical solution, the nodes can be much larger than the mesh elements used in finite-difference solutions. Then the solutions in the different nodes are coupled by applying interface conditions, ultimately fixing the solutions to the external boundary conditions.

Alpha radiolysis of hydrogenous waste and packaging materials generates hydrogen gas in radioactive storage containers. For that reason, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) limits the flammable gas (hydrogen) concentration in the Transuranic Package Transporter-II (TRUPACT-II) containers to 5 vol% of hydrogen in air, which is the lower explosion limit. Consequently, a method is needed to prevent the build up of hydrogen to 5 vol% during the storage and transport of the TRUPACT-II containers (up to 60 days). One promising option is the use of hydrogen getters. These materials scavenge hydrogen from the gas phase and irreversibly bind it in the solid phase. One proven getter is a material called 1,4-bis (phenylethynyl) benzene, or DEB. It has the needed binding rate and capacity, but some of the chemical species that might be present in the containers could interfere with its ability to remove hydrogen. This project is focused upon developing a protective polymeric membrane coating for the DEB getter material, which comes in the form of small, irregularly shaped particles. This report summarizes the experimental results of the second phase of the development of the materials.