A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) management concerns persist despite enactment of the LLRW Policy Act of 1980, as amended, which made states responsible for providing for disposal of most LLRW. It also enumerated guidance and oversight responsibilities for DOE and NRC. When GAO last reported on LLRW disposal, in 1999, the only existing facility accepting the more highly radioactive types of LLRW (known as class B and C waste) from most states was expected to be full within 10 years. In this context, GAO examined (1) changes in LLRW conditions since 1999, (2) recent annual LLRW disposal volumes and potential future volumes, (3) any current or anticipated shortfalls in disposal availability, and (4) potential effects of any such shortfall."

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a municipality's finance director may simultaneously serve as a temporary municipal judge in the same city (RQ-0144-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether Government Code section 435.013(a) grants exclusive authority to the Texas Military Facilities Commission to construct, repair, and maintain facilities on its property (RQ-0147-GA).

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Small propellant pumps can reduce rocket hardware mass, while increasing chamber pressure to improve specific impulse. The maneuvering requirements for planetary ascent require an emphasis on mass, while those of orbiting spacecraft indicate that I{sub SP} should be prioritized during pump system development. Experimental efforts include initial testing with prototype lightweight components while raising pump efficiency to improve system I{sub SP}.

Weekly newspaper from Timpson, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Livingston, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Odem, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Hondo, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Front surface spectral control filters significantly improve the efficiency of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) converters. Tandem filter designs for 0.52 and 0.60 eV cells were fabricated. Energy and angle weighted spectral efficiencies of {approx}83% for the 0.52 eV application and {approx}76% for the 0.60 eV applications were achieved with {approx}78% angle weighted above bandgap transmission. Manufacturing demonstrations of both designs were completed with good yield. Design improvements were made using angle weighted spectral utilization and above bandgap transmission as refinement goals. Current development work addresses elimination of the plasma filter and alternate substrates.

Zeolites are extremely versatile. They can adsorb liquids and gases and serve as cation exchange media. They occur in nature as well cemented deposits. The Romans used blocks of zeolitized tuff as a building material. Using zeolites for the management of radioactive waste is not new, but a process by which the zeolites can be made to act as a cementing agent is. Zeolitic materials are relatively easy to synthesize from a wide range of both natural and man-made precursors. The process under study is derived from a well known method in which metakaolin (thermally dehydroxylated kaolin a mixture of kaolinite and smaller amounts of quartz and mica that has been heated to {approx}700 C) is mixed with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and water and reacted in slurry form (for a day or two) at mildly elevated temperatures. The zeolites form as finely divided powders containing micrometer ({micro}m) sized crystals. However, if the process is changed slightly and just enough concentrated sodium hydroxide solution is added to the metakaolinite to make a thick paste and then the paste is cured under mild hydrothermal conditions (60-200 C), the mixture forms a concrete-like ceramic material made up of distinct crystalline tectosilicate minerals (zeolites …

The objective of the proposed effort is to use a new approach to develop solution models of complex waste glass systems and spent fuel that are predictive with regard to composition, phase separation, and volatility. The effort will also yield thermodynamic values for waste components that are fundamentally required for corrosion models used to predict the leaching/corrosion behavior for waste glass and spent fuel material. This basic information and understanding of chemical behavior can subsequently be used directly in computational models of leaching and transport in geologic media, in designing and engineering waste forms and barrier systems, and in prediction of chemical interactions.

Weekly newspaper from Archer City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Stamford, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Canadian, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with some advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Rio Grande City, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Computer simulations of intense ion beams play a key role in the Heavy Ion Fusion research program. Along with analytic theory, they are used to develop future experiments, guide ongoing experiments, and aid in the analysis and interpretation of experimental results. They also afford access to regimes not yet accessible in the experimental program. The U.S. Heavy Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory and its collaborators have developed state-of-the art computational tools, related both to codes used for stationary plasmas and to codes used for traditional accelerator applications, but necessarily differing from each in important respects. These tools model beams in varying levels of detail and at widely varying computational cost. They include moment models (envelope equations and fluid descriptions), particle-in-cell methods (electrostatic and electromagnetic), nonlinear-perturbative descriptions (''{delta}f''), and continuum Vlasov methods. Increasingly, it is becoming clear that it is necessary to simulate not just the beams themselves, but also the environment in which they exist, be it an intentionally-created plasma or an unwanted cloud of electrons and gas. In this paper, examples of the application of simulation tools to intense ion beam physics are presented, including support of present-day experiments, fundamental beam physics studies, and the development of future experiments. …

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This report provides appropriations of Interior and Related Agencies for FY2004.

It was demonstrated that highly porous sol-gel derived iron (III) oxide materials could be reduced to sub-micron-sized metallic iron by heating the materials to intermediate temperatures in a hydrogen atmosphere. Through a large number of experiments complete reduction of the sol-gel based materials was realized with a variety of hydrogen-based atmospheres (25-100% H{sub 2} in Ar, N{sub 2}, CO{sub 2}, or CO) at intermediate temperatures (350 C to 700 C). All of the resulting sol-gel-derived metallic iron powders were ignitable by thermal methods, however none were pyrophoric. For comparison several types of commercial micron sized iron oxides Fe2O3, and NANOCAT were also reduced under identical conditions. All resulting materials were characterized by thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential thermal analysis (DTA), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), as well as scanning and transmission electron microscopies (SEM and TEM). In addition, the reduction of the iron oxide materials was monitored by TGA. In general the sol-gel materials were more rapidly reduced to metallic iron and the resulting iron powders had smaller particle sizes and were more easily oxidized than the metallic powders derived from the micron sized materials. The lack of pyrophoricity of the smaller fine metallic powders was unexpected and may in part …

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