The work described in this activity plan addresses Information Need 2.7.3 of the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Plan (l), which reads Determination that the design criteria in lOCFR60.130 through 60.133 and any appropriate additional design objectives pertaining to criticality control have been met. This work falls under section WBS 1.2.2.5 2 (Basket Materials) of WBS 1.2.2.5 (Waste Package Materials) in the Work Breakdown Structure of the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project.

Ten years after hosting the First International Mammalian Genome Conference in Paris in 1986, Dr. Jean-Louis Guenet presided over the Tenth Conference at the Pasteur Institute, October 7--10, 1996. The 1986 conference was a satellite to the Human Gene Mapping Workshop and had approximately 50 attendees. The 1996 meeting was attended by 300 scientists from around the world. In the interim, the number of mapped loci in the mouse increased from 1,000 to over 20,000. This report contains a listing of the program and its participants, and two articles that review the meeting and the role of the laboratory mouse in the Human Genome project. More than 200 papers were presented at the conference covering the following topics: International mouse chromosome committee meetings; Mutant generation and identification; Physical and genetic maps; New technology and resources; Chromatin structure and gene regulation; Rate and hamster genetic maps; Informatics and databases; and Quantitative trait analysis.

On May 26, 1994, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) issued Recommendation 94-1, which expressed the board`s concern about nuclear materials left in the manufacturing pipeline after the US halted its nuclear weapons production activities. The DNFSB emphasized the need for remediation of these materials. As part of Recommendation 94-1, the DNFSB defined research objectives as follows: that a research program be established to fill any gaps in the information base needed for choosing among the alternate processes to be used in safe conversion of various types of fissile materials to optimal forms for safe interim storage and the longer-term disposition. To achieve this objective a research and technology development program with two elements is needed: a technology-specific program that is focused on treating and storing materials safety, with concomitant development of storage criteria and surveillance requirements, centered around 3- and 8-year targets; and a core technology program to augment the knowledge base about general chemical and physical processing and storage behavior and to assure safe interim material storage until disposition policies are formulated. The paper reports the progress on the following: materials identification and surveillance; stabilization process development; surveillance and monitoring; core technologies; and project management.

This document provides an overview of both the present status of the 340 Complex (within Hanford`s 300 Area), and of tasks associated with the deactivation of segments associated with radioactive, mixed liquid waste receipt, storage, and shipping. The plan also describes activities that will allow portions of the 340 Complex to remain in service.

Using LAHET, the Los Alamos High-Energy Transport code, the authors calculated the radiation hazard from an 800-MeV proton beam spill at the bending magnet. Neutron doses were calculated at an area above the 84.0-cm-thick concrete roof, where there existed a gap with only 30.48-cm concrete shielding. The authors also studied the effect of the gap and proposed a corrective action.

This document reports on a summer program to encourage students to pursue scientific or engineering professions. The topics of the report include a description of the recruitment program, selection criteria for participants, workshops, nine follow up activities, research projects and student`s presentation, and field trips. Course descriptions and schedule are included as appendices.

The results of the radiological and nonradiological environmental monitoring programs for 1996 at the Naval Reactors Facility (NRF) are presented in this report. The NRF is located on the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and contains three naval reactor prototypes and the Expended Core Facility, which examines developmental nuclear fuel material samples, spent naval fuel, and irradiated reactor plant components/materials. The results obtained from the environmental monitoring programs verify that releases to the environment from operations at NRF were in accordance with state and federal regulations. Evaluation of the environmental data confirms that the operation of NRF continues to have no adverse effect on the quality of the environment or the health and safety of the general public. Furthermore, a conservative assessment of radiation exposure to the general public as a result of NRF operations demonstrated that the dose received by any member of the public was well below the most restrictive dose limits prescribed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

The National Technical Workgroup on Mixed Waste Thermal Treatment held its annual meeting in Atlanta Georgia on March 12-14, 1996. The National Technical Workgroup (NTW) and this meeting were sponsored under an interagency agreement between EPA and DOE. The 1996 Annual Meeting was hosted by US DOE Oak Ridge Operations in conjunction with Lockheed Martin Energy Systems - Center for Waste Management. A new feature of the annual meeting was the Permit Writer Panel Session which provided an opportunity for the state and federal permit writers to discuss issues and potential solutions to permitting mixed waste treatment systems. In addition, there was substantial discussion on the impacts of the Waste Combustion Performance Standards on mixed waste thermal treatment which are expected to proposed very soon. The 1996 meeting also focussed on two draft technical resource documents produced by NTW on Waste Analysis Plans and Compliance Test Procedures. Issues discussed included public involvement, waste characterization, and emission issues.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) administers the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project to clean up uranium mill tailings and other surface contamination at 24 abandoned uranium mill sites in 10 states. One of these abandoned mill sites was near the town of Gunnison, Colorado. Surface remediation was completed at the Gunnison site in December 1995. Remedial action resulted in the elimination of 4.3 acres of wetlands and mitigation of this loss is through the enhancement of 17.8 acres of riparian plant communities in six spring-fed areas on US Bureau of Land Management mitigation sites. A five-year monitoring program was then implemented to document the response of vegetation and wildlife to the exclusion of livestock. This report provides the results of the third year of the monitoring program.

The Pacific Northwest Loads and Resources Study (White Book) is published annually by BPA and establishes the planning basis for supplying electricity to customers. It serves a dual purpose. First, the White Book presents projections of regional and Federal system load and resource capabilities, along with relevant definitions and explanations. Second, the White Book serves as a benchmark for annual BPA determinations made pursuant to the 1981 regional power sales contracts. Specifically, BPA uses the information in the White Book for determining the notice required when customers request to increase or decrease the amount of power purchased from BPA. Aside from these purposes, the White Book is used for input to BPA`s resource planning process. The White Book compiles information obtained from several formalized resource planning reports and data submittals, including those from the Northwest Power Planning Council (Council) and the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee (PNUCC). 11 figs., 12 tabs.

Tennessee`s Resource Valley, a regional economic development organization, was asked to facilitate a two-year, $750,000 grant from the Department of Energy. The grant`s purpose was to make the East Tennessee region less dependent on federal funds for its economic well-being and to increase regional awareness of the advantages of proximity to the Department of Energy facilities in Oak Ridge. The mission of Tennessee`s Resource Valley is to market the business location advantages of mid-East Tennessee to corporate decision makers and to facilitate regional initiatives that impact the creation of quality job opportunities. Tennessee`s Resource Valley represents fifteen (15) counties in East Tennessee: Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Jefferson, Knox, Loudon, Monroe, Morgan, Roane, Scott, Sevier and Union.

An underground steel reinforced concrete transfer and storage canal was built in 1943 and operated as an integral part of the Oak Ridge Graphite Reactor Building (3001) until 1963 when the reactor was shutdown. During operation, the canal was used for under water transfer of irradiated materials and other metals from the reactor in Building 3001 to the Building 3019 hot cell for further processing. After shutdown of the reactor, the canal was used for storage of irradiated materials and fission products until 1990 when the larger materials were removed and stored in the Department of Energy (DOE) approved solid waste management storage facilities. At that time it was discovered that a considerable amount of sludge had accumulated over the intervening years and subsequent analysis showed that the sludge contained Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) materials that violated quantities allowed by the RCRA regulations. It was also recognized in 1990 that the canal was losing water to evaporation and the ground at the rate of approximately 400 gallons per day. To maintain water quality; i.e., radionuclide content at or near DOE derived concentration guidelines (DCG), the water in the canal is constantly demineralized using a demineralizer in the Building …

Hot gas particulate filters are key components for the successful commercialization of advanced coal-based power-generation systems such as Pressurized Fluidized-bed Combustion (PFBC), including second- generation PFBC, and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycles (IGCC). Current generation monolithic ceramic filters are subject to catastrophic failure because they have very low resistance to crack propagation. To overcome this problem, a damage -tolerant ceramic filter element is needed. Westinghouse, with Techniweave as a major subcontractor, is conducting a three-phase program aimed at providing advanced candle filters for a 1996 pilot scale demonstration in one of the two hot gas filter systems at Southern Company Service`s Wilsonville PSD Facility. The Base Program (Phases I and II) objective is to develop and demonstrate the suitability of the Westinghouse/Techniweave next generation composite candle filter for use PFBC and/or IGCC power generation systems. The optional Task (Phase III, Task 5) objective is to fabricate, inspect and ship to Wilsonville 50 advanced candle filters for pilot scale testing.

The M3D (Multi-level 3D) tokamak simulation project aims at the simulation of tokamak plasmas using a multi-level tokamak code package. Several current applications using MHD and Extended-MHD models are presented; high-{beta} disruption studies in reversed shear plasmas using the MHD level MH3D code, {omega}{sub *i} stabilization and nonlinear island saturation of TAE mode using the hybrid particle/MHD level MH3D-K code, and unstructured mesh MH3D{sup ++} code studies. In particular, three internal mode disruption mechanisms are identified from simulation results which agree which agree well with experimental data.

The objectives of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) {open_quotes}Engineering Development of Advanced Coal-Fired Low-Emission Boiler Systems{close_quotes} (LEBS) project are to dramatically improve environmental performance of future pulverized coal-fired power plants, to increase their efficiency and to reduce their cost of electricity using near-term technologies, i.e., advanced technologies that are partially developed. The overall objective is to expedite commercialization of the technologies that are developed. The paper describes the work by the ABB team on the LEBS project which is part of the DOE`s Combustion 2000 Program. A major deliverable of the Project is the design of a 400 MWe commercial generating unit (CGU). The design being developed by the ABB team is projected to meet all the project objectives and to reduce emissions of NO{sub x}, SO{sub 2} and particulates to one-third to one-sixth NSPS limits while increasing net station efficiency significantly and reducing the cost of electricity. Development activities supporting the design work are described in the paper.

ABB Combustion Engineering, Inc. is one of three contractors executing Phases 1, 2 and 3 of the Department of Energy project entitled Engineering Development of Advanced Coal-Fired Low-Emission Boiler Systems (LEBS). Phase 1 has been completed and Phase 2 is scheduled for completion on September 30, 1996. The following major activities are being carried out in parallel in Phase 2 and this paper is a status report on this work: (1) in-furnace NOx reduction; (2) catalytic filter optimization; (3) add Kalina cycle to POCTF; and (4) POCTF design and licensing. The in-furnace NOx reduction work has been completed and, therefore, a description of this work comprises the major part of this paper.

Portable parallel programming has been hampered by the lack of a single, standard, portable application-programmer`s interface (API) for parallel I/O. Instead, the programmer must choose from several different APIs, many of which are not portable. To alleviate this problem, the authors have developed an abstract-device interface for parallel I/O, called ADIO. ADIO is not intended as a new API; rather, it is a strategy for implementing other APIs in a simple, portable, and efficient manner. ADIO facilitates the implementation of any existing or new API on any existing or new file system. ADIO thus enables users to experiment with different APIs, a feature that, they think, would help in the definition of a standard API. It also makes existing applications portable across a wide range of platforms. In this paper, they introduce the concept of ADIO. They describe the design of ADIO and its use in implementing APIs. They have currently implemented subsets of the Intel PFS, IBM PIOFS, and MPI-IO APIs on both the PFS and PIOFS file systems. As a result, they are able to run IBM PIOFS applications on the Intel Paragon, Intel PFS applications on the IBM SP, and MPI-IO applications on both systems. They report …

Interesting developments in accelerators have shown that they can be used as {open_quote}factory{close_quote}-type systems with the choice of technology dependent on the specific requirements of the application. The status and future possibilities for cyclotrons and linear accelerators are compared briefly, based on discussions at a break-out session on accelerators. Only high power systems with beam powers in excess of a MW average power were considered.

Seismic characterization at the regional level requires accurate determination of phases and travel times for many combinations of stations and events. An important consideration in the process is the accuracy of event locations. The LLNL Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Research Program is currently working on data from the Middle East and North Africa, where seismic station coverage is relatively sparse and ``ground truth`` seismic source information is practically nonexistent. In this report the investigator use after shock studies as a source of local ground truth. He evaluates teleseismic location accuracy by comparing hypocenters determined by local networks with those determined teleseismically [e.g. the International Seismological Center (ISC) and the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC)]. Epicentral locations, origin times, and depth determinations of events from three aftershocks studies (Algeria, Armenia, and Iran) and one local network study (Iran) are compared with ISC and NEIC locations for the same events. The key parameter for the ISC locations is the number of observations used in the location determination. For more than 40-50 observations, the agreement rapidly diminishes and ISC locations can differ from local determinations by as much as 80 km or more. Events in Iran show a distinct bias of ISC location …

Condensation reaction of a propionate with formaldehyde is a novel route for synthesis of methyl methacrylate (MMA). The reaction mechanism involves a proton abstraction from the propionate on the basic sites and activation of the aliphatic aldehyde on the acidic sites of the catalyst. The acid-base properties of ternary V-Si-P oxide catalysts and their relation to the NWA yield in the vapor phase condensation of formaldehyde with propionic anhydride has been studied for the first time. Five different V-Si-P catalysts with different atomic ratios of vanadium, silicon, and phosphorous were synthesized, characterized, and tested in a fixed-bed microreactor system. A V-Si-P 1:10:2.8 catalyst gave the maximum condensation yield of 56% based on HCHO fed at 300{degrees}C and 2 atm and at a space velocity of 290 cc/g cat{center_dot}h. A parameter called the ``q-ratio`` has been defined to correlate the condensation yields to the acid-base properties. The correlation of q-ratio with the condensation yield shows that higher q-ratios are more desirable. The long-term deactivation studies on the V-Si-P 1: 10:2.8 catalyst at 300{degrees}C and 2 atm and at a space velocity of 290 cc/g cat{center_dot}h show that the catalyst activity drops by a factor of nearly 20 over a 180 h …

The project was initiated to assist the State of Montana to develop a methodology to ameliorate acid mine drainage problems associated with the abandoned mines located in the Stockett/Sand Coulee area near Great Falls, Montana. Extremely acidic water is continuously discharging from abandoned coal mines in the Stockett/Sand Coulee area at an estimated rate of greater than 600 acre-feet per year (about 350 to 400 gallons per minute). Due to its extreme acidity, the water is unusable and is contaminating other water supplies. Most of the local alluvial aquifers have been contaminated, and nearly 5% of the private wells that were tested in the area during the mid-1980`s showed some degree of contamination. Significant government money has been spent replacing water supplies due to the magnitude of this problem. In addition, millions of dollars have been spent trying to remediate acid mine drainage occurring in this coal field. To date, the techniques used have focused on the management and containment of mine waters, rather than designing technologies that would prevent the formation of acid mine drainage.

Acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data is part of the core data for the US JGOFS Arabian Sea project, along with hydrographic and nutrient data. Seventeen cruises are scheduled to take place between September 1994 and January 1996 on the R/V T.G. Thompson. Seven of the cruises follow a standard cruise track, taking hydrographic, chemical and biological measurements. The rest of the cruises, which take place generally within the standard cruise region defined by a set track, are for the deployment and recovery of moored equipment and towing of a SeaSoar. Detailed description of ADCP hardware, the AutoADCP data acquisition system, and the collection of navigation and compass data on the Thompson is documented in Section 2. Followed by data collection for each cruise together with a cruise track, Section 3 presents the processing and analysis of velocity and acoustic backscatter intensity data. Section 5 shows results of profile quality diagnosis.

Weiss Associates is conducting the following three phase program investigating the in-situ application of acoustically enhanced remediation (AER) of contaminated unconsolidated soil and ground water under both saturated and unsaturated conditions: Phase I-- laboratory scale parametric investigation; Phase II--technology Scaling; and Phase III--large scale field tests. AER addresses the need for NAPL (either lighter or denser than water: LNAPL or DNAPL, respectively) in high and low permeability sediments, and the remediation of other types of subsurface contaminants (e.g., metals, radionuclides) in low permeability soils. This program has been placed in the U.S. Department of Energy`s (DOE`s) DNAPL product. Phase I indicated that AER could be used to effectively remediate NAPL in high permeability soil, and that removal of NAPL from low permeability soil could be increased since the water flux through these soils was significantly increased. Phase II, Technology Scaling, the subject of this paper, focused on (1) evaluating the characteristics of an AER field deployment system, (2) developing DNAPL flow and transport performance data under acoustic excitation, (3) predicting the effect of acoustic remediation in three-dimensional unconsolidated hydrogeologic conditions, (4) conducting an engineering analysis of acoustical sources, and (5) identifying candidate field site(s) for large-scale field testing of the …

The atmospheric monitor conceptual design is based on a pulsed CO{sub 2} laser. The narrow laser lines provide high spectral selectivity in the 9-11 {mu}m region, within the 8-14 {mu}m ``fingerprint`` region where most large molecules have unique spectral absorption signatures. Laser power has been chosen so that topological objects, e.g., trees or buildings, as far as 4 km can be used as backreflectors, but the laser intensity is sufficiently low that the laser beam is eye-safe. Time-of-flight measurements give the distance to the topological reflector. The lidar system is augmented with an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) which measures the thermal emission spectra from 3 to 14 {mu}m with a 3 cm{sup -1} passband. Sensitivity to narrow emission lines is enhanced by derivative spectroscopy in which the passband of the AOTF is dithered via the rf drive. Path-averaged concentrations are determined from the emission intensity and laser- determined range.