The objective is to develop and test various integrated solar heating, cooling and domestic hot water systems, and to evaluate their performance. Systems composed of new, as well as previously tested, components are carefully integrated so that effects of new components on system performance can be clearly delineated. The SEAL-DOE program includes six tasks which have received funding for the 1991--92 fifteen-month period. These include: (1) a project employing isothermal operation of air and liquid solar space heating systems; (2) a project to build and test several generic solar water heaters; (3) a project that will evaluate advanced solar domestic hot water components and concepts and integrate them into solar domestic hot water systems; (4) a liquid desiccant cooling system development project; (5) a project that will perform system modeling and analysis work on solid desiccant cooling systems research; and (6) a management task. The objectives and progress in each task are described in this report. 6 figs.

The objective of proposed research is development of catalysts with enhanced slurry phase activity and better selectivity to fuel range products, through a more detailed understanding and systematic studies of the effects of pretreatment procedures and promoters/binders (silica) on catalyst performance.

An imaging beamline based on a Kirkpatrick-Baez mirror configuration has been designed to image the electron beam in the ALS storage ring, to measure its size and shape. The electron beam emittance will be small ({epsilon}h = 3.4 {times} 10{sup {minus}9} m rad) and the quality of the image is extremely sensitive to surface figure distortion of the mirrors. Thermal distortions and surface temperatures have been calculated for radiatively cooled mirrors of various materials in a search for a simple design which avoids water cooling. The choice of mirror material and the thermal and mechanical design is discussed. 6 refs.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on year 2000 readiness of State Employment Security Agencies' (SESA) unemployment insurance benefits and tax systems and determined the reported status of whether these systems have been independently verified and validated for year 2000 compliance. GAO also determined whether SESAs have submitted contingency plans for continuity of business operations."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed Amtrak's overall financial condition, its progress in becoming free of operating subsidies, its use of the Taxpayer Relief Act (TRA) of 1997 funds, and its need for capital investment to improve quality of service."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed its observations on the initial implementation of the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act of 1998, focusing on: (1) the progress to date in developing and releasing agencies' FAIR Act inventories; (2) the status of the initial steps taken to implement the FAIR Act; and (3) issues related to the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the General Services Administration FAIR Act inventories."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the implementation of the Community Policing Act, focusing on statutory requirements for implementing the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the export of high performance computers to countries of concern that might use the computers for military or nuclear proliferation purposes, focusing on whether: (1) exporters' notifications to the Department of Commerce of proposed sales of high performance computers to countries of concern have resulted in any license applications and what action was taken on these licenses; and (2) Commerce is verifying the use of high performance computers after their export to these countries."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) efforts to address the year 2000 computer problem, focusing on the: (1) year 2000 readiness of automated systems that support the delivery of veterans' benefits and health care services, the compliance status of biomedical equipment used in patient care, and the year 2000 readiness of the pharmaceutical and medical-surgical manufacturers on which VA relies; and (2) Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) year 2000 efforts to address biomedical equipment and pharmaceutical products."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on performance management and measurement practices that could position regulatory agencies to more effectively implement the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993."

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) is a synchrotron radiation facility nearing completion at LBL. As a third-generation machine, the ALS is designed to produce intense light from bend magnets, wigglers, and undulators (insertion devices). The facility will include a 50 MeV electron linear accelerator, a 1.5 GeV booster synchrotron, beam transport lines, a 1--2 GeV storage ring, insertion devices, and photon beam lines. Currently, the beam injection systems are being commissioned, and the storage ring is being installed. Electron beam position monitors (BPM) are installed throughout the accelerator and constitute the major part of accelerator beam diagnostics. The design of the BPM instruments is complete, and 50 units have been constructed for use in the injector systems. We are currently fabricating 100 additional instruments for the storage ring. In this paper I discuss engineering fabrication, testing and performance of the beam pickup electrodes and the BPM electronics.

The program for providing water cooled metal optics for the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley is reviewed with respect to fabrication and metrology of the surfaces. Materials choices, surface figure and smoothness specifications, and metrology systems for measuring the plated metal surfaces are discussed. Results from prototype mirrors and grating blanks will be presented, which show exceptionally low microroughness and mid-period error. We will briefly describe out improved version of the Long Trace Profiler, and its importance to out metrology program. We have completely redesigned the mechanical, optical and computational parts of the profiler system with the cooperation of Peter Takacs of Brookhaven, Continental Optical, and Baker Manufacturing. Most important is that one of our profilers is in use at the vendor to allow testing during fabrication. Metrology from the first water cooled mirror for an ALS beamline is presented as an example. The preplating processing and grinding and polishing were done by Tucson Optical. We will show significantly better surface microroughness on electroless nickel, over large areas, than has been reported previously.

The objectives of this work are to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that are responsible for radiation-induced DNA damage. The overall goal is to understand the relationship between the chemical and structural changes produced by ionizing radiation in DNA and the resulting impairment of biological function expressed as carcinogenesis or cell death. The studies are based on theoretical explorations of possible mechanisms that link initial radiation damage in the form of base and sugar damage to conformational changes in DNA. These mechanistic explorations should lead to the formulation of testable hypothesis regarding the processes of impairment of regulation of gene expression, alternation in DNA repair, and damage to DNA structure involved in cell death or cancer.

Tank 16 is a High Level Radioactive Waste tank in the H-Area Tank Farm on the Savannah River Site that was placed into service in May 1959. A leak was detected in one of the construction weld joints while the tank was being filled. Before jet evacuation of the tank waste was completed, the leak overflowed the annulus pan and an estimated 16 to 700 gallons of waste escaped to the environment (soil and groundwater) over a six hour period contaminating approximately 1,600--70,000 cubic feet of soil with up to 5000 curies of activity (principally Cs[sup 137]). The Tank 16 bottom is constructed below the groundwater table which resulted in almost immediate contamination of that medium. Low groundwater flow rates, the ion exchange property of adjacent soils, and the distance to the nearest surface water bodies (1,500 to 8,000 feet) indicates that surface water and sediment outcrop of contaminates may be expected between 44 and 530 years (Poe et al., 1974). Remedial action objectives consist of medium-specific and operable unit specific goals for protecting human health and the environment. These objectives are specific and do not limit the range of alternatives that may be developed.A range of remedial technologies, which …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a city is authorized to combine in a single proposition proposals for voting on adoption of an economic development tax under section 4B, V.T.C.S. article 5190.6 and an additional sales and use tax under Tax Code section 321.101(b) (ID# 34757)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a commissioners court may decline to permit a particular individual to speak at a public meeting (ID# 38709)

Several membranes have been investigated for use in a membrane reactor. Porous VYCOR has been tested for permeability changes with temperature. Three-sectional VYCOR membranes, with a porous central section, have been fabricated and tested in the experimental setup. Catalysts for methane coupling have been reviewed in the literature and five catalysts have been selected. Modeling studies of the methane oxidative coupling reaction in different reactor configurations shows higher C{sub 2} selectivity and yield with membrane reactors as compared to conventional packed bed reactors.

This document provides a discussion of the technical progress on DOE/PETC project number DE-AC22-92PC91338, {open_quotes}High Efficiency SO{sub 2} Removal Testing{close_quotes}, for the time period 1 July through 30 September, 1993. The project involves testing at six full-scale utility flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems, to evaluate low capital cost upgrades that may allow these systems to achieve up to 98% SO{sub 2} removal efficiency. The upgrades to be evaluated primarily involve the addition of organic acid buffers to the FGD systems. The {open_quotes}base{close_quotes} project involved testing at the Tampa Electric Company Big Bend station. As of September 1993, all five potential options to the base program had been exercised by DOE, involving testing at the Hoosier Energy Merom Station (Option I), the Southwestern Electric Power Company Pirkey Station (Option II), the PSI Energy Gibson Station (Option III), the Duquesne Light Elrama Station (Option IV), and the New York State Electric and Gas Company Kintigh Station (Option V). As of September 1993, testing has been completed for the base project and for Options 1 and 2, has begun but not been completed for Options III and IV, and has not yet begun for Option V. This document is divided into five sections. …

This DOE research project was established to document the integrated team approach for solving reservoir engineering problems. A field study integrating the disciplines of geology, geophysics, and petroleum engineering will be the mechanism for documenting the integrated approach. This is an area of keen interest to the oil and gas industry. The goal will be to provide tools and approaches that can be used to detect reservoir compartments, reach a better reserve estimate, and improve profits early in the life of a field.

The Materials Technology Section (MTS) of the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) was asked to demonstrate the practicality of recycling previously contaminated stainless steel components such as reactor heat exchanger heads, process water piping and slug buckets into 208 liters (55 gallon) drums and 2.8 cubic meter (100 ft{sup 3}) storage boxes. Radioactively contaminated stainless steel scrap will be sent to several industrial partners where it will be melted, decontaminated/cast into ingots, and rolled into plate and sheet and fabricated into the drums and boxes. As part of this recycle initiative, MTS was requested to demonstrate that radioactively contaminated Type 304L stainless steel could be remelted and cast to meet the applicable ASTM specification for fabrication of drums and boxes. In addition, MTS was requested to develop the technical basis of melt decontamination and establish practicality of using this approach for value added products. The findings presented in this investigation lead to the following conclusions: recycle of 18 wt% Cr-8 wt% Ni alloy can be achieved by melting Type 304 stainless steel in a air vacuum induction furnace; limited melt decontamination of the contaminated stainless steel was achieved, surface contamination was removed by standard decontamination techniques; carbon uptake in the …

Tank 16 is a High Level Radioactive Waste tank in the H-Area Tank Farm on the Savannah River Site that was placed into service in May 1959. A leak was detected in one of the construction weld joints while the tank was being filled. Before jet evacuation of the tank waste was completed, the leak overflowed the annulus pan and an estimated 16 to 700 gallons of waste escaped to the environment (soil and groundwater) over a six hour period contaminating approximately 1,600--70,000 cubic feet of soil with up to 5000 curies of activity (principally Cs{sup 137}). The Tank 16 bottom is constructed below the groundwater table which resulted in almost immediate contamination of that medium. Low groundwater flow rates, the ion exchange property of adjacent soils, and the distance to the nearest surface water bodies (1,500 to 8,000 feet) indicates that surface water and sediment outcrop of contaminates may be expected between 44 and 530 years (Poe et al., 1974). Remedial action objectives consist of medium-specific and operable unit specific goals for protecting human health and the environment. These objectives are specific and do not limit the range of alternatives that may be developed.A range of remedial technologies, which …

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) is a synchrotron radiation facility nearing completion at LBL. As a third-generation machine, the ALS is designed to produce intense light from bend magnets, wigglers, and undulators (insertion devices). The facility will include a 50 MeV electron linear accelerator, a 1.5 GeV booster synchrotron, beam transport lines, a 1--2 GeV storage ring, insertion devices, and photon beam lines. Currently, the beam injection systems are being commissioned, and the storage ring is being installed. Electron beam position monitors (BPM) are installed throughout the accelerator and constitute the major part of accelerator beam diagnostics. The design of the BPM instruments is complete, and 50 units have been constructed for use in the injector systems. We are currently fabricating 100 additional instruments for the storage ring. In this paper I discuss engineering fabrication, testing and performance of the beam pickup electrodes and the BPM electronics.

Routine radiological surveys are part of near-facility environmental monitoring which monitors and helps direct the reduction of the radiological areas at the Hanford Site. The routine radiological surveys are performed by the Southern Area Remediation Support Group and the Site Support Services Radiological Control Group as directed by Environmental Monitoring and Investigations. The surveys included in this program consist of inactive waste sites; outdoor radiological control areas; tank farm perimeters and associated diversion boxes, lift stations, and vent stations; perimeters of active or uncovered waste sites such as burial grounds, retention basins, ponds, process trenches, and ditches; underground pipelines; and road and rail surfaces. This report provides a summary of the radiological surveys performed during the Third Quarter of 1997. The status of corrective actions required from current and past reports are also discussed. A waste site survey schedule, WHC-SP-0098-8, was developed by Environmental Monitoring and Investigations and reviewed by the Southern Area Remediation Support Group and the Site Support Services Radiological Control Group. Environmental Monitoring and Investigations reviews the radiological survey reports and files a copy for historical purposes and reference. Radiological conditions are tracked and trends noted. All sites are surveyed at least once each year. The survey …