Revisions 0 and 0A of this document provided estimated chemical and radionuclide inventories of spent nuclear fuel and sludge currently stored within the Hanford Site`s 105-K Basins. This Revision (Rev. 1) incorporates the following changes into Revision 0A: (1) updates the tables to reflect: improved cross section data, a decision to use accountability data as the basis for total Pu, a corrected methodology for selection of the heat generation basis fee, and a revised decay date; (2) adds section 3.3.3.1 to expand the description of the approach used to calculate the inventory values and explain why that approach yields conservative results; (3) changes the pre-irradiation braze beryllium value.

The objective of this project was to determine why diamond-based films are unusually efficient electron emitters (field emission cathodes) at room temperature. Efficient cathodes based on diamond are being developed by SI Diamond Technology (SIDT) as components for bright, sunlight-readable, flat panel displays. When the project started, it was known that only a small fraction (<1%) of the cathode area is active in electron emission and that the emission sites themselves are sub-micron in size. The critical challenge of this project was to develop new microcharacterization methods capable of examining known emission sites. The research team used a combination of cathode emission imaging (developed at SIDT), micro-Raman spectroscopy (LBNL), and electron microscopy and spectroscopy (National Center for Electron Microscopy, LBNL) to examine the properties of known emission sites. The most significant accomplishment of the project was the development at LBNL of a very high resolution scanning probe that, for the first time, measured simultaneously the topography and electrical characteristics of single emission sites. The increased understanding of the emission mechanism helped SIDT to develop a new cathode material,''nano-diamond,'' which they have incorporated into their Field Emission Picture Element (FEPix) product. SIDT is developing large-format flat panel displays based on these …

The objective is to provide a comprehensive geologic analysis of the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin.

This project deals with the demonstration of a coking reactor (Process Development Unit-- PDU-11) using Calderon's proprietary technology for making commercially acceptable coke. The activities of the past quarter were focused on the following: 1. Testing and Designing of the Submerged Quenching Closed System for the Process; 2. Usage of the Cracked Desulfurized Gas as a Reducing Gas to Make Directly Reduced Iron (DRI) in Order to Make the Process Economics Viable; 3. Changes in the Ceramic Liners for Supporting Them in the Coking Reactor; 4. Work Towards Testing of U.S. Steel's Coal in the Existing Process Development Unit in Alliance (PDU-1); 5. Permitting.

During this reporting period an agreement was entered into with Bechtel Corporation for design and construction of Calderon cokemaking facilities (see enclosed letter of February 28, 1997). A second agreement with Bechtel Enterprises to commercialize the Calderon technology as a worldwide business has progressed; during the forthcoming quarter, it is expected to have in place an agreement with Bechtel Enterprises (see attached letter of February 20, 1997). Thyssen Still Otto Anlagentechnik (TSOA), the world's largest builder of conventional cokemaking facilities indicated that it would be please to join Bechtel and Calderon in the demonstration and implementation of Calderon's cokemaking technology (see attached letter of January, 1997).

This project deals with the demonstration of a coking process using Calderon's proprietary technology for: (i) making coke of such quality as to be suitable for use in high driving (highly productive) blast furnaces; and (ii) providing proof that such process is continuous and environmentally closed to prevent emissions. The activities of the past quarter were entirely focused on the rehabilitation of Calderon's Process Development Unit (PDU-I) in Alliance, Ohio to conduct a series of tests under steady state using coal from Bethlehem Steel and U.S. Steel in order to demonstrate the above.

This project deals with the demonstration of a coking process using proprietary technology of Calderon with the following objectives in order to enable its commercialization: (i) making coke of such quality as to be suitable for use in high driving (highly productive) blast furnaces; (ii) providing proof that such process is continuous and environmentally closed to prevent emissions; and (iii) demonstrating that high-coking-pressure (non-traditional) coal blends which cannot be safely charged into conventional by-product coke ovens can be used in the Calderon process. The activities of the past quarter were entirely focused on operating the Calderon Process Development Unit (PDU-I) in Alliance, Ohio conducting a series of tests under steady state using coal from Bethlehem Steel and U.S. Steel in order to demonstrate the above. The objectives mentioned above were successfully demonstrated.

This report provides an overview and discussion of the legal basis and congressional precedents regarding a congressional "censure" of the President.

Recent work at Sandia National Laboratories, Imperial College, and the U.K. utility PowerGen, has identified an important mechanism believed to have a large influence on unburned carbon levels from pulverized coal-fired boilers. That mechanism is char carbon crystalline rearrangements on subsecond times scales at temperatures of 1800 - 2500 K, which lead to char deactivation in the flame zones of furnaces. The so-called thermal annealing of carbons is a well known phenomenon, but its key role in carbon burnout has only recently been appreciated, and there is a lack of quantitative data in this time/temperature range. In addition, a new fundamental tool has recently become available to study crystalline transformations, namely high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) fringe imaging, which provides a wealth of information on the nature and degree of crystallinity in carbon materials such as coal chars. Motivated by these new developments, this University Coal Research project has been initiated with the following two goals:  to determine transient, high-temperature, thermal deactivation kinetics as a function of parent coal and temperature history.  to characterize the effect of this thermal treatment on carbon crystalline structure through high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and specialized, quantitative image analysis. Work is currently …

This report summarizes proposed and enacted legislative initiatives to change child nutrition programs (including WIC program) during 1997 and 1998.

From abstract: This report provides a brief background on religions in the People's Republic of China and discusses official Chinese government attitudes toward religious observance.

This closure report provides the documentation for closure of the Cactus Spring Waste Trenches Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 426. The site is located on the Tonopah Test Range,approximately 225 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. CAU 426 consists of one Corrective Action Site which is comprised of four waste trenches. The trenches were excavated to receive solid waste generated in support of Operation Roller Coaster, primarily the Double Tracks Test in 1963, and were subsequently backfilled. The Double Tracks Test involved the use of live animals to assess the biological hazards associated with the non-nuclear detonation of plutonium-bearing devices (i.e., inhalation uptake of plutonium aerosol) (DOE, 1996). The remedial alternative proposed Nevada Division of Environmental Protection proposed the capping method. The closure activities were completed in accordance with the approved Corrective Action Plan and consisted of constructing an engineered cover in the ar ea of the trenches, constructing/planning a vegetative cover, installing a perimeter fence and signs, implementing restrictions on future use, and preparing a post-closure monitoring plan. Closure activities for CAU 426 have been completed in accordance with the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection approved Corrective Action Plan as documented in this Closure Report.

In this paper the monthly mean vorticity and divergence at 200 hPa are compared from four data sources: The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses 1958 through 1994, the ECMWF (ERA) reanalyses, 1979 through 1994, a NCAR CCM3 integration using prescribed SSTs from 1979 through 1993, and the NCAR CSM 300 year integration. The NCEP, ERA and CCM3 all provide data for the period 1979 through1993. The timescales examined are the annual cycle and interannual variations. The annual mean vorticity of the ERA and NCEP match very closely. The annual cycle is likewise close except in the eastern equatorial Pacific and Indian Ocean. Compared to the reanalyses, the models have adequate annual means but suffer in the depiction of the annual cycle in the regions of the jet maxima and in some regions of the Tropics. The CSM appears to inherit errors from the CCM3 and apparently add some new ones. The annual mean divergence shows a much larger difference between the reanalyses. This is most pronounced in the Tropics especially over the African and South American land masses. The models also show large differences, with the CSM being an outlier in the tropical Pacific. For many tropical and extratropical locations even the annual …

The oscillations of a centered second order finite difference scheme and the excessive diffusion of a first order centered scheme can be overcome by global composition of the two, that is by performing cycles consisting of several time steps of the second order method followed by one step of the diffusive method. The authors show the effectiveness of this approach on some test problems in two and three dimensions.

This document describes the configuration process, choices and conventions used during the configuration activities, and issues involved in making changes to the configuration. Includes the master listings of the Tag definitions, which should be revised to authorize any changes. Revision 2 incorporates minor changes to ensure the document setpoints accurately reflect limits (including exhaust stack flow of 800 scfm) established in OSD-T-151-00019. The MICON DCS software controls and monitors the instrumentation and equipment associated with plant systems and processes.

This Corrective Action Decision Document has been prepared for Corrective Action Unit 340, the NTS Pesticide Release Sites, in accordance with the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order of 1996 (FFACO, 1996). Corrective Action Unit 340 is located at the Nevada Test Site, Nevada, and is comprised of the following Corrective Action Sites: 23-21-01, Area 23 Quonset Hut 800 Pesticide Release Ditch; 23-18-03, Area 23 Skid Huts Pesticide Storage; and 15-18-02, Area 15 Quonset Hut 15-11 Pesticide Storage. The purpose of this Corrective Action Decision Document is to identify and provide a rationale for the selection of a recommended corrective action alternative for each Corrective Action Site. The scope of this Corrective Action Decision Document consists of the following tasks: Develop corrective action objectives; Identify corrective action alternative screening criteria; Develop corrective action alternatives; Perform detailed and comparative evaluations of the corrective action alternatives in relation to the corrective action objectives and screening criteria; and Recommend and justify a preferred corrective action alternative for each Corrective Action Site.

The primary objective of the project is to construct a subsurface transect of Cretaceous strata that were deposited in the Kansas-Colorado-Utah corridor, going from marine sequences that contain organic-carbon-rich hydrocarbon source rocks in Kansas and eastern Colorado to nearshore coal-bearing units in western Colorado and Utah. The drilling transect will provide continuous, unweathered samples for inorganic, organic, and isotopic geochemical studies and mineralogical investigations to determine the characteristics of hydrocarbon source rocks. This transect also will provide information on the extent of thermal maturation and migration of hydrocarbons in organic-carbon-rich strata along a burial gradient. In addition, the eastern Colorado hole will provide characteristics of an important fractured reservoir (the Pierre Shale) in the Florence oil field, the oldest continuously producing field in the United States (>100 years; 600 wells; >14 Mbbls).

The gross federal debt consists of the debt held by the public plus the debt held by government accounts. Almost all of the gross federal debt is subject to a public debt limit, as set forth in statute (31 U.S.C. 3101).This report considers legislation needed to change the public debt limit.

This report should be useful for tracking appropriations and authorization actions on the DOE R&D programs, and the potential implications of those actions.

This report focuses on the R&D programs. It divides the programs into four categories: energy resources R&D, science, national security R&D, and environmental quality R&D. Those categories, which approximate the way DOE has divided up its programs, are set up to keep similar research activities together.(1) R&D funding is concentrated in the first three. The report gives a description of the programs within each category including their research objectives and the activities where significant budget changes were requested for FY1999. It then describes the request, and congressional appropriation and authorization action. There follows a discussion of issues about the FY1999 request that are emerging during congressional consideration of the budget.

In the second quarter of calendar year 1998, no work was performed on the present project. The 20 MMBtu/hr combustor-boiler facility was not operated during this period. The total test days on the Philadelphia facility to the end of June 1998 remained at 108 as in the previous quarter. Of these, 34 tests were part of the other DOE project. The test days on the other project are listed here because they demonstrate the durability of the combustor, which is one of the objectives of the present project. As noted previously, this exceeds the planned 63 test days for this project. All key project objectives have been exceeded including combustor durability, automated combustor operation, NO{sub x} emissions as low as 0.07 lb/MMBtu and SO{sub 2} emissions as low as 0.2 lb/MMBtu. In addition, a novel post-combustion NO{sub x} control process has been tested on a 37 MW and 100 MW utility boiler. Any further tests will depend on the results of evaluations of current and prior tests. The only effort remaining on this project is facility disassembly and Final Report. Also, as part of the commercialization effort for this combustor technology, Coal Tech is developing alternative designs of the combustor …

A convenient and effective sample bottle system based on simple modifications of disposable plastic syringes and bottles has been devised and tested for slurry samples. Syringe/ bottle hybrids (hereafter referred to as syringe bottles) have the convenience of regular flat-bottom bottles with screw cap closures. In addition, the syringe imparts a sliding and adjustable bottom to the bottle that forces the entire contents from the bottle. The system was designed especially to collect samples for high temperature work-ups of DWPF slurry samples. The syringe bottles together with fixed-bottom sample vial inserts would provide the DWPF with convenient and reliable methods for dealing with slurry samples.

All of the experimental results from OMEGA shots described here are from CY-1998 experiments under an (extended) FY-98 grant. This research involves fielding at LLE their two flat-field euv spectrographs in the 30--250 {angstrom} range, mainly utilizing on one o them a gated stripline microchannel plate as a time-resolved detector, with photographic recording. The experimental layout for the 1998 experiments is shown. During the week beginning May 3, 1998, the authors obtained 24 data shots over 4 days, and fielded both the time-gated extreme ultraviolet (euv) spectrograph mounted external to the target chamber, as well as their newly-constructed TIM-mounted euv spectrograph mounted closer to the target with time-integrated photographic recording on a trial basis. They also had available the LLE/LLNL streak x-ray spectrograph and x-ray imaging cameras. In this series, the first two shots appeared from the x-ray streak spectra to be normal in the sense that the spectral line emissions from the two coatings sequenced beginning with magnesium followed by aluminum as the coatings were vaporized. Unfortunately, on the following shots in this campaign it became increasingly apparent that conditions had changed radically, and later analyses showed that x-ray spectra lines from the deep aluminum undercoating appeared initially along …

In response to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) developed and is implementing the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project. Raven abundance was measured from August 1991 through August 1995 along treatment and control routes to evaluate whether site characterization activities resulted in increased raven abundance at Yucca Mountain. This study fulfills the requirement set forth in the incidental take provisions of the Biological Opinion that DOE monitor the abundance of ravens at Yucca Mountain. Ravens were more abundant at Yucca Mountain than in the control area, and raven abundance in both areas increased over time. However, the magnitude of differences between Yucca Mountain and control surveys did not change over time, indicating that the increase in raven abundance observed during this study was not related to site characterization activities. Increases over time on both Yucca Mountain and control routes are consistent with increases in raven abundance in the Mojave Desert reported by the annual Breeding Bird Survey of the US. Fish and Wildlife Service. Evidence from the Desert Tortoise Monitoring Program at Yucca Mountain suggests that ravens are not a significant predator of small …