A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund Program expenditures, focusing on: (1) the relative shares of Superfund expenditures for contractor cleanup work, site-specific support, and non-site-specific support; (2) the activities carried out with the EPA's cleanup support spending, particularly its non-site-specific spending; and (3) EPA's efforts to monitor and analyze how its regions and headquarters units spend Superfund resources, particularly the distribution of expenditures among contractor cleanup work, site-specific support, and non-site-specific support."

The Technology Cooperation Agreement Pilot Project (TCAPP) was launched by several U.S. Government agencies (USAID, EPA and DOE) in August 1997 to establish a model for climate change technology cooperation with developing and transition countries. TCAPP is currently facilitating voluntary partnerships between the governments of Brazil, China, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, and the Philippines, the private sector, and the donor community on a common set of actions that will advance implementation of clean energy technologies. The six participating countries have been actively engaged in shaping this initiative along with international donors and the private sector. This program helps fulfill the US obligation to support technology transfer to developing countries under Article 4.5 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. TCAPP also provides a mechanism to focus resources across international donor programs on the technology cooperation needs of developing and transition countries.

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the notification requirements in 12 U. S. C. 4903(a)(3), (b) will supersede the notification requirements in Texas Insurance Code article 21.50, section 1B(a) when the federal law becomes effective in July 1999 (RQ-1185)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Authority of charitable organization to conduct raffle that offers prize valued in excess of $50,000, and related questions (RQ-0013)

In this paper we summarize the status of Top Quark Physics and of searches for the Standard Model Higgs at the Tevatron. Results from both the CDF and D0 experiments are discussed and the prospects for the upcoming Run 2, in the year 2000, are outlined. Much work has been performed on these topics and due to the nature of these proceedings only a brief explanation can be offered here. For more details the reader should turn to the excellent sources listed in the reference section.

This fifteenth quarterly report describes work done during the fifteenth three-month period of the University of Pittsburgh's project on the ''Treatment of Metal-Laden Hazardous Wastes with Advanced Clean Coal Technology By-Products.'' This report describes the activities of the project team during the reporting period. The principal work has focused upon new laboratory evaluation of samples from Phase 1, discussions with MAX Environmental Technologies, Inc., on the field work of Phase 2, preparing and giving presentations, and making and responding to several outside contacts.

In 1990, Congress enacted legislation requiring coastal states and territories to develop programs to help address the problem of nonpoint source pollution in coastal waters, which are especially threatened by pressures of population growth, development, and pollution. The coastal nonpoint pollution program is unique because it expressly links federal and state coastal zone management and water quality programs. Coastal states are now implementing these requirements. Congress has not changed the program since its enactment, but legislative activity in the 106th Congress is possible. One issue receiving attention is whether to integrate the coastal nonpoint pollution program with the activities under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Navy's program to modernize its naval surface fire support (NSFS) capabilities, focusing on the cost of the modernization."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the operations and benefits of the Department of Defense's (DOD) Defense Modernization Account, focusing on: (1) the status of funding and uses of the account; and (2) whether DOD has reported to the six congressional committees on the activities of the account as required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996."

A variety of small (100 MWe) fast reactor core designs are developed, these include compact configurations, long-lived (15-year fuel lifetime) cores, and derated, natural circulation designs. Trade studies are described which identify key core design issues for lead-based coolant systems. Performance parameters and reactivity feedback coefficients are compared for lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) and sodium-cooled cores of consistent design. The results of these studies indicate that the superior neutron reflection capability of lead alloys reduces the enrichment and burnup swing compared to conventional sodium-cooled systems; however, the discharge fluence is significantly increased. The size requirement for long-lived systems is constrained by reactivity loss considerations, not fuel burnup or fluence limits. The derated lead-alloy cooled natural circulation cores require a core volume roughly eight times greater than conventional compact systems. In general, reactivity coefficients important for passive safety performance are less favorable for the larger, derated configurations.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO identified: (1) key issues the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must resolve in order to achieve accountability over its property, plant, and equipment (PP&E); and (2) the status of FAA's efforts to resolve these issues."

The four chapters that are described in this report cover a variety of subjects that not only give insight into the understanding of multiphase flow in fractured porous media, but they provide also major contribution towards the understanding of flow processes with in-situ phase formation. In the following, a summary of all the chapters will be provided. Chapter I addresses issues related to water injection in water-wet fractured porous media. There are two parts in this chapter. Part I covers extensive set of measurements for water injection in water-wet fractured porous media. Both single matrix block and multiple matrix blocks tests are covered. There are two major findings from these experiments: (1) co-current imbibition can be more efficient than counter-current imbibition due to lower residual oil saturation and higher oil mobility, and (2) tight fractured porous media can be more efficient than a permeable porous media when subjected to water injection. These findings are directly related to the type of tests one can perform in the laboratory and to decide on the fate of water injection in fractured reservoirs. Part II of Chapter I presents modeling of water injection in water-wet fractured media by modifying the Buckley-Leverett Theory. A major …

A model is proposed for gamma-ray bursts based upon general relativistic hydrodynamic studies of the compression, heating, and collapse of close binary neutron stars as they approach their last stable orbit. Relativistic compression and heating before collapse may produce a neutrino burst of {approx} 10{sup 53} ergs lasting several seconds. The associated thermal neutrino emission produces an e{sup +}e{sup -} pair plasma by {nu}{bar {nu}} annihilation. We present a hydrodynamic simulation of the formation and evolution of the pair plasma associated with the neutrino burst. We find that this pair plasma leads to the production of {approx} 10{sup 51} - 10{sup 52} ergs in {gamma}-rays with spectral and temporal properties consistent with observed gamma-ray bursts.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to clean up its Superfund sites, focusing on: (1) how long it will take to complete the construction of cleanup facilities at hazardous waste sites on the National Priorities List as of early 1999; and (2) how much it will cost."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the impact of private health insurance premium increases on the number of covered individuals, focusing on: (1) the trends in employers' decisions to offer insurance and employees' decisions to purchase it; (2) an assessment of recent studies that have estimated the relationship between premium increases and insurance coverage; and (3) conditions or factors that could affect the impact of premium increases on insurance coverage."

We have used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to characterize the surface topographies of weight-loss coupons of Alloy C-22 which had been exposed to two different environments in the Long-Term Corrosion Test Facility at LLNL for one year. We have observed a silicate deposit on these coupons, with the most extensive coverage occurring on the coupon immersed in an acidified bath. We have not detected localized corrosion on these coupons.

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.

The objective of this report is to evaluate the effect of potential changes to the TSPA-VA base case design on long-term repository performance. The design feature that is evaluated in this report is a higher thermal load (Feature 26 or F26). The following paragraph briefly describes the motivation for evaluating higher thermal loading. Higher thermal load has been identified as a design feature that might have a beneficial effect on long-term repository performance. A higher thermal load will increase temperatures and decrease relative humidity on the waste package surface. The decrease in relative humidity may delay the onset of corrosion, thus delaying the failure of waste packages and the release of radionuclides from the engineered barrier system (EBS). For the current calculation a thermal load of 109 MTU/acre (metric tons of uranium per acre) is considered. Two cases are evaluated, one with the base case inventory and a higher thermal load and a second with an increased inventory that would cover the current repository footprint at the higher thermal load. This report documents the modeling assumptions and calculations conducted to evaluate the long-term performance of higher thermal loading. The performance measure for this evaluation is dose-rate. Results are presented that …

The objective of this report is to document the analysis that was conducted to evaluate the effect of a potential change to the TSPA-VA base case design that could improve long-term repository performance. The design feature evaluated in this report is a modification of the topographic surface of Yucca Mountain. The modification consists of covering the land surface immediately above the repository foot-print with a thick layer of unconsolidated material utilizing rip-rap and plants to mitigate erosion. This surface modification is designated as Feature 23a or simply abbreviated as F23a. The fundamental aim of F23a is to reduce the net infiltration into the unsaturated zone by enhancing the potential for evapotranspiratiration at the surface; such a change would, in turn, reduce the seepage flux and the rate of radionuclide releases from the repository. Field and modeling studies of water movement in the unsaturated zone have indicated that shallow infiltration at the surface is almost negligible in locations where the bedrock is covered by a sufficiently thick soil layer. In addition to providing storage for meteoric water, a thick soil layer would slow the downward movement of soil moisture to such an extent that evaporation and transpiration could easily transfer most …

The objective of this work was to devise essentially exact solutions to a set of well-defined basic problems of inviscid fluid flow with particulate inclusions. This would help to establish a sound basis for fundamental theoretical developments in the field of two-phase flow. The results of this effort have ranged from basic theorems and the formulation of conservation laws for two-phase mixtures, to detailed predictions for specific geometrical patterns and experimental confirmation of these results.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) third party charges, focusing on: (1) the soundness of VA's methodology for setting reasonable charges for inpatient facility, skilled nursing, outpatient facility, physician, and nonphysician services; and (2) potential effects of the new charge-based system on VA, insurers, and veterans."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on its recommendations to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for completing key actions necessary to ensure continued delivery of benefits and health care services to veterans beyond January 1, 2000."

Jean-Marie Lehn (Nobel laureate, 1987) suggested ligand thickness to be an important consideration in the design of host molecules for cation recognition. We have recently expanded the role of this simple ligand property by demonstrating a case in which ligand thickness contributes significantly to anion discrimination. It was found that in the extraction of sodium nitrate and perchlorate by a simple crown ether, bis(t-octylbenzo)-14-crown-4 (BOB 14C4), the normal preference for perchlorate is almost completely lost when the complex cation has the open-face sandwich vs. the sandwich structure.

This paper summarizes progress at three collaborating US national laboratories on the extraction of the fission products {sup 99}Tc and {sup 137}Cs from alkaline high-level wastes (HLW). Efficient, economical processes for Tc and Cs extraction (SRTALK and alkaline-side CSEX, respectively) have been developed, and testing has progressed through batch tests on actual wastes and continuous countercurrent centrifugal-contactor tests on simulants.