The 200 Area Interim Storage Area Technical Safety Requirements define administrative controls and design features required to ensure safe operation during receipt and storage of canisters containing spent nuclear fuel. This document is based on the 200 Area Interim Storage Area, Annex D, Final Safety Analysis Report which contains information specific to the 200 Area Interim Storage Area.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed its recent reports on the Air Force's Ranch Hand study, which was designed to investigate whether exposure to herbicides in Vietnam led to or would lead to adverse health effects, focusing on: (1) what impact the study has had on veterans' compensation decisions; and (2) how the study disseminated results and data, communicated its limitations, and implemented measures to ensure that it was conducted with scientific independence and appropriate outside scientific oversight."

In the context of the LHC experiments, the physics of bottom flavoured hadrons enters in different contexts. It can be used for QCD tests, it affects the possibilities of B decays studies, and it is an important source of background for several processes of interest. The physics of b production at hadron colliders has a rather long story, dating back to its first observation in the UA1 experiment. Subsequently, b production has been studied at the Tevatron. Besides the transverse momentum spectrum of a single b, it has also become possible, in recent time, to study correlations in the production characteristics of the b and the b. At the LHC new opportunities will be offered by the high statistics and the high energy reach. One expects to be able to study the transverse momentum spectrum at higher transverse momenta, and also to exploit the large statistics to perform more accurate studies of correlations.

The development of a new class of laser systems: capable of producing intense radiation in the mid-infrared (MIR) regime (photon energies between 0.3 and 0.4 eV), opens the possibility of observing multiphoton processes in a new class of systems with lower ionization potentials than those previously studied. Of particular interest are the alkali metal atoms, which are true one-(valence)-electron systems. We present theoretical calculations of above threshold ionization (ATI) and high harmonic generation (HHG) from alkali metal atoms subject to 3-4 {micro}m laser irradiation. The ATI calculations, which use a multiple gauge propagation method, show a striking dependence in the production of high-order photoelectrons on the electron-ion potential. The HHG calculations illustrate the importance of the strong ground-to-first excited state coupling in multiphoton processes in the alkali metals.

Coal beneficiation is achieved by suspending coal fines in a colloidal suspension of microscopic gas bubbles in water under atmospheric conditions to form small agglomerates of the fines adhered by the gas bubbles. The agglomerates are separated, recovered and resuspended in water. Thereafter, the pressure on the suspension is increased above atmospheric to deagglomerate, since the gas bubbles are then re-dissolved in the water. During the deagglomeration step, the mineral matter is dispersed, and when the pressure is released, the coal portion of the deagglomerated gas-saturated water mixture reagglomerates, with the small bubbles now coming out of the solution. The reagglomerate can then be separated to provide purified coal fines without the mineral matter.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the challenges that the Coast Guard faces in its fiscal year 2001 and future budget requests, focusing on: (1) the Coast Guard's progress in justifying and managing its Deepwater Capability Replacement Project; and (2) opportunities for improving the Coast Guard's operating efficiencies."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) calendar years 1997 and 1998 accounting reports for the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which provides assistance to the former Soviet Union, focusing on each report's: (1) compliance with its respective deadline for submission to Congress; and (2) accuracy and completeness."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed proposed changes and improvements to the military health system (MHS), focusing on: (1) the various proposals to expand the military health care benefit, especially those for older retirees, including describing the nature of the enhancement, the present or potential challenges in implementing these proposals, and overall cost implications; (2) the broader perspective of the appropriate size and structure of the military health system; and (3) the obstacles that impede improvements in the TRICARE program, particularly in terms of accessing appointments and claims processing."

The Demand Activated Manufacturing Architecture (DAMA) project during the last five years of work with the U.S. Integrated Textile Complex (retail, apparel, textile, and fiber sectors) has developed an inter-enterprise supply chain collaboration development methodology. The goal of this methodology is to enable a supply chain to work more efficiently and competitively. The outcomes of this methodology include: (1) A definitive description and evaluation of the role of business cultures and supporting business organizational structures in either inhibiting or fostering change to a more competitive supply chain; (2) ``As-Is'' and proposed ``To-Be'' supply chain business process models focusing on information flows and decision-making; and (3) Software tools that enable and support a transition to a more competitive supply chain, which results form a business driven rather than technologically driven approach to software design. This methodology development will continue in FY00 as DAMA engages companies in the soft goods industry in supply chain research and implementation of supply chain collaboration.

A process for depositing CVD mullite coatings on SiC fibers for enhanced oxidation and corrosion, and/or act as an interfacial protective barrier has been developed. Process optimization via systematic investigation of system parameters yielded uniform crystalline mullite coatings on SiC fibers. Structural characterization has allowed for tailoring of coating structure and therefore properties. High temperature oxidation/corrosion testing of the optimized coatings has shown that the coatings remain adherent and protective for extended periods. However, preliminary tests of coated fibers showed considerable degradation in tensile strength.

During Phase I the feasibility of fabricating high-performance, low bandgap (0.58ev)PV cells by thermally diffusing p-n junctions in GaSb based quaternary materials was established. During phase II, bandgap engineered thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells were optimized, development of a low-cost build source material for quaternary devices was investigated, and a diesel-fueled, TPV test-bed was built and tested allowing its performance to be characterized.

The authors have investigated the properties of GaAsSb/InGaAs type-II bilayer quantum well structures grown by molecule beam epitaxy for use in long-wavelength lasers on GaAs substrates. Structures with layer, strains and thicknesses designed to be thermodynamically stable against dislocation formation exhibit room-temperature photoluminescence at wavelengths as long as 1.43 {mu}m. The photoluminescence emission wavelength is significantly affected by growth temperature and the sequence of layer growth (InGaAs/GaAsSb vs GaAsSb/InGaAs), suggesting that Sb and/or In segregation results in non-ideal interfaces under certain growth conditions. At low injection currents, double heterostructure lasers with GaAsSb/InGaAs bilayer quantum well active regions display electroluminescence at wavelengths comparable to those obtained in photoluminescence, but at higher currents the electroluminescence shifts to shorter wavelengths. Lasers have been obtained with threshold current densities as low as 120 A/cm{sup 2} at 1.17 {mu}m, and 2.1 kA/cm{sup 2} at 1.21 {mu}m.

Examination of differing opinions on whether or not the IMF and World Bank economic programs in Russia and Asia were effective.

The authors have designed and assembled two generations of integrated micro-optical systems that deliver pump light and detect broadband laser-induced fluorescence in micro-fluidic chemical separation systems employing electrochromatography. The goal is to maintain the sensitivity attainable with larger, tabletop machines while decreasing package size and increasing throughput (by decreasing the required chemical volume). One type of micro-optical system uses vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) as the excitation source. Light from the VCSELs is relayed with four-level surface relief diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and delivered to the chemical volume through substrate-mode propagation. Indirect fluorescence from dye-quenched chemical species is collected and collimated with a high numerical aperture DOE. A filter blocks the excitation wavelength, and the resulting signal is detected as the chemical separation proceeds. Variations of this original design include changing the combination of reflective and transmissive DOEs and optimizing the high numerical aperture DOE with a rotationally symmetric iterative discrete on-axis algorithm. The authors will discuss the results of these implemented optimizations.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the National Railroad Passenger Corporation's (Amtrak) use of Taxpayer Relief Act (TRA) funds, focusing on: (1) how much Amtrak has spent in TRA funds and what types of activities it has funded; (2) whether Amtrak used the funds in accordance with the act; (3) to what extent the Amtrak Reform Council and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have overseen Amtrak's use of TRA funds; and (4) observations on Amtrak's capital needs, its progress toward reaching operational self-sufficiency, and the administration's fiscal year 2001 budget request for Amtrak."

Alumina has been joined at 1150 degrees C and 1400 degrees C using multilayer copper/niobium/copper interlayers. Four-point bend strengths are sensitive to processing temperature, bonding pressure, and furnace environment (ambient oxygen partial pressure). Under optimum conditions, joints with reproducibly high room temperature strengths (approximately equal 240 plus/minus 20 MPa) can be produced; most failures occur within the ceramic. Joints made with sapphire show that during bonding an initially continuous copper film undergoes a morphological instability, resulting in the formation of isolated copper-rich droplets/particles at the sapphire/interlayer interface, and extensive regions of direct bonding between sapphire and niobium. For optimized alumina bonds, bend tests at 800 degrees C-1100 degrees C indicate significant strength is retained; even at the highest test temperature, ceramic failure is observed. Post-bonding anneals at 1000 degrees C in vacuum or in gettered argon were used to assess joint stability and to probe the effect of ambient oxygen partial pressure on joint characteristics. Annealing in vacuum for up to 200 h causes no significant decrease in room temperature bend strength or change in fracture path. With increasing anneal time in a lower oxygen partial pressure environment, the fracture strength decreases only slightly, but the fracture path shifts from …

Colloidal suspensions near 100 {micro}g/L can be pumped from below ground. Designing injection solutions that optimally mobilize colloids in the field also promotes desorption processes. As an example, in manipulating chromium-containing colloids, injected sorbate also served to displace the ion exchangeable chromate load in that subsurface region.

This report summarizes the proceedings of a CRS seminar for congressional staff on appropriations for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), held September 23, 1999 against a backdrop of congressional deliberations over increases in National Institute of Health (NIH’s) budget.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO evaluated the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) financial management activities to determine if they are sufficient to resolve financial management weaknesses identified through annual financial statement audits and other management-type reviews of HCFA's Medicare activities."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed its review of the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) financial management activities for Medicare, focusing on challenges HCFA faces in establishing an adequate foundation for control and accountability over the Medicare program's financial operations."

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Initiation and detonation properties are dramatically affected by an energetic material's microstructural properties. Sol-gel chemistry allows intimacy of mixing to be controlled and dramatically improved over existing methodologies. One material goal is to create very high power energetic materials which also have high energy densities. Using sol-gel chemistry we have made a nanostructured composite energetic material. Here a solid skeleton of fuel, based on resorcinol-formaldehyde, has nanocrystalline ammonium perchlorate, the oxidizer, trapped within its pores. At optimum stoichiometry it has approximately the energy density of HMX. Transmission electron microscopy indicated no ammonium perchlorate crystallites larger than 20 nm while near-edge soft x-ray absorption microscopy showed that nitrogen was uniformly distributed, at least on the scale of less than 80 nm. Small-angle neutron scattering studies were conducted on the material. Those results were consistent with historical ones for this class of nanostructured materials. The average skeletal primary particle size was on the order of 2.7 nm, while the nanocomposite showed the growth of small 1 nm size crystals of ammonium perchlorate with some clustering to form particles greater than 10 nm.

At the 29th International Annual Conference of ICT (1998), the authors described the results of laboratory-scale process development studies for a new synthesis of 1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (TATB). This new synthesis approach--which uses vicarious nucleophilic substitution (VNS) methodology--converts picramide to TATB in high yield, and potentially at lower cost and with few environmental effects than existing synthetic approaches. In this report they describe results of their work on producing TATB by the VNS method at the pilot plant scale. They will discuss structure and control of impurities, changes in yield/quality with reaction conditions, choice of solvents, workup and product isolation, safety, and environmental considerations. Product characterization (particle size, DSC, HPLC, etc.) as well as small-scale safety and performance testing is also discussed.

Repositories have been in use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories for storage of ten grams or less explosives samples for about twenty years. A previous Repository testing program detailed in UCID 19219 reported that a standard repository would contain ten grams of high explosive but the repository drawer would open. It further recommended a non-propagating array that would allow storage of quantities of explosives in a repository drawer, however; the capability of the proposed nonpropagating array was never verified. A series of tests was undertaken to verify the capability of the proposed array to provide non-propagation between 10-gram samples stored within that array and to document the extent of damage to the stored explosives, the array and the repository. Testing has verified that the standard four-drawer repository configured per UCID 19219 may store a 10-gram explosive sample without propagation to the other materials stored in the repository. Should a detonation of a 10-gram sample occur, the four-drawer repository will be damaged but does not appear to create a significant fragment hazard and does not sustain significant damage. The drawer containing the test charge opens quickly and fully releasing the detonation overpressure. Testing of a standard two-drawer repository verified that the …