Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, emergency preparedness at nuclear power plants has become of heightened concern. Currently, 104 commercial nuclear power plants operate at 64 sites in 32 states and provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. In July 2001, GAO reported on emergency preparedness at the Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant in New York State. This testimony discusses GAO's findings and recommendations in that report and the progress the plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have made in addressing these problems. GAO also provides its thoughts on the findings of a soon-to-be-issued report (the Witt report) on emergency preparedness at Indian Point and the Millstone nuclear power plant in Connecticut, and the implications of that report for plants nationwide. Since 2001, the Entergy Corporation has assumed ownership of the Indian Point 2 plant from the Consolidated Edison Company of New York (ConEd)."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Many proposals have been offered to restructure the U.S. Social Security system to include individual retirement savings accounts. However, some key proposals would make participation in the accounts voluntary rather than mandatory. While any individual account plan can offer a variety of choices regarding contributions, investments, and withdrawals, the choice of whether or not to participate is fundamental to a voluntary approach. That choice could have significant effects on individual retirement incomes and on the costs to the government as well. GAO was asked to report on the implications of using a voluntary approach to individual accounts. Accordingly, GAO's reporting on (1) how voluntary plans can affect individuals, (2) how they could affect the total costs of the retirement system, and (3) the role of educational efforts relating to the participation decision. Throughout this report, GAO focuses on the issues that pertain specifically to a voluntary approach as distinct from a mandatory approach. GAO studied three countries that have enacted voluntary individual account plans--the Czech Republic, Germany, and the United Kingdom."

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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether an individual may simultaneously serve as a member of a city council and a Selective Service Local Board (RQ-0616-JC)

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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: When a license of a bail bond surety who sold bail bonds before the creation of the county’s bail bond board was “originally issued” for purposes of section 1704.203(a), (f) of the Occupations Code (RQ-0625-JC)

This report provides Background and Legislative Issues about Export-Import Bank. The Export-Import Bank is a U.S chief government agency which finance American exports..

Enhancing the proliferation resistance of nuclear energy systems and fuel cycles is an ambitious undertaking. Current systems, dominated by the light water reactor fuel cycle are quite proliferation resistant. However, continued accumulations of plutonium in spent fuel and accumulations of separated plutonium resulting from reprocessing are eroding the proliferation resistance of today's nuclear energy systems. Alternatives to address these issues invariably involve making trade-offs among different proliferation risks and advantages. For example, thorium cycles reduce the quantity and quality of plutonium in spent fuel, but do so at the expense of increased fresh fuel enrichment and/or production of separable U233. Evaluation of these tradeoffs is difficult, as there are serious and significant differences of opinion regarding the relative merits and significance of the various risks of and barriers to proliferation from commercial nuclear power fuel cycles.

The reflectance stability of multilayer coatings for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) in a commercial tool environment is of uttermost importance to ensure continuous exposures with minimum maintenance cost. We have made substantial progress in designing the protective capping layer coatings, understanding their performance and estimating their lifetimes based on accelerated electron beam and EUV exposure studies. Our current capping layer coatings have about 40 times longer lifetimes than Si-capped multilayer optics. Nevertheless, the lifetime of current Ru-capped multilayers is too short to satisfy commercial tool requirements and further improvements are essential.

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In order to improve the hot corrosion resistance of conventional YSZ TBC system, a thin and dense {alpha}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} overlay has been deposited on the YSZ surface by the composite-sol-gel route (CSG). The YSZ substrates were dipped with boehmite sol containing calcined {alpha}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} particles, dried to form a gel film and calcined at 1200 C to form {alpha}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} overlay. Hot corrosion tests were carried out on the TBCs with and without Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} coating in molten salt mixtures (Na{sub 2}SO{sub 4} + 5% V{sub 2}O{sub 5}) at 950 C for 10 hours. The results showed that besides a thin and dense alumina overlay with the thickness of about 100-500 nm formed on the YSZ surface, the microcracks and porous near the surface in YSZ was also occupied by alumina because of penetration of the low viscosity precursor. As a result, the Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} overlay remarkably refrained the infiltration of the molten salt into the YSZ coating. The amount of M-phase in the TBC coating with Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} overlay was substantially reduced comparing to that without alumina overlay. In the next reporting period, we will prepare the alumina overlay by CSG route with …

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A procedure uses the equations that govern ionization cooling, and leads to the most important parameters of a muon cooling channel that achieves assumed performance parameters. First, purely transverse cooling is considered, followed by both transverse and longitudinal cooling in quadrupole and solenoid channels. Similarities and differences in the results are discussed in detail, and a common notation is developed. Procedure and notation are applied to a few published cooling channels. The parameters of the cooling channels are derived step by step, starting from assumed values of the initial, final and equilibrium emittances, both transverse and longitudinal, the length of the cooling channel, and the material properties of the absorber. The results obtained include cooling lengths and partition numbers, amplitude functions and limits on the dispersion at the absorber, length, aperture and spacing of the absorber, parameters of the RF system that achieve the longitudinal amplitude function and bucket area needed. Finally, I compute the merit factor that describes the enhancement of the density in 6D phase space. The consequences of changes in the input parameters are discussed. The lattice parameters needed to achieve the assumed performance are summarized. The design proper of such a lattice, i.e. finding the precise …

The work strived to improve industry understanding of CO2 flooding mechanisms with the ultimate goal of economically recovering more of the U.S. oil reserves. The principle interests are in the related fields of mobility control and injectivity.

The goal of this project was to develop computationally efficient automatic history matching techniques for generating geologically plausible reservoir models which honor both static and dynamic data. Solution of this problem was necessary for the quantification of uncertainty in future reservoir performance predictions and for the optimization of reservoir management.

Aluminum corrosion and turbidity formation in reactors correlate with fuel sheath temperature. To further substantiate this correlation, discharged fuel elements from R-3, P-2 and K-2 cycles were examined for extent of corrosion and evidence of breaking off of the oxide film. This report discusses this study.

Hydrochloric acid stimulation was successfully used on several wells in the Los Angeles Downtown Field, in the past. The decline rates after stimulation were relatively high and generally within six months to a year, production rates have returned to their prestimulation rates. The wells in Los Angeles Downtown Field have strong scale producing tendencies and many wells are treated for scale control. Four wells were carefully selected that are representative of wells that had a tendency to form calcium carbonate scale and had shown substantial decline over the last few years.

As the dimensions of semiconductor devices are scaled down, in order to achieve higher levels of integration, optical lithography will no longer be sufficient for the needs of the semiconductor industry. Alternative next-generation lithography (NGL) approaches, such as extreme ultra-violet (EUV), X-ray, electron-beam, and ion projection lithography face some challenging issues with complicated mask technology and low throughput. Among the four major alternative NGL approaches, ion beam lithography is the only one that can provide both maskless and resistless patterning. As such, it can potentially make nano-fabrication much simpler. This thesis investigates a focused ion beam system for maskless, resistless patterning that can be made practical for high-volume production. In order to achieve maskless, resistless patterning, the ion source must be able to produce a variety of ion species. The compact FIB system being developed uses a multicusp plasma ion source, which can generate ion beams of various elements, such as O{sub 2}{sup +}, BF{sub 2}{sup +}, P{sup +} etc., for surface modification and doping applications. With optimized source condition, around 85% of BF{sub 2}{sup +}, over 90% of O{sub 2}{sup +} and P{sup +} have been achieved. The brightness of the multicusp-plasma ion source is a key issue for …

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The objective of this project was to perform unique laboratory experiments with artificial fractured cores (AFCs) and X-ray CT to examine the physical mechanisms of bypassing in HFR and NFR that eventually result in less efficient CO2 flooding in heterogeneous or fracture-dominated reservoirs. This report provided results of the second semi-annual technical progress report that consists of three different topics.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the economic appropriateness of several enhanced oil recovery processes that are available to a small mature oil field located in southwest Arkansas and to implement the most economic efficient process evaluated. The State of Arkansas natural resource laws require that an oilfield is to be unitized before conducting a secondary recovery project. This requires all properties that can reasonably be determined to include the oil productive reservoir must be bound together as one common lease by a legal contract that must be approved to be fair and equitable to all property owners within the proposed unit area.

This report describes research into the use of complex hydrides for hydrogen storage. The synthesis of a number of alanates, (AIH4) compounds, was investigated. Both wet chemical and mechano-chemical methods were studied.

Detailed residual stress analysis was performed for a multi-pass butt weld, representing the middle butt-girth weld of a storage tank. The analysis procedures took into account representative welding parameters, joint detail, weld pass deposition sequence, as well as temperature-dependent properties. The predicted residual stresses were then considered in stress intensity factor calculations using a three-dimensional finite element alternating model for investigating crack growth behavior for both small elliptical surface and through-wall cracks.

The objectives of this report was to propose the location of new injection wells, to review wellbore status in Germania unit and to forecast the incremental oil recovery based on waterflooding performance in other waterflood pilot area in order to demonstrate the benefit of waterflooding in Germania unit area.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Funeral program for Jeffery Dean Adams, born May 6, 1962 and died March 5, 2003. The funeral was held March 10, 2003 at St. Paul United Methodist Church, officiated by Rev. J. Brendonly Cunningham. The funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and he was buried in Meadowlawn Memorial Park in San Antonio, Texas.