A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense's (DOD) investment in new weapon systems is expected to exceed $1 trillion from fiscal years 2003 to 2009. To reduce the risk of cost and schedule overruns, DOD revamped its acquisition policy in May 2003. The policy provides detailed guidance on how weapon systems acquisitions should be managed. The Senate report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 required GAO to determine whether DOD's policy supports knowledge-based, evolutionary acquisitions and whether the policy provides the necessary controls for DOD to ensure successful outcomes, such as meeting cost and schedule goals. The report also required GAO to assess whether the policy is responsive to certain requirements in the Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003 concerning DOD's management of the acquisition process."

The goal of this project was the development of a family of wireless, single-chip, luminescence-sensing devices to solve a number of difficult distributed measurement problems in areas ranging from environmental monitoring and assessment to high-throughput screening of combinatorial chemistry libraries. These wireless luminescence integrated sensors (WLIS) consist of a microluminometer, wireless data transmitter, and RF power input circuit all realized in a standard integrated circuit (IC) process with genetically engineered, whole-cell, bioluminescent bioreporters encapsulated and deposited on the IC. The end product is a family of compact, low-power, rugged, low-cost sensors. As part of this program they developed an integrated photodiode/signal-processing scheme with an rms noise level of 175 electrons/second for a 13-minute integration time, and a quantum efficiency of 66% at the 490-nm bioluminescent wavelength. this performance provided a detection limit of < 1000 photons/second. Although sol-gel has previously been used to encapsulate yeast cells, the reaction conditions necessary for polymerization (primarily low pH) have beforehand proven too harsh for bacterial cell immobilizations. Utilizing sonication methods, they have were able to initiate polymerization under pH conditions conductive to cell survival. both a toluene bioreporter (Pseudomonas putida TVA8) and a naphthalene bioreporter (Pseudomonas fluorescens HK44) were successfully encapsulated in sol-gel …

The U.S. steel industry has faced increasing difficulties since the late 1990s. About 40 U.S. steel producers have gone into bankruptcy. While different companies and parts of the industry have been affected to different degrees, the two types of domestic producers of raw steel, integrated mills and minimills, have both supported restrictions on imports, which they say have undermined the ability of the U.S. industry to produce steel economically. This report reviews industry developments and the economic situation of the steel industry, including legacy cost aspects of its problems.

The objective of this calculation is to establish an isotopic database to represent commercial spent nuclear fuel (CSNF) from pressurized water reactors (PWRs) in criticality analyses performed for the proposed Monitored Geologic Repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Confirmation of the conservatism with respect to criticality in the isotopic concentration values represented by this isotopic database is performed as described in Section 3.5.3.1.2 of the ''Disposal Criticality Analysis Methodology Topical Report'' (YMP 2000). The isotopic database consists of the set of 14 actinides and 15 fission products presented in Section 3.5.2.1.1 of YMP 2000 for use in CSNF burnup credit. This set of 29 isotopes is referred to as the principal isotopes. The oxygen isotope from the UO{sub 2} fuel is also included in the database. The isotopic database covers enrichments of {sup 235}U ranging from 1.5 to 5.5 weight percent (wt%) and burnups ranging from approximately zero to 75 GWd per metric ton of uranium (mtU). The choice of fuel assembly and operating history values used in generating the isotopic database are provided is Section 5. Tables of isotopic concentrations for the 29 principal isotopes (plus oxygen) as a function of enrichment and burnup are provided in Section 6.1. Results …

Several bench-scale column tests (resin bed volume less than or equal to 75 mL) have been conducted with SuperLig 639 resin and simulated Hanford waste supernates. Rhenium (surrogate for technetium in actual waste samples) breakthrough profiles were determined for three simulant compositions which are representative of the basic waste categories requiring treatment in the Hanford River Protection Project Waste Treatment Plant. Considerable loading performance variability was observed between the three waste types, although the resin is effective at rhenium removal from each solution. Careful and frequent analysis during elution studies conducted at the conclusion of the column loading tests confirmed that sodium nitrate and sodium perrhenate ion pairs are primary sorbing species on SuperLig 639 resin. Furthermore, it was discovered that potassium nitrate and potassium perrhenate salts are significant competitors for sorption sites on the resin. Successive desorption profiles were identified for all four salt species during elution tests. Integration of the desorption profiles revealed that the resin is selective for removal of the potassium salts over the sodium salts.

This report quantified potential hydrogen diffusion through Hanford Site Single-Shell tank (SST) domes if the SSTs were hypothetically sealed airtight. Results showed that diffusion would keep headspace flammable gas concentrations below the lower flammability limit in the 241-AX and 241-SX SST. The purpose of this document is to quantify the amount of hydrogen that could diffuse through the domes of the SSTs if they were hypothetically sealed airtight. Diffusion is assumed to be the only mechanism available to reduce flammable gas concentrations. The scope of this report is limited to the 149 SSTs.

The goal of this project was to establish a dose response curve for radiation-induced neoplastic transformation of HeLa x skin fibroblast human hybrid cells in vitro under experimental conditions were an adaptive response, if it were induced, would have an opportunity to be expressed. During the first two years of the grant an exhaustive series of experiments were performed and the resulting data were reported at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Radiation Research Society and then Subsequently published. The data showed that an adaptive response against spontaneous neoplastic transformation was seen up to doses of 10cGy of Cs-137 gamma rays. At dose of 30, 50 and 100 cGy the transformation frequencies were above background. This indicated that for this system, under the specific experimental conditions used, there was a threshold of somewhere between 10 and 30 cGy. The results also indicated some unexpected, though very interesting, correlations with relative risk estimates made from human epidemiologic studies.

Understanding virulence mechanisms of bacterial pathogens is vital to anticipating biological threats and to improving detectors, vaccines, and treatments. This project will characterize factors responsible for virulence of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague and a biothreat agent, which has an inducible Type III secretion virulence mechanism also found in other animal, plant, and human pathogens. Our approach relies on genomic and proteomic characterization of Y. pestis in addition to a bioinformatic infrastructure. Scientific and technical capabilities developed in this project can be applied to other microbes of interest. This work will establish a significant new direction for biodefense at LLNL and expand our national and international scientific collaborations.

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This report discusses the policy, economic, and technical factors that contributed to higher spending and lower receipts, raising the deficit substantially from what was originally proposed.

During the initial months of In-Tank Precipitation radioactive operation in 1995 the process experienced high rates of tetraphenylborate decomposition with assumed corresponding high rates of benzene generation. In March 1996 after a two month quiescent period, a water addition to Tank 48H resulted in an unexpected benzene release to the tank vapor phase. This was the first time a low energy input resulted in a significant release rate. This led to questions about how benzene, generated in-situ by TPB decomposition, was retained in the surrounding potassium tetraphenylborate slurry. It was postulated the retention mechanism may have changed during the quiescent period prior to March so the benzene present became readily releasable to the vapor phase with low energy input to the slurry or that enough benzene accumulated that some of it was in a different, more releasable form. Readily releasable is a qualitative term defined as a rapid release of benzene at a rate approaching evaporation of a free benzene layer. It is intended to distinguish between benzene in a form with high liquid phase resistance to mass transfer diffusion controlled from benzene in a form with minimal liquid phase resistance to mass transfer free benzene layer evaporation. If a …