Evaluate the long-term retention of several facilities associated with the PNNL Capability Replacement Laboratory and other Hanfor mission needs. WCH prepared a mitigation plan for three scenarios with different release dates for specific buildings. The evaluations present a proposed plan for providing utility services to retained facilities in support of a long-term (+20 year) lifespan in addition to temporary services to buildings with specified delayed release dates.

To help inform discussions on the federal role in dam safety, this report provides background information on the nation’s dam safety activities and funding mechanisms.

This report discusses agricultural credit, which makes or guarantees loans to farmers who cannot qualify at other lenders, and the Farm Credit System (FCS), which is a network of borrower-owned lending institutions operating as a government-sponsored enterprise.

This report provides basic information on several agriculture conservation programs, primarily drawn from agency budget presentations and websites, about each program using a consistent format. This information should help respond to basic questions and resolve many common sources of confusion about the purposes of the program, program participation and policy topics.

In order to better understand EPA’s actions, this report provides an analysis of the agency’s final 2006 revisions to the particulates NAAQS, and the estimated costs and benefits of the new standards and of a more stringent alternatives analyzed. The report concludes by highlighting concerns and issues raised regarding the revisions to the particulates standards, including those of the science advisory committee (Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, or CASAC), and actions in Congress.

This report reviews the types of air emissions from livestock and poultry operations and their human health and environmental impacts. It then discusses provisions of several federal laws concerned with environmental impacts, beginning with the Clean Water Act, because protecting water resources has been the primary regulatory focus regarding livestock and animal operations.

This report discusses a plan announced by EPA in January 2005, called the Air Compliance Agreement, that would produce air quality monitoring data on animal agriculture emissions from a small number of farms, while at the same time protecting all participants (including farms where no monitoring takes place) through a “safe harbor” from liability under certain provisions of federal environmental laws.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and New York State Department of State (DOS) requested the help of DOE’s Building Energy Codes Program (BECP) in estimating the annual building energy savings and cost impacts of adopting ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2004 (ASHRAE 2004) requirements. This report summarizes the analysis methodology and results of energy simulation in response to that request.

This report is a brief overview of some selected issues related to animal agriculture that are drawn from CRS reports.

This report is about the importance of animal identification and its issues.

This report provides background on the revised environmental rules, the previous Clean Water Act rules and the Clinton Administration proposal, and perspectives of key interest groups on the proposal and final regulations.

This report is on The Animal Welfare Act: Background and Selected Legislation.

The goal of the OSMOSE program is to measure the reactivity effect of minor actinides in known neutron spectra of interest to the Generation-IV reactor program and other programs and to create a database of these results for use as an international benchmark for the minor actinides. The results are then compared to calculational models to verify and validate integral absorption cross-sections for the minor actinides. The OSMOSE program includes all aspects of the experimental program -- including the fabrication of fuel pellets and samples, the oscillation of the samples in the MINERVE reactor for the measurement of the reactivity effect, reactor physics modeling of the MINERVE reactor, and the data analysis and interpretation of the experimental results.

This report provides information about environmental programs during 2005 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Seasonal activities that span calendar years are also included. Production of an annual site environmental report (ASER) is a requirement established by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for all management and operating (M&O) contractors throughout the DOE complex. SLAC is a federally-funded research and development center with Stanford University as the M&O contractor. SLAC effectively applied environmental management in meeting the site's integrated safety and environmental management system (ISEMS) goals. For normal daily activities, all SLAC managers and supervisors are responsible for ensuring that proper procedures are followed so that: (1) Worker safety and health are protected; (2) The environment is protected; and (3) Compliance is ensured. Throughout 2005, SLAC focused on these activities through the SLAC management systems (described in Chapter 3). These systems were also the way SLAC approached implementing ''greening of the government'' initiatives such as Executive Order 13148. The management systems at SLAC are effective, supporting compliance with all relevant statutory and regulatory requirements. There were no reportable releases to the environment from SLAC operations during 2005. In addition, many improvements were continued during 2005, in waste minimization, …

The ''front end'' of the ILC RTML constitutes the sections of the RTML which are upstream of the first RF cavity of the first stage bunch compressor: specifically, the SKEW, COLL, TURN, SPIN, and EMIT sections. Although in principle it should be easy to transport the beam through these sections with low emittance growth, since the energy spread of the beam is relatively low, in practice it is difficult because of the large number of betatron wavelengths and strong focusing, especially in the TURN section. We report here on the use of the Kick Minimization Method for limiting the emittance growth in the ''front end'' of the RTML. Kick Minimization (KM) is a steering method which balances two optima: minimization of the RMS measured orbit on the BPMs (often called 1:1 steering), and minimization of the RMS corrector strength [1]. The simulation program used for these studies is Lucretia [2].

A report of an archaeological monitoring of the Elm Fork Relief Interceptor sewer pipeline.

Some white light-emitting diode (LED) light sources haverecently attained levels of efficiency and cost that allow them tocompete with fluorescent lighting for off-grid applications in thedeveloping world. Additional attributes (optics, size, ruggedness, andservice life) make them potentially superior products. Enormousreductions in energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions are thus possible,and system costs can be much lower given the ability to downsize thecharging and energy storage components compared to a fluorescentstrategy. However, there is a high risk of "market-spoiling" if inferiorproducts are introduced and result in user dissatisfaction. Completesystems involve the integration of light sources and optics, energysupply, and energy storage. A natural starting point for evaluatingproduct quality is to focus on the individual light sources. This reportdescribes testing results for batches of 10 5mm white LEDs from 26manufacturers. Efficacies and color properties are presented.

This report is on the Automobile and Light Truck Fuel Economy: The CAFE Standards.

Thermochemical processes are being developed to provide global-scale quantities of hydrogen. A variant on sulfur-based thermochemical cycles is the Hybrid Sulfur (HyS) Process which uses a sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolyzer (SDE) to produce the hydrogen. In FY05 and FY06, testing at the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) explored a low temperature fuel cell design concept for the SDE. The advantages of this design concept include high electrochemical efficiency and small footprint that are crucial for successful implementation on a commercial scale. A key component of the SDE is the ion conductive membrane through which protons produced at anode migrate to the cathode and react to produce hydrogen. An ideal membrane for the SDE should have both low ionic resistivity and low sulfur dioxide transport. These features allow the electrolyzer to perform at high currents with low potentials, along with preventing contamination of both the hydrogen output and poisoning of the catalysts involved. Another key component is the electrocatalyst material used for the anode and cathode. Good electrocatalysts should be chemically stable and have a low overpotential for the desired electrochemical reactions. This report summarizes results from activities to evaluate commercial and experimental membranes for the SDE. Several different types of …

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This report provides information about the Bioterrorism Countermeasure Development and its issues in Patents and Homeland Security.

In this project, we have integrated state-of-the-art Density Functional Theory (DFT) models of heterogeneous catalytic processes with high-throughput screening of bimetallic catalytic candidates for important industrial problems. We have studied a new class of alloys characterized by a surface composition different from the bulk composition, and investigated their stability and activity for the water-gas shift reaction and the oxygen reduction reaction. The former reaction is an essential part of hydrogen production; the latter is the rate-limiting step in low temperature H2 fuel cells. We have identified alloys that have remarkable stability and activity, while having a much lower material cost for both of these reactions. Using this knowledge of bimetallic interactions, we have also made progress in the industrially relevant areas of carbohydrate reforming and conversion of biomass to liquid alkanes. One aspect of this work is the conversion of glycerol (a byproduct of biodiesel production) to synthesis gas. We have developed a bifunctional supported Pt catalyst that can cleave the carbon-carbon bond while also performing the water-gas shift reaction, which allows us to better control the H2:CO ratio. Knowledge gained from the theoretical metal-metal interactions was used to develop bimetallic catalysts that perform this reaction at low temperature, allowing …

This report is on China-U.S. Trade Issues.

This report provides a discussion of several interrelated air issues of interest in the 110th Congress, including revision of the particulate standards, the role of independent scientific review in the setting of air quality standards, multi-pollutant legislation for electric power plants, mercury from power plants, and New Source Review. This report provides an overview of these issues; CRS reports that contain additional information and detailed sources are referenced in the appropriate sections.