Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In December 2009, recognizing that the situation in Afghanistan had become more grave since the March 2009 announcement of the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the administration concluded a 10-week review of the strategy's goals and the methods needed to achieve them. In announcing the results of this review, the President reaffirmed the core strategic goal of disrupting, dismantling, and eventually defeating extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and preventing them from threatening the United States and its allies in the future. To meet this goal, the President announced his decision to rapidly deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. In addition, he pledged a "surge" of civilian experts to help enhance the capacity of Afghan government institutions and assist in the rehabilitation of key economic sectors. Since the President's December 2009 announcement, about 16,000 of the additional U.S. troops have gradually deployed to Afghanistan--including about 10,000 as of March 2010 and approximately another 6,000 since that time--and the number of U.S. government civilians present in country has grown by about 200. In February 2010, in what senior Department of Defense (DOD) officials have described as the …

This report is about an Alternative Enhanced Chemical Cleaning Basic Studies Results FY09

Due to the need to close waste storage tanks, chemical cleaning methods are needed for the effective removal of the heels. Oxalic acid is the preferred cleaning reagent for sludge heel dissolution, particularly for iron-based sludge, due to the strong complexing strength of the oxalate. However, the large quantity of oxalate added to the tank farm from oxalic acid based chemical cleaning has significant downstream impacts. Optimization of the oxalic acid cleaning process can potentially reduce the downstream impacts from chemical cleaning. To optimize oxalic acid usage, a detailed understanding of the chemistry of oxalic acid based sludge dissolution is required. Additionally, other acid systems may be required for specific waste components with low solubility in oxalic acid and as a means to reduce oxalic acid usage in general. Solubility tests were conducted using non-radioactive, pure metal phases known to be the primary phases present in High Level Waste sludge. The metal phases studied included the aluminum phases gibbsite and boehmite and the iron phases magnetite and hematite. Hematite and boehmite are expected to be the most difficult iron and aluminum phases to dissolve. These mineral phases have been identified in both SRS and Hanford High Level Waste sludge. Acids …

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) are widely used in U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) nonreactor nuclear facilities for safety-critical applications. Although use of the SIS technology and computer-based digital controls, can improve performance and safety, it potentially introduces additional complexities, such as failure modes that are not readily detectable. Either automated actions or manual (operator) actions may be required to complete the safety instrumented function to place the process in a safe state or mitigate a hazard in response to an alarm or indication. DOE will issue a new standard, Application of Safety Instrumented Systems Used at DOE Nonreactor Nuclear Facilities, to provide guidance for the design, procurement, installation, testing, maintenance, operation, and quality assurance of SIS used in safety significant functions at DOE nonreactor nuclear facilities. The DOE standard focuses on utilizing the process industry consensus standard, American National Standards Institute/ International Society of Automation (ANSI/ISA) 84.00.01, Functional Safety: Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector, to support reliable SIS design throughout the DOE complex. SIS design must take into account human-machine interfaces and their limitations and follow good human factors engineering (HFE) practices. HFE encompasses many diverse areas (e.g., information display, user-system interaction, alarm management, operator response, control …

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

Weekly newspaper from Brady, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The ore pitchblende was discovered in the 1750's near Joachimstal in what is now the Czech Republic. Used as a colorant in glazes, uranium was identified in 1789 as the active ingredient by chemist Martin Klaproth. In 1896, French physicist Henri Becquerel studied uranium minerals as part of his investigations into the phenomenon of fluorescence. He discovered a strange energy emanating from the material which he dubbed 'rayons uranique.' Unable to explain the origins of this energy, he set the problem aside. About two years later, a young Polish graduate student was looking for a project for her dissertation. Marie Sklodowska Curie, working with her husband Pierre, picked up on Becquerel's work and, in the course of seeking out more information on uranium, discovered two new elements (polonium and radium) which exhibited the same phenomenon, but were even more powerful. The Curies recognized the energy, which they now called 'radioactivity,' as something very new, requiring a new interpretation, new science. This discovery led to what some view as the 'golden age of nuclear science' (1895-1945) when countries throughout Europe devoted large resources to understand the properties and potential of this material. By World War II, the potential to harness this …

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As Congress considers reauthorization of the laws which provide funding for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), there is interest in understanding what accounts for recent trends in child care subsidy receipt among eligible families and what research says about subsidies' effects on parents' ability to obtain and maintain employment. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) administers CCDF, but states have flexibility in its implementation. As requested, GAO examined: (1) trends in federal estimates of the number and proportion of eligible children and families who receive child care subsidies, (2) factors that may affect trends in estimates of the number of children served, and (3) what is known about the extent to which access to subsidies supports low-income parents' employment. To address these issues, GAO reviewed recent federal estimates of the number and proportion of eligible children and families served; conducted a survey of state child care administrators in 50 states and the District of Columbia; interviewed HHS officials, state officials in four selected states, and researchers and experts in child care subsidies; and reviewed research on the relationship between subsidy receipt …

Weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

A replacement for the PS storage ring is being considered, in the context of the future LHC accelerator complex upgrade, that would likely place the new machine (the PS2) in a regime where the electron-cloud (EC) effect might be significant. We report here our current estimate of the EC density ne in the bending magnets and the field-free regions at injection and extraction beam energy, for both proposed bunch spacings, tb = 25 and 50 ns. The primary model parameters exercised are the peak secondary emission yield (SEY) delta max, the electron-wall impact energy at which the SEY peaks, Emax, and the chamber radius a in the fieldfree regions. We present many of our results as a function of the bunch intensity Nb, and we provide a tentative explanation for the non-monotonic behavior of ne as a function of Nb.

The purpose of this report is to document the acceptability of the second macrobatch (Salt Batch 2) of Tank 49H waste to H Tank Farm, DWPF, and Saltstone for operation of the Interim Salt Disposition Project (ISDP). Tank 49 feed meets the Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) requirements specified by References 11, 12, and 13. Salt Batch 2 material is qualified and ready to be processed through ARP/MCU to the final disposal facilities.

The purpose of this report is to document the acceptability of Sludge Batch 5 with the initial macrobatch operation of the Interim Salt Disposition Project (ISDP) waste to the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). This report was prepared to comply with the requirements listed in the Waste Acceptance Criteria for Sludge, Actinide Removal Process (ARP), and Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) Process Transfers to 512-S and DWPF. The requirements for transfers to 512-S were evaluated during ISDP Salt Batch 1 qualification. The calculations of sludge concentrations are based entirely on the Tank 51 sample processed at SRNL. This is conservative because Tank 51 is blended with the dilute feed in the DWPF Feed Tank (Tank 40). This report documents the acceptability of sludge only as well as Sludge Batch 5 sludge slurry combined with ARP/MCU products for feed to DWPF. All criteria were met for unblended Tank 51 material.

None

This presentation summarizes findings of the fuel cell vehicle learning demonstration of the Fuel Cell Technologies Program.

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

In December 2004, Google announced its Library Project, which was to entail digitizing, indexing, and displaying "snippets" of print books in the collections of five major libraries, among other things. The Library Project was not limited to books in the public domain (e.g., books whose terms of copyright protection had expired), and Google did not seek the permission of copyright holders, in part, because it asserted that its proposed uses were fair uses. Many authors, publishers, and other rights holders disagreed. This report provides background on the Library Project, legal issues raised by digitization and indexing projects, and the status of the litigation over the Library Project.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

The Heavy Water Components Test Reactor (HWCTR) facility (Figure 1) was built in 1961, operated from 1962 to 1964, and is located in the northwest quadrant of the Savannah River Site (SRS) approximately three miles from the site boundary. The HWCTR facility is on high, well-drained ground, about 30 meters above the water table. The HWCTR was a pressurized heavy water test reactor used to develop candidate fuel designs for heavy water power reactors. It was not a defense-related facility like the materials production reactors at SRS. The reactor was moderated with heavy water and was rated at 50 megawatts thermal power. In December of 1964, operations were terminated and the facility was placed in a standby condition as a result of the decision by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to redirect research and development work on heavy water power reactors to reactors cooled with organic materials. For about one year, site personnel maintained the facility in a standby status, and then retired the reactor in place. In 1965, fuel assemblies were removed, systems that contained heavy water were drained, fluid piping systems were drained, deenergized and disconnected and the spent fuel basin was drained and dried. The doors of …