ENERGY STAR [registered trademark] is a voluntary labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products, buildings and practices. Operated jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), ENERGY STAR labels exist for more than thirty products, spanning office equipment, residential heating and cooling equipment, commercial and residential lighting, home electronics, and major appliances. This report presents savings estimates for a subset of ENERGY STAR program activities, focused primarily on labeled products. We present estimates of the energy, dollar and carbon savings achieved by the program in the year 2001, what we expect in 2002, and provide savings forecasts for two market penetration scenarios for the period 2002 to 2020. The target market penetration forecast represents our best estimate of future ENERGY STAR savings. It is based on realistic market penetration goals for each of the products. We also provide a forecast under the assumption of 100 percent market penetration; that is, we assume that all purchasers buy ENERGY STAR-compliant products instead of standard efficiency products throughout the analysis period.

The purpose of this note is to combine existing information on the {sup 237}U(n,f) cross section to determine if some consistency can be obtained for the neutron induced fission excitation of {sup 237}U. The neutron induced fission cross section of the 6.8 day {sup 237}U was measured directly by McNally et al. in 1968 using the Pommard nuclear device test. At the same time critical assembly measurements were done at Los Alamos using the Flattop assembly. A previous measurement was also made at LASL in 1954 with two different neutron sources, each peaked near 200 keV. The results were 0.66 {+-} 0.10 b and 0.70 {+-} 0.07 b for the (n,f) cross section. More recently Younes and Britt have reanalyzed direct reaction charged particle data of Cramer and Britt that had determined the fission probability of the {sup 238}U compound nucleus as a function of nuclear excitation energy. They have combined fission probabilities with calculated neutron absorption cross sections, including corrections for the differences in angular momentum between the direct and neutron induced reactions. From this analysis they have extracted equivalent {sup 237}U(n,f) cross sections. The technique for extracting surrogate (n,f) cross sections from (t,pf) data has been demonstrated in …

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to granting the legislature permission to adjourn for more than three days during the period beginning on Wednesday, February 25, 2009, and ending on Monday, March 2, 2009.

Strontium-90 is one of the most hazardous materials managed by agencies charged with protecting the public from radiation. Traditional radiometric methods have been limited by low sample throughput and slow turnaround times. Mass spectrometry offers the advantage of shorter analysis times and the ability to measure samples immediately after processing, however conventional mass spectrometric techniques are susceptible to molecular isobaric interferences that limit their overall sensitivity. In contrast, accelerator mass spectrometry is insensitive to molecular interferences and we have therefore begun developing a method for determination of {sup 90}Sr by accelerator mass spectrometry. Despite a pervasive interference from {sup 90}Zr, our initial development has yielded an instrumental background of {approx} 10{sup 8} atoms (75 mBq) per sample. Further refinement of our system (e.g., redesign of our detector, use of alternative target materials) is expected to push the background below 10{sup 6} atoms, close to the theoretical limit for AMS. Once we have refined our system and developed suitable sample preparation protocols, we will utilize our capability in applications to homeland security, environmental monitoring, and human health.

This report describes the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The report details that the act will make major cuts to agricultural programs.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been far more severely affected by AIDS than any other part of the world. The United Nations reports that 25.3 million adults and children are infected with the HIV virus in the region, which has about 10% of the world's population but more than 70% of the worldwide total of infected people. This report discusses this issue in detail, including the cause of the African AIDS epidemic, the social and economic consequences, response and treatment, and U.S. policy.

The purpose of this study was to develop the air emission projections for the maintenance operation to dissolve and flush out the scale material inside the F-Canyon Waste Header No.2. The chemical agent used for the dissolution is a concentrated nitric acid solution, so the pollutant of concern is the nitric acid vapor. Under the very conservative operating scenarios considered in this study, it was determined that the highest possible rate of nitric acid emission during the acid flush would be 0.048 lb. per hr. It turns out that this worst-case air emission projection is just below the current exemption limit of 0.05 lb. per hr. for permit applications.

We review the work performed under LDRD ER grant 98-ERD-099. The goal of this work is to write a subroutine for a fluid turbulence code that allows it to incorporate wave-particle resonances (WPR). WPR historically have required a kinetic code, with extra dimensions needed to evolve the phase space distribution function, f(x, v, t). The main results accomplished under this grant have been: (1) Derivation of a nonlinear closure term for 1D electrostatic collisionless fluid; (2) Writing of a 1D electrostatic fluid code, ''es1f,'' with a subroutine to calculate the aforementioned closure term; (3) derivation of several methods to calculate the closure term, including Eulerian, Euler-local, fully local, linearized, and linearized zero-phase-velocity, and implementation of these in es1f; (4) Successful modeling of the Landau damping of an arbitrary Langmuir wave; (5) Successful description of a kinetic two-stream instability up to the point of the first bounce; and (6) a spin-off project which uses a mathematical technique developed for the closure, known as the Phase Velocity Transform (PVT) to decompose turbulent fluctuations.

Control Banding (CB) strategies offer simplified solutions for controlling worker exposures to constituents that are found in the workplace in the absence of firm toxicological and exposure data. These strategies may be particularly useful in nanotechnology applications, considering the overwhelming level of uncertainty over what nanomaterials and nanotechnologies present as potential work-related health risks, what about these materials might lead to adverse toxicological activity, how risk related to these might be assessed, and how to manage these issues in the absence of this information. This study introduces a pilot CB tool or 'CB Nanotool' that was developed specifically for characterizing the health aspects of working with engineered nanoparticles and determining the level of risk and associated controls for five ongoing nanotechnology-related operations being conducted at two Department of Energy (DOE) research laboratories. Based on the application of the CB Nanotool, four of the five operations evaluated in this study were found to have implemented controls consistent with what was recommended by the CB Nanotool, with one operation even exceeding the required controls for that activity. The one remaining operation was determined to require an upgrade in controls. By developing this dynamic CB Nanotool within the realm of the scientific information …

This is a report by the Arctic Petroleum Technology about its developments.

We describe the motivation, architecture, and implementation of the Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory (ASC) portal. The ASC project provides a web-based problem solving framework for the astrophysics community that harnesses the capabilities of emerging computational grids.

The purpose of atmospheric transport and diffusion calculations is to provide estimates of concentration and surface deposition from routine and accidental releases of pollutants to the atmosphere. This paper discusses this topic.

Efforts during this second year focused on four areas: (1) continued searching and summarizing of published Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) mechanistic and kinetic studies of FTS reactions on iron catalysts; (2) investigation of CO adsorption/desorption and temperature programmed hydrogenation (TPH) of carbonaceous species after FTS on unsupported iron and alumina-supported iron catalysts; (3) activity tests of alumina-supported iron catalysts in a fixed bed reactor; (4) sequential design of experiments, for the collection of rate data in a Berty CSTR reactor, and nonlinear-regression analysis to obtain kinetic parameters. Literature sources describing mechanistic and kinetic studies of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis on iron catalysts were compiled in a review. Temperature-programmed desorption/reaction methods (the latter using mass-spectrometry detection and also thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA)) were utilized to study CO adsorption/-desorption on supported and unsupported iron catalysts. Molecular and dissociative adsorptions of CO occur on iron catalysts at 25-150 C. The amounts adsorbed and bond strengths of adsorption are influenced by supports and promoters. That CO adsorbs dissociatively on polycrystalline Fe at temperatures well below those of FT reaction indicates that CO dissociation is facile and unlikely to be the rate-limiting step during FTS. Carbonaceous species formed after FT reaction for only 5 minutes at 200 C were …

We calculate the atmospheric structure of an accretion disk around a Kerr black hole and obtain its X-ray spectrum, which exhibits prominent atomic transitions under certain circumstances. The gravitational and Doppler (red)shifts of the C V, C VI, O VII, O VIII, and Fe I-XXVI emission lines are observable in active galaxies. We quantify the line emissivities as a function of radius, to identify the effects of atmospheric structure, and to determine the usefulness of these lines for probing the disk energetics. The line emissivities do not always scale linearly with the incident radiative energy, as in the case of Fe XXV and Fe XXVI. Our model incorporates photoionization and thermal balance for the plasma, the hydrostatic approximation perpendicular to the plane of the disk, and general relativistic tidal forces. We include radiative recombination rates, fluorescence yields, Compton scattering, and photoelectric opacities for the most abundant elements.

The Material Control and Accountability (MC and A) Group has developed an electronic scan system to acknowledge issuance and returns of Tamper Indicating Device (TID) seals. Important MC and A features of the system are: 1. The system requires the issuer identification and the identification of applicators to be entered, thereby ensuring that at least two qualified issuers and applicators possess the seals. Also, Operations is prompted to ensure the Two Person Rule is met during issuance and application of the seals. 2. All input is date and time stamped to ease resolution of anomalies. 3. The system requires all information to be input before allowing the user to logoff, thereby eliminating the problem of incomplete information in the records. 4. The input is immediately available to FBL MC and A personnel outside the facility who then know to expect completed procedures and forms regarding these transactions. The paper will describe the application of these features in routine operations as well as the development effort and final configuration of the system.

The material in this report summarizes the Diversa technical effort in development of a biocatalyst for the biodesulfurization of Petro Star diesel as well as an economic report of standalone and combined desulfurization options, prepared by Pelorus and Anvil, to support and inform the development of a commercially viable process. We will discuss goals of the projected as originally stated and their modification as guided by parallel efforts to evaluate commercialization economics and process parameters. We describe efforts to identify novel genes and hosts for the generation of an optimal biocatalyst, analysis of diesel fuels (untreated, chemically oxidized and hydrotreated) for organosulfur compound composition and directed evolution of enzymes central to the biodesulfurization pathway to optimize properties important for their use in a biocatalyst. Finally we will summarize the challenges and issues that are central to successful development of a viable biodesulfurization process.

The goal of the Biomolecular Simulation of Base Excision Repair and Protein Signaling project is to enhance our understanding of the mechanism of human polymerase-, one of the key enzymes in base excision repair (BER) and the cell-signaling enzymes cyclic-AMP-dependent protein kinase. This work used molecular modeling and simulation studies to specifically focus on the • dynamics of DNA and damaged DNA • dynamics and energetics of base flipping in DNA • mechanism and fidelity of nucleotide insertion by BER enzyme human polymerase-β • mechanism and inhibitor design for cyclic-AMP-dependent protein kinase. Molecular dynamics simulations and electronic structure calculations have been performed using the computer resources at the Molecular Science Computing Facility at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.

The authors show that the most popular method to simulate Bose-Einstein (BE) interference effects predicts negligible correlations between identical pions originating from the hadronic decay of different W's produced in e{sup +}e{sup {minus}} {r_arrow} W{sup +}W{sup {minus}} {r_arrow} 4 jets at typical linear collider energies.

The 109th congress is considering the issues related to the public lands managed by the Bureau of the Land Management (BLM) and the national forest managed by the Forest Service,

Critical experiments were conducted at the Oak Ridge Critical Experiment Facility (ORCEF) to determine the critical concentration for an unreflected 69.2-cm-diameter sphere of UO{sub 2}F{sub 2}, at an enrichment of {approx}37 percent U{sup 235}, by weight. These experiments were a continuation of previous efforts to determine critical dimensions for fissile materials in simple geometry. Some of the earlier experiments in this vessel have been published as part of the OECD handbook. The reports concerning these experiments have only recently become available. Until August 2005, Refs. 2 and 3 were still classified. These documents, along with experimental logbooks and unclassified papers available on the experimental campaign and facility are being used to generate a computer model for this critical experiment.

Researchers at the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) successfully demonstrated the Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) process flow sheet using a 33-stage, 2-cm centrifugal contactor apparatus in two 24-hour tests using actual high level waste. Previously, we demonstrated the solvent extraction process with actual SRS HLW supernatant solution using a non-optimized solvent formulation. Following that test, the solvent system was optimized to enhance extractant solubility in the diluent by increasing the modifier concentration. We now report results of two tests with the new and optimized solvent.

Industrial processes use mechanical draft cooling towers (MDCT's) to dissipate waste heat by transferring heat from water to air via evaporative cooling, which causes air humidification. The Savannah River Site (SRS) has a MDCT consisting of four independent compartments called cells. Each cell has its own fan to help maximize heat transfer between ambient air and circulated water. The primary objective of the work is to conduct a parametric study for cooling tower performance under different fan speeds and ambient air conditions. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) developed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to achieve the objective. The model uses three-dimensional steady-state momentum, continuity equations, air-vapor species balance equation, and two-equation turbulence as the basic governing equations. It was assumed that vapor phase is always transported by the continuous air phase with no slip velocity. In this case, water droplet component was considered as discrete phase for the interfacial heat and mass transfer via Lagrangian approach. Thus, the air-vapor mixture model with discrete water droplet phase is used for the analysis. A series of the modeling calculations was performed to investigate the impact of ambient and operating conditions on the thermal performance of the cooling tower when fans …

Liquid wall protection, which challenges chamber clearing, has such advantages it's Heavy Ion Fusion's (HIF) main line chamber design. Thin liquid protection from x rays is necessary to avoid erosion of structural surfaces and thick liquid makes structures behind 0.5 m of Flibe (7 mean free paths for 14 MeV neutrons), last the life of the plant. Liquid wall protection holds the promise of greatly increased economic competitiveness. Driver designers require {approx}200 beams to illuminate recent target designs from two sides. The illumination must be compatible with liquid wall protection. The ''best'' values for driver energy, gain, yield and pulse rate comes out of well-known trade-off studies. The chamber design is based on several key assumptions, which are to be proven before HIF can be shown to be feasible. The chamber R&D needed to reduce the unknowns and risks depend on resolving a few technical issues such as jet surface smoothness and rapid chamber clearing.

We present deep Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of the galaxy cluster RDCS1252.9-2927, which was selected from the ROSAT Deep Cluster Survey (RDCS) and confirmed by extensive spectroscopy with the VLT at redshift z = 1.237. With the Chandra data, the X-ray emission from the intra-cluster medium is well resolved and traced out to 500 kpc, thus allowing a measurement of the physical properties of the gas with unprecedented accuracy at this redshift. We detect a clear 6.7 keV Iron K line in the Chandra spectrum providing a redshift within 1% of the spectroscopic one. By augmenting our spectroscopic analysis with the XMM-Newton data (MOS detectors only), we significantly narrow down the 1{sigma} error bar to 10% for the temperature and 30% for the metallicity, with best fit values kT = 6.0{sup +0.7}{sub -0.5} keV, Z = 0.36{sup +0.12}{sup -0.10}Z{sub {circle_dot}}. In the likely hypothesis of hydrostatic equilibrium, we measure a total mass of M{sub 500} = (1.9{+-}0.3)10{sup 14}h{sup -1}{sub 70} M{sub {circle_dot}} within R{sub {Delta}=500} {approx} 536 kpc. Overall, these observations imply that RDCS1252.9-2927 is the most X-ray luminous and likely the most massive bona-fide cluster discovered to date at z > 1. When combined with current samples of distant …