This test plan documents the acceptance testing of the sludge pickup adapter for potential use during PSI Phases 3 and 4 fuel cleanliness inspection activities. The adaptex is attached to the strainer tip of the vacuum wand and used to suction up residual sludge captured in a sludge collection tray. The material is vacuumed into a chamber of known volume in the sludge pickup adapter. The device serves as an aid in helping to determine whether the observed quantity of sludge is within allowable limits (1.4 cm{sup 3} per fuel assembly). This functionality test involves underwater testing in the 305 Building Cold Test Facility to verify that sludge can be successfully vacuumed from a collection tray. Ancillary activities in this acceptance test include demonstration that the sludge pickup adapter CM be successfully attached to and detached from the vacuum wand underwater.

US infrastructures provide essential services that support the economic prosperity and quality of life. Today, the latest threat to these infrastructures is the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of the system. On balance, added connectivity will improve economic efficiency; however, increased coupling could also result in situations where a disturbance in an isolated infrastructure unexpectedly cascades across diverse infrastructures. An understanding of the behavior of complex systems can be critical to understanding and predicting infrastructure responses to unexpected perturbation. Sandia National Laboratories has developed an agent-based model of critical US infrastructures using time-dependent Monte Carlo methods and a genetic algorithm learning classifier system to control decision making. The model is currently under development and contains agents that represent the several areas within the interconnected infrastructures, including electric power and fuel supply. Previous work shows that agent-based simulations models have the potential to improve the accuracy of complex system forecasting and to provide new insights into the factors that are the primary drivers of emergent behaviors in interdependent systems. Simulation results can be examined both computationally and analytically, offering new ways of theorizing about the impact of perturbations to an infrastructure network.

A process monitor is needed by British Nuclear Fuels Limited, Inc. (BNFL Inc.) to measure total {sup 99}Tc levels in column effluents during technetium removal from the aqueous fraction of the Hanford high-level tank wastes. The monitor must achieve detection limits of 1 x 10{sup {minus}8}Ci/mL (0.6 {micro}g/mL). Measurements must be done in near real time, with an analysis frequency of {approximately}15 min. The monitoring technology must be sufficiently simple and robust for unattended continuous operation in the plant settings.

This report is on the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act: Overview of S. 1931 and H.R. 1658, 106th Congress.

We present a new algorithm for material boundary interface reconstruction from data sets containing volume fractions. We transform the reconstruction problem to a problem that analyzes the dual data set, where each vertex in the dual mesh has an associated barycentric coordinate tuple that represents the fraction of each material present. After constructing the dual tetrahedral mesh from the original mesh, we construct material boundaries by mapping a tetrahedron into barycentric space and calculating the intersections with Voronoi cells in barycentric space. These intersections are mapped back to the original physical space and triangulated to form the boundary surface approximation. This algorithm can be applied to any grid structure and can treat any number of materials per element/vertex.

This technical report summarizes the research conducted and results obtained during the period beginning October 1, 1999 to March 31, 2000. Heat transfer characteristics study and experimental work were continued using the bench-scale CFB system with the heat transfer probe. A copper tube with thermocouples was used as the heat transfer probe which was convenient to measure the temperature changes at different locations of the bed. The heat transfer coefficient at different locations of the heat transferring surface decreases along the slides down the heat transfer surface; its temperature increase, which reducing the temperature difference between the surface of the tube and the bulk of the bed. The radial variation of heat transfer coefficients showed little increase in heat transfer coefficient near the wall. It is believed that a long heat-transferring surface is located in the core region; a boundary layer develops near the wall of the surface. This may cause clusters or streamers to form which slides down the surface. According to the results, heat transfer coefficients in the core region are not affected significantly by the location of the probe. The wall conduction resistance was eliminated and heat transfer coefficients were measured and calculated at different locations along …

This design analysis has shown that, on a conceptual level, the emplacement of drip shields is feasible with current technology and equipment. A plan for drip shield emplacement was presented using a Drip Shield Transporter, a Drip Shield Emplacement Gantry, a locomotive, and a Drip Shield Gantry Carrier. The use of a Drip Shield Emplacement Gantry as an emplacement concept results in a system that is simple, reliable, and interfaces with the numerous other exising repository systems. Using the Waste Emplacement/Retrieval System design as a basis for the drip shield emplacement concept proved to simplify the system by using existing equipment, such as the gantry carrier, locomotive, Electrical and Control systems, and many other systems, structures, and components. Restricted working envelopes for the Drip Shield Emplacement System require further consideration and must be addressed to show that the emplacement operations can be performed as the repository design evolves. Section 6.1 describes how the Drip Shield Emplacement System may use existing equipment. Depending on the length of time between the conclusion of waste emplacement and the commencement of drip shield emplacement, this equipment could include the locomotives, the gantry carrier, and the electrical, control, and rail systems. If the exisiting equipment …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the equal employment opportunity (EEO) complaint process for federal employees and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) role in protecting federal workers from unlawful employment discrimination, focusing on the: (1) rising number of new discrimination cases; (2) data shortcomings that hinder assessment of workplace conflicts; and (3) movement toward a systematic approach to dispute prevention."

Excise taxes have long been a part of our country's revenue history. In the field of gasoline taxation, the states led the way with Oregon enacting the first tax on motor fuels in 1919. By 1932, all states and the District of Columbia had followed suit with tax rates that ranged between two and seven cents per gallon. The federal government first imposed its excise tax on gasoline at a one cent per gallon rate in 1932. The gas tax was enacted to correct a federal budgetary imbalance.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed federal information security, focusing on actions federal agencies can take immediately to strengthen their security programs as well as other actions required to make more fundamental and long-term improvements."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on international parental child abductions, focusing on the adequacy of federal response to: (1) problems identified with the federal government's response to international parental child abductions; (2) the Department of Justice's (DOJ) use of the 1993 International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act to prosecute abducting parents; and (3) the actions federal agencies plan to take to address the problems."

The authors report and analyze the results of numerical studies of dense granular flows in two and three dimensions, using both linear damped springs and Hertzian force laws between particles. Chute flow generically produces a constant density profile that satisfies scaling relations suggestive of a Bagnold grain inertia regime. The type for force law has little impact on the behavior of the system. Failure is not initiated at the surface, consistent with the absence of surface flows and different principal stress directions at vs. below the surface.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the possible connection between depleted uranium exposure and Gulf War illnesses, focusing on: (1) the scientific understanding about health effects from exposure to depleted uranium; (2) whether the Gulf War veterans are experiencing administrative problems with the medical screening program for depleted uranium health effects; and (3) the extent to which the services have implemented programs to train servicemembers to safely operate in a depleted uranium-contaminated battlefield."

The hazard model described in this paper is designed to accept data over the Internet from distributed databases. A hazard object template is used to ensure that all necessary descriptors are collected for each object. Three methods for combining the data are compared and contrasted. Three methods are used for handling the three types of interactions between the hazard objects.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the federal government's management of crosscutting program activities, focusing on: (1) an overview of programs with mission fragmentation and overlap in 1998 and 1999; (2) barriers to interagency coordination within the last decade; and (3) potential approaches for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of crosscutting programs."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the actions needed to make the federal government more efficient and effective for the 21st Century."

Numerous investigations have demonstrated that intense plastic deformation is an attractive procedure for producing an ultrafine grain size in metallic materials. Torsional deformation under high pressure and equal-channel angular extrusion are two techniques that can produce microstructures with grain sizes in the submicrometer and nanometer range. Materials with these microstructures have many attractive properties. The microstructures formed by these two processing techniques are essentially the same and thus the processes occurring during deformation should be the same. Most previous studies have examined the final microstructures produced as a result of severe plastic deformation and the resulting properties. Only a limited number of studies have examined the evolution of microstructure. As a result, some important aspects of ultra-fine grain formation during severe plastic deformation remain unknown. There is also limited data on the influence of the initial state of the material on the microstructural evolution and mechanisms of ultra-fine grain formation. This limited knowledge base makes optimization of processing routes difficult and retards commercial application of these techniques. The objective of the present work is to examine the microstructure evolution during severe plastic deformation of a 2219 aluminum alloy. Specific attention is given to the mechanism of ultrafine grain formation as …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the status of the National Weather Service (NWS) systems modernization and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program."

As part of a program intended to replace the present evaporative coolant at the gaseous diffusion plants (GDPs) with a non-ozone-depleting alternate, a series of investigations of the suitability of candidate substitutes is under way. This report summarizes studies directed at estimating the chemical and thermal stability of three candidate coolants, c-C{sub 4}F{sub 8}, n-C{sub 4}F{sub 10}, and c-C{sub 4}F{sub 8}O, in a few specific environments to be found in gaseous diffusion plant operations. One issue concerning the new coolants is the possibility that they might produce the highly toxic compound perfluoroisobutylene (PFIB) in high-temperature environments. Two specific high-temperature thermal environments are examined, namely the use of a flame test for the presence of coolant vapors and welding in the presence of coolant vapors. A second issue relates to the thermal or chemical decomposition of the coolants in the gaseous diffusion process environment. The primary purpose of the study was to develop and evaluate available data to provide information that will allow the technical and industrial hygiene staff at the GDPs to perform appropriate safety evaluations and to determine the need for field testing or experimental work. The scope of this study included a literature search and an evaluation of …

This Environmental Program Plan was developed in support of the Integrated Environment, Safety, and Health Management System Plan (ISMS) (RPP-MP-003), which establishes a single, defined environmental, safety, and health management system that integrates requirements into the work planning and execution processes to protect workers, the public, and the environment. The ISMS also provides mechanisms for increasing worker involvement in work planning, including hazard and environmental impact identification, analysis, and control; work execution; and feedback/improvement processes. The ISMS plan consists of six core functions. Each section of this plan describes the activities of the River Protection Project (RPP) (formerly known as the Tank Waste Remediation System) Environmental organization according to the following core functions: Establish Environmental Policy; Define the Scope of Work; Identify Hazards, Environmental Impacts, and Requirements; Analyze Hazards and Environmental Impacts and Implement Controls; Perform Work within Controls; and Provide Feedback and Continuous Improvement.

This report describes the results of an independent review team brought in to assess CH2M Hill Hanford Group's readiness and ability to support the RPP's move into its next major phase - retrieval and delivery of tank waste to the Privatization Contractor

This Acceptance Test Report (ATR) provides the test results for the inspection and testing of the new Pumping Instrumentation and Control (PIC) skid designed as ''P''. The ATR summaries the results and provides a copy of the ATP and inspections in the Appendix.

None

This Waste Encapsulation Storage Facility (WESF) Dangerous Waste Training Plan (DWTP) applies to personnel who perform work at, or in support of WESF. The plan, along with the names of personnel, may be given to a regulatory agency inspector upon request. General workers, subcontractors, or visiting personnel who have not been trained in the management of dangerous wastes must be accompanied by an individual who meets the requirements of this training plan. Dangerous waste management includes handling, treatment, storage, and/or disposal of dangerous and/or mixed waste. Dangerous waste management units covered by this plan include: less-than-90-day accumulation area(s); pool cells 1-8 and 12 storage units; and process cells A-G storage units. This training plan describes general requirements, worker categories, and provides course descriptions for operation of the WESF permitted miscellaneous storage units and the Less-than-90-Day Accumulation Areas.