The goal of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) project is to provide an aboveground experimental capability for maintaining nuclear competence and weapons effects simulation and to provide a facility capable of achieving fusion ignition using solid-state lasers as the energy driver. The facility will incorporate 192 laser beams, which will be focused onto a small target located at the center of a spherical target chamber--the energy from the laser beams will be deposited in a few billionths of a second. The target will then implode, forcing atomic nuclei to sufficiently high temperatures and densities necessary to achieve a miniature fusion reaction. The NIF is under construction, at Livermore, California, located approximately 50 miles southeast of San Francisco, California.

On July 1, 2000, President Clinton signed H.R. 4762, P.L. 106-230. The law amended the Internal Revenue Code [IRC] to require political organizations described in IRC § 527 to disclose their political activities, if they were not already required to do so by the Federal Election Campaign Act [FECA]. This report summarizes the three major changes made by the law and some of the major responses to the legislation. First, all 527 organizations which expect to have over $25,000 in gross receipts during a taxable year and which are not required to report to the Federal Election Commission [FEC] are required to register with the IRS within 24 hours of their formation, whether they are involved in state, local, or federal elections. Second, 527 issue advocacy organizations, which previously reported neither to the IRS nor the FEC, are required to file regular disclosure statements with the IRS. Third, all 527 organizations with gross receipts in excess of $25,000 per year are required to file annual reports with the IRS. The registration statements, disclosure forms, and annual reports will be made public. H.R. 527 and S. 527 in the 107th Congress would exempt most state and local 527 organizations from the …

The experience of the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) with aging in the large axial drift chamber responsible for tracking in the central region is presented. Premature aging in the Run 1 chamber was observed after only 0.02 C/cm. After cleaning much of the gas system and making modifications to reduce aerosols from the alcohol bubbler, the observed aging rate fell dramatically in test chambers. Considerable effort has been made to better understand the factors that affect aging since the replacement chamber for Run 2 will accumulate about 1.0 C/cm. Current test chambers using the full CDF gas system show aging rates of less than 5%/C/cm.

A newly proposed type of multicharged ion source offers the possibility of an economically advantageous high-charge-state fusion driver. Multiphoton absorption in an intense uniform laser focus can give multiple charge states of high purity, simplifying or eliminating the need for charge-state separation downstream. Very large currents (hundreds of amperes) can be extracted from this type of source. Several arrangements are possible. For example, the laser plasma could be tailored for storage in a magnetic bucket, with beam extracted from the bucket. A different approach, described in this report, is direct beam extraction from the expanding laser plasma. They discuss extraction and focusing for the particular case of a 4.1-MV beam of Xe{sup 16+} ions. The maximum duration of the beam pulse is limited by the total charge in the plasma, while the practical pulse length is determined by the range of plasma radii over which good beam optics can be achieved. The extraction electrode contains a solenoid for beam focusing. The design studies were carried out first with an envelope code and then with a self-consistent particle code. Results from the initial model showed that hundreds of amperes could be extracted, but that most of this current missed the solenoid …

This booklet is designed to guide you through the process of buying a grid-tied solar electric system. A word of caution: This is not a technical guide for designing or installing your system.

This final report of the decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) of the Argonne National Laboratory-East (ANL-E) 60'' Cyclotron Accelerator Facility contains descriptions and evaluations of activities performed, and results obtained in connection with the Cyclotron D&D Project. It provides the following information: Objective of the Cyclotron D&D Project; A brief history of the Cyclotron facility; Overall descriptions of the Cyclotron facility and the ANL-E site; An overview of the D&D activities performed in connection with the Cyclotron D&D Project; Summary of the final status of the Cyclotron facility, including results of the final and confirmation surveys; Final cost and schedule for the Cyclotron D&D Project; Summaries of personnel exposure and total waste generated in connection with this project; and Final facility condition. This project final report was written in accordance with the requirements of the ANL-E D&D Project Planning Guidance Manual and the ANL-E D&D Program Management Plan. It covers the entire Cyclotron D&D Project, from the initiation of D&D activities to final project closeout. At the conclusion of the Independent Verification Survey (IVS), the Cyclotron facility was released for unrestricted reuse. Residual, elevated activity remains in inaccessible areas, however. The upper floor of the Cyclotron vault contains readily measurable radioactivity …

Discretionary spending limits are statutory caps on the level of budget authority and outlays determined through the annual appropriations process. They were initially established by the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA) of 1990 (Title XIII of P.L. 101-508) as part of an agreement between Congress and President George Bush to reduce the deficit. Twice since, they were extended to enforce agreements between Congress and President Bill Clinton, most recently to achieve a surplus.

We implement a dual scaling algorithm for positive semidefinite programming to handle a broader class of problems than could be solved with previous implementations of the algorithm. With appropriate representations of constraint matrices, we can solve general semidefinite programs and still exploit the structure of large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. Computational results show that our preliminary implementation is competitive with primal-dual solvers on many problems requiring moderate precision in the solution and is superior to primal-dual solvers for several types of problems.

Executive orders and proclamations are used extensively by Presidents to achieve policy goals, set uniform standards for managing the Executive Branch, or outline a policy view intended to influence the behavior of private citizens. The Constitution does not define these presidential instruments, and does not explicitly vest the President with the authority to issue them. Nonetheless, such orders are accepted as an inherent aspect of presidential power, and, if based on appropriate authority, they have the force and effect of law. This report discusses the nature of executive orders and proclamations, with a focus on the scope of presidential authority to execute such instruments and judicial and congressional responses thereto.

The 2001 annual reports of the board of trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds were released on March 19, 2001. Both programs have benefitted from an improved economic outlook in the near term, but both continue to have projected long-range problems. Insolvency for the Disability Insurance (DI) part of Social Security is projected to occur in 2026, and for the retirement and survivors part, in 2040.

This report uses hypothetical decommissioning test cases to illustrate an uncertainty assessment methodology for dose assessments conducted as part of decommissioning analyses (see NUREG/CR-6656). The hypothetical test case source term and scenarios are based on an actual decommissioning case and the physical setting is based on the site of a field experiment carried out for the NRC in Arizona. The emphasis in the test case was on parameter uncertainty. The analysis is limited to the hydrologic aspects of the exposure pathway involving infiltration of water at the ground surface, leaching of contaminants, and transport of contaminants through the groundwater to a point of exposure. The methodology uses generic parameter distributions based on national or regional databases for estimating parameter uncertainty. A Bayesian updating method is used in one of the test case applications to combine site-specific information with the generic parameter distributions. Sensitivity analysis and probabilistic simulation are used to describe the impact of parameter uncertainty on predicted dose. Emphasis is placed on understanding the conceptual and computational behavior of the dose assessment codes as they are applied to the test cases. The primary code used in this application was RESRAD v.6.0 although D and D v.1.0 results are also …

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Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the results of GAO's analysis of the financial health of the Federal Housing Administration's Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. GAO estimates that the Fund had an economic value of about $15.8 billion at the end of fiscal year 1999. This estimate implies a capital ratio of 3.20 percent, which is higher than the two-percent capital ratio mandated by law. Given the economic value of the Fund and the state of the economy at the end of fiscal year 1999, a two-percent capital ratio appears sufficient to withstand moderately severe economic downturns that could lead to worse-than-expected loan performance. Some more severe downturns that GAO analyzed also did not cause the estimated capital ratio to decline by as much as two percentage points. Because of the nature of such analysis, GAO urges caution in concluding that the estimated value of the Fund today implies that the Fund would necessarily withstand any particular economic scenario under all circumstances. Congress and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development have taken and could take several steps to influence the economic value of the Fund. Actions that influence the Fund's reserve …

Short- and long-wavelength plasma waves can become strongly coupled in the presence of two counter-propagating laser pump pulses detuned by twice the cold plasma frequency. What makes this four-wave interaction important is that the growth rate of the plasma waves occurs much faster than in the more obvious co-propagating geometry.

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We extend the Method of Manufactured Solutions (MMS) to the verification of transport codes. We derive analytic fixed sources required by the MMS procedure for several types of transport problems and apply the method to the Attila transport code. By means of this method we discover and correct several coding mistakes in Attila and ultimately verify its correct implementation for the problems studied. Our studies reveal that the MMS procedure is a useful tool for transport code development.

This report discusses air quality initiatives (such as the Ozone Transport Rule) that primarily focus on reducing and enforcing emissions from coal-fired electric generating utilities in the Midwest and South. The report also addresses various legislative activity that focuses on multi-pollutant strategies as an alternative to these piecemeal initiatives.

ALE3D simulations are presented for the thermal explosion of PBXN-109 (RDX, AI, HTPB, DOA) in support of an effort by the U. S. Navy and Department of Energy (DOE) to validate computational models. The U.S. Navy is performing benchmark tests for the slow cookoff of PBXN-109 in a sealed tube. Candidate models are being tested using the ALE3D code, which can simulate the coupled thermal, mechanical, and chemical behavior during heating, ignition, and explosion. The strength behavior of the solid constituents is represented by a Steinberg-Guinan model while polynomial and gamma-law expressions are used for the Equation Of State (EOS) for the solid and gas species, respectively. A void model is employed to represent the air in gaps. ALE3D model 'parameters are specified using measurements of thermal and mechanical properties including thermal expansion, heat capacity, shear modulus, and bulk modulus. A standard three-step chemical kinetics model is used during the thermal ramp, and a pressure-dependent burn front model is employed during the rapid expansion. Parameters for the three-step kinetics model are specified using measurements of the One-Dimensional-Time-to-Explosion (ODTX), while measurements for burn rate of pristine and thermally damaged material are employed to determine parameters in the burn front model. Results …

The United States recognized the independence of all the former Soviet republics by the end of 1991, including the South Caucasus states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The United States has fostered these states' ties with the West in part to end the dependence of these states on Russia for trade, security, and other relations. The FREEDOM Support Act of 1992 provides authorization for assistance to the Eurasian states for humanitarian needs, democratization, and other purposes. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the Administration appealed for a national security waiver of the prohibition on aid to Azerbaijan, in consideration of Azerbaijan's assistance to the international coalition to combat terrorism. Azerbaijani and Georgian troops participate in stabilization efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Armenian personnel serve in Iraq.

An ASIC wafer test system has been developed to provide comprehensive production screening of the ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker front-end chip (ABCD3T). The ABCD3T[1] features a 128-channel analog front-end, a digital pipeline, and communication circuitry, clocked at 40 MHz, which is the bunch crossing frequency at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). The tester measures values and tolerance ranges of all critical IC parameters, including DC parameters, electronic noise, time resolution, clock levels and clock timing. The tester is controlled by an FPGA (ORCA3T) programmed to issue the input commands to the IC and to interpret the output data. This allows the high-speed wafer-level IC testing necessary to meet the production schedule. To characterize signal amplitudes and phase margins, the tester utilizes pin-driver, delay, and DAC chips, which control the amplitudes and delays of signals sent to the IC under test. Output signals from the IC under test go through window comparator chips to measure their levels. A probe card has been designed specifically to reduce pick-up noise that can affect the measurements. The system can operate at frequencies up to 100 MHz to study the speed limits of the digital circuitry before and after radiation damage. Testing requirements and design solutions …

This report discusses the welfare reform law of 1996 that sharply increased federal child care funding for low-income families, with the expectation that new work requirements for welfare parents would increase demand for child care services.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Like many federal agencies, the Coast Guard's priorities were dramatically altered by the events of September 11. The Coast Guard has requested $7.3 billion for fiscal year 2003--a 36 percent increase from the previous year. The events of September 11 caused a substantial shift of effort toward homeland security and away from other missions. As resources were shifted to meet these needs, the law enforcement mission area, which consists mainly of drug and migrant interdiction and fisheries enforcement, saw a dramatic drop in mission capability. The Coast Guard's fiscal year 2003 budget request reflects an attempt to maintain and enhance heightened levels of funding for homeland security while also increasing funding for all other Coast Guard missions beyond fiscal year 2002 levels. The Coast Guard faces substantial management challenges in translating its requested funding increases into increased service levels in its key mission areas. For example, workforce issues present a daunting challenge. If the budget request for fiscal year 2003 is approved, the Coast Guard will add 2,200 full-time positions, retain and build on the expertise and skills of its current workforce, and deal with already high attrition …

Cyprus has been divided since 1974. Greek Cypriots, nearly 80% of the population, live in the southern two thirds of the island. Turkish Cypriots live in the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (recognized only by Turkey), with about 30,000 Turkish troops providing security. U.N. peacekeeping forces maintain a buffer zone between the two. Members of Congress have urged the Administration to be more active, although they have not proposed an alternative to the U.N.-sponsored talks.