This report describes each stage of the legislative process that legislative assistants may find helpful as they seek to further the progress of a specific bill.

Environmental concerns in trade negotiations have received extensive attention by policymakers both with regard to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Letter opinion issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether an appraisal review board, under section 25.25(d) of the Tax Code, may correct the market value of real property that receives productivity valuation under chapter 23 of the Tax Code.

Letter opinion issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Application of section 21.9205, Education Code (ID# 23490)

Letter opinion issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether an investigator for the Harris County district attorney is eligible to serve as a trustee of the North Independent School District (ID# 26083)

In situ and near real-time measurements of coal seam thickness have been identified by industry as a highly desirable component of robotic mining systems. With it, a continuous mining machine can be guided close to the varying boundary of the seam while the cutting operation is underway. This provides the mining operation the ability to leave behind the high-sulfur, high-particulate coal which is concentrated near the seam boundary. The result is near total recovery of high quality coal resources, an increase in mining efficiency, and opportunities for improved safety through reduction in personnel in the most hazardous coal cutting areas. In situ, real-time coal seam measurements using the Special Technologies Laboratory (STL) ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology were shown feasible by a demonstration in a Utah coal mine on April 21, 1994. This report describes the October 18, 1994 in situ GPR measurements of coal seam thickness at the US Bureau of Mines (USBM) robotic mining testing laboratory. In this report, an overview of the measurements at the USBM Laboratory is given. It is followed by a description of the technical aspects of the STL frequency modulated-continuous wave (FM-CW) GPR system. Section 4 provides a detailed description of the USBM …

Condensing economizers increase the thermal efficiency of boilers by recovering sensible and latent heat from exhaust gas. These economizers are currently being used commercially for this purpose in a wide range of applications. Performance is dependent upon application-specific factors affecting the utility of recovered heat. With the addition of a condensing economizer boiler efficiency improvements up to 10% are possible. Condensing economizers can also capture flue gas particulates. In this work, the potential use of condensing economizers for both efficiency improvement and control of particulate emissions from small, coal water slurry-fired boilers was evaluated. Analysis was done to predict heat transfer and particulate capture by mechanisms including: inertial impaction, interception, diffusion, thermophoretic forces, and condensation growth. Shell-and-tube geometries were considered with flue gas on the outside of Teflon-covered tubes. Experimental studies were done with both air- and water-cooled economizers refit to a small boiler. Two experimental arrangements were used including oil-firing with injection of flyash upstream of the economizer and direct coal water slurry firing. Firing rates ranged from 27 to 82 kW (92,000 to 280,000 Btu/hr). Inertial impaction was found to be the most important particulate capture mechanism and removal efficiencies to 95% were achieved. With the addition of …

Since the 1960`s, ground-water flow models have been used for analysis of water resources problems. In the 1970`s, emphasis began to shift to analysis of waste management problems. This shift in emphasis was largely brought about by site selection activities for geologic repositories for disposal of high-level radioactive wastes. Model development during the 1970`s and well into the 1980`s focused primarily on saturated ground-water flow because geologic repositories in salt, basalt, granite, shale, and tuff were envisioned to be below the water table. Selection of the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for potential disposal of waste began to shift model development toward unsaturated flow models. Under the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System Management and Operating Contractor (CRWMS M&O) has the responsibility to review, evaluate, and document existing computer models; to conduct performance assessments; and to develop performance assessment models, where necessary. This document describes the CRWMS M&O approach to model review and evaluation (Chapter 2), and the requirements for unsaturated flow models which are the bases for selection from among the current models (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 identifies existing models, and their characteristics. Through a detailed examination of characteristics, Chapter 5 presents the …

The Office of Science and Technology Policy has established the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) to help solve problems, to improve economic competitiveness, and to provide stimulus for education. Within the NSTC, the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources Research is responsible for seven environmental issues, including all research relating to global change. The US Global Change Research Program supports international protocols and conventions relating to ozone, climate, and biodiversity. It contributes to the advancement of knowledge in science, education, and technology transfer by providing scientific understanding for policy. This program supports the mission of federal agencies in the areas of forecasts, regulations, services, etc.

This paper presents and evaluates the numerical solution of a coupled system of equations that arises in a model for the formation and evolution of three-dimensional longshore sand ridges. The model is based on the interaction between surficial or internal weakly nonlinear shallow-water waves, having weak spanwise spatial dependence, and the deformable bottom topography. The presentation of the details concerning the discretization of the model is primarily motivated by two facts: (1) The model involves equations for which little is known regarding its solutions, and (2) the predictor-corrector scheme presented here, which combines finite difference techniques and fixed-point methods, is simple, fast, and general enough to be used in the discretization of partial differential equations with local nonlinearities whose solutions are smooth.

In coating processes (e.g. in blade coating) the flow domain inherently contains free surfaces and three-phase contact lines, and characteristic length scales of flow features in the dimension transverse to the web-movement vary by an order of magnitude or more from a fraction of a millimeter or more to tens of microns or less). The presence of free surfaces and three-phase contact lines, and the sudden changes of flow geometry and directions create difficulties in theoretical analyses of such flows. Though simulations of coating flows via finite-element methods using structured grids have been reportedly demonstrated in the literature, achieving high efficiency of such numerical experiments remains a grand challenge -- mainly due to difficulties in local mesh-refinement and in avoiding unacceptably distorted grids. High efficiency of computing steady flow fields under various process conditions is crucial in shortening turn-around time in design and optimization of coating-flow processes. In this paper we employ a fully-implicit, pseudo-solid, domain mapping technique coupled with unstructured meshes to analyze blade and slot coating flows using Galerkin`s method with finite element basis functions. We demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of our unique technique in circumventing shortcomings of mesh-motion schemes currently being used in the coating-flow research …

A project is in progress that addresses two of problems with existing holdup measurement technology; the need for compact instrumentation and a more efficient means of reducing the massive amounts of data to quantities of Special Nuclear Materials (SNM). The approach taken by the project utilizes the Miniature Modular MultiChannel Analyzer (M{sup 3}CA) a complete and truly portable gamma-ray spectroscopy system, under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The hardware is then integrated and automated by the Holdup Measurement System II (HMSII) software being developed by the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant. Together they provide the hardware components, measurement control in the field, automated data acquisition, data storage and manipulation which simplify holdup measurements.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the volatilities of U, Pu, and Am in thermal treatment processes for mixed wastes. The thermodynamics of vaporization U and Pu oxides in the presence of oxygen and water vapor and of U oxide in the presence of oxygen and chlorine were studied. Experimental studies of U oxide volatilities by previous authors have also been reviewed. For species where data are unavailable estimation methods were used to obtain free energies of formation of the gaseous species, The data are applied to thermal treatment processes in general and then more specifically to conditions representative of the Rocky Flats Plant Fluidized Bed Unit. (RFP FBU), molten salt oxidizer, and an incinerator. U volatilities are greatest ranging from 2.67 x 10{sup -7} gU/h in the RFP FBU to 4. 00 gU/h for typical incinerator conditions. Pu volatilities are almost 5 orders of magnitude less than U and Am volatilities are about 3 orders of magnitude less than Pu.

This document provides general information on all Single-Shell Tank Farms about readiness and special concerns for Emergency Pumping and identifies the required actions when a Single-Shell tank is identified as a leaking tank. Tank Transfer Routes are described, possible heat trace circuits are outlined, and tank riser status and obstructions are documented. Locations of existing saltwell systems and spares, information on emergency pumping equipment, watch list tank status, and transfer line integrity assessments are all included. A matrix of required actions to emergency pump individual tanks, and lists of useful drawings, procedures, work procedure outlines, and references are also provided.

The transfer of 12,000 gallons of In-Tank Precipitation (ITP) spent salt solution waste from the ITP Feed Tank to Tank 48H will not result in any flammability, compatibility, criticality, or combustibility problems. No impacts on downstream facilities or processes were identified. Addition of the solution to Tank 48H will not result in an increase in the rate of hydrogen production. Insoluble tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP) will collect on the surface of the contents of Tank 48H. However, the quantity of TBP will be insufficient to form a layer thick enough to pose a credible combustibility hazard.

This report is divided into two parts. The second part is divided into the following sections: experimental protocol; modeling the hollow fiber extractor using film theory; Graetz model of the hollow fiber membrane process; fundamental diffusive-kinetic model; and diffusive liquid membrane device-a rigorous model. The first part is divided into: membrane and membrane process-a concept; metal extraction; kinetics of metal extraction; modeling the membrane contactor; and interfacial phenomenon-boundary conditions-applied to membrane transport.

Successive evaporations were performed on simulated low-heat waste and post-aluminum dissolution waste spiked with depleted uranium. Waste compositions were determined for supernate and saltcake samples.

The primary purpose of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of operating a methanotrophic mobile trickle filter bioreactor (MMB) unit to effectively reduce or eliminate trichloroethylene (TCE) and associated hydrocarbons from contaminated groundwater. The two-column trickle filter system can process 1.67 gallons per minute (gpm) of contaminated groundwater. During this project, the pilot system will evaluate, optimize, and demonstrate methanotrophic treatment technology (MTT). The mobile system will receive a 1--4% methane to air mixture for stimulating the methanotrophic TCE degrading bacteria, thereby increasing the rates of degradation of these contaminants. This project will also evaluate the efficacy of different bacteria for degrading TCE for use in the system at the laboratory-scale sample groundwater monitoring wells at TNX and set up the system for continued operation. The trickle filter system may be used to inexpensively treat other small-scale organic waste streams at SRS after the initial start-up. The MTT was demonstrated as an effective and efficient method of degrading TCE in the laboratory and during a field-scale in situ demonstration for degrading TCE in a groundwater plume at SRS. The methanotrophic bacteria increase significantly in population numbers and in the production of methane monooxygenase (MMO), an extremely powerful …

This report gives a summary of the research accomplished under this project which included: Collocation analysis of multistage separation systems; Heat and mass transport fundamentals; Fractionation tray modeling; and Computational and statistical methods. The large equation sets encountered in tray-by-tray modeling of distillation systems are a major obstacle in computer-aided process engineering. The authors addressed this difficulty by approximating the multistage equations with much smaller sets, obtained by orthogonal polynomial interpolation over the stages. A new approach to column design was initiated when they discovered how to extend their collocation formulas to modules containing non-integer numbers of stages. This extension proved equally useful for column simulations in the presence of more than one liquid phase. They also investigated strategies to handle locally steep concentration profiles and high-purity separations. As a basis for realistic modeling of fractionating trays, a comprehensive comparison of various computation methods for multicomponent mass transfer was undertaken. A theoretical study was carried out for asymptotic forms for heat and mass transfer rates in boundary layers. Newton`s method was used in several of the computational algorithms for equation solving, parametric sensitivity analysis and nonlinear parameter estimation. The authors investigated modifications of the Newton method designed to achieve convergence …