Document 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 House Bill 2087 violates article III section 52 of the Texas Constitution (RQ-592)

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 the Harris County Flood Control District has a right-of-way to build flood control works across Harris County roads, and related questions (RQ-302)

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 the Texas A&M University System may contract with a law firm that has, as one of its partners, a member of the Texas A&M University System’s board of regents and related questions (ID# 17933)

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 section 11(a) of the Boxing and Wrestling Act, V.T.C.S. article 8501-1, authorizes the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to collect a three percent gross receipts tax on proceeds the promoter obtains from the sale of television rights (RQ-584)

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 a county commissioner who has been removed from office for a felony conviction that is overturned on appeal is entitled to receive (1) the cash equivalent of premiums for health insurance covering the commissioner that the county would have paid if it had not terminated the commissioner’s insurance while his case was pending and (2) the amount of past contributions the county has made on his behalf to his retirement plan (ID# 18456)

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: Access of members of the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners to the agency’s personnel and investigative files (ID# 20337)

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: Applicability of doctrines of dual office holding and incompatibility of office to members of the board of directors of the Edwards Aquifer Authority (RQ-581)

The helical orbits in the Tevatron necessitated changes in the beam transfer operation between the Main Ring and the Tevatron. This document is intended to present an overview of the beam transfer with an emphasis on the recent changes. It will also serve as a bibliography for the other documents that exist on Tevatron injection.

Starting in 1989, the concept that partitioning and transmuting actinides from spent nuclear fuel could be a {open_quotes}solution{close_quotes} to the apparent lack of progress in the high-level waste disposal program began to be heard from a variety of sources, both in the US and internationally. There have been numerous papers and sessions at scientific conferences and several conferences devoted to this subject in the last three years. At the request of the US Department of Energy, the National Research Council is evaluating the feasibility of this concept. Because either plutonium or highly enriched uranium is needed to startup breeder reactors, there is a sound rationale for using Pu from reprocessing spent light-water reactor fuel to start a conversion to Pu-breeding liquid metal reactors (LMRs), once society makes the determination that adding a large component of LMRs to the electricity-generating grid is desirable. This is the long-term option referred to in the title. It is compatible with the current and likely future high-level waste program, as well as the current nuclear power industry in the US. However, the thesis of this paper is that partitioning and transmutation (P-T) does not offer a near term solution to high-level waste disposal in the …

Silica aerogel consists of bonded silicon and oxygen joined into log strands, which are randomly linked together with pockets of air between them. Discovered in the 1930s, the material was thought to have little use outside of theoretical science. However, with the advent of greatly improved processing techniques, such as those developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, aerogels are on the verge of commercialization. This document describes the need for aerogels in the high-speed microelectronics industry, and state of the art processing techniques. Collaboration is welcomed in the endeavor.

The technical work during this reporting term has principally involved the continued development, optimization and improvement of freezing drying techniques for solid ceramic oxide electrolyte powder preparation, preliminary optimization of the calcining of the ceramic electrolyte freeze dried powders to allow for optimum processing to the IGR composite, and determining (initial) electrochemical properties of the stabilized ceramic solid electrolyte at a variety of temperatures in air.

The Monthly Energy Review provides an overview of the production, distribution, and consumption of energy derived from petroleum, natural gas, coal, electricity, and nuclear energy. It also discusses oil and gas resource development, energy prices, and issues relevant to international energy markets.

The GEM EM calorimeter is optimized for the best energy, position, angular resolution and jet rejection. The detailed simulation results are presented. In the barrel with LKr, an energy resolution of about 6%/{radical}{direct_sum}0.4%, pointing resolution of 40mrad/{radical}E + 0.5mrad, and jet rejection of a factor of 5 are expected.

This is the fourth quarterly report covering December 5, 1992, to March 4, 1993. The overall goal of this program is to develop a system based on reverse osmosis (RO) membranes that can treat oily water economically. This system will be based on the use of thin-film-composite (TFC) membranes that consist of a selective coating placed on a solvent-resistant hollow-fiber support. For this program, we plan to develop solvent-resistant hollow-fiber supports and coat them with a ``loose RO`` coating. We developed the coating, which is designated TTM, in previous work for the treatment of oily waste waters. During this reporting period, work was focused on (1)fabrication and testing of large-scale hollow-fiber modules, (2)performing preliminary field tests using these modules, and (3)arranging for a demonstration test of this technology. Our results show that the solvent-resistant TTM hollow-fiber modules perform well when operated on oily waters. During the next reporting period, we plan to complete arrangements for the demonstration test of this technology. This field test, preparation of the final report, and technology transfer are the only tasks remaining in this program.

The Electric Power Monthly (EPM) is prepared by the Survey Management Division; Office of Coal, Nuclear, Electric and Alternate Fuels, Energy Information Administration (EIA), Department of Energy. This publication provides monthly statistics at the US, Census division, and State levels for net generation, fossil fuel consumption and stocks, quantity and quality of fossil fuels, cost of fossil fuels, electricity sales, revenue, and average revenue per kilowatthour of electricity sold. Data on net generation, fuel consumption, fuel stocks, quantity and cost of fossil fuels are also displayed for the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) regions.

Net income for 259 energy companies-- including, 20 major US petroleum companies-- rose 38 percent between the first quarter of 1992 and the first quarter of 1993. An increased level of economic activity, along with colder weather, helped lift the demand for natural gas. crude oil, coal, and electricity. The sharp rise in the domestic price of natural gas at the wellhead relative to the year-ago quarter was the most significant development in US energy during the first quarter. As a consequence of higher natural gas prices, the upstream segment of the petroleum industry reported large gains in income, while downstream income rose due to higher refined product demand. Increased economic activity and higher weather-related natural gas demand also led to improvements in income for the rate-regulated energy segment. However, declining domestic oil production continued to restrain upstream petroleum industry earnings growth, despite a moderate rise in crude oil prices.

High power and high radiance laser technologies developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) such as copper-vapor lasers, solid-state slab lasers, dye lasers, harmonic wavelength conversion of these lasers, and fiber optic delivery systems show great promise for material processing tasks. Evaluation of models suggests significant potential for tenfold increases in welding, cutting, and drilling performance, as well as capability for applications in emerging technologies such as micromachining, surface treatment, and stereolithography. The goals of this program are to develop low-cost, reliable and maintainable industrial laser systems. Chains of copper lasers currently operate at more than 1.5 kW output and achieve mean time between failures of more than 1,000 hours. The beam quality of copper vapor lasers is approximately three times the diffraction limit. Dye lasers have near diffraction limited beam quality at greater than 1.0 kW. diode laser pumped, Nd:YAG slab lasers are also being developed at LLNL. Current designs achieve powers of greater than 1.0 kW and projected beam quality is in the two to five times diffraction limited range. Results from cutting and drilling studies in titanium and stainless steel alloys show that cuts and holes with extremely fine features can be made with dye and copper-vapor …

The objective of this study was to examine the processes in coal/petroleum coprocessing systems which led to coke formation. Specifically, the interactions between the petroleum residue and coal, leading to retrogressive products, were investigated. Five coals were reacted with five model compounds in order to investigate the coal conversions in a variety of solvents and to determine the role of the solvent in promoting or inhibiting coal conversion. The selected model compounds range from paraffinic to fully aromatic and were chosen as representative of types of compounds that are found in petroleum residua. Coprocessing experiments were conducted using the five coals and three petroleum residua. The effect of temperature on coal conversions was crucial. The coal conversions at 350 and 400{degree}C seem to be governed by the nature of the coal and to a lesser extent by the petroleum residua. Negative coal conversions were observed above 400{degree}C indicating that retrogressive processes had occurred. At temperatures higher than 400{degree}C, the petroleum residua undergo physical and chemical transformations and the influence of the petroleum residua on coal conversions is significant. The structural features of the residues indicated that the residues were predominately coal-derived. An overall increase in aromaticity was observed with increasing …

Concurrent progress is being made in all key areas, namely, separation, characterization and market assessment. The market area, not one of our traditionally strong areas, has been going better than expected. We believe this is due mainly to the emerging interest in new and unconventional materials. The characterization work has been progressing solidly with the fundamental Z-BASIC correlations providing information not heretofore available in the chemical literature. Our agreement with Hewlett-Packard regarding the purchase of equipment at a reduced price is complete and the gc-ms will be ordered shortly. The separation work has progressed satisfactorily although an unexpected amount of time has been required for ``facilities`` and ``equipment`` related issues. Some of these issues have dealt with safety and regulatory compliance when storing larger quantities of samples. These now seem to be solved. We have a lot of direct experience in shale oil separations dating back to the OXY project and before. Also, we will streamline our work by going to prepacked micro-separation tools for some of our separation characterization work. This will allow us to stay on schedule. Overall, we are on schedule with the project. All administration requirements are in place and the accounting and financial records are …

Corrosion kinetics of SiC were investigated from 950 to 1100C at 0.63 vol% alkali vapor concentration. Corrosion rate in alkali is 10{sup 4} to 10{sup 5} times faster than oxidation rate of SiC in air. Activation energy of the alkali corrosion is 406 kj/mol, indicating a high sensitivity to temperature changes. Overall reaction appears to be controlled by the oxidation of SiC. The alkali corrosion kinetics of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} from 950 to 1050{degrees}C were also examined in the same atmosphere (0.63 vol% alkali vapors). Reaction thickness of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} appears to vary linearly with reaction time from 950 to 1050C, suggesting that the alkali corrosion process is controlled by the oxidation of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}. At 1050{degrees}C, the alkali-enhanced oxidation of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} is approximately 10{sup 7} times faster than the oxidation of Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} in dry oxygen. Compared to SiC corroded in the same alkali atmosphere, Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} seems to be less alkali-resistant than SiC. Phase relations of the Na{sub 2}O-Al{sub 2}TiO{sub 5} vertical section from 5--40 wt% Na{sub 2}O and 840-1100C were studied. Phase analysis indicates that this section is not a true binary system. A tentative phase diagram for the Na{sub 2}O-Al{sub …

The Full Scale Demonstration Low-NO{sub x} Cell{trademark} Burner (LNCB{trademark}) project involves retrofitting the two-nozzle cell burners at Dayton Power and Light`s, 605 MW(e) J.M. Stuart Unit No. 4 boiler near Aberdeen, Ohio with LNCB{trademark} (a burner and integral No{sub x} port). Previous pilot-scale tests have shown such an arrangement to achieve 50% reduction in NO{sub x} emission levels. This full-scale project will determine the commercial applicability of this technology. Long-term testing via a Continuous Emission Monitor (CEM) began in August, 1992. CEM testing will continue until Spring of 1993 when Unit No. 4 comes off line for its annual outage which at this time is scheduled for April 4, 1993. A key item remaining to be evaluated as part of the long term testing is furnace tube wall corrosion. H{sub 2}S probing similar to optimized test probing was repeated during the week of August 17, 1992. During the Spring `93 outage, ultrasonic testing of the furnace wall tubes as well as destructive examination of samples from the corrosion test panel will be accomplished.

Results are reported on adsorption of water vapor on reservoir rocks, physics of injection of water into vapor-dominated geothermal reservoirs, earth-tide effects on downhole pressures, injection optimization at the Geysers, effects of salinity in adsorption experiments, interpreting multiwell pressure data from Ohaaki, and estimation of adsorption parameters from transient experiments.

The MGBS-TGAL combination of the J70 criticality modules was validated for Mark 16 lattices by H. K. Clark as reported in DPST-83-1025. Unfortunately, the records of the calculations reported can not be retrieved and the descriptions of the modeling used are not fully provided in DPST-83-1025. The report does not describe in detail how to model the experiments and how to set up the input. The computer output for the cases reported in the memorandum can not be located in files. The MGBS-TGAL calculations reported in DPST-83-1025 have been independently reperformed to provide retrievable record copies of the calculations, to provide a detailed description and discussion of the methodology used, and to serve as a training exercise for a novice criticality safety engineer. The current results reproduce Clark`s reported results to within about 0.01% or better. A procedure to perform these and similar calculations is given in this report, with explanation of the methodology choices provided. Copies of the computer output have been made via microfiche and will be maintained in APG files.

Phase transformation and cracking during RT aging of charged, high-purity Fe18Cr12Ni alloy and commerical 304 ss were examined; results show that {epsilon}* (hcp) hydride formed on Fe18Cr12Ni upon charging, and it decomposed rapidly to form first {epsilon} and then {alpha}` martensite. Morphology of fracture surfaces of Fe18Cr12Ni produced by corrosion fatigue in NaCl solutions and in hydrogen was found to be identical. Effort was made to examine the approaches and methodologies used in service life predictions and reliability analyses.