On August 14, 1992, the United States Department of Energy issued a Request for Comments Concerning State Policies Affecting Natural Gas Consumption. This Notice of (NOI) noted the increasing significance of the role played by states and sought to gain better understanding of how state policies impact the gas industry. The general trend toward a. more competitive marketplace for natural gas, as well as recent regulatory and legislative changes at the Federal level, are driving State regulatory agencies to reevaluate how they regulate natural gas. State action is having a significant impact on the use of natural gas for generating electricity, as well as affecting the cost-effective trade-off between conservation expenditures and gas use. Additionally, fuel choice has an impact upon the environment and national energy security. In light of these dimensions, the Department of Energy initiated this study of State regulation. The goals of this NOI are: (1) help DOE better understand the impact of State policies on the efficient use of gas; (2) increase the awareness of the natural gas industry and Federal and State officials to the important role of State policies and regulations; (3) create an improved forum for dialogue on State and Federal natural gas …

Programs to develop solid core nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems have been under way at the Department of Defense (DoD), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Energy (DOE). These programs have recognized the need for a new ground test facility to support development of NTP systems. However, the different military and civilian applications have led to different ground test facility requirements. The Department of Energy (DOE) in its role as landlord and operator of the proposed research reactor test facilities has initiated an effort to explore opportunities for a common ground test facility to meet both DoD and NASA needs. The baseline design and operating limits of the proposed DoD NTP ground test facility are described. The NASA ground test facility requirements are reviewed and their potential impact on the DoD facility baseline is discussed.

On August 14, 1992, the United States Department of Energy issued a Request for Comments Concerning State Policies Affecting Natural Gas Consumption. This Notice of (NOI) noted the increasing significance of the role played by states and sought to gain better understanding of how state policies impact the gas industry. The general trend toward a. more competitive marketplace for natural gas, as well as recent regulatory and legislative changes at the Federal level, are driving State regulatory agencies to reevaluate how they regulate natural gas. State action is having a significant impact on the use of natural gas for generating electricity, as well as affecting the cost-effective trade-off between conservation expenditures and gas use. Additionally, fuel choice has an impact upon the environment and national energy security. In light of these dimensions, the Department of Energy initiated this study of State regulation. The goals of this NOI are: (1) help DOE better understand the impact of State policies on the efficient use of gas; (2) increase the awareness of the natural gas industry and Federal and State officials to the important role of State policies and regulations; (3) create an improved forum for dialogue on State and Federal natural gas …

Argonne National Laboratory`s Analysis & Diagnostic Laboratory (ADL) tests advanced batteries under simulated electric and hybrid vehicle operating conditions. The ADL facilities also include a post-test analysis laboratory to determine, in a protected atmosphere if needed, component compositional changes and failure mechanisms. The ADL provides a common basis for battery performance characterization and life evaluations with unbiased application of tests and analyses. The battery evaluations and post-test examinations help identify factors that limit system performance and life, and the most-promising R&D approaches for overcoming these limitations. Since 1991, performance characterizations and/or life evaluations have been conducted on eight battery technologies (Na/S, Li/S, Zn/Br, Ni/MH, Ni/Zn, Ni/Cd, Ni/Fe, and lead-acid). These evaluations were performed for the Department of Energy`s. Office of Transportation Technologies, Electric and Hybrid Propulsion Division (DOE/OTT/EHP), and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Transportation Program. The results obtained are discussed.

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 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.

Reducing the complexity and cost of producing deep-submicrometer integrated circuits (ICs) will soon be possible using a revolutionary approach being developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Resistless Projection Doping (RPD) will eliminate the need for photoresist processing during the impurity doping step. This single innovation will reduce the doping sequence from 13 steps to 1 and eliminate the need for five pieces of capital equipment costing more than $5 million. The overall cost of high-volume wafer fabrication will be reduced by more than 10 percent. In addition, the LLNL RPD machine is compact and modular, minimizing facilities costs when compared to today`s industry-standard doping equipment. These physical characteristics of the machine also allow the RPD process to be easily incorporated into single-wafer, ``cluster`` processing tools. When integrated with existing deposition, etching, and annealing steps and developing lithography techniques, the LLNL doping process completes the technology set required to produce a flexible fabrication facility of the future. At one-fifth the cost of current mega-fabrication facilities, the availability of these compact, low-volume, smart factories will give US manufacturers a substantial competitive advantage in the world-wide marketplace for high-value custom and semi-custom integrated circuits.

Proton and deuteron kinetic energy spectra have been measured at target rapidities for both minimum bias and central collisions of 14.6 A{center_dot}GeV/c {sup 28}Si and 11.7 A{center_dot}GeV/c {sup 197}Au beams with a {sup 197}Au target. The spectra were measured from a low energy threshold of approximately E{sub kin}=35 MeV to well over 200 MeV for laboratory angles of 50{degree} to 130{degree} ({vert_bar}{eta}{vert_bar} {le}0.76). The acceptance-corrected spectra have been fit over a limited range of kinetic energies using a Boltzmann distribution. The integrated yields and the inverse slope parameters are presented as a function of centrality for the {sup 28}Si + {sup 197}Au reaction and as a function of trigger for the {sup 197}Au + {sup 197}Au reaction. These quantities are also compared with the proton spectra generated using both the ARC and RQMD codes.

Argonne National Laboratory's Analysis Diagnostic Laboratory (ADL) tests advanced batteries under simulated electric and hybrid vehicle operating conditions. The ADL facilities also include a post-test analysis laboratory to determine, in a protected atmosphere if needed, component compositional changes and failure mechanisms. The ADL provides a common basis for battery performance characterization and life evaluations with unbiased application of tests and analyses. The battery evaluations and post-test examinations help identify factors that limit system performance and life, and the most-promising R D approaches for overcoming these limitations. Since 1991, performance characterizations and/or life evaluations have been conducted on eight battery technologies (Na/S, Li/S, Zn/Br, Ni/MH, Ni/Zn, Ni/Cd, Ni/Fe, and lead-acid). These evaluations were performed for the Department of Energy's. Office of Transportation Technologies, Electric and Hybrid Propulsion Division (DOE/OTT/EHP), and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Transportation Program. The results obtained are discussed.

In order to address the effect of prior out-of-plane damage on the in-plane behavior of unreinforced masonry infills, two full-scale (24 feet tall by 28 feet long) structural clay tile infills and one frame-only (no infilling) were constructed and tested. The infilled frame, consisting of two wide flange columns surrounded by masonry plasters and an eccentric wide flange purlin, was identical to many of the infills located at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant. The masonry infill was approximately 12.5 inches thick and was composed of individual four- and eight-inch hollow clay tile (HCT) units. One of the infill panels was tested out-of-plane by four quasi-static actuators -- two on each column. The test structure was deflected out-of-plane equally at all four actuator locations in order to simulate the computed deflection path of the top and bottom chords of a roof truss framing into the columns at these locations. Prior to the infill testing, a bare frame was loaded similarly in order to determine the behavior and stiffness contribution of the frame only. Following the out-of-plane test of the infilled panel, the structure was loaded in-plane to failure in order to ascertain residual strength. A second, identical infilled frame was then …

In this paper the following items will be treated: The present status of dense nuclear matter calculations and constraints on the behavior of the associated equation of state at high densities from data on rapidly rotating pulsars. Recent finding of the likely existence of a mixed phase of baryons and quarks forming a coulomb lattice in the dense cores of neutron stars. Review of important findings of recently performed calculations of rapidly rotating compact stars. These are constructed in the framework of general relativity theory for a representative collection of realistic nuclear equations of state. Establish the minimum-possible rotational periods of gravitationally bound neutron stars and self-bound strange stars. Its knowledge is of fundamental importance for the decision between pulsars that can be understood as rotating neutron stars and those that cannot (signature of hypothetical self-bound matter of which strange stars are the likely stellar candidates. Investigate the properties of sequences of strange stars. Specifically, we answer the question whether such objects can give rise to the observed phenomena of pulsar glitches, which is at the present time the only astrophysical test of the strange-quark-matter hypothesis.

For a smooth boundary, hypersingular integrals can be defined as a limit from the interior, the approach direction being taken, for convenience, normal to the surface. At a boundary corner, the limit process, with a necessarily non-normal approach direction, provides a valid definition of the hypersingular equation, as long as the direction is employed for all integrations. The terms which are potentially singular in the limit are shown to cancel, provided the function approximations at the corner are consistent. The analytical formulas for the singular integrals are more complicated than for a smooth surface, but are easily obtained using symbolic computation. These techniques have been employed to accurately solve the ``L-shaped domain`` potential problem considered by Jaswon and Symm.

Spectral broadening of single-frequency laser pulses by optical cross-phase modulation (XPM) with chaotic laser pulses in birefringent single-mode optical fibers is investigated numerically and results are compared with experiments. By this process we have generated laser pulses of variable bandwidth (1--25 {Angstrom}) at the fundamental wavelength (1053 nm) for amplification in high power solid-state Nd:glass lasers used for inertial confinement fusion research. Simulations indicate that a temporally smooth XPM pulse can be generated with intensity fluctuations of less than 10% and spectral width greater than 50 {Angstrom} using a short length ({approximately}5 m) of special low dispersion and low birefringence fiber, e.g. D = 10 ps/nm-km (normal dispersion) and {Delta}n = 2 {times} 10{sup {minus}5}. Readily available fibers of similar length, with parameters of D = 40 ps/nm-km and {Delta}n = 6 {times} 10{sup {minus}5}, can give spectral widths exceeding 25 {Angstrom}, but the noise will range from 25 to 60%. Broadband laser pulses generated by XPM are now routinely used at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for active smoothing of the laser irradiance on targets by the technique of smoothing-by-spectral dispersion.