In December 1995, a NATO-led implementation force (IFOR) was deployed to Bosnia to enforce the military aspects of the Bosnian peace agreement. After fierce debate, the House and Senate passed separate resolutions in December 1995 expressing support for the U.S. troops in Bosnia, although not necessarily for the mission itself. Legislative efforts to bar funds for the deployment of U.S. troops to Bosnia were narrowly rejected. In the 105th Congress, similar efforts to bar a U.S. deployment after June 1998 were also rejected, although the FY 1998 defense authorization and appropriations laws contain reporting requirements that must be fulfilled before an extended deployment may take place. The defense appropriation measure requires the President to seek a supplemental appropriation for any deployment after June 1998.

The FY1998 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Act, P.L. 105-78, enacted on November 13, 1997, prohibits the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from funding human embryo research in the fiscal year 1998. This ban applies to all federally supported investigations involving the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes, and studies in which a human embryo is destroyed, discarded, or knowingly exposed to the risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero as delineated in 45 CFR 46.208 (a)(2) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act. The expression “human embryo or embryos” include any organism not protected under 45 CFR 46 (Protection of Human Subjects) that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes (egg and sperm, female and male sex cells, respectively) or human diploid cells. Current research involving human embryos, done in the private and international sectors pertain largely to the preimplantation embryo that results from in vitro fertilization.

The dependence of the d(e,e{prime}K{sup +}) reaction cross sections on the hyperon-nucleon interactions is investigated. It is shown that the data obtained with Longitudinal-Transverse separation or polarized photons can distinguish a class of Nijmegen models of hyperon-nucleon interactions which are {chi}{sup 2}-equivalent in fitting the existing 35 data points of hyperon-nucleon reactions.

The dissolution behavior of a candidate reference glass has been measured under a range of test conditions. The data base from these tests can be used to evaluate the credibility and validity of test results reported by Private Contractors as part of the acceptance process for immobilized low-activity waste (ILAW) products for DOE wastes. The LRM-1 glass that was used in the tests was formulated to be compositionally representative of anticipated ILAW products for Hanford and other Department of Energy sites. Replicate tests with this glass were used to measure the variability in the response (i.e., the solution concentrations of B, Na, and Si) under different test conditions. The glass was further evaluated for possible use as a standard material by analysis of its composition, microstructure, density, and compressive strength. In addition, the Na leachability index was measured with the ANS 16.1 test, and the Toxicity Characteristic Leach Procedure was run. The results of those tests and analyses are summarized.

A detailed study has been conducted of the effect of Kr ion irradiation on phase formation in Zr-Fe metallic multilayers, using the Intermediate Voltage Electron Microscopy (IVEM) at Argonne National Laboratory. Metallic multilayers were prepared with different overall compositions (near 50-50 and Fe-rich), and with different wavelengths (repetition thicknesses). These samples were irradiated with 300 keV Kr ions at various temperatures to investigate the final products, as well as the kinetics of phase formation. For the shorter wavelength samples, the final product was in all cases an amorphous Zr-Fe phase, in combination with Fe, while specially for the larger wavelength samples, in the Fe-rich samples the intermetallic compounds ZrFe{sub 2} and Zr{sub 3}Fe were formed in addition to the amorphous phase. The dose to full reaction decreases with temperature, and with wavelength in a manner consistent with a diffusion-controlled reaction.

RESRAD was one of the multimedia models selected by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to include in its workshop on radiation dose modeling and demonstration of compliance with the radiological criteria for license termination. This paper is a summary of the presentation made at the workshop and focuses on the 10 questions the NRC distributed to all participants prior to the workshop. The code selection criteria, which were solicited by the NRC, for demonstrating compliance with the license termination rule are also included. Among the RESRAD family of codes, RESRAD and RESRAD-BUILD are designed for evaluating radiological contamination in soils and in buildings. Many documents have been published to support the use of these codes. This paper focuses on these two codes. The pathways considered, the databases and parameters used, quality control and quality assurance, benchmarking, verification and validation of these codes, and capabilities as well as limitations of these codes are discussed in detail.

An automated controlled-potential coulometer has been developed at the Savannah River Site (SRS) for the determination of plutonium for use at the International Atomic Energy Agency`s (IAEA) Safeguards Analytical Laboratory in Siebersdorf, Austria. The system is functionally the same as earlier systems built for use at the Savannah River Site`s Analytical Laboratory. All electronic circuits and printed circuits boards have been upgraded with state-of-the-art components. A higher amperage potentiostat with improved control stability has been developed. The system achieves electronic calibration accuracy and linearity of better than 0.01 percent, with a precision and accuracy better than 0.1 percent has been demonstrated. This coulometer features electrical calibration of the integration system, electrolysis current background corrections, and control-potential adjustment capabilities. These capabilities allow application of the system to plutonium measurements without chemical standards, achieving traceability to the international measurement system through electrical standards and Faraday`s constant. the chemist is provided with the capability to perform measurements without depending upon chemical standards, which is a significant advantage for applications such as characterization of primary and secondary standards. Additional benefits include reducing operating cost to procure, prepare and measure calibration standards and the corresponding decrease in radioactive waste generation. The design and documentation of …

The general objectives of this task are to develop, prepare, and test spheroidal inorganic ion exchangers made by the HMTA (hexamethylenetetramine) internal gelation process to remove radionuclides and heavy metals from waste streams occurring at the various DOE sites. Inorganic ion-exchange materials, such as sodium silicotitanate, sodium titanate, ammonium molybdeophosphate, phosphotungstic acid, hexacyanoferrates, titanium monohydrogen phosphate, hydrous titanium oxide, polyantimonic acid, magnesium oxide, etc. have high selectivities and efficiencies for separating and removing radionuclides (e.g., cesium, strontium, technetium, iodine, europium, cerium, ruthenium, and zirconium), actinides, and other elements (such as lead, mercury, silver, nickel, zinc, chromium, and fluoride) from aqueous waste streams. The development of cesium specific spherical sorbents for treatment of acidic, high-salt waste solutions was initiated in FY 1998. Acid-side treatment is important at INEEL and could become important if acidic sludge washing were to become a treatment option at Hanford, Savannah River, or Oak Ridge. Zirconium monohydrogen phosphates (ZrHP) embedded with ammonium molybdophosphate (AMP) was the cesium selective inorganic sorbent chosen for making microspheres. AMP is known to be a very effective sorbent for removing cesium from waste streams over a wide range of acidity and salinity, and it has very rapid loading kinetics. The cesium can …

Data warehouses and data marts have been successfully applied to a multitude of commercial business applications as tools for integrating and providing access to data located across an enterprise. Although the need for this capability is as vital in the scientific world as in the business domain, working warehouses in our community are scarce. A primary technical reason for this is that our understanding of the concepts being explored in an evolving scientific domain change constantly, leading to rapid changes in the data representation. When any database providing information to a warehouse changes its format, the warehouse must be updated to reflect these changes, or it will not function properly. The cost of maintaining a warehouse using traditional techniques in this environment is prohibitive. This paper describes ideas for dramatically reducing the amount of work that must be done to keep a warehouse up to date in a dynamic, scientific environment. The ideas are being applied in a prototype warehouse called DataFoundry. DataFoundry, currently in use by structural biologists at LLNL, will eventually support scientists at the Department of Energy`s Joint Genome Institute.

A significant fraction of U.S. natural gas reserves are subquality due to the presence of acid gases and nitrogen; 13% of existing reserves (19 trillion cubic feed) may be contaminated with hydrogen sulfide. For natural gas to be useful as fuel and feedstock, this hydrogen sulfide has to be removed to the pipeline specification of 4 ppm. The technology used to achieve these specifications has been amine, or similar chemical or physical solvent, absorption. Although mature and widely used in the gas industry, absorption processes are capital and energy-intensive and require constant supervision for proper operation. This makes these processes unsuitable for treating gas at low throughput, in remote locations, or with a high concentration of acid gases. The U.S. Department of Energy, recognizes that exploitation of smaller, more sub-quality resources will be necessary to meet demand as the large gas fields in the U.S. are depleted. In response to this need, Membrane Technology and Research, Inc. (MTR) has developed membranes and a membrane process for removing hydrogen sulfide from natural gas. During this project, high-performance polymeric thin-film composite membranes were brought from the research stage to field testing. The membranes have hydrogen sulfide/methane selectivities in the range 35 to …

The basic mechanisms driving the collapse of point defects produced in collision cascades are investigated by transmission electron microscope (TEM) characterization of defect microstructure produced in fcc-Cu irradiated with low-fluences of heavy (100 keV Kr) ions at elevated temperature (23--600 C). Areal defect yields are determined from direct TEM observation of the total defect production integrated over the duration of the in-situ ion-irradiation. They are unequivocally demonstrated to decrease with increasing lattice temperature. This decrease in defect yield indicates a proportional decrease in the probability of collapse of cascade regions into defects of size where visible contrast is produced in a TEM.

In situ fracture studies on thin-film NiTi intermetallic compounds have been carried out in the high-voltage electron microscope at Argonne National Laboratory. Local stress-induced amorphization of regions directly in front of moving crack tips has been observed under tensile loading conditions. The stress-induced amorphization at crack tips exhibits a temperature dependence similar to that of ion-induced amorphization of NiTi. The upper limiting temperature for stress-induced amorphization is the same as that for ion-induced amorphization of crystalline NiTi and for amorphous phase formation during ion-beam mixing of Ni and Ti multilayer specimens. This upper limiting temperature of 600K is also the lowest temperature at which stress-induced amorphous phase crystallizes during isothermal annealing. This isothermal crystallization temperature is nearly 200K less than the kinetic crystallization temperature during heating of unrelaxed NiTi glasses formed by rapid quenching or vapor phase deposition.

In 1990, the Laboratory began an investigation into biological approaches for the reduction of water produced from oil and gas wells. In the spring of 1995, the Company began an on-site experiment at an oil/gas lease in Oklahoma using one of these approaches. The process, known as phytoremediation, utilizes the ability of certain salt tolerant plants to draw the produced water through their roots, transpire the water from their leaves, and thereby reduce overall water disposal volumes and costs. At the Company experimental site, produced water flows through a trough where green plants (primarily cordgrass) have been planted in pea gravel. The produced water is drawn into the plant through its roots, evapotranspirates and deposits a salt residue on the plant leaves. The plant leaves are then harvested and used by a local rancher as cattle feed. The produced water is tested to assure it contains nothing harmful to cattle. In 1996, the Company set up another trough to compare evaporation rates using plants versus using an open container without plants. Data taken during all four seasons (water flow rate, temperature, pH, and conductivity) have shown that using plants to evapotranspirate produced water is safe, more cost effective than traditional …

This report provides background and analysis on the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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This document defines the services the Waste Sampling and Characterization Facility (WSCF) shall provide the Effluent and Environmental Monitoring Program (EEM) throughout the calendar year for analysis. The purpose of the EEM Program is to monitor liquid and gaseous effluents, and the environment immediately around the facilities which may contain radioactive and hazardous materials. Monitoring data are collected, evaluated, and reported to determine their degree of compliance with applicable federal and state regulations and permits. The Appendix identifies the samples EEM plans to submit for analysis in CY-1998. Analysis of effluent (liquid and air discharges) and environmental (air, liquid, animal, and vegetative) samples is required using standard laboratory procedures, in accordance with regulatory and control requirements cited in Quality Assurance Program Plan for Radionuclide Airborne Emissions Monitoring (especially Appendix G) (WHC 1995a), Effluent Monitoring Quality Assurance Project Plan for Radionuclide Airborne Emissions Data (WHC 1995b), Near-Facility Environmental Monitoring Quality Assurance Project Plan (WMNW 1997), and Hanford Analytical Services Quality Assurance Requirements Documents (DOE 1996). Should changes to this document be necessary, WSCF or the Waste Management Federal Services, Inc. (WMH) Air and Water Services (AWS) Organization may amend it at any time with a jointly approved internal memo.

This report documents the results of a performance demonstration and operational checkout of three 300 HP mixer pumps in accordance with WHC-SD-WI51-TS-001 ``Mixer Pump Test Specification for Project W-151`` and Statement of Work 8K520-EMN-95-004 ``Mixer Pump Performance Demonstration at MASF`` in the 400 Area Maintenance and Storage Facility (MASF) building. Testing of the pumps was performed by Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Engineering and funded by the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) Project W-151. Testing began with the first pump on 04-01-95 and ended with the third pump on 11-01-96. Prior to testing, the MASF was modified and prepared to meet the pump testing requirements set forth by the Test Specification and the Statement of Work.