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Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the management challenges facing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and its progress in implementing its new restructuring initiative."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) year 2000 readiness, focusing on: (1) VA's ability to deliver benefits and health care services through the turn of the century; and (2) the readiness of automated systems that support such delivery, the compliance status of biomedical equipment used in patient care, and the year 2000 readiness of the pharmaceutical and medical-surgical manufacturers upon which VA relies."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed: (1) the immediate effects of the Melissa virus and variations of it as well as its broader implications for the federal government; and (2) critical measures that should be taken to ensure that federal departments and agencies are better prepared for future viruses and other forms of attack."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the reporting of lobbying activities by organizations that have employees who lobby on the organizations' behalf and have the option to report their lobbying expenses under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) of 1995 or applicable Internal Revenue Code (IRC) provisions that they use for tax purposes, focusing on: (1) the differences between the LDA and IRC section 4911 and 162(e) definitions of lobbying; (2) the impact that differences in the definitions may have on registration and reporting under LDA, including information on the number of organizations using each definition and the expenses they have reported; and (3) identifying and analyzing options, including harmonizing the three definitions, that may better ensure that the public disclosure purposes of LDA are realized."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the compliance programs established by health care providers to reduce improper payments by Medicare, focusing on the: (1) prevalence of compliance programs among hospitals and other Medicare providers; (2) costs involved with compliance programs; and (3) effectiveness of the programs, to the extent that could be measured."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) domestic banking program on military bases, focusing on whether: (1) domestic military bases have followed DOD procedures to provide for open solicitations in obtaining banking services; (2) on-base financial institutions face competition for banking services from other financial institutions and charge fees competitive with other banks; and (3) opportunities exist for DOD and military bases to generate additional revenues from banking services on military bases and how this might affect banking services and customers."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the United Nations Secretariat's efforts to reform its procurement process, focusing on: (1) the types of procurement problems that the U.N. High Level Expert Group on Procurement and U.N. audit and inspection organizations found; (2) progress on the implementation of the Expert Group's recommendations and other reforms to correct procurement-related problems; and (3) whether these actions have succeeded in achieving the objectives of procurement reform."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Military Traffic Management Command's (MTMC) first interim progress report on the Department of Defense's demonstration program (MTMC pilot) to improve personal property shipments of the armed forces, focusing on MTMC's plan for evaluating the: (1) pilot results; and (2) proposed industry alternative called the Commercial-Like Activities for Superior Quality (CLASS) proposal."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) personal property programs."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the challenges facing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in transforming health care, focusing on: (1) VA's transformation progress to date; (2) challenges that remain to be confronted; and (3) the implications for VA's fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Hydra 70 rocket, focusing on the: (1) problem of early motor blow (EMB); (2) actions the military services have taken to identify and eliminate its causes; and (3) rocket's present performance."

Measurements of the rates for the hadronic decays B{sup {+-}} {r_arrow} {pi}K along with the CP-averaged B{sup {+-}} {r_arrow} {pi}{sup {+-}} {pi}{sup 0} branching ratio can be used to bound and extract the weak phase {gamma} = arg(V{sub ub}*). Using preliminary CLEO data, we obtain the bounds {vert_bar}{gamma}{vert_bar} > 93{degree} at 1 {sigma}, and {vert_bar}{gamma}{vert_bar} > 71{degree} at 90% confidence level.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) design incorporated a positron accumulator ring (PAR) as part of the injector chain. In order to increase reliability and accommodate other uses of the injector, APS will run with electrons, eliminating the need for the PAR, provided another method of eliminating rf bucket pollution in the APS is found. Satellite bunches captured from an up to 30-ns-long beam from the linac need to be removed in the injector synchrotron and storage ring. The bunch cleaning method considered here relies on driving a stripline kicker with an amplitude modulated (AM) carrier signal where the carrier is at a revolution harmonic sideband corresponding to the vertical tune. The envelope waveform is phased so that all bunches except a single target bunch (eventually to be injected into the storage ring) are resonated vertically into a scraper. The kicker is designed with a large enough shunt impedance to remove satellite bunches from the injection energy of 0.4 GeV up to 1 GeV. Satellite bunch removal in the storage ring relies on the single bunch current tune shift resulting from the machine impedance. Small bunches remaining after initial preparation in the synchrotron may be removed by driving the beam vertically …

This Community Involvement Plan has been prepared by the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Community Involvement Office with the input of the community, Laboratory employees and representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy. The process to develop the plan began with the formation of a focus group consisting of representatives from: the community at large; special interest groups within the community; the business community; Laboratory retirees; senior and line management from the Laboratory; and the U.S. Department of Energy. The focus group reviewed an initial outline developed by the Office of Community involvement, held in-depth roundtable discussions of community involvement needs, and created a draft plan based on their discussions. A workshop was held to present the draft Community Involvement Plan to a wider audience for their input and insights on how Brookhaven should involve the community in decision making. This workshop was advertised in local newspapers and within the Laboratory. It was attended by community members, special interest group representatives, Laboratory employees and managers, U.S. Department of Energy-Brookhaven Group management, and members of the Laboratory's Community Advisory Council. The results of the workshop discussions are incorporated in this plan.

The ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code provides rules for the construction of nuclear power plant components. Appendix I to Section HI of the Code specifies design fatigue curves for structural materials. However, the effects of light water reactor (LWR) coolant environments are not explicitly addressed by the Code design curves. Recent test data illustrate potentially significant effects of LWR environments on the fatigue resistance of carbon and low-alloy steels and austenitic stainless steels (SSs). Under certain loading and environmental conditions, fatigue lives of carbon and low-alloy steels can be a factor of {approx}70 lower in an LWR environment than in air. These results raise the issue of whether the design fatigue curves in Section III are appropriate for the intended purpose. This paper presents the two methods that have been proposed for incorporating the effects of LWR coolant environments into the ASME Code fatigue evaluations. The mechanisms of fatigue crack initiation in carbon and low-alloy steels and austenitic SSs in LWR environments are discussed.

As part of the US-Russia Cooperative Program of Material Protection, Control and Accounting, staff members of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) have implemented procedures for taking physical inventory of nuclear materials at many of the facilities within the IPPE site. These include both large facilities, with substantial inventories and requiring dedicated inventory equipment and computers, and small facilities, with smaller amounts of material and subject to inventory by portable equipment. The experience to date demonstrates good progress toward the goal of regular PITs for the most attractive nuclear materials at IPPE.

The Visible-Infrared SASE Amplifier (VISA) undulator consists of four 99cm long segments. Each undulator segment is set up on a pulsed-wire bench, to characterize the magnetic properties and to locate the magnetic axis of the FODO array. Subsequently, the location of the magnetic axis, as defined by the wire, is referenced to tooling balls on each magnet segment by means of a straightness interferometer. After installation in the vacuum chamber, the four magnet segments are aligned with respect to themselves and globally to the beam line reference laser. A specially designed alignment fixture is used to mount one straightness interferometer each in the horizontal and vertical plane of the beam. The goal of these procedures is to keep the combined rms trajectory error, due to magnetic and alignment errors, to 50{micro}m.

Operation of the 242-16H High Level Waste Evaporator proves crucial to liquid waste management in the H-Area Tank Farm. Recent operational history of the Evaporator showed significant solid formation in secondary lines and in the evaporator pot. Additional samples remain necessary to ensure material identity in the evaporator pot. Analysis of these future samples will provide actinide partitioning information and dissolution characteristics of the solid material from the pot to ensure safe chemical cleaning.

Small-scale experiments were performed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusing refractory actinide oxides with a series of materials commonly used to decompose minerals, glasses, and other refractories as a pretreatment to dissolution and subsequent recovery operations. In these experiments, 1-2 g of plutonium or neptunium oxide (PuO₂ or NpO₂) were calcined at 900 degrees Celsius, mixed and heated with the fusing reagent(s), and dissolved. For refractory PuO₂, the most effective material tested was a lithium carbonate (Li₂CO₃)/sodium tetraborate (Na₂B₄O₇) mixture which aided in the recovery of 90 percent of the plutonium. The fused product was identified as a lithium plutonate (Li₃PuO₄) by x-ray diffraction. The use of a Li₂CO₃/Na₂B₄O₇ mixture to solubilize high-fired NpO₂ was not as effective as demonstrated for refractory PuO₂. In a small-scale experiment, 25 percent of the NpO₂ was oxidized to a neptunium (VI) species that dissolved in nitric acid. The remaining neptunium was then easily recovered from the residue by fusing with sodium peroxide (Na₂O₂). Approximately 70 percent of the neptunium dissolved in water to yield a basic solution of neptunium (VII). The remainder was recovered as a neptunium (VI) solution by dissolving the residue in 8M nitric acid. In subsequent experiments with Na₂O₂, the …

This study suggests that a strong poitential exists for both chemical and biological fouling of the injection wells at the F- and H Area remediation systems. To further the potential, an evaluation of WTU process chemistry, characterization of the natural groundwater geochemistry, and analysis of microbiological activity should be performed. This report summarizes the results.

This report presents an analysis of the consequences and risks of accidents resulting from hazardous material transportation at the Savannah River Plant.

This report describes the groundwater monitoring and corrective-action program at the M-Area Hazardous Waste Management Facility (HWMF) and the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) HWMF at the Savannah River Site (SRS) during 1998.