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The helium coolant in high-temperature reactors inevitably contains low levels of impurities during steady-state operation, primarily consisting of small amounts of H{sub 2}, H{sub 2}O, CH{sub 4}, CO, CO{sub 2}, and N{sub 2} from a variety of sources in the reactor circuit. These impurities are problematic because they can cause significant long-term corrosion in the structural alloys used in the heat exchangers at elevated temperatures. Currently, the primary candidate materials for intermediate heat exchangers are Alloy 617, Haynes 230, Alloy 800H, and Hastelloy X. This project will evaluate the role of impurities in helium coolant on the stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation and creep crack growth in candidate alloys at elevated temperatures. The project team will: • Evaluate stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation and creep crack initiation and crack growth in the temperature range of 500-850°C in a prototypical helium environment. • Evaluate the effects of oxygen partial pressure on stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation and creep crack growth in impure helium at 500°C, 700°C, and 850°C respectively. • Characterize the microstructure of candidate alloys after long-term exposure to an impure helium environment in order to understand the correlation between stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation, creep crack growth, material composition, and impurities in the …

This report discusses the firefighting activities that are traditionally the responsibility of states and local communities. The report also talks about the funding for firefighters, which is provided mostly by state and local governments. However, during the 106th Congress, many in the fire community asserted that local fire departments require and deserve greater support from the federal government.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to the recruitment and hiring strategies of the Child Protective Services (CPS) Division of the Department of Family and Protective Services' (Department), and strategies to combat high vacancy and turnover rates, specifically in regards to retaining tenured CPS caseworkers and improving caseload management.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to determining whether the Office of Injured Employee Counsel (Office) is accurately reporting its performance measures to ABEST and has adequate controls in place over the collection, calculation, and reporting of its performance measures.

This report discusses the background and issues for congressional oversight of ARRA Broadband Awards

This report provides an overview of the recent tragedy in Bangladesh and the Bangladesh economic environment and culture. It also notes the responses to the tragedy, to date, from Congress, the Administration, the ILO, the Bangladesh government, and the private sector. Finally, it raises some possible issues for Congress.

The Biomass Scenario Model (BSM) is a system dynamics model that represents the entire biomass-to-biofuels supply chain, from feedstock to fuel use. The BSM is a complex model that has been used for extensive analyses; the model and its results can be better understood if input data used for initialization and calibration are well-characterized. It has been carefully validated and calibrated against the available data, with data gaps filled in using expert opinion and internally consistent assumed values. Most of the main data sources that feed into the model are recognized as baseline values by the industry. This report documents data sources and references in Version 2 of the BSM (BSM2), which only contains the ethanol pathway, although subsequent versions of the BSM contain multiple conversion pathways. The BSM2 contains over 12,000 total input values, with 506 distinct variables. Many of the variables are opportunities for the user to define scenarios, while others are simply used to initialize a stock, such as the initial number of biorefineries. However, around 35% of the distinct variables are defined by external sources, such as models or reports. The focus of this report is to provide insight into which sources are most influential in …

This report reviews efforts to combat unauthorized migration across the Southwest border in the nearly three decades since the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) initiated the modern era in migration control, takes stock of the current state of border security, and considers lessons that may be learned about enhanced enforcement at U.S. borders. The report begins by reviewing the history of border control and the development of a national border control strategy beginning in the 1990s. The following sections summarize appropriations and resources dedicated to border enforcement, indicators of enforcement outcomes, metrics for estimating unauthorized migration flows, and possible secondary and unintended consequences of border enforcement. The report concludes by reviewing the overall costs and benefits of the current approach to migration control and raising additional questions that may help guide the discussion of these issues in the future.,5/

This report discusses the broadband loan and grant programs at Rural Utilities Service (RUS) that is intended to accelerate the deployment of broadband services in rural America. “Broadband” refers to high-speed Internet access and advanced telecommunications services for private homes, commercial establishments, schools, and public institutions.

This report examines how automatic spending reductions triggered by the Budget Control Act (BCA) might affect health reform appropriations acts.

This report examines how automatic spending reductions triggered by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) might affect health reform implementation under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of ACA's health insurance reforms and some analysis of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) estimates of the impact of the law's implementation on federal direct spending and revenues. The second section examines the automatic spending reductions under the BCA. The final section discusses which types of health reform spending are likely subject to, or exempt from, those reductions.

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This document is the Building America FY2012 Annual Report, which includes an overview of the Building America Program activities and the work completed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Building America industry consortia (the Building America teams). The annual report summarizes major technical accomplishments and progress towards U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Program's multi-year goal of developing the systems innovations that enable risk-free, cost effective, reliable and durable efficiency solutions that reduce energy use by 30%-50% in both new and existing homes.

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This documentation describes the tool development. It was created to evaluate the effects of built environment scenarios on transportation energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This documentation also provides guidance on how to apply the tool.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The overall number of inmates in the Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) three main types of segregated housing units--Special Housing Units (SHU), Special Management Units (SMU), and Administrative Maximum (ADX)--increased at a faster rate than the general inmate population. Inmates may be placed in SHUs for administrative reasons, such as pending transfer to another prison, and for disciplinary reasons, such as violating prison rules; SMUs, a four-phased program in which inmates can progress from more to less restrictive conditions; or ADX, for inmates that require the highest level of security. From fiscal year 2008 through February 2013, the total inmate population in segregated housing units increased approximately 17 percent--from 10,659 to 12,460 inmates. By comparison, the total inmate population in BOP facilities increased by about 6 percent during this period."

This report discusses the current issues in Burma (Myanmar) in regards to political prisoners and the resulting U.S. sanctions against the nation. It includes an introduction and definitions; information about current estimates of prisoners and prisoner releases; the relation of political prisoners, parliamentary elections and national reconciliation; and U.S. sanctions and U.S. efforts regarding political prisoners, as well as relevant issues for Congress to consider.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As of March 31, 2013, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) had received about $222 billion from its Capital Purchase Program (CPP) investments, exceeding the approximately $205 billion it had disbursed. Treasury estimated at the end of December 2012 that CPP would have an approximate lifetime income of $15 billion after all institutions had exited the program. Treasury's March 2013 data showed that 534 of the original 707 institutions had exited CPP. Most of these institutions exited by repurchasing their preferred shares in full or by refinancing their investments through other federal programs. In March 2012, Treasury began selling its investments in the institutions through auctions, expediting the exit of a number of CPP participants. A relatively small number of the remaining 173 institutions accounted for most of the funds outstanding. Specifically, 25 institutions accounted for $4.2 billion, or 68 percent, of the $6.1 billion in outstanding investments. These investments were relatively widely dispersed throughout the United States, with 39 states having at least one institution with investments outstanding and 12 states having at least 5 such institutions."

Carbon-14 is among the key radionuclides driving risk at the E-Area Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility on the Savannah River Site (SRS). Much of this calculated risk is believed to be the result of having to make conservative assumptions in risk calculations because of the lack of site-specific data. The original geochemical data package (Kaplan 2006) recommended that performance assessments and composite analyses for the SRS assume that {sup 14}C did not sorbed to sediments or cementitious materials, i.e., that C-14 K{sub d} value (solid:liquid concentration ratio) be set to 0 mL/g (Kaplan 2006). This recommendation was based primarily on the fact that no site-specific experimental work was available and the assumption that the interaction of anionic {sup 14}C as CO{sub 2}{sup 2-}) with similarly charged sediments or cementitious materials would be minimal. When used in reactive transport equations, the 0 mL/g Kd value results in {sup 14}C not interacting with the solid phase and moving quickly through the porous media at the same rate as water. The objective of this study was to quantify and understand how aqueous {sup 14}C, as dissolved carbonate, sorbs to and desorbs from SRS sediments and cementitious materials. Laboratory studies measuring the sorption of {sup …

This report summarizes the results of an assessment and analysis of renewable energy opportunities conducted for the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Tasks included assessing the suitability for wind and solar on both a utility and facility scale.

On April 10, 2013, three green compacts composed o

In FY2013, the Cementitious Barriers Partnership (CBP) is continuing in its effort to develop and enhance software tools demonstrating tangible progress toward fulfilling the objective of developing a set of tools to improve understanding and prediction of the long‐term structural, hydraulic and chemical performance of cementitious barriers used in nuclear applications. In FY2012, the CBP released the initial inhouse “Beta‐version” of the CBP Software Toolbox, a suite of software for simulating reactive transport in cementitious materials and important degradation phenomena. The current primary software components are LeachXS/ORCHESTRA, STADIUM, and a GoldSim interface for probabilistic analysis of selected degradation scenarios. THAMES is a planned future CBP Toolbox component (FY13/14) focused on simulation of the microstructure of cementitious materials and calculation of resultant hydraulic and constituent mass transfer parameters needed in modeling. This past November, the CBP Software Toolbox Version 1.0 was released that supports analysis of external sulfate attack (including damage mechanics), carbonation, and primary constituent leaching. The LeachXS component embodies an extensive material property measurements database along with chemical speciation and reactive mass transport simulation cases with emphasis on leaching of major, trace and radionuclide constituents from cementitious materials used in DOE facilities, such as Saltstone (Savannah River) and Cast …