The overall objective of this work is to develop preliminary operating data including expected concentration endpoints using a C waste envelope simulant. The data is to be used for the preliminary Hanford RPP flow sheet development and LAW Melter Feed Evaporator design.

An Envelope D Tank 241-C-106 sample was characterized for solids, elemental, and radioactive isotope content. The work was done by the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) to support the Hanford River Protection Project (RPP). The sludge from Hanford Tank 241-C-106 is high level waste that is to be included in the first ten years of processing by the RPP Waste Treatment Plant (WTP). The sample was a composite of caustic-leached and washed sludge from previous work at the Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). Sludge analysis results were found to compare well with those of previous researchers analyzing leached samples from Tank 241-C-106. Composition of the liquid accompanying the sample was also measured.

In 1980, vegetative stress and arboreal mortality in wetland plant communities down-gradient from the F- and H-Area seepage basins were detected using aerial imagery. By 1988, approximately six acres in H-Area and four acres in F-Area had been adversely impacted. Today, wetland plant communities have become well established at the H-Area tree-kill zone.

This report provides an overview of U.S. assistance before the Plan Colombia proposal, describes the Clinton Administration Plan Colombia proposal, and tracks Congressional action on it. It also covers the Bush Administration’s Andean Regional Initiative (ARI), which incorporated the Bush Administration’s Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI). Table 2 provides a breakdown of the ARI by country, purpose, and account. Table 1 provides an overview of U.S. assistance from FY1999-FY2001, Tables 3 and 4 compare the Clinton Administration’s Plan Colombia proposal with House, Senate, and conference action on it, and Table 5 charts U.S. assistance from FY1989-FY1998. Discussion of conference action includes a list of certification and reporting requirements, and Clinton Administration responses.

With varying success, the United States and Europe have followed a more or less parallel path of policies to support wind development over the past twenty years. Feed-in laws and tax incentives first popularized in California in the early 1980s and greatly expanded upon in Europe during the 1990s are gradually giving way to market-based support mechanisms such as renewable portfolio standards, which are being implemented in one form or another in ten US states and at least three European nations. At the same time, electricity markets are being liberalized in both the US and Europe, and many electricity consumers are being given the choice to support the development of renewable energy through higher tariffs, both in traditionally regulated and newly competitive markets. One notable area in which wind development in Europe and United States has not evolved in common, however, is with respect to the level of community ownership of wind turbines or clusters. While community ownership of wind projects is unheard of in the United States, in Europe, local wind cooperatives or other participatory business schemes have been responsible for a large share of total wind development. In Denmark, for example, approximately 80% of all wind turbines are …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the International Monetary Fund's concessional (below-market terms) lending facility--the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility--are two multilateral programs intended to help spur economic growth and reduce poverty in low-income countries, most notably countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The HIPC Initiative represents a step forward in the international community's efforts to relieve poor countries of their heavy debt burdens. It does so by seeking to include all creditors and by providing significant debt relief to recipient countries. Unless strong, sustained economic growth is achieved, however the initiative will not likely provide recipient countries with a lasting exit from their debt problems. Furthermore, as long as the initiative links debt relief to poverty reduction strategies, the tension between quick debt relief and comprehensive country-owned strategies is likely to persist. These issues should not be seen, however, as a reason to abandon efforts to provide debt relief to eligible countries. Heavily indebted poor countries continue to carry unsustainable debt burdens that are unlikely to be lessened without debt relief, but participants and observers need to be more realistic about what the initiative may ultimately achieve. …

The Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF) formats and libraries are decided by the Cross Section Evaluation Working Group (CSEWG), a cooperative effort of national laboratories, industry, and universities in the U.S. and Canada, and are maintained by the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC). Earlier versions of the ENDF format provided representations for neutron cross sections and distributions, photon production from neutron reactions, a limited amount of charged-particle production from neutron reactions, photo-atomic interaction data, thermal neutron scattering data, and radionuclide production and decay data (including fission products). Version 6 (ENDF-6) allows higher incident energies, adds more complete descriptions of the distributions of emitted particles, and provides for incident charged particles and photonuclear data by partitioning the ENDF library into sub-libraries. Decay data, fission product yield data, thermal scattering data, and photo-atomic data have also been formally placed in sub-libraries. In addition, this rewrite represents an extensive update to the Version V manual.

The failure frequency of Type I and Type II High Level Waste tanks was calculated. The degradation mechanism that could lead to large break failure and the credits taken for steps taken to prevent large break failure were considered.

Instability flaw lengths were estimated for high level waste Tank 6 at its current fill height of 244 inches with an average specific gravity of 1.1. The instability flaw lengths were obtained by interpolation of the results from previous stress and fracture analyses for Type I high level waste tanks.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the financial statements of the Congressional Award Foundation for fiscal years 2000 and 1999 and the related statements of activities and cash flows. GAO found that (1) the financial statements were presented fairly in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, (2) the Foundation had effective internal control over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations, and (3) there was no reportable noncompliance with laws and regulations GAO tested."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the preliminary results of GAO's ongoing review of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is run by the Federal Emergency Management Administration's (FEMA) Federal Insurance Administration (FIA) and Mitigation Directorate, a major component of the federal government's efforts to provide flood assistance. This program creates standards to minimize flood losses. GAO found that FEMA has several performance goals to improve program results, including increasing the number of insurance policies in force. Although these goals provide valuable insight into the degree to which the program has reduced flood losses, they do not assess the degree to which the most vulnerable residents--those living in flood-prone areas--participate in the program. Capturing data on the number of uninsured and insured structures in flood-prone areas can provide FEMA with another indication of how well the program is penetrating those areas with the highest flood risks, whether the financial consequences of floods in these areas are increasing or decreasing, and where marketing efforts can better be targeted. However, before participation rates can be used to measure the program's success, better data are needed on the total number …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Until the 2000-2001 flu season, the production and the distribution of flu vaccine generally went smoothly. In the fall of 2000, however, stories began to circulate about delays in obtaining flu vaccines. GAO reviewed (1) the circumstances that contributed to the delay and the effects the delay had on prices paid for vaccine, (2) how effectively current distribution channels ensure that high-risk populations receive vaccine on a priority basis, and (3) what the federal government is doing to better prepare for possible disruptions of influenza vaccine supply. GAO found that manufacturing difficulties resulted in an overall delay of about 6-8 weeks in shipping vaccine to most customers and a temporary price spike. Manufacturers experienced unprecedented problems growing a new viral strain, while two of four manufacturers halted production--one permanently--to address safety and quality control concerns. There is currently no system to ensure that high-risk patients have priority when the supply of vaccine is short. Although the federal government has no direct control over how influenza vaccine is purchased and distributed by the private sector and state and local governments, the Department of Health and Human Services …

The authors calculate the time evolution of fluctuations for rare particles such as e.g. kaons in 1 AGeV or charmonium in 200 AGeV heavy ion collisions. The authors find that these fluctuations are a very sensitive probe of the degree of chemical equilibration reached in these collisions. Furthermore, measuring the second factorial moment the size of the initial population can be determined.

The fracture toughness properties of A285 steels are being measured at specific material and test conditions for application to elastic-plastic fracture mechanics analysis of storage tanks at the Department of Energy Savannah River Site.

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A drop forge viscometer was employed to investigate the flow behavior under very rapid compression rates of A357, A356 diluted with pure aluminum and Al-4.5%Cu alloys. The A357 alloys were of commercial origin (MHD and SIMA) and the rheocast, modified A356 and Al-4.5Cu alloys were produced by a process developed at the solidification laboratory of MIT.

This report provides background information concerning the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), discusses air and water quality issues associated with it, and reviews options available to congressional and other policy-makers concerned about its continued use. It includes a discussion of legislation considered in the 106th Congress, which may serve as a starting point for legislation in the 107th.

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Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The security systems installed by the Department of Energy (DOE) are reducing the risk of theft of nuclear material in Russia, but hundreds of metric tons of nuclear material still lack improved security systems. As of February 2001, DOE had installed, at a cost of about $601 million, completed or partially completed systems that protect 192 metric tons of the 603 metric tons of nuclear material identified at risk of theft. These systems, although not as stringent as those installed in the United States, are designed to prevent individuals or small groups of criminals from stealing nuclear material. During its first two years of operation, DOE's Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) has had limited success. DOE estimates that the program employs about 370 people, including many weapons scientists who are primarily working on a part-time basis through research projects sponsored by the U.S. national laboratories. A disproportionate amount of the NCI program's funding has been spent in the U.S. GAO also found that DOE's NCI program lacks a plan for the future. This testimony summarizes two reports, GAO-01-312, and GAO-01-429."

Scientists in the Physical Biosciences Division of the Ernest Orlando Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) studying transition metals in proteins with fluorescence-detected L-edge absorption spectroscopy have found the measurements to be extremely challenging. The difficulty is that the metal centers are present in very dilute concentrations so that their weak fluorescence is often obscured by strong background signals carbon and oxygen. To solve this problem, the Berkeley group has been working with researchers from the Advanced Detector Group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on an energy-dispersive superconducting tunnel junction x-ray detector. These devices in principle have the energy resolution needed to reveal the metal signal. The most recent results with the latest version of the detector on Beamline 4.0.1-2 at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) illustrate the promise of the cryogenic detector strategy not only for this application but also for spectroscopy of other types of dilute samples. Transition-metal complexes are key elements in many biologically important processes that are catalyzed by proteins (enzymes), photosynthesis being a prime example. The changes in that occur in electronic structure throughout a catalytic cycle are the subject of much research aimed at understanding the mechanisms of these processes. L-edge x-ray spectroscopy offers …

The work detailed within this report is a continuation of earlier work carried out under contract number 1DX-SY382V. The earlier work comprises a literature review of the sources and types of defects found principally in Fe-based ODS alloys as well as experimental work designed to identify defects in the prototype ODS-Fe{sub 3}Al alloy, deduce their origins and to recommend methods of defect reduction. The present work is an extension of the experimental work already reported and concentrates on means of reduction of defects already identified rather than the search for new defect types. This report also includes results gathered during powder separation trials, conducted by the University of Groningen, Netherlands and coordinated by the University of Liverpool, involving the separation of different metallic powders in terms of their differing densities. The scope and objectives of the present work were laid out in the technical proposal ''Reduction in Defect Content in ODS Alloys-III''. All the work proposed in the ''Statement of Work'' section of the technical proposal has been carried out and all work extra to the ''Statement of Work'' falls within the context of an ODS-Fe{sub 3}Al alloy of improved overall quality and potential creep performance in the consolidated form. …

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This report provides the resluts of detailed hydrologic characterization tests conducted within eleven Hanford Site wells during fiscal year 2000. Detailed characterization tests performed included groundwater-flow characterization; barometric response evaluation; slug tests; single-well tracer tests; constant-rate pumping tests; and in-well, vertical flow tests. Hydraulic property estimates obtained from the detailed hydrologic tests include transmissivity; hydraulic conductivity; specific yield; effective porosity; in-well, lateral flow velocity; aquifer-flow velocity; vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivity (within the well-screen section); and in-well, verticla flow velocity. In addition, local groundwater-flow characteristics (i.e., hydraulic gradient and flow direction) were determined for four sites where detailed well testing was performed.

This report provides the results of detailed hydrologic characterization tests conducted within eleven Hanford Site wells during fiscal year 2000. Detailed characterization tests performed included groundwater-flow characterization; barometric response evaluation; slug tests; single-well tracer tests; constant-rate pumping tests; and in-well, vertical flow tests. Hydraulic property estimates obtained from the detailed hydrologic tests include transmissivity; hydraulic conductivity; specific yield; effective porosity; in-well, lateral flow velocity; aquifer-flow velocity; vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivity (within the well-screen section); and in-well, vertical flow velocity. In addition, local groundwater-flow characteristics (i.e., hydraulic gradient and flow direction) were determined for four sites where detailed well testing was performed.