TA 2-1083, under which RFSA processing is conducted, calls for a nominal mercuric ion concentration in the dissolver solution of 0.006M with a maximum of 0.01 M. The second RFSA campaign operated according to these guidelines with the initial Hg(II) concentration being 0.0068 M. Part of this study is to ascertain optimum excess Hg(I) for chloride removal.

This report describes the AXAIR computer code which is available to terminal users for evaluating the doses to man from exposure to the atmospheric plume from postulated stack or building-vent releases at the Savannah River Plant. The emphasis herein is on documentation of the methodology only. The total-body doses evaluated are those that would be exceeded only 0.5 percent of the time based on worst-sector, worst-case meteorological probability analysis. The associated doses to other body organs are given in the dose breakdowns by radionuclide, body organ and pathway.

This report discusses results of testing to determine the chemical resistance of pellets of silver mordenite and silver mordenite, reduced form. For comparison Berl saddles were tested under similar conditions. Silver mordenite has been proposed as a replacement for the saddles that remove iodine in the off-gas treatment system from the canyon dissolvers.

The dissolver solution from the second RFSA campaign was analyzed for chloride using the recently-developed turbidimetric method. Prior to chloride removal in head end, the solution contained 1625 ppm chloride. After chloride removal with Hg(I) and prior to feeding to solvent extraction, the solution contained only 75 ppm chloride. This report discusses those analysis results.

BestPractices technical case study gives an overview of a compressed air system improvement in a textile plant in South Carolina.

This report begins by reviewing the precedents established during the Washington Administration for withholding documents from Congress. Close examination reveals that the scope of presidential privilege is often exaggerated. Congress had access to more documentation than is commonly believed and might have had more had it pressed for it. Subsequent sections focus on various forms of congressional leverage: the power of the purse, the power to impeach, issuing congressional subpoenas, holding executive officials in contempt, House resolutions of inquiry, GAO investigations, and blocking nominations, all of which may force executive officials to release documents they would otherwise want to keep private and confidential. Even if Presidents announce perfectly plausible grounds for withholding documents, they may have to comply with the congressional will to achieve other more important goals.

This report provides the critical experimenter's interpretations and descriptions of informal critical experiment logbook notes and associated information (e.g., experimental equipment designs/sketches, chemical and isotopic analyses, etc.) for the purpose of formally documenting the results of critical experiments performed in the late 1960s at the Oak Ridge Critical Experiments Facility. The experiments were conducted with aqueous solutions of 97.6 wt % {sup 233}U uranyl nitrate having uranium densities varying between about 346 g U/l and 45 g U/l. Criticality was achieved with single simple units (e.g., cylinders and spheres) and with spaced subcritical simple cylindrical units arranged in unreflected, water-reflected, and polyethylene reflected critical arrays.

This report provides the critical experimenter's interpretations and descriptions of informal critical experiment logbook notes and associated information (e.g., experimental equipment designs/sketches, chemical and isotopic analyses, etc.) for the purpose of formally documenting the results of critical experiments performed in the late 1960s at the Oak Ridge Critical Experiments Facility. The experiments were conducted with aqueous solutions of 97.6 wt % {sup 233}U uranyl nitrate having uranium densities varying between about 346 g U/l and 45 g U/l. Criticality was achieved with single simple units (e.g., cylinders and spheres) and with spaced subcritical simple cylindrical units arranged in unreflected, water-reflected, and polyethylene reflected critical arrays.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses lessons learned from the Department of Defense's (DOD) TRICARE contracts and their implications for the future. TRICARE's successes and maturity reflect the ability of the DOD and its contractors to work within the current contract structure. However, it has not been easy, and there are important lessons from current contract shortcomings that need to be addressed in designing future TRICARE contracts. Most, including DOD, believe that the current contracts are too large, complex, and prescriptive in nature, limiting innovation and competition. Also, numerous adjustments to these contracts have created an unstable program, and program costs have been difficult to predict, contributing to annual funding shortfalls. Additionally, financial incentives, accountability, and data quality need to be strengthened to achieve greater efficiencies. To address these weaknesses, DOD redesigned its solicitation for the next round of TRICARE contracts; however, the initial issuance was withdrawn because of internal concerns and reservations about its costs and specifications. DOD is now reassessing how to structure the TRICARE contracts and is considering the views and recommendations of the Defense Medical Oversight Committee, a group formed to oversee TRICARE."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has become increasingly aware that the use of more commercial and military electronic systems aboard ships, aircraft, and vehicles can cause unintended electromagnetic interactions among systems and harm operations. Such unintended interactions, called electromagnetic environmental effects, have already undermined mission effectiveness on many occasions. The new procurement procedures established by DOD are reasonable and could help prevent problems arising from radio frequency interference. The impact of these new procedures cannot be evaluated, however, until DOD has had a chance to apply its revised guidance to systems as they go through each acquisition decision milestone. DOD would then be able to demonstrate that the new procedures have (1) resulted in the review of relevant documents at each decision milestone to identify potential frequency problems, (2) prevented interference problems, and (3) improved the acquisition process. No DOD system had undergone the new procedures for all decision milestones at the time of GAO's review. The first of three pilot programs using the new acquisition guidance should be completed by January 2002 according to DOD officials. Consequently, GAO could not assess the programs' effectiveness."

There is clearly a great need to understand the processes of crystallization and solid scale formation that led to the shutdown of 2H evaporator operation at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and could possibly cause similar problems in the future in other evaporators. Waste streams from SRS operations that enter the evaporators generally contain alkaline, sodium nitrate/nitrite-based solutions with various changing concentrations of silicates and aluminates. It has been determined. that the silicates and aluminates served as precursor reactants for forming unwanted minerals during solution evaporation, upon transport, or upon storage. Mineral forms of the Zeolite Linde A group--sodalites and cancrinite--along with gibbsite, have often been identified as contributing to deposit (scale) formation on surfaces of the 2H evaporator as well as to the formation of solid plugs in the gravity drain line and lift line. Meanwhile, solids (amorphous or crystalline minerals) are believed, without direct evidence, to form in the bulk solutions in the evaporator. In addition, the position of deposits in the 2H evaporator suggests that scale formation depends on the interplay of heat and mass transfer, hydrodynamics, and reaction mechanisms and kinetics. The origin of solid scale formation on walls could be due to heterogeneous nucleation and/or …

The overall objective of this project is the three-phase development of an Early Entrance Coproduction Plant (EECP) that produces at least one product from at least two of the following three categories: Electric power (or heat); Fuels; and Chemicals. The objective is to have these products produced by technologies capable of using synthesis gas derived from coal and/or some other carbonaceous feedstock, such as petroleum coke. The objective of Phase I was to determine the feasibility and define the concept for the EECP located at a specific site and to develop a Research, Development, and Testing (RD and T) Plan for implementation in Phase II. This objective has now been accomplished. A specific site, Motiva Refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, has been selected as the location best suited for the EECP. The accomplishments of Phase I are discussed in detail in this Phase I Concept Report. A RD and T Plan and a preliminary project financing plan have been developed and are submitted separately from this report.

Good nuclear data are essential for accurate prediction of reactor parameters. Several cross section libraries are currently available for use with GLASS physics calculations. In recent Mark 15 and Mark 22 studies, cross section data were developed to provide more accurate buckling calculations for Mark 15 and Mark 22 charges. This report documents evaluation of these new data for universal application.

The primary research effort supported by Grant No. DOE DEFG02-97ER62366 titled ''Retrieval of Cloud Fraction and Type Using Broadband Diffuse and Total Shortwave Irradiance Measurements'' was application of clear-sky identification and cloud fraction estimation algorithms developed by Charles N. Long and Thomas P. Ackerman to the downwelling total, direct and diffuse shortwave irradiance measurements made at all of the central, boundary, and extended facilities of the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Southern Great Plains (SOP) site. Goals of the research were finalization and publication of the two algorithms in the peer-reviewed literature and operational application of them to all of aforementioned data streams from the ARM SGP site. The clear-sky identification algorithm was published as Long and Ackerman (2000) in the Journal of Geophysical Research, while a description of the cloud fraction estimation algorithm made it to the scientific literature as Long et al. (1999) in the Proceedings of the 10th American Meteorological Association Conference on Atmospheric Radiation held in Madison, Wisconsin. The cloud fraction estimation algorithm relies on empirical relationships between the outputs of the clear-sky identification algorithm and cloud fraction; as such, the cloud fraction estimation algorithm requires significant amounts of data both to properly develop the …

This report discusses visitation of the PAMELA plant which provided an opportunity to observe the operation and design of this European waste solidification facility. The aim of the workshop was to exchange expertise relative to the safe vitrification of HLLW in order to determine which areas were technologically solved and which areas required further study.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the U.S. government's rule of law assistance efforts in the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. GAO found that these efforts have had limited impact so far, and results may not be sustainable in many cases. U.S. agencies have had some success in introducing innovative legal concepts and practices in these countries. However, the U.S. assistance has not often had a major, long-term impact on the evolution of the rule of law in these countries. In some cases, countries have not widely adopted the new concepts and practices that the United States has advocated. In other cases, continuation or expansion of the innovations depends on further funding from the U.S. or other donors. In fact, the rule of law appears to have actually deteriorated in recent years in several countries, including Russia and Ukraine, according to the data used to measure the results of U.S. development assistance in the region and a host of U.S. government and foreign officials. This testimony summarizes an April 2001 report (GAO-01-354)."

This brief, but definitive, study indicates that the relatively new spectrometric techniques, DCAP and AA (Atomic Absorption), give high values for mercury when employed to analyze solutions that contain Hg(I) per se or that contain soluble mercury which is or has been subject to reducing conditions.

The objective of this calculation was to determine the structural response of a 12-Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Long, a 24-Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) and a 5-Defense High Level Waste/Department of Energy (DHLW/DOE)--Long spent nuclear fuel waste packages lifted in a horizontal position. The scope of this calculation was limited to reporting the calculation results in terms of maximum stress intensities in the trunnion collar sleeves. In addition, the maximum stress intensities in the inner and outer shells of the waste packages were presented for illustrative purposes. The information provided by the sketches (Attachments I, II and III) is that of the potential design of the types of waste packages considered in this calculation, and all obtained results are valid for these designs only. This calculation is associated with the waste package design and was performed by the Waste Package Design Section in accordance with the ''Technical work plan for: Waste Package Design Description for LA'' (Ref. 7). AP-3.12Q, Calculations (Ref. 13), was used to perform the calculation and develop the document.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) does not have a financial management enterprise architecture, and it does not have the management structures in place to effectively develop, implement, and maintain one. DOD has not applied recognized best practices--particularly support and sponsorship by the head of the enterprise and assignment of accountability and commensurate authority--to develop, implement, and maintain a DOD-wide financial management enterprise architecture. Nevertheless, DOD's various components are either spending or planning to spend billions of dollars to acquire new or modify existing financial management systems. In the absence of a complete, enforceable enterprise architecture, such investments are unwise. DOD runs the risk that its components will spend billions of dollars to modify and modernize financial management systems independently from one another, forcing DOD to maintain a system that suffers from duplication, limited interoperability, and unnecessarily costly operations and maintenance. As part of its plan to invest in financial management systems modernization, DOD has tried to use lessons learned from its Year 2000 program. DOD can build upon these actions to ensure that it uses recognized best practices for enterprise architecture management. This approach will allow …

Parameterization of cumulus convection in general circulation model (GCM) has been recognized as one of the most important and complex issues in the model physical parameterizations. In earlier studies, most cumulus parameterizations were developed and evaluated using data observed over tropical oceans, such as the GATE (the Global Atmospheric Research Program's Atlantic Tropical Experiment) data. This is partly due to inadequate field measurements in the midlatitudes. In this study, we compare and evaluate a total of eight types of the state-of-the-art cumulus parameterizations used in fifteen Single-Column Models (SCM) under the summertime midlatitude continental conditions using the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) summer 1997 Intensive Operational Period (IOP) data, which covers several continental convection events. The purpose is to systematically compare and evaluate the performance of these cumulus parameterizations under summertime midlatitude continental conditions. Through the study we hope to identify strengths and weaknesses of these cumulus parameterizations that will lead to further improvements. Here, we briefly present our most interesting results. A full description of this study can be seen in Xie et al. (2001). The authors conclude that: (1) The SCM simulation errors are closely related to problems with model cumulus parameterizations. The schemes with …

Parameterization of cumulus convection in general circulation model (GCM) has been recognized as one of the most important and complex issues in the model physical parameterizations. In earlier studies, most cumulus parameterizations were developed and evaluated using data observed over tropical oceans, such as the GATE (the Global Atmospheric Research Program's Atlantic Tropical Experiment) data. This is partly due to inadequate field measurements in the midlatitudes. In this study, we compare and evaluate a total of eight types of the state-of-the-art cumulus parameterizations used in fifteen Single-Column Models (SCM) under the summertime midlatitude continental conditions using the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) summer 1997 Intensive Operational Period (IOP) data, which covers several continental convection events. The purpose is to systematically compare and evaluate the performance of these cumulus parameterizations under summertime midlatitude continental conditions. Through the study we hope to identify strengths and weaknesses of these cumulus parameterizations that will lead to further improvements. Here, we briefly present our most interesting results. A full description of this study can be seen in Xie et al. (2001).

Three peaks and two dips have been detected in the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from the BOOMERANG experiment, at {ell} {approx} 210, 540, 840 and {ell} {approx} 420, 750, respectively. Using model-independent analyses, we find that all five features are statistically significant and we measure their location and amplitude. These are consistent with the adiabatic inflationary model. We also calculate the mean and variance of the peak and dip locations and amplitudes in a large 7-dimensional parameter space of such models, which gives good agreement with the model-independent estimates, and forecast where the next few peaks and dips should be found if the basic paradigm is correct. We test the robustness of our results by comparing Bayesian marginalization techniques on this space with likelihood maximization techniques applied to a second 7-dimensional cosmological parameter space, using an independent computational pipeline, and find excellent agreement: {Omega}{sub tot} = 1.02{sub -0.05}{sup +0.06} vs. 1.04 {+-} 0.05, {Omega}{sub b}h{sup 2} = 0.022{sub -0.003}{sup +0.004} vs. 0.019{sub -0.004}{sup +0.005}, and n{sub s} = 0.96{sub -0.09}{sup +0.10} vs. 0.90 {+-} 0.08. The deviation in primordial spectral index n{sub s} is a consequence of the strong correlation with the optical depth.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the recruitment and the retention of nursing staff, including both nurses and nurses aides, and concerns about the future supply of these workers. The health and long-term care systems in the United States rely heavily on the services of both nurses and nurses aides, the two largest groups of health care workers. GAO found that the recruitment and the retention of both nurses and nurses aides are major concerns for health care providers. Experts and providers have reported a shortage of nurses, partly as a result of patients' increasingly complex care needs. This shortage is expected to become more serious as the population ages and the demand for nurses increases. Several factors combine to constrain the current and future supply of nurses. Like the population in general, the nurse workforce is aging; the average age of a registered nurse rose from 37 years in 1983 to 42 years in 1998. Enrollments in nursing programs have declined during the last five years, shrinking the pool of new workers available to replace those who are retiring. Many studies also report less job satisfaction among nurses, which could …

Incomplete or sparse information on types of data such as geologic or formation characteristics introduces a high level of risk for oil exploration and development projects. ''Expert'' systems developed and used in several disciplines and industries have demonstrated beneficial results. A state-of-the-art exploration ''expert'' tool, relying on a computerized database and computer maps generated by neural networks, is being developed through the use of ''fuzzy'' logic, a relatively new mathematical treatment of imprecise or non-explicit parameters and values. Oil prospecting risk can be reduced with the use of a properly developed and validated ''Fuzzy Expert Exploration (FEE) Tool.'' This FEE Tool can be beneficial in many regions of the U.S. by enabling risk reduction in oil and gas prospecting as well as decreased prospecting and development costs. In the 1998-1999 oil industry environment, many smaller exploration companies lacked the resources of a pool of expert exploration personnel. Downsizing, low oil prices, and scarcity of exploration funds have also affected larger companies, and will, with time, affect the end users of oil industry products in the U.S. as reserves are depleted. The FEE Tool will benefit a diverse group in the U.S., leading to a more efficient use of scarce funds …