For a severe PWR accident that leads to a loss of feedwater to the steam generators, such as might occur in a station blackout, fission product decay heating will cause a water boiloff. Without effective cooling of the core, steam will begin to oxidize the Zircaloy cladding. The noble gases and volatile fission products, such as Cs and I, that are major contributors to the radiological source term, will be released from the damaged fuel shortly after cladding failure. The accident environment when these volatile fission products escape was simulated in STEP-3 using four fuel elements from the Belgonucleaire BR3 reactor. The primary objective was to examine the releases in samples collected as close to the test zone as possible. In this paper, an analysis of the temperatures and hydrogen generation is compared with the measurements. The analysis is needed to estimate releases and characterize conditions at the source for studies of fission product transport.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether a county is required to reimburse a state-supported public hospital for indigent health care of a resident of that county

The goal of this research is to develop catalysts that directly convert methane and light hydrocarbons to intermediates that can, as economics dictate, be subsequently converted either to liquid fuels or value-added chemicals. In this program we are exploring two approaches to developing such catalysts. The first approach consists of developing advanced catalysts for reforming methane. We will prepare the catalysts by reacting organometallic complexes of transition metals (Fe, Ru, Rh, and Re) with zeolitic and rare-earth-exchanged zeolitic supports to produce surfaceconfined metal complexes in the zeolite pores. Our second approach entails synthesizing the porphyrin and phthalocyanine complexes of Cr, Mn, Ru, Fe, and/or Co within the pores of zeolitic supports for use as selective oxidation catalysts for methane and light hydrocarbons. During the second quarter of this project, we concentrated on methane reforming. Two ruthenium clusters (Ru{sub 4} and Ru{sub 6}) supported on three types of support materials ({beta}-alumina, 5 {Angstrom} molecular sieves, and {gamma}-zeolite) were tested for methane reforming. The effects of cluster size, supporting material, and reaction conditions were evaluated. The methane conversions range from 1.74 to 10.11% at 750{degrees}C. The reaction product contains hydrogen, C{sub 2} hydrocarbons, and C{sub 6} or higher hydrocarbons. Up to 48.34% …