This report details the legislative, political, and legal contexts of H.J.Res 78 (Religious Freedom Amendment) and analyzes its legal effect.

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This report provides information about the Foreign Policy Agency Reorganization in the 105th Congress. This report also provides the background on foreign policy consolidation issues, discusses foreign policy implications, and tracks legislation.

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Because toxic solvents and other hazardous materials are commonly used in analytical methods, characterization procedures result in significant and costly amount of waste. We are developing alternative analytical methods in the radiological and organic areas to reduce the volume or form of the hazardous waste produced during sample analysis. For the radiological area, we have examined high-pressure, closed-vessel microwave digestion as a way to minimize waste from sample preparation operations. Heated solutions of strong mineral acids can be avoided for sample digestion by using the microwave approach. Because reactivity increases with pressure, we examined the use of less hazardous solvents to leach selected contaminants from soil for subsequent analysis. We demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by extracting plutonium from a NET reference material using citric and tartaric acids with microwave digestion. Analytical results were comparable to traditional digestion methods, while hazardous waste was reduced by a factor often. We also evaluated the suitability of other natural acids, determined the extraction performance on a wider variety of soil types, and examined the extraction efficiency of other contaminants. For the organic area, we examined ways to minimize the wastes associated with the determination of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in environmental samples. Conventional …

The purpose of this project is to develop a computer code for joint inversion of seismic and electrical data, to improve underground imaging for site characterization and remediation monitoring. The computer code developed in this project will invert geophysical data to obtain direct estimates of porosity and saturation underground, rather than inverting for seismic velocity and electrical resistivity or other geophysical properties. This is intended to be a significant improvement in the state-of-the-art of underground imaging, since interpretation of data collected at a contaminated site would become much less subjective. Potential users include DOE scientists and engineers responsible for characterizing contaminated sites and monitoring remediation of contaminated sites. In this three-year project, we use a multi-phase approach consisting of theoretical and numerical code development, laboratory investigations, testing on available laboratory and borehole geophysics data sets, and a controlled field experiment, to develop practical tools for joint electrical and seismic data interpretation.

The goals of work done this quarter were (1) to analyze the preliminary seismic inversion model for the Grayburg A, B, and C sequences and the upper San Andres formation; (2) modify the inversion model to improve its accuracy and to include the deeper Holt Formation; and (3) test various rock property quantities against the improved model and other seismic attributes using refined analysis boundaries. A satisfactory inversion model and porosity analysis remains to be accomplished, but much has been learned about the modeling and analysis processes. Qualitative comparison of sonic logs with the inversion model traces in profile view shows great similarity and success is being made toward good quantitative results.

This describes a test program to establish the in-situ material properties of the reinforced concrete in Building 221-U for comparison to the original design specifications. Field sampling and laboratory testing of concrete and reinforcing steel structural materials in Building 221-U for design verification will be undertaken. Forty seven samples are to be taken from radiologically clean exterior walls of the canyon. Laboratory testing program includes unconfined compressive strength of concrete cores, tensile strength of reinforcing steel, and petrographic examinations of concrete cores taken from walls below existing grade.

This document provides the results of the acceptance test procedure performed under document number: HNF-2501, Rev 0. This Acceptance Test Procedure has been prepared to demonstrate the Hanford Site Emergency Alerting System functions as required by Specification WHC-S0454, Rev. 1 and project criteria.

During the test of the LEDA injector on the CRITS RFQ, an automatic data acquisition system has been implemented. The purpose was to measure the sparking rate of this CW RFQ. The RF level has some influences on vacuum, but there is no evidence of any reciprocal effect. The raw sparking rate is very difficult to interpret, since burst of sparks bias the statistics. A more convenient and useful interpretation is the number of sparking seconds. At the nominal field level (1.75 Kilp), the sparking-second rate is 0.5 per minute without beam. It strongly depends on the field, with a logarithmic law: 4.5 decade/Kilp. With beam, the sparking rate jumps to 3.0 per minute. As far as tested, it depends neither on the beam current (20 to 80 mA) nor on the field (1.5 to 1.7 Kilp tested). With sparking rates as measured here, one could not hope to build an RFQ that would be free of sparks over a several months continuous operation. Such a requirement, based on an extrapolation of the curves presented here, would lead to a maximal electric field much lower than the Kilpatrick value, an unreasonable requirement for a functional RFQ. A conclusion is that …

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This report provides a sample of public opinion questions concerning the current tax system, the Internal Revenue Service, and proposals for tax reform. It will be updated as new poll results become available. The report is for the use of Members as they consider legislation currently before the 105 Congress.

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This report provides information about the Foreign Policy Agency Reorganization in the 105th Congress. This report also provides the background on foreign policy consolidation issues, discusses foreign policy implications, and tracks legislation.

The Standard Hydrogen Monitoring System (SHMS) is designed to monitor the volume percent hydrogen concentration during potential gas releases from the Hanford underground waste storage tanks. A flexible gas continuous monitoring system was needed that could be expanded to measure gas compositions at both high and low sensitivities. For these reasons, a modified version of the SHMS (entitled SHMS-E) has been developed. The SHMS-E analytical (often referred to as SHMS-E+) measures gas concentrations in selectable ranges of approximately: Hydrogen (3-100,000 ppm); Nitrous Oxide (10-4,000 ppm); Ammonia (10-10,000 ppm) and Methane (10-4,000 ppm). The SHMS-E basic will monitor Hydrogen using electrochemical cells, but will not have the Microsensor Technology Inc. (MTI) dual-column gas chromatograph, B and K photo-acoustic spectrometer, and associated computers installed though they may be installed with minimal hardware changes in the future if needed.

This paper presents several innovative and common sense approaches to pollution prevention that have been employed during facility deactivation at the Hanford Site in South Central Washington. It also presents several pollution prevention principles applicable to other projects. Innovative pollution prevention ideas employed at the Hanford site during facility deactivation included: (1) Recycling more than 185,000 gallons of radioactively contaminated nitric acid by sending it to an operating nuclear fuels reprocessing facility in England; (2) Recycling millions of pounds of chemicals and excess materials to other industries for reuse; (3) Evaporating flush water at a low rate and discharging it into the facility exhaust air stream to avoid discharging thousands of gallons of liquid to the soil column; and (4) Decontaminating and disposing of thousands of gallons of radioactively contaminated organic solvent waste to a RCRA licensed, power-producing, commercial incinerator. Common sense pollution prevention ideas that were employed include recycling office furniture, recycling paper from office files, and redeploying tools and miscellaneous process equipment. Additional pollution prevention occurred as the facility liquid and gaseous discharge streams were deactivated. From the facilities deactivation experiences at Hanford and the ensuing efforts to disposition excess chemicals and materials, several key pollution prevention principles …

A major function of the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) is to characterize waste in support of waste management and disposal activities at the Hanford Site. Analytical data from sampling and analysis and other available information about a tank are compiled and maintained in a tank characterization report (TCR). This report and its appendixes serve as the TCR for single-shell tank 241-U-112. The objectives of this report are (1) to use characterization data in response to technical issues associated with tank 241-U-112 waste, and (2) to provide a standard characterization of this waste in terms of a best-basis inventory estimate. Section 2.0 summarizes the response to technical issues, Section 3.0 shows the best-basis inventory estimate, Section 4.0 makes recommendations about the safety status of the tank and additional sampling needs. The appendixes contain supporting data and information. This report supports the requirements of the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (Ecology et al. 1997), Milestone M-44-15b, change request M-44-97-03 to issue characterization deliverables consistent with the Waste Information Requirements Document developed for 1998.

This report discusses the Permitting Plan regarding NEPA, SEPA, RCRA, and other regulatory standards and alternatives, for planning the environmental permitting of the Canister Storage Building, Project W-464.