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 commissioner's court may enter into a lease with an option to extend, and related questions (RQ-1558)

The transportation impacts of moving high level nuclear waste (HLNW) to a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada are of concern to the residents of the State as well as to the residents of other states through which the nuclear wastes might be transported. The projected volume of the waste suggests that shipments will occur on a daily basis for some period of time. This will increase the risk of accidents, including a catastrophic incident. Furthermore, as the likelihood of repository construction and operation and waste shipments increase, so will the attention given by the national media. This document is not to be construed as a willingness to accept the HLNW repository on the part of the State. Rather it is an initial step in ensuring that the safety and well-being of Nevada residents and visitors and the State`s economy will be adequately addressed in federal decision-making pertaining to the transportation of HLNW into and across Nevada for disposal in the proposed repository. The Preferred Transportation System Needs Assessment identifies critical system design elements and technical and social issues that must be considered in conducting a comprehensive transportation impact analysis. Development of the needs assessment and the impact analysis is …

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) must, among other things, be equipped to readily produce, file, store, access, retrieve, and transfer a wide variety of technical and institutional data and information. The data and information regularly produced by members of the OCRWM Program supports, and will continue to support, a wide range of program activities. Some of the more important of these information communication-related activities include: supporting the preparation, submittal, and review of a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to authorize the construction of a geologic repository; responding to requests for information from parties affected by and/or interested in the program; and providing evidence of compliance with all relevant Federal, State, local, and Indian Tribe regulations, statutes, and/or treaties. The OCRWM Telecommunications Network Plan (TNP) is intended to identify, as well as to present the current strategy for satisfying, the telecommunications requirements of the civilian radioactive waste management program. The TNP will set forth the plan for integrating OCRWM`s information resources among major program sites. Specifically, this plan will introduce a telecommunications network designed to establish communication linkages across the program`s Washington, DC; Chicago, Illinois; and Las Vegas, Nevada, sites. The linkages across these and …

In this presentation, I will discuss our evaluation of the materials copper, 7% aluminum bronze, and 70/30 copper-nickel. These are three of the six materials currently under consideration as potential waste-packaging materials. I should mention that we are also considering alternatives to these six materials. This work is part of the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP), formerly known as the Nevada Nuclear Waste Storage Investigations (NNWSI) Project. The expected-case environment in our proposed vault is quite different from that encountered at the WIPP site or that expected in a Canadian vault. Our proposed site is under a desert mountain, Yucca Mountain, in southern Nevada. The repository itself will be located approximately 700 feet above the water table and 300 to 1200 feet below the surface of the mountain. The variations in these numbers are due to the variations in mountain topography.

The total-system life-cycle cost (TSLCC) analysis for the Department of Energy`s (DOE) Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program is an ongoing activity that helps determine whether the revenue-producing mechanism established by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 -- a fee levied on electricity generated in commercial nuclear power plants -- is sufficient to cover the cost of the program. This report provides cost estimates for the sixth annual evaluation of the adequacy of the fee and is consistent with the program strategy and plans contained in the DOE`s Draft 1988 Mission Plan Amendment. The total-system cost for the system with a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a facility for monitored retrievable storage (MRS), and a transportation system is estimated at $24 billion (expressed in constant 1988 dollars). In the event that a second repository is required and is authorized by the Congress, the total-system cost is estimated at $31 to $33 billion, depending on the quantity of spent fuel to be disposed of. The $7 billion cost savings for the single-repository system in comparison with the two-repository system is due to the elimination of $3 billion for second-repository development and $7 billion for the second-repository facility. These savings are offset …

The following Safety Assessment (SA) pertains to the indoor live fire range (LFR) at EG&G Mound Applied Technology plant. The purpose of the indoor LFR is to conduct training with live ammunition for all designated personnel. The SA examines the risks that are attendant to the operation of an indoor LFR for this purpose.

The following Safety Assessment (SA) pertains to the outdoor live fire range facility (LFR). The purpose of this facility is to supplement the indoor LFR. In particular it provides capacity for exercises that would be inappropriate on the indoor range. This SA examines the risks that are attendant to the training on the outdoor LFR. The outdoor LFR used by EG&G Mound is privately owned. It is identified as the Miami Valley Shooting Grounds. Mondays are leased for the exclusive use of EG&G Mound.

As part of a national multi-institutional Materials Research Group (MRG), Argonne National Laboratory had the responsibility, under a prime contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, of obtaining a Permanent Magnet Hybrid undulator to be used on the U5 Beam Line on the VUV Ring at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS). The procurement involved determining the technical specifications of the device as well as developing an effective procedure for evaluation of the proposals. The conceptual design of the magnetic structure including all pertinent magnetic field properties was developed before the actual procurement process was initiated. In addition, complete calculations of the expected spectral properties of the undulator were performed which included the emittance properties of the VUV ring. The results from both analysis were essential in determining the expected performance of the device and the final choice of operating parameters.

Volcanic hazard studies are ongoing to evaluate the risk of future volcanism with respect to siting of a repository for disposal of high-level radioactive waste at the Yucca Mountain site. Seven Quaternary basaltic volcanic centers are located a minimum distance of 12 km and a maximum distance of 47 km from the outer boundary of the exploration block. The conditional probability of disruption of a repository by future basaltic volcanism is bounded by the range of 10{sup {minus}8} to 10{sup {minus}10} yr{sup {minus}1}. These values are currently being reexamined based on new developments in the understanding of the evaluation of small volume, basaltic volcanic centers including: (1) Many, perhaps most, of the volcanic centers exhibit brief periods of eruptive activity separated by longer periods of inactivity. (2) The centers may be active for time spans exceeding 10{sup 5} yrs, (3) There is a decline in the volume of eruptions of the centers through time, and (4) Small volume eruptions occurred at two of the Quaternary centers during latest Pleistocene or Holocene time. We classify the basalt centers as polycyclic, and distinguish them from polygenetic volcanoes. Polycyclic volcanism is characterized by small volume, episodic eruptions of magma of uniform composition over …

This document consists of a single map without supporting text. (TEM)

This fiscal year 1988 study sponsored by the Bonneville Power Administration evaluates an existing, small-scale salmon production facility operated and maintained by the Clatsop County Economic Development Committee's Fisheries Project.

This is an internal DOE Geothermal Program planning and control document. Many of these reports were issued only in draft form. (DJE - 2005)

This report documents the progress in the assigned tasks which have occurred during the second year of the Augmented Anadromous Fish Health Monitoring Project. Fish at seven Idaho Department of Fish and Game facilities were monitored for various pathogens and organosomatic analyses were performed on smolts prior to their release in the Spring of 1989. A disease database has been developed and facility impediments to fish health have been identified.

The cytotoxic, clastogenic and mutagenic effects of sulfur nustard in Chinese hamster ovary cells are described in this reoort. The cytotoxicity data indicate that micromolar amounts of HC are highly toxic in microrolar amounts. Chromosone aberration frequencies increased in a dose-dependent manner over a dose range of 0. 5 to 1.0 {micro}m and SCE increased in a dose-dependent fashion in the dose range of 0.0625 to 0.25 {micro}M. Mutation induction at the HGPRT locus was sporadic, but the majority of the exoosures resulted in mutation frequencies which were 1.2 to 4.3 fold higher than the spontaneous frequencies.

Occupational health standards have not been established for sulfur mustard (HD) [bis{2-chloroethyl)-sulfide) ' a strong alkylating agent with known mutagenic properties. Little, however, is known about the mutagenic activity of HD in mammalian species and data regarding the dominant lethal effects of HD are ambiguous. The purpose of this study was to determine the dominant lethal effect in male and female rats orally exposed to HD. The study was conducted in two phases; a female dominant lethal phase and a male dominant lethal phase. Sprague-Dawley rats of each sex were administered 0.08, 0.20, or 0.50 mg/kg HD in sesame oil 5 days/week for 10 weeks. For the female phase, treated or untreated males were mated with treated females and their fetuses were evaluated at approximately 14 days after copulation. For the male dominant lethal phase, treated males cohabited with untreated femal (during 5 days of each week for 10 weeks) and females were sacrificed for fetal evaluation 14 days after the midweek of cohabitation during each of the 10 weeks. The appearance and behavior of the rats were unremarkable throughout the experiment and there were no treatment-related deaths. Growth rates were reduced in both female and male rats treated with …

In the design of high-luminosity colliders for high-energy physics, it has become clear that multibunch instabilities will be one of the primary effects that limit beam intensity, and hence luminosity. This paper reports on a series of calculations of multibunch growth rates, using the LBL accelerator physics code ZAP, that illustrate the seriousness of the effect for typical design parameters of a Tau-Charm Factory. A common feature of high-luminosity machines is the requirement of a small beta function at the interaction point. To maintain the advantages of a low beta function, however, requires that the rms bunch length, {sigma}{sub {ell}}, be smaller than {beta}*. This leads, in general, to several inconvenient aspects: (1) The requirement for short bunches leads to the need for a substantial amount of RF hardware-introducing just the narrow-band (high-Q) impedance that generates multibunch instabilities in the first place. (2) The need for short bunches means that bunch lengthening from the longitudinal microwave instability must be avoided. Since the longitudinal impedance Z{sub {parallel}}/n cannot be reduced indefinitely, there is a clear benefit to using many bunches, with lower current per bunch. (3) The short bunches have a Fourier spectrum extending up to very high frequencies, thus effectively …

This paper revises and extends EPRI report EA-3409, ''Household Appliance Choice: Revision of REEPS Behavioral Models.'' That paper reported the results of an econometric study of major appliance choice in new residential construction. Errors appeared in two tables of that report. We offer revised versions of those tables, and a brief analysis of the consequences and significance of the errors. The present paper also proposes several possible extensions and re-specifications of the models examined by EPRI. Some of these are judged to be highly successful; they both satisfy economic intuition more completely than the original specification and produce a better quality fit to the dependent variable. We feel that inclusion of these modifications produces a more useful set of coefficients for economic modeling than the original specification. This paper focuses on EPRI's models of residential space heating technology choice. That choice was modeled as a nested logit structure, with consumers choosing whether to have central air conditioning or not, and, given that choice, what kind of space heating system to have. The model included five space heating alternatives with central cooling (gas, oil, and electric forced-air; heat pumps; and electric baseboard) and eight alternatives without it (gas, oil, and electric …

The fourth Quarterly Technical Progress Report presents the results of work accomplished during the period February 6 through April 30, 1989. the overall objective of the program is the development of a pulsed atmospheric, fluidized bed combustion (PAFBC) technology to burn coal and to provide heat and steam to commercial, institutional, and small industrial applications at a reasonable price in an environmentally acceptable manner. During this past quarter, a baseline for comparing PAFBC vs. AFBC performance was established and the initial series of PAFBC coal-fired combustion tests was completed. The AFBC baseline was representative of bubbling bed units with the exception of emissions which were somewhat higher and attributable to the size constraints of the AFBC unit. However, it still provided a valid baseline for referencing and optimizing PAFBC performance. Initial coal combustion tests in the pulsed fluid-bed verified enhanced performance in comparison to the non-pulsed beds, providing reduced NO{sub x}, CO, and SO{sub 2} emissions as well as higher steam generation rates and considerably lower entrainment losses. 9 figs., 4 tabs.

The Stanford Linear Collider (SLC) located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) collides electrons and positrons produced in the linear accelerator pulse by pulse. The object is to produce collisions energetic enough to produce the heavy intermediate vector boson, the Z{sup 0}. An essential component of the SLC physics program is the precise knowledge of the center-of-mass energy of each interaction. We measure the energy of each collision by using two energy spectrometers. The spectrometers are located in extraction lines of each beam. We will measure the energy of each beam to 20 MeV or 5 parts in 10{sup 4}. We report here on the status of the energy spectrometer system. 13 refs., 7 figs., 3 tabs.

The overall objective of this project is to provide a basic understanding of the principal processes that govern fine particulate formation in pulverized coal flames. This understanding is to be sued to develop a model (or models) which will predict the yield and size distribution of fine particulate matter as a function of coal type, coal processing, and combustion conditions. The goal of the model is to provide an engineering tool that will enable the practitioner to estimate the consequences of deign decisions and fuel selection on the fine particulate yield. The practitioner can then make rational decisions regarding the required technology and costs associated with effluent cleanup while still in the design phase.

Kokanee abundance, estimated from July trawl data, was 1.2 million fish in 1988, including 553,000 fry, 501,000 yearlings and 156,000 subadults. Spawning trend data indicated escapement was up threefold compared to 1987, despite a sport harvest of 207,000 kokanee averaging 258 mm caught at a rate of 1.5 fish per hour. An estimated 40,000 kokanee were counted during the September peak of spawning in five tributaries of the reservoir. Size of adult fish was below average at 293 mm. Zooplankton densities averaged 10.3 organisms/L in 1988 and ranged from 0.3 organisms/L during April at the Little North Fork station to 26.2 organisms/L in November at the Elk Creek station. Densities were similar to values obtained prior to the development of the primary kokanee fishery; however, cladocerans made up only 34.9% of the zooplankton sampled. Daphnia and Cyclops were the most important food items; Daphnia became the prime food organism as its seasonal abundance increased. Concentrations of ortho-phosphate and nitrate, lower than in the 1970s, indicated Dworshak may have become more oligotrophic. 13 refs., 24 figs., 4 tabs.

The gradual senescence of present-day operating nuclear facilities, and resultant contamination of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, emphasize the importance of understanding the behavior of radionuclides in the environment. Observations and deductions concerning mechanisms of radionuclide transport can contribute significantly to knowledge of fundamental ecological processes. This study emphasized the ecosystem-level distribution of several long-lived radionuclides in an abandoned reactor cooling impoundment after a twenty year period of chemical and biological equilibration. 90 refs., 14 figs., 5 tabs.

Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) is conducting numerous field monitoring studies of the induces of energy in buildings. Energy use monitoring techniques have been developed to provide reliable empirical measurements of energy consumption according to enduse and time of day. These measurements are analyzed in conjunction with climate and site characteristics data to determine energy use efficiencies and identify energy conservation and load management opportunities. This paper draws upon this experience to advance an approach to minimize the cost and maximize the benefits of field data collection projects for entire facilities.

To estimate possible radioactive releases from a waste package to the near-field environment, we analyzed pressure-driven brine migration movement and release rates of low-solubility and readily soluble nuclides by diffusion. A possible pathway for radioactive release in salt repositories in interbeds and we have analyzed the steady-state transport of species through the interbeds in which there is ground-water flow. A more realistic situation is when there is no ground-water flow in the interbeds. Here we use some results previously obtained for transient diffusion of radioactive species from a waste cylinder intersecting a planar fracture in rock to the problem of diffusion from a waste cylinder intersecting an interbed in a salt repository. 5 refs., 8 figs., 3 tabs.