This report discusses policy issues raised by Beck, and tracks legislation on the use of union dues for political activities that has come before the 105th Congress.

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether a member of the Pleasure Island Commission may be appointed to the Parks Board of Jefferson County (RQ-1124)

Revisions to the waste transfer system piping to be implemented by Project W-314 will eliminate the need to access a majority of interfarm jumper connections associated with specific process pits. Additionally, connections that formerly facilitated waste transfers from the Plutonium-Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Plant are no longer required. This document identified unneeded process pit jumper connections, describes former designated routing, denotes current status (i.e., open or blanked), and recommends appropriate disposition for all. Blanking of identified nozzles should be accomplished by Project W-314 upon installation of jumpers and acceptance by Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) Tank Farm Operations.

The 105 Congress has been active on issues involving China. This report, which will be updated as developments occur, tracks pending human rights legislation, including bills concerning: prison conditions and prison labor exports; coercive abortion practices; China’s policies toward religion; and more general human rights issues.

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A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

This study was undertaken in order to improve understanding of several aspects of the NO-carbon reaction. This reaction is of practical importance in combustion systems, but its close examination also provides some fundamental insight into oxidizing gas-carbon reactions. As part of this study, a comprehensive literature review of earlier work on this reaction has been published (Aarna and Suuberg, Fuel, 1997, 76, 475-491). It has been thought for some time that the kinetics of the NO-carbon reaction are unusual, in that they often show a two-regime Arrhenius behavior. It has, however, turned out during this work that NO is not alone in this regard. In this laboratory, we also uncovered evidence of two kinetic regime behavior in CO{sub 2} gasification. In another laboratory, a former colleague has identified the same behavior in N{sub 2}O. The low temperature reaction regime always shows an activation energy which is lower than that in the high temperature regime, leaving little doubt that a shift in mechanism, as opposed to transport limitations, dictates the behavior. The activation energy of the low temperature regime of these reactions is typically less than 100 kJ/mol, and the activation energy of the high temperature regime is generally considerably in …

In 1993 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced ENERGY STAR (registered trademark), a voluntary labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products. Since then EPA, now in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has introduced programs for more than twenty products, spanning office equipment, residential heating and cooling equipment, new homes, commercial and residential lighting, home electronics, and major appliances. We present potential energy, dollar and carbon savings forecasts for these programs for the period 1998 to 2010. Our target market penetration case represents our best estimate of future ENERGY STAR savings. It is based on realistic market penetration goals for each of the products. We also provide results under the assumption of 100% market penetration; that is, we assume that all purchasers buy ENERGY STAR-compliant products instead of standard efficiency products throughout the analysis period. Finally, we assess the sensitivity of our target penetration case forecasts to greater or lesser marketing success by EPA and DOE, lower-than-expected future energy prices, and higher or lower rates of carbon emission by electricity generators. The potential savings of ENERGY STAR are substantial. If all purchasers chose Energy Star-compliant products instead of standard efficiency products over the next 15 …

The importance of the parallel flow of primary and impurity ions in the Scrape-Off layer (SOL) of divertor tokamaks has been recognized recently. Impurity accumulation on the closed flux surfaces is determined in part by their parallel flow in the SOL. In turn, the parallel transport of the impurity ions is determined in part by drag from the primary ion flow. Measurement of flow in the DIII-D tokamak has begun recently. We describe initial results of modeling plasma ion flow using the 2-D code UEDGE in this paper. We assume the impurity (carbon) arises from chemical and physical sputtering from the walls surrounding the DIII-D plasma. We include six charge states of carbon in our simulations. We make detailed compaison with a multitude of SOL plasma diagnostics, including the flow measurement, to verify the UEDGE physics model. We begin the paper with a brief description of the plasma and neutral models in the UEDGE code in Section 2. We then present initial results of flow simulations and compare them with experimental measurement in Section 3. We conclude with a discussion of the dominant physics processes identified in the modeling in Section 4.

Options for plutonium disposition require PuO₂ that can be used as feed material for mixed oxide (MOX) reactor fuel pellets, or glass and ceramic immobilization forms (cf. Federal Register Doc. 97-1355, Vol. 62, No. 13, January 2 1,1997). As part of a DOE-sponsored demonstration known as the Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System (ARIES), conversion of plutonium to oxide by the Hydride/Oxidation (HYDOX) process will be used, along with other supporting technologies, to recover plutonium from the cores or *#34;pits" of nuclear weapons that have been determined to be surplus to national defense needs. This demonstration will be performed jointly by the Los Alamos and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories at the Los Alamos Plutonium Facility. The pyrochemical methods employed by HYDOX offer a simple and reliable process to recover plutonium in oxide form from various sources. This process will: Separate plutonium from other nuclear and non-nuclear materials, Convert massive metallic shapes into fine oxide particles, Produce oxide directly acceptable for MOX fuel fabrication, and Produce no solid or liquid waste. The paper describes the reactor module and operational sequences, provides up-to-date experimental results, identifies rate-controlling factors, and discusses their impact on the reactor design.

Insulated pressure vessels are cryogenic-capable pressure vessels that can be fueled with liquid hydrogen (LIQ) or ambient-temperature compressed hydrogen (CH2). Insulated pressure vessels offer the advantages of liquid hydrogen tanks (low weight and volume), with reduced disadvantages (lower energy requirement for hydrogen liquefaction and reduced evaporative losses). This paper shows an evaluation of the applicability of the insulated pressure vessels for light-duty vehicles. The paper shows an evaluation of evaporative losses and insulation requirements and a description of the current experimental plans for testing insulated pressure vessels. The results show significant advantages to the use of insulated pressure vessels for light-duty vehicles.

The objective of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to present the scope, the deliverables, the organization, the technical and schedule expectations for the development of a Package Design Criteria (PDC), cost and schedule estimate for the acquisition of a transportation system for the Immobilized Low-Activity Waste (ILAW).

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This report tracks pending human rights legislation, including bills concerning: prison conditions and prison labor exports (H.R. 2195, H.R. 2358); coercive abortion practices (H.R. 2570); China’s policies toward religion (H.R. 967, H.R. 2431); and more general human rights issues (H.R. 2095). Other bills concern Taiwan — in particular, Taiwan’s entry into the World Trade Organization (H.Res. 190) and the U.S. role in helping Taiwan with a theater missile defense system (H.R. 2386). Also, legislation is pending on China’s missile proliferation activities (H.Res. 188), Radio Free Asia broadcasting to China (H.R. 2232), China’s participation in multilateral institutions (H.R. 1712, H.R. 2605), and the activities of China’s military and intelligence services (H.R. 2647, H.R. 2190).