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 the mayor of the city manager of the City of Brownsville may remove a municipal housing authority commissioner (RQ-1084)

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 Dallas City Council member whose spouse is employed by American Airlines may participate in matters involving the use of Love Field (RQ-1033)

Two listed toxic chemicals were used at the Hanford Site above established activity thresholds: phosphoric acid and chlorine. Because total combined quantities of chlorine released, disposed, treated, recovered through recycle operations, co-combusted for energy recovery, and transferred to off-site locations for the purpose of recycle, energy recovery, treatment, and/or disposal, amounted to less than 500 pounds, the Hanford Site qualified for the alternate one million pound threshold for chlorine. Accordingly, this Toxic Chemical Release Inventory includes a Form A for chlorine, and a Form B for phosphoric acid.

This document was previously referred to as the Draft 2006 Plan. As part of the DOE`s national strategy, the Richland Operations Office`s Paths to Closure summarizes an integrated path forward for environmental cleanup at the Hanford Site. The Hanford Site underwent a concerted effort between 1994 and 1996 to accelerate the cleanup of the Site. These efforts are reflected in the current Site Baseline. This document describes the current Site Baseline and suggests strategies for further improvements in scope, schedule and cost. The Environmental Management program decided to change the name of the draft strategy and the document describing it in response to a series of stakeholder concerns, including the practicality of achieving widespread cleanup by 2006. Also, EM was concerned that calling the document a plan could be misconstrued to be a proposal by DOE or a decision-making document. The change in name, however, does not diminish the 2006 vision. To that end, Paths to Closure retains a focus on 2006, which serves as a point in time around which objectives and goals are established.

The major technical objectives of this program are threefold: (1) to develop the design tools and a fundamental understanding of the fluid dynamics of a slurry bubble column rector to maximize reactor productivity, (2) to develop the mathematical reactor design models and gain an understanding of the hydrodynamic fundamentals under industrially relevant process conditions, and (3) to develop an understanding of the hydrodynamics and their interaction with the chemistries occurring in the bubble column reactor. Successful completion of these objectives will permit more efficient usage of the reactor column and tighter design criteria, increase overall reactor efficiency, and ensure a design that leads to stable reactor behavior when scaling up to large diameter reactors.

This project has identified all FDD oil reservoirs in Oklahoma; grouped those reservoirs into plays that have similar depositional origins; collected, organized, and analyzed all available data; conducted characterization and simulation studies on selected reservoirs in each plays; and implemented a technology transfer program targeted to the operators of FDD reservoirs. By fulfilling these objectives, the FDD project has had the goal of helping to sustain the life expectancy of existing wells and provide incentive for development and exploratory wells with the ultimate objective of increasing oil recovery.

None

A computer implemented information extraction process that locates and identifies eddy current signal features in digital point-ordered signals, said signals representing data from inspection of test materials, by enhancing the signal features relative to signal noise, detecting features of the signals, verifying the location of the signal features that can be known in advance, and outputting information about the identity and location of all detected signal features.

Legislation authorizing the negotiation and, where required, fast-track implementation of trade agreements expired in early 1994. Action in the 104th Congress to renew the authority, prompted in part by the near-term prospect of the negotiation of a free-trade agreement with Chile, which might later be followed by other agreements, reached an impasse in late 1995 because of a disagreement between Congress and the Administration as to the inclusion of labor and environmental issues in agreements approved by fast-track procedure.

The behavior of the implementation of Craig Tarver's reactive flow model for high explosives in a hydro code is investigated. The model produces the correct shock propagation rates. The effects of geometry, zoning and artificial viscosity are compared in one (1D) and two (2D) dimensions. Sensitivities to the solution scheme of the hydro equations are also investigated. A comparison with an experimentally verified, analytic theory is presented for the speed of spherically diverging reactive flow fronts. We show that for LX-14 the reactive flow results obey that theory and a lag of about 1.5 to 2.0 mm is produced in a spherical system in about 5 cm of travel from the origin compared to programmed burn. Reactive flow is shown to produce a more strongly developed Mach stem than does conventional, programmed lighting assisted by beta burn. The reactive flow results appear to be close to convergence for zone sizes of 1/16 mm. Several numerical anomalies in code/model behavior are shown and their limited effects are discussed. Some one-dimensional results for LX-17 are also briefly discussed.

Integrated Approach Towards the Application of Horizontal Wells to Improve Waterflooding Performance scanner logs through a newly drilled well. By combining the state-of-the-art data with conventional core and log data, we developed a detailed reservoir description based on an integrated approach. After conducting extensive reservoir simulation studies, we evaluated alternate reservoir management strategies to improve the reservoir performance including drilling of a horizontal injection well. We observed that selective completion of many wells followed by an increase in the injection rate was the most feasible option to improve the performance of the Self Unit. This management plan is currently being implemented and the performance is being Stage II of the project will involve selection of part of the same reservoir (Berryhill Unit - Tract 7), development of reservoir description using only conventional data, simulation of flow performance using developed reservoir description, selection of an appropriate reservoir management plan, and implementation of the plan followed by monitoring of reservoir performance. During the summer of 1995, we started implementing the reservoir management plan in the Self Unit. Last quarter, after evaluating each individual well, we decided to install electrical submersible pumps to produce three wells. The other three wells required the use …

With approximately 99% of the electrical energy supplied to the National Ignition Facility (NIF) appearing as heat in the amplifiers, thermal recovery of the NIF system is a major consideration in the design process. The NIF shot rate is one shot every 8 hours, with a goal of 4 hours between shots. This necessitates that thermal recovery take place in no more than 7 hours, with a goal of 3 hours for the accelerated shot rate. Residual optical distortions, which restrict the shot rate, are grouped into two discrete categories: (1) distortions associated with residual temperature gradients in the laser slabs, and (2) distortions associated with buoyantly driven convective currents in the amplifier cavity and beam-tube regions. Thermal recovery of the amplifiers is achieved by cooling the flashlamps and blastshields with a turbulent gas flow. The cooled blastshields then serve as a cold boundary to radiatively extract the residual heat deposited in the slabs and edge claddings. Advanced concepts, such as the use of slightly chilled gas to accelerate some aspects of recovery, are addressed. To quantify recovery rates of the amplifiers, experiments and numerical models are used to measure and calculate the temperatures and optical distortions in NIF-like amplifier …

Extensive progress in development of an HTC (heat transfer coefficient) Evaluator and in the preparation of the experiments at CMI and Amcast have been achieved in the last three months. The interface of the HTC Evaluator has been developed in Visual C++ for the PC platform. It provides a tool to collect and store the published data on heat transfer coefficients in a database for further analysis. It also supports the mathematical model for evaluation of heat transfer coefficients. More than 100 papers related to this project have been cited and most of them have been collected. The preparation of the experiments at CMI is almost completed. A hockey-puck mold has been selected for the experiments for squeeze casting and semi-solid casting. A direct cavity pressure measurement system was purchased from Kistler. The pressure probes and data acquisition software as well as the necessary accessories have been delivered. The instrumented mold modification has been designed and the modifications completed. At Amcast Automotive, a new wheel-like mold for low-pressure permanent mold casting was designed. The CAD file for mold fabrication has been generated. The modeling of the casting has been done. An extensive survey on the ultrasonic gap formation measurement was …

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), now under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will be the largest laser fusion facility ever built. The NIF laser architecture is based on a multi-pass power amplifier to reduce cost and maximize performance. A key component in this laser design is an optical switch that closes to trap the optical pulse in the cavity for four gain passes and then opens to divert the optical pulse out of the amplifier cavity. The switch is comprised of a Pockels cell and a polarizer and is unique because it handles a beam that is 40 cm x 40 cm square and allows close horizontal and vertical beam spacing. Conventional Pockels cells do not scale to such large apertures or the square shape required for close packing. Our switch is based on a Plasma-Electrode Pockels Cell (PEPC). In a PEPC, low-pressure helium discharges (l-2 kA) are formed on both sides of a thin slab of electro-optic material. Typically, we use KH2P04 crystals (KDP). The discharges form highly conductive, transparent sheets that allow uniform application of a high-voltage pulse (17 kV) across the crystal. A 37 cm x 37 cm PEPC has been in routine operation for two …

On April 14, 1998, a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researcher performing work in the Building 324 facility approached facility management and asked if facility management could turn off the tritium sampler in the main exhaust stack. The researcher was demonstrating the feasibility of treating components from dismantled nuclear weapons in a device called a plasma arc furnace and was concerned that the sampler would compromise classified information. B and W Hanford Company (BWHC) operated the facility, and PNNL conducted research as a tenant in the facility. The treatment of 200 components in the furnace would result in the release of up to about 20 curies of tritium through the facility stack. The exact quantity of tritium was calculated from the manufacturing data for the weapons components and was known to be less than 20 curies. The Notice of Construction (NOC) approved by the Washington State Department of Health (WDOH) had been modified to allow releasing 20 curies of tritium through the stack in support of this research. However, there were irregularities in the way the NOC modification was processed. The researcher was concerned that data performed on the sampler could be used to back-calculate the tritium content of the …

A flexible, highly efficient laboratory proof-of-concept Ultracapacitor/Battery Interface power electronic circuit with associated controls was developed on a cost-shared contract funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and the General Electric Company (GE). This power electronic interface translates the varying dc voltage on an ultracapacitor with bi-directional power flow to the dc bus of an inverter-supplied ac propulsion system in an electric vehicle application. In a related application, the electronic interface can also be utilized to interface a low-voltage battery to a dc bus of an inverter supplied ac propulsion system. Variations in voltage for these two intended applications occur (1) while extracting energy (discharge) or supplying energy (charge) to an ultracapacitor, and (2) while extracting energy (discharge) or supplying energy (charge) to a low-voltage battery. The control electronics of this interface is designed to be operated as a stand-alone unit acting in response to an external power command. However, the interface unit`s control is not configured to provide any of the vehicle system control functions associated with load leveling or power splitting between the propulsion battery and the ultracapacitor in an electric or hybrid vehicle application. A system …

The authors have investigated the alteration of chromatin domains in Human T and B cells after ionizing radiation using three DNA specific dyes, Feulgen, Hoechst and 7-amino actinomycin D. Characterization and differentiation of T and B cells was accomplished using only 4 of a possible 32 image features with the CAS and Quaritex QX7 Digital Image Systems. Human B and T cells were irradiated with 1, 5 and 10 Gy and analyzed during a 1.5 hour recovery period. The chosen features detect a dose dependent change in DNA domains which can be observed as early as 1.5 hours after a 1Gv exposure. The results suggest that the ability of DNA specific dyes to stain chromatin can be used as an early sensitive indicator of DNA damage. The observed alteration of chromatin staining suggests that chromatin structure does observably change in a significant manner during a DNA repair interval. Since these alteration can be detected with DNA specific dyes that stain both AT rich, GC rich or total DNA, these data suggest that a global alteration of the chromatin is occurring after exposure to ionizing radiation.

This paper describes a new two-dimensional (2-D) cylindrical geometry to three-dimensional (3-D) rectangular x-y-z splice option for multi-dimensional discrete ordinates solutions to the neutron (photon) transport equation. Of particular interest are the simple transformations developed and applied in order to carry out the required spatial and angular interpolations. The spatial interpolations are linear and equivalent to those applied elsewhere. The angular interpolations are based on a high order spherical harmonics representation of the angular flux. Advantages of the current angular interpolations over previous work are discussed. An application to an intricate streaming problem is provided to demonstrate the advantages of the new method for efficient and accurate prediction of particle behavior in complex geometries.

This research focused on determining the importance of non-degradative tolerance (NDT) to pisatin for the virulence of N. haematococca MPVI on pea. An attempt was also made to determine the importance of pda for virulence of F. oxysporum f.sp.pisi,A. pisi and M. pinodes. This research aided in refining the author's understanding of those characteristics of the pda genes that contribute to virulence and the role of non-degradative tolerance in the virulence of other pea pathogens.

All first-stage experimental tests were completed for Task 4 (and the Contract). The first-stage one-liter autoclave tests that were made were duplicates of Run 41-LA. The conditions used were chosen last quarter to reduce the cost of the first-stage of the process from those used at the conclusion of Task 3. Filtration and second-stage tests were made using the products of the first-stage tests. Post-second-stage filtration, tested as an alternative to interstage (pre-second- stage) filtration, resulted in low filtration rates. Different catalyst loadings and type and residence time for second-stage hydrotreating were explored. Longer residence times did not result in significantly more resid conversion. Higher catalyst loadings were more effective in converting the resid at the same residence time. The material and elemental balances for the first-stage were completed. The material and elemental balances for the second-stage were initiated.

None

Over this grant period we have studied extensively zirconia and alumina aerogels doped with a wide variety of dopants including silica, sulfate, phosphate, tungstate and combinations thereof. These results have deepened our understanding of the effects of dopants on acidic properties, which is the main goal of the project, and in particular led to the development of a hierarchy with which the Broensted acid strength of different samples can be meaningfully compared. We provide a more detailed description of several specific systems.

This Engineered Materials Characterization Report (EMCR), Volume 3, discusses in considerable detail the work of the past 18 months on testing the candidate materials proposed for the waste-package (WP) container and on modeling the performance of those materials in the Yucca Mountain (YM) repository setting This report was prepared as an update of information and serves as one of the supporting documents to the Viability Assessment (VA) of the Yucca Mountain Project. Previous versions of the EMCR have provided a history and background of container-materials selection and evaluation (Volume I), a compilation of physical and mechanical properties for the WI� design effort (Volume 2), and corrosion-test data and performance-modeling activities (Volume 3). Because the information in Volumes 1 and 2 is still largely current, those volumes are not being revised. As new information becomes available in the testing and modeling efforts, Volume 3 is periodically updated to include that information.

The principal objective of this project is to perform an analysis of basin-centered gas occurrence in the U.S. and analyze its potential significance to future natural gas exploration and development. This project shall utilize state-of-the-art procedures and knowledge of basin-centered gas systems, including, stratigraphic analysis, organic geochemistry, basin thermal dynamics and reservoir and pressure analyses. All information will be stored in database format, and products will be fully digital.