This report summarizes foreign relations reauthorization, including history, current legislation, background, and relevance.

This report lays out the applicable legal considerations relevant to analyzing potential executive branch agency reorganizations that have been proposed by the Trump Administration.

This report begins with an overview of the purpose for which child welfare funds are appropriated. The report discusses FY2013 appropriations for those programs, including the effect of the automatic spending cuts, know as sequestration.

Scope of the Report The objective of this literature review is to identify and review documents to address scaling, design, operations, and experimental setup, including configuration, data collection, and remote handling that would be used during waste feed qualification in support of the glass fabrication unit operation. Items addressed include:  LAW and HLW glass formulation algorithms;  Mixing and sampling;  Rheological measurements;  Heat of hydration;  Glass fabrication techniques;  Glass inspection;  Composition analysis;  Use of cooling curves;  Hydrogen generation rate measurement.

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Final Report for grant DE-FG02-06ER54898. The dynamics and generation of intermittent plasma turbulent structures, widely known as "blobs" have been studied in the presence of sheared plasma flows in a controlled laboratory experiment.

The objectives of this program were to research and develop a fully enclosed Information Technology (IT) rack system for 100 kilowatts (KW) of IT load that provides its own internal power and cooling with High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC defined as 480 volt) and chilled water as the primary inputs into the system and accepts alternative energy power sources such as wind and solar. For maximum efficiency, internal power to the IT equipment uses distributed High Voltage Direct Current power (HVDC defined as 360-380 volt) from the power source to the IT loads. The management scheme aggressively controls energy use to insure the best utilization of available power and cooling resources. The solution incorporates internal active management controls that not only optimizes the system environment for the given dynamic IT loads and changing system conditions, but also interfaces with data center Building Management Systems (BMS) to provide a complete end-to-end view of power and cooling chain. This technology achieves the goal of a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.25, resulting in a 38% reduction in the total amount of energy needed to support a 100KW IT load compared to current data center designs.

Tank Farm and Closure Engineering is evaluating changes to the Actinide Removal Process facility operations to decrease the MST concentration from 0.4 g/L to 0.2 g/L and the contact time from 12 hours to between 6 and 8 hours. For this evaluation, SRNL reviewed previous datasets investigating the performance of MST at 0.2 g/L in salt solutions ranging from 4.5 to 7.5 M in sodium concentration. In general, reducing the MST concentration from 0.4 to 0.2 g/L and increasing the ionic strength from 4.5 to 7.5 M in sodium concentration will decrease the measured decontamination factors for plutonium, neptunium, uranium and strontium. The decontamination factors as well as single standard deviation values for each sorbate are reported. These values are applicable within the sorbate and sodium concentrations used in the experimental measurements. Decreasing the MST concentration in the ARP from 0.4 g/L to 0.2 g/L will produce an increase in the filter flux, and could lead to longer operating times between filter cleaning. The increase in flux is a function of a number of operating parameters, and is difficult to quantify. However, it is estimated that the reduction in MST could result in a reduction of filtration time of up …

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is currently evaluating the water management procedures at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU). The facility has three issues related to water management that require technical assistance: (1) due to a excessive rainfall event in October, 2010, contaminated water collected in basements of G2 and H2 buildings. As a result of this event, the contractor has had to collect and dispose of water offsite; (2) The failure of a sump pump at a KAPL outfall resulted in a Notice of Violation issued by the New York State Department of Environment and Conservation (NYSDEC) and subsequent Consent Order. On-site water now requires treatment and off-site disposition; and (3) stormwater infiltration has resulted in Strontium-90 levels discharged to the storm drains that exceed NR standards. The contractor has indicated that water management at SPRU requires major staff resources (at least 50 persons). The purpose of this review is to determine if the contractor's technical approach warrants the large number of staff resources and to ensure that the technical approach is compliant and in accordance with federal, state and NR requirements.

Carbon tetrachloride contamination in groundwater at Morrill, Kansas, was initially identified in 1985 during statewide testing of public water supply wells for volatile organic compounds (VOCs). High levels of nitrate were also present in the wells. The city of Morrill is located in Brown County in the northeastern corner of the state, about 7 mi east of Sabetha. The population of Morrill as of the 2000 census was approximately 277. All residents of Morrill now obtain their drinking water from the Sabetha municipal water system via a pipeline constructed in 1991. Starting in 1922, eight different public wells formerly served the Morrill municipal system at some time. Because of poor water quality, including high nitrate levels attributed to numerous animal feeding operations in the vicinity and application of fertilizer on agricultural lands, use of the local groundwater from any public well for municipal supply purposes was terminated in 1991 in favor of obtaining water from the Sabetha municipal water system. Investigations of the carbon tetrachloride and nitrate contamination by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) in 1989, 1994, and 1996 (KDHE 1989; GeoCore 1994a-e, 1996) identified a localized plume of carbon tetrachloride in groundwater extending downgradient from a …

Summary of recent ORAU decommissioning activities at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). Project objective was to generate approved Waste Lot Profiles for legacy facilities scheduled for demolition and shipment to the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility (EMWMF) or appropriate alternate facility. The form and content of process knowledge (PK) reports were developed with input from the EMWMF Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) Attainment Team and regulators. PK may be defined as the knowledge of the design and the history of operations that occurs during the life cycle of a facility (paraphrased from SRNL guidance) - similar to the MARSSIM historical site assessment. Some types of PK data used to decommission ORNL and ETTP facilities include: (1) Design drawings; (2) Historical documents [e.g., History of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory by Thomas (1963) and A Brief History of the Chemical Technical Division (ORNL/M-2733)]; (3) Historical photographs; (4) Radiological survey reports; (5) Facility-specific databases - (a) Spill history, (b) Waste Information Tracking System (WITS), and (c) Hazardous Materials Management Information System (HMMIS); (6) Facility walkdown summary reports; and (7) Living memory data. Facility walkdowns are critical for worker safety planning and to assure on-the-ground-conditions match …

Computational chemistry was used to help provide a molecular level description of the interactions of Gram-negative microbial membranes with subsurface materials. The goal is to develop a better understanding of the molecular processes involved in microbial metal binding, microbial attachment to mineral surfaces, and, eventually, oxidation/reduction reactions (electron transfer) that can occur at these surfaces and are mediated by the bacterial exterior surface. The project focused on the interaction of the outer microbial membrane, which is dominated by an exterior lipopolysaccharide (LPS) portion, of Pseudomonas aeruginosa with the mineral goethite and with solvated ions in the environment. This was originally a collaborative project with T.P. Straatsma and B. Lowery of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The University of Alabama effort used electronic structure calculations to predict the molecular behavior of ions in solution and the behavior of the sugars which form a critical part of the LPS. The interactions of the sugars with metal ions are expected to dominate much of the microscopic structure and transport phenomena in the LPS. This work, in combination with the molecular dynamics simulations of Straatsma and the experimental electrochemistry and microscopy measurements of Lowry, both at PNNL, is providing new insights into the detailed …

The U.S. wind power industry experienced a trying year in 2010, with a significant reduction in new builds compared to both 2008 and 2009. The delayed impact of the global financial crisis, relatively low natural gas and wholesale electricity prices, and slumping overall demand for energy countered the ongoing availability of existing federal and state incentives for wind energy deployment. The fact that these same drivers did not impact capacity additions in 2009 can be explained, in part, by the 'inertia' in capital-intensive infrastructure investments: 2009 capacity additions were largely determined by decisions made prior to the economy-wide financial crisis that was at its peak in late 2008 and early 2009, whereas decisions on 2010 capacity additions were often made at the height of the financial crisis. Cumulative wind power capacity still grew by a healthy 15% in 2010, however, and most expectations are for moderately higher wind power capacity additions in 2011 than witnessed in 2010, though those additions are also expected to remain below the 2009 high.

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As Congress decides whether to revisit law surrounding political campaigns, it may be appropriate to take stock of the current landscape and to examine what has changed, what has not, and what policy options might be relevant. This report provides a starting point for doing so. It also provides comments on how those events might affect future policy considerations.

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This report discusses a growing consensus that U.S. global health assistance needs to become more efficient and effective. It also points out the CDC Global Health Spending: FY2001-FY2012.

This report provides an overview of the Clean Air act issues addresses in the 113th Congress. The contents include EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, emissions of other pollutants from power plants, air quality standards and other issues.

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The primary objective of the present work is to perform a heat balance study for type-I waste tank to assess the impact of using submersible mixer pumps during waste removal. The temperature results calculated by the model will be used to evaluate the temperatures of the slurry waste under various tank operating conditions. A parametric approach was taken to develop a transient model for the heat balance study for type-I waste tanks such as Tank 11, during waste removal by SMP. The tank domain used in the present model consists of two SMP�s for sludge mixing, one STP for the waste removal, cooling coil system with 36 coils, and purge gas system. The sludge waste contained in Tank 11 also has a decay heat load of about 43 W/m{sup 3} mainly due to the emission of radioactive gamma rays. All governing equations were established by an overall energy balance for the tank domain, and they were numerically solved. A transient heat balance model used single waste temperature model, which represents one temperature for the entire waste liquid domain contained in the tank at each transient time.

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