The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is required to provide assistance to 20 specified agricultural commodities, to achieve three primary objectives: to support prices, supplement incomes, and manage supplies. Supporters contend that financial help to the farm sector also ensures consumers an abundant supply of reasonably priced food. But critics believe that basic U.S. farm policies, conceived in the 1930s, no longer meet the needs of modern agriculture or society as a whole. This report discusses the various programs available for different commodities.

Early in the post-Cold War era, the willingness of the United States to use military force was tested by Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. U.S. actions and those of allied nations suggested that the international community had the will and ability to respond to serious aggressions and some other threats to international order. The United States appeared to be showing the way toward a post-Cold War international system whose demonstrated ability to respond to such threats was expected to deter at least some of them.

South Korea has become a mid-level economy with a growing consumer market and industrial base. It now is in transition. It can no longer compete easily in low-wage, low-technology manufacturing with other countries of Asia, yet it does not have the technology and expertise to compete fully with industries from Japan, the United States, and Europe.

The growing U.S. trade imbalance with China, and alleged Chinese unfair trade practices, have become of major concern to many U.S. policymakers. Over the past few years, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown at a faster rate than that of any other major U.S. trading partner. In 1993, the U.S. trade deficit with China totalled $22.8 billion, the second largest U.S. bilateral trade imbalance after Japan. Many trade analysts have attributed the growing U.S.-China trade deficit to a variety of Chinese restrictive trade practices. Other areas of concern to the United States have included China's alleged violation of U.S. intellectual property rights, transshipments of textiles to the United States in violation of U.S. textile quotas, and China's alleged use of forced labor for products exported to the United States.

The surprise election of Socialist Party leader Tomiichi Murayama as Prime Minister on June 29, 1994, reflects an ongoing process of change and realignment in Japanese politics that, in the short term, has made the management of U.S.-Japan relations significantly more difficult and impeded the resolution of important issues. Although Murayama has pledged continuity in U.S.-Japan relations, and key cabinet posts have been given to senior LDP leaders with experience in dealing with Washington, his election could have a number of negative implications for U.S. interests. Among other possibilities, the change could temporarily set back the cause of political reform in Japan, further delay the recovery of the Japanese economy from a three-year long slump, pose new obstacles to trade negotiations aimed at more fully opening Japanese markets to U.S. goods and services, and bring into question Tokyo's cooperation under certain scenarios on the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The likely hiatus in major decisionmaking may continue at least until the next general election.

Kim Il Sung died on July 8, 1994, the only leader North Korea had since its founding in 1948. His death raises several questions about future stability and the strong U.S. interests on the Korean Peninsula.

Japan's current political instability began in July 1993, when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) -- in power since 1955 - was voted out and replaced by a fragile multiparty coalition government under Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. The new government faced turmoil in April 1994, when Hosokawa suddenly resigned amid a personal financial scandal. Then-deputy prime minister/foreign minister Tsutomu Hata succeeded, but only at the head of a minority government after the Socialist party, a key coalition partner, quit the Hata coalition. Although beset by its own internal squabbles, the LDP remained the single largest party in Japan's bicameral Diet, or parliament. In late June, Hata was forced to resign under threat of an LDP-led no-confidence motion.

On May 19, 1994, the Senate passed, by a vote of 95 to 3, S. 2019, the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1994, a comprehensive proposal to reauthorize and amend the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). During floor debate on the bill, the Senate considered numerous amendments, many of which were adopted. This report summarizes selected provisions of S. 2019, as passed.

This report focuses on technologies to improve energy supply in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. The report is divided into two parts. The first part reviews energy supply technologies for fossil–fuel and nonfossil–based energy resources. In addition, it reviews the environmental consequences of energy production and consumption. The report highlights specific needs for U.S. technology and opportunities for U.S. business. The second part of the report is devoted to policy considerations. It describes the highly varied political, economic, and social context of reform. Next, it analyzes and catalogues Western energy–related assistance and investment programs for the region. The final chapter of the report presents policy options relating to energy supply and efficiency that will promote the achievement of U.S. political and economic goals.

This report discusses the medical malpractice system that has frequently been cited as a contributor to increasing health care costs and has been targeted in many health care reform proposals as a potential source of savings. The report first examines the nature of defensive medicine, adopting a working definition of defensive medicine that embraces the complexity of the problem from both the physician and broader public policy perspectives. Finally, it comments on the potential impact of a variety of medical malpractice reforms on the practice of defensive medicine.

This paper emphasizes recent changes in the market for health care and health insurance in the Twin Cities, including the growth of managed care organizations, the growth of integrated delivery systems, the development of health insurance purchasing coalitions, and recent state health care reforms. The report concludes with a discussion of potential lessons from the Twin Cities for the health reform debate.

This report focuses on energy use in U.S. transportation, which accounts for over 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption. The report attempts to put these opinions into context by examining the current status of the system and evaluating critical problems such as congestion, presenting forecasts of future energy use, making some pointed comparisons with European transportation, and describing and evaluating a range of options for saving energy.

This paper describes and evaluates the sources of variation in analysts’ estimates of the federal budget impacts of key reform provisions. The paper also discusses potential variations in the estimates of federal budget effects of the American Health Security Act and the Managed Competition Act, and of health reform proposals in general.

This report is intended as a guide to the use of multi-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM) for incorporating environmental factors in electric utility integrated resource planning (IRP). Application of MCDM is emerging as an alternative and complementary method to explicit economic valuation for weighting environmental effects. We provide a step-by-step guide to the elements that are common to all MCDM applications. The report discusses how environmental attributes should be selected and defined; how options should be selected (and how risk and uncertainty should be accounted for); how environmental impacts should be quantified (with particular attention to the problems of location); how screening should be conducted; the construction and analysis of trade-off curves; dominance analysis, which seeks to identify clearly superior options, and reject clearly inferior options; scaling of impacts, in which we translate social, economic and environmental impacts into value functions; the determination of weights, with particular emphasis on ensuring that the weights reflect the trade-offs that decision-makers are actually willing to make; the amalgamation of attributes into overall plan rankings; and the resolution of differences among methods, and between individuals. There are many MCDM methods available for accomplishing these steps. They can differ in their appropriateness, ease of use, validity, …

The hydrologic system in the unsaturated tuff at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is being evaluated for the US Department of Energy by the Yucca Mountain Project Branch of the US Geological Survey as a potential site for a high-level radioactive-waste repository. Part of this investigation includes a hydrochemical study that is being made to assess characteristics of the hydrologic system such as: traveltime, direction of flow, recharge and source relations, and types and magnitudes of chemical reactions in the unsaturated tuff. In addition, this hydrochemical information will be used in the study of the dispersive and corrosive effects of unsaturated-zone water on the radioactive-waste storage canisters. This report describes the design and validation of laboratory experimental procedures for extracting representative samples of uncontaminated pore water from welded and nonwelded, unsaturated tuffs from the Nevada Test Site.

McSKY evaluates skyshine dose from an isotropic, monoenergetic, point photon source collimated into either a vertical cone or a vertical structure with an N-sided polygon cross section. The code assumes an overhead shield of two materials, through the user can specify zero shield thickness for an unshielded calculation. The code uses a Monte-Carlo algorithm to evaluate transport through source shields and the integral line source to describe photon transport through the atmosphere. The source energy must be between 0.02 and 100 MeV. For heavily shielded sources with energies above 20 MeV, McSKY results must be used cautiously, especially at detector locations near the source.

DETOX{sup SM} is a catalyzed wet oxidation process which destroys organic materials in an acidic water solution of iron at 373 to 473 K. The solution can be used repeatedly to destroy great amounts of organic materials. Since the process is conducted in a contained vessel, air emissions from the process can be well controlled. The solution is also capable of dissolving and concentrating many heavy and radioactive metals for eventual stabilization and disposal. The Phase 2 effort for this project is site selection and engineering design for a DETOX demonstration unit. Site selection was made using a set of site selection criteria and evaluation factors. A survey of mixed wastes at DOE sites was conducted using the Interim Mixed Waste Inventory Report. Sites with likely suitable waste types were identified. Potential demonstration sites were ranked based on waste types, interest, regulatory needs, scheduling, ability to provide support, and available facilities. Engineering design for the demonstration unit is in progress and is being performed by Jacobs Applied Technology. The engineering design proceeded through preliminary process flow diagrams (PFDs), calculation of mass and energy balances for representative waste types, process and instrumentation diagrams (P and IDs), preparation of component specifications, and …

SKYDOS evaluates skyshine dose from an isotropic, monoenergetic, point photon source collimated by three simple geometries: (1) a source in a silo; (2) a source behind an infinitely long, vertical, black wall; and (3) a source in a rectangular building. In all three geometries, an optical overhead shield may be specified. The source energy must be between 0.02 and 100 MeV (10 MeV for sources with an overhead shield). This is a user`s manual. Other references give more detail on the integral line-beam method used by SKYDOSE.

Examination of the paleoenvironmental and geomorphic records to determine the local and regional impact of past climates will advance the assessment of Yucca Mountain`s suitability as a high-level nuclear waste repository. Paleobotanical studies will reconstruct the response of vegetation to climate change at the community and the organismal levels in order to identify periods of mesic climate at Yucca Mountain and the adjacent region during the last 20,000 to 50,000 years. Constructing a history of Great Basin vertebrates, particularly mammals, will provide empirical evidence of past environmental and climatic conditions within the Great Basin. The objective of the geomorphology component of the program is to document the responses of surficial processes and landforms to the climatic changes documented by studies of packrat middens, pollens, and faunal distributions. The goal of the transportation component is to compare the results from three models (FESWMS-2DH, DAMBRK, and FLO-2D) that have been suggested as appropriate for evaluating flood flows on alluvial fans with the results obtained from the traditional one-dimensional, stochastic model used in previous research for the Yucca Mountain Project. Progress on all these tasks is described.

Laboratory experiments were performed to measure the effect of frequency, water-saturation, and strain amplitude on Young`s modulus and seismic wave attenuation on rock cores recovered on or near the site of a potential nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The purpose of this investigation is to perform the measurements using four techniques: cyclic loading, waveform inversion, resonant bar, and ultrasonic velocity. The measurements ranged in frequency between 10{sup {minus}2} and 10{sup 6} Hz. For the dry specimens Young`s modulus and attenuation were independent of frequency; that is, all four techniques yielded nearly the same values for modulus and attenuation. For saturated specimens, a frequency dependence for both Young`s modulus and attenuation was observed. In general, saturation reduced Young`s modulus and increased seismic wave attenuation. The effect of strain amplitude on Young`s modulus and attenuation was measured using the cyclic loading technique at a frequency of 10{sup {minus}1} Hz. The effect of strain amplitude in all cases was small. For some rocks, such as the potential repository horizon of the Topopah Spring Member tuff (TSw2), the effect of strain amplitude on both attenuation and modulus was minimal.

This final DOE report for grant award number DE-FG22-90PC 90291 presents the results of our efforts to better understand the Rh-Mo/{gamma}-Al{sub 2}O3 catalytic system for the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to selectively form oxygenated products. The content of this report is divided into three major sections and a fourth, concluding section which addresses our major research accomplishments, as well as documents the most significant publications and presentations associated with this grant. The three main sections which make up the body of this report are presented in the in form of manuscripts which, in turn, summarize our progress in three areas of this project. The three body sections are organized as follows: Section I--Evidence for site isolation in Rh-Mo bimetallic catalysts derived from organometallic clusters; Section II--Surface Chemistry of Rh-Mo/{gamma}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}: An analysis of surface acidity; and Section III--Comparative study of Rh/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} and Rh-Mo/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} Catalysts. Section IV summarizes major accomplishments. The content of this final report is meant to generally highlight our progress in both characterizing the nature of the Rh-Mo/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} system and probing its reactivity for insight on the oxygenate synergy present in this class of catalysts.

The central issue facing renewables in the integrated resource planning process is the appropriate assessment of the value of renewables to utility systems. This includes their impact on both energy and capacity costs (avoided costs), and on emissions and environmental impacts, taking account of the reliability, system characteristics, interactions (in dispatch), seasonality, and other characteristics and costs of the technologies. These are system-specific considerations whose relationships may have some generic implications. In this report, we focus on the reliability contribution of wind electric generating systems, measured as the amount of fossil capacity they can displace while meeting the system reliability criterion. We examine this issue for a case study system at different wind characteristics and penetration, for different years, with different system characteristics, and with different modelling techniques. In an accompanying analysis we also examine the economics of wind electric generation, as well as its emissions and social costs, for the case study system. This report was undertaken for the {open_quotes}Innovative IRP{close_quotes} program of the U.S. Department of Energy, and is based on work by both Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Tellus Institute, including America`s Energy Choices and the UCS Midwest Renewables Project.

Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Statement of Basis (SB) and Response to Comments (RTC) decision documents are prepared when a corrective action is implemented through either a permit or enforcement order [RCRA {section} 3008(h)]. EPA`s Guidance on RCRA Corrective Action Decision Documents presents a standard format for documenting RCRA corrective action decisions. The guidance clarifies the roles and responsibilities of regulatory agencies in developing and issuing decision documents. DOE, for some corrective actions, may be directed to prepare materials for the Statement of Basis. EPA`s guidance is intended to provide consistency in the organization and content of decision documents as well as promote clear and logical presentations of rationales for remedy selection decisions based on facility-specific information and supporting analysis. This Information Brief summarizes EPA`s guidance on SB and RTC decision documents.

The primary objective of this project was to determine the effect of reductive pretreatments of low-rank coals through the use of electron-transfer agents. This potential was explored in laboratory studies through determination of the impact on the evolution of oxygen functions, crosslinking, and conversion. The pretreatments explored include treatment with CO/water/base and hydroquinones or other electron-transfer agents in various combinations. The effects of these pretreatments on functional group distribution, macromolecular structure, and liquefaction were compared with those of pretreatments that have in the past shown promise for improved conversions, such as simple hydrothermal pretreatment, mild hydrogenation with dispersed catalysts, and demineralization. Additional objectives were to improve test procedures for assessing the effect of the pretreatment on subsequent liquefaction and to achieve some understanding of the chemical origins of the effects observed. These tests are: (1) proton magnetic resonance thermal analysis, (PMRTA) for determining the effect of pretreatment on fluidity as liquefaction conditions (temperature, pressure) are approached and (2) a thermogravimetric assay (TGA)-based simulated distillation for convenient measurement of product volatility following small-scale batch-liquefaction experiments. The purpose of the PMRTA test is to gain additional insight into whether beneficial pretreatments primarily affect pre-existing crosslinks in the coals or primarily limit additional …