This report discusses the background information and most recent development in U.S.-China relations since mid-1996. The relations also have been marred by continuing allegations of Chinese espionage, ongoing controversy over human rights, charges that China continues to violate its non-proliferation commitments, controversy over the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and renewed tensions over Taiwan. The report describes current issues in U.S.-China relations such as; Human Rights Issues, Issues in U.S.-China Security Relations, Economic Issues, and Sovereignty Issues: Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong.

This report discusses treaty on biodiversity, issues, history and current status.

Recent Japanese political instability has complicated U.S.-Japan relations and posed new challenges to the achievement of important American economic, foreign policy and security objectives. Since July 1993 Japan has been governed by coalitions under three different prime ministers. The first coalition, under Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, pushed through electoral and campaign finance reform legislation of potentially long-term significance, but failed to overcome political, bureaucratic and interest group resistance to its economic and administrative reform agenda. Its successor's have appeared to have progressively less power and will to carry out promised reforms or assume international leadership commensurate with Japan's global economic weight.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

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.

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.

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 term "qualified hotel project," as defined by House Bill 2282, Act of May 11, 1993, 73rd Leg., R.S., ch. 231, 1993 Tex. Gen. Laws 480 includes a private entity selected by a municipality (RQ-854)

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 General Services Commission may enter into a seven-year contract with the City of Austin for the provision of electric services to state buildings and facilities in Austin (ID# 35204)

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 state or local governmental entity, by posting notice under the criminal trespass statute, may prohibit a concealed handgun licensee from carrying a handgun or premises of which the governmental entity is the "owner" as defined in the Penal Code (ID# 35896)

The Super EBIT device at LLNL can produce and trap any highly charged ion at rest in the laboratory, including bare U{sup 92+} ions. Recently, the ionization cross sections for high-Z hydrogenlike ions have been measured for the first time, and measurements of the L-shell ionization cross sections for uranium ions are in progress. The two-electron contributions to the ground state energies of heliumlike ions have been directly measured using a novel technique, and spectra of 2s-2p transitions in highly ionized thorium and uranium have been used to test QED corrections to the energy levels of few electron high-Z ions. A new capability for the study of rare isotopes has been demonstrated. Ion cooling has been used to reduce the thermal broadening of x-ray emission lines to the point where natural line widths can be observed in some cases.

The objective of this project is to increase oil production and reserves in the Uinta Basin by demonstrating improved completion techniques. Low productivity of Uinta Basin wells is caused by gross production intervals of several thousand feet that contain perforated thief zones and water-bearing zones, and unperforated oil-bearing intervals. Geologic and engineering characterization and computer simulation of the Green River and Wasatch Formations in the Bluebell field will determine reservoir heterogeneities related to fractures and depositional trends. This will be followed by drilling and recompletion of several wells to demonstrate improved completion techniques based on the reservoir characterization. Transfer of the project results will be an ongoing component of the project.

We report on the results of a search for the B{sub c} (b{bar c}) meson in the decay B{sub c}{sup +-} {yields} J/{psi} + {pi}{sup +-}. This search is guided by a control sample of decays of B{sub u} mesons to J/{psi} + K and uses {approx_equal} 75pb{sup -1} of data collected at the Collider Detector Facility (CDF) at Fermilab. The lifetime of the B{sub c} meson is unknown, so the 95% confidence level limit on {sigma} {center_dot} BR(B{sub c} {yields} {psi} + {pi})/{sigma} {center_dot} BR(B{sub u} {yields} {psi} + K) is obtained as a function of the B{sub c} lifetime.

Salary information was collected for October 1995 for personnel working as nuclear engineers and health physicists. The salary information includes personnel at the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. levels with zero, one, and three years of professional work experience. Information is provided for utilities and non-utilities. Non-utilities include private sector organizations and U.S. Department of Energy contractor-operated facilities. Government agencies, the military, academic organizations, and medical facilities are excluded.

Xtoys is a collection of xwindow programs for demonstrating simulations of various statistical models. Included are xising, for the two dimensional Ising model, xpotts, for the q-state Potts model, xautomalab, for a fairly general class of totalistic cellular automata, xsand, for the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfield model of self organized criticality, and xfires, a simple forest fire simulation. The programs should compile on any machine supporting xwindows.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve reduces the Nation`s vulnerability to oil supply disruptions. Its existence provides a formidable deterrent to the use of oil as a political instrument and an effective response mechanism should a disruption occur. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of December 22, 1975 (Public Law 94-163). Its purposes are to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the Agreement on an International Energy Program. Section 165(a) of the Act requires the submission of Annual Reports and Section 165(b)(1) requires the submission of Quarterly Reports. This Quarterly Report highlights activities undertaken during the second quarter of calendar year 1995, including: inventory of petroleum products stored in the Reserve; current and projected storage capacity, analysis of existing or anticipated problems with the acquisition and storage of petroleum products, and future expansion of storage capacity; funds obligated by the Secretary from the SPR Petroleum Account and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Account during the prior calendar quarter and in total; and major environmental actions completed, in progress, or anticipated.

This publication presents 5 years (1990--94) of summary financial data and current year detailed financial data on the major publicly owned electric utilities. Generator and nongenerator summaries are presented. Composite tables present: Aggregates of income statement and balance sheet data, financial indicators, electric operation and maintenance expenses, electric utility plant, number of consumers, sales of electricity, and operating revenue, and electric energy account data.

We performed additional bundle review effort subsequent to the completion of the preliminary report and are revising our original recommendations. We now recommend that the NIF baseline laser bundle size be changed to the 4x2 bundle configuration. There are several 4x2 bundle configurations that could be constructed at a cost similar to that of the baseline 4x12 (from $11M more to about $11M less than the baseline; unescalated, no contingency) and provide significant system improvements. We recommend that the building cost estimates (particularly for the in-line building options) be verified by an architect/engineer (A/E) firm knowledgeable about building design. If our cost estimates of the in-line building are accurate and therefore result in a change from the baseline U-shaped building layout, the acceptability of the in-line configuration must be reviewed from an operations viewpoint. We recommend that installation, operation, and maintenance of all laser components be reviewed to better determine the necessity of aisles, which add to the building cost significantly. The need for beam expansion must also be determined since it affects the type of bundle packing that can be used and increases the minimum laser bay width. The U-turn laser architecture (if proven viable) offers a reduction in …

The proposed National Biomedical Tracer Facility (NBTF) will house a high-current accelerator dedicated to production of short-lived radionuclides for biomedical and scientific research. The NBTF will play a vital role in repairing and maintaining the United States` research infrastructure for generation of essential accelerator-based radioisotopes. If properly designed and managed, the NBTF should also achieve international recognition as a Center-of-Excellence for research on radioisotope production methods and for associated education and training. The current report documents the results of a DOE-funded NBTF Project Definition Phase study carried out to better define the technical feasibility and projected costs of establishing and operating the NBTF. This report provides an overview of recommended Facility Design and Specifications, including Accelerator Design, Building Design, and the associated Construction Cost Estimates and Schedule. It is recommended that the NBTF be established as an integrated, comprehensive facility for meeting the diverse production, research, and educational missions set forth in previous documents. Based on an analysis of the projected production demands that will be placed on the NBTF, it appears that a 70 MeV, 1 mA, negative ion cyclotron will offer a good balance between production capabilities and the costs of accelerator purchase and operation. A preliminary architectural …

The objective of this project is to address waterflood problems of the type found in Cherokee Group reservoirs in southeastern Kansas and in Morrow sandstone reservoirs in southwestern Kansas. Two demonstration sites operated by different independent oil operators are involved in the project. General topics to be addressed will be (1) reservoir management and performance evaluation; (2) waterflood optimization, and (3) the demonstration of recovery processes involving off-the-shelf technologies which can be used to enhance waterflood recovery, increase reserves, and reduce the abandonment rate of these reservoir types. The reservoir management portion of the project will involve performance evaluation and will include such work as (1) reservoir characterization and the development of a reservoir database, (2) identification of operational problems, (3) identification of near wellbore problems, (4) identification of unrecovered mobile oil and estimation of recovery factors, and (5) identification of the most efficient and economical recovery process. The waterflood optimization portion of the project involves only the Nelson Lease. It will be based on the performance evaluation and will involve (1) design and implementation of a water cleanup system for the waterflood, (2) application of well remedial work such as polymer gel treatments to improve vertical sweep efficiency, and …

Progress is described in the following research areas concerned with high resolution interface nanochemistry and structure: ceramic interfaces and grain boundaries; metal/alpha (6H)-SiC(0001) interfaces; oxygen distributions in monolithic silicon carbide; SiC/nitride and metal on nitride interfaces; and interface synthesis.

Hot gas desulfurization may be accomplished by using solid sorbents such as oxides of those metals that form stable sulfides. The effectiveness of a desulfurizing agent in treating such gases is related to the predicted equilibrium partial pressure of hydrogen sulfide which will be present in a phase combination of the reduced form of sulfide and oxide phases. The focus of much current work being performed by the Department of Energy on sorbent development is in the use of zinc ferrite, zinc titanate, and Z-Sorb. The latter sorbent is a commercial product consisting of ZnO, a promoter, and a proprietary supporting matrix designed to provide stability and prolong sorbent life. Although these Zn-based sorbents have been the subject of extensive pilot-scale and process development work, all sorbents produced to date still experience structural and reactive degradation over multi-cycle use at relatively moderate temperatures. An effective alternative to zinc-based sorbents could be manganese sorbents which withstand high temperature operation and also maintain structural and reactive integrity over many cycles, as investigations by Ben-Slimane and Hepworth have indicated. Thermodynamic limits may prevent MnO from achieving the low sulfur specifications of the product gas for use in a molten carbonate fuel cell, but …

Production from the Marg Area 1 at Port Neches is averaging 337 BOPD for this quarter. The production drop is due to fluctuation in both GOR and BS&W on various producing wells, low water injectivity in the reservoir and shut-in one producing well to perform a workover to replace a failed gravel pack setting. Coil tubing work was performed on 2 injection wells in order to resume injection of water and CO{sub 2} in the reservoir. The Marg Area 2 did not respond favorably to CO{sub 2} injection in the Kuhn No. 6 well. For this reason Texaco will not pursue any further development of this section of the reservoir due mainly to low target reserves. Instead Texaco will reallocate the money to a new Marg segment (Marg Area 3) in order to test a new process that will utilize the CO{sub 2} to accelerate the primary production rates and reduce cycle time. Also the process should reduce water disposal cost, cash lifting cost, operating cost and increase the NPV of the reserves.

The present a conceptual design of a diode-pumped solid-state-laser (DPSSL) driver for an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant based on the maximized cost of electricity (COE) as determined in a comprehensive systems study. This study contained extensive detail for all significant DPSSL physics and costs, plus published scaling relationships for the costs of the target chamber and the balance of plant (BOP). Our DPSSL design offers low development cost because it is modular, can be fully tested functionally at reduced scale, and is based on mature solid-state-laser technology. Most of the parameter values that we used are being verified by experiments now in progress. Future experiments will address the few issues that remain. As a consequence, the economic and technical risk of our DPSSL driver concept is becoming rather low. Baseline performance at 1 GW{sub e} using a new gain medium [Yb{sup 3+}-doped Sr{sub 5}(PO{sub 4}){sub 3}F or Yb:S-FAP] includes a product of laser efficiency and target gain of {eta}G = 7, and a COE of 8.6 cents/kW{center_dot}h, although values of {eta}G {ge} 11 and COEs {le}6.6 cents/kW{center_dot}h are possible at double the assumed target gain of 76 at 3.7 MJ. We present a summary of our results, discuss …