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This report briefly discusses the options for federal support and assistance for areas affected by wildfire disaster including the period during wildfires, in the aftermath, and later for preventing a recurrence.

Greenhouse gas (CO{sub 2}, CH{sub 4} and N{sub 2}O, hereinafter GHG) and criteria air pollutant (CO, NO{sub x}, VOC, PM{sub 10}, PM{sub 2.5} and SO{sub x}, hereinafter CAP) emission factors for various types of power plants burning various fuels with different technologies are important upstream parameters for estimating life-cycle emissions associated with alternative vehicle/fuel systems in the transportation sector, especially electric vehicles. The emission factors are typically expressed in grams of GHG or CAP per kWh of electricity generated by a specific power generation technology. This document describes our approach for updating and expanding GHG and CAP emission factors in the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) model developed at Argonne National Laboratory (see Wang 1999 and the GREET website at http://greet.es.anl.gov/main) for various power generation technologies. These GHG and CAP emissions are used to estimate the impact of electricity use by stationary and transportation applications on their fuel-cycle emissions. The electricity generation mixes and the fuel shares attributable to various combustion technologies at the national, regional and state levels are also updated in this document. The energy conversion efficiencies of electric generating units (EGUs) by fuel type and combustion technology are calculated on the basis …

The cancellation of the Yucca Mountain repository program in the United States raises the prospect of extended long-term storage (i.e., >120 years) and deferred transportation of used fuel at operating and decommissioned nuclear power plant sites. Under U.S. federal regulations contained in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 72.42, the initial license term for an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) must not exceed 40 years from the date of issuance. Licenses may be renewed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the expiration of the license term upon application by the licensee for a period not to exceed 40 years. Application for ISFSI license renewals must include the following: (1) Time-limited aging analyses (TLAAs) that demonstrate that structures, systems, and components (SSCs) important to safety will continue to perform their intended function for the requested period of extended operation; and (2) a description of the aging management program (AMP) for management of issues associated with aging that could adversely affect SSCs important to safety. In addition, the application must also include design bases information as documented in the most recent updated final safety analysis report as required by 10 CFR 72.70. Information contained in previous …

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC is an x-ray Free Electron Laser (FEL) with wavelengths of 0.15 nm to 1.5 nm. The electron beam stability is important for good lasing. While the transverse jitter of the beam is about 10-20% of the rms beam sizes, the jitter in the longitudinal phase space is a multiple of the energy spread and bunch length. At the lower energy of 4.3 GeV (corresponding to the longest wavelength of 1.5 nm) the relative energy jitter can be 0.125%, while the rms energy spread is with 0.025% five times smaller. An even bigger ratio exists for the arrival time jitter of 50 fs and the bunch duration of about 5 fs (rms) in the low charge (20 pC) operating mode. Although the impact to the experiments is reduced by providing pulse-by-pulse data of the measured energy and arrival time, it would be nice to understand and mitigate the root causes of this jitter. The thyratron of the high power supply of the RF klystrons is one of the main contributors. Another suspect is the multi-pacting in the RF loads. Phase measurements down to 0.01 degree (equals 10 fs) along the RF pulse were …

The demonstration of absolute stability of the position of the focused beam is the primary goal of the ATF2 commissioning effort. We have installed a laser interferometer system that will eventually correct the measurement of high-precision Beam Position Monitors used in the ATF2Final Focus Steering Feedback for mechanical motion or vibrations. Here, we describe the installed system and present preliminary data on the short- and long-term mechanical stability of the BPM system.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC is in full user operation and has met the stability goals for stable lasing. The 250pC bunch can be compressed to below 100fS before passing through an undulator. In a new mode of operation a 20pC bunch is compressed to about 10fS. Experimenters are regularly using this shorter X-ray pulse and getting pristine data. The 10fS bunch has timing jitter on the order of 100fS. Physicists are requesting that the RF system achieve better stability to reduce timing jitter. Drifts in the RF system require longitudinal feedbacks to work over large ranges and errors result in reduced performance of the LCLS. A new RF system is being designed to help diagnose and reduce jitter and drift in the SLAC linac.

The project was carried out in 2 distinct phases. In the first phase we established the general validity of using an ensemble approach to Single Column Modeling (SCM) using the Manus and Nauru sites. In the second phase we derived and applied an ensemble forcing derivation technique to observations. First we derived an ensemble forcing estimate for the TWP-ICE experiment and then by extended the method to provide three wet seasons of “continuous ensemble forcing” for the Darwin site. The main purpose of using ensemble techniques in SCM simulation is to be able to assess how much of the overall SCM simulation error is due to model errors and how much due to errors in the forcing.

This report discusses how the Federal Reserve (Fed) handles monetary policy, including background information about the execution of monetary policy, the recent and current stance of monetary policy, and current legislation and Congressional oversight that would affect the Fed's practices.

This report discusses economic effects of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, monetary policy vs. fiscal policy, the current stance of monetary policy given the financial crisis, and Congressional oversight and disclosure on the issue.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) beam-dump system relies on extraction kickers that need 3 microseconds to rise to their nominal field. Since particles transiting the kickers during the rise will not be dumped properly, the proton population in this interval must always remain below quench and damage limits. A specific monitor to measure the particle population of this gap has been designed based on the detection of synchrotron radiation using a gated photomultiplier. Since the quench and damage limits change with the beam energy, the acceptable population in the abort gap and the settings of the monitor must adapt accordingly. This paper presents the design of the monitor, the calibration procedure and the detector performance with beam.

SuperB[1] is an international project for an asymmetric 2 rings collider at the B mesons cm energy to be built in the Rome area in Italy. The two rings will have very small beam sizes at the Interaction Point and very small emittances, similar to the Linear Collider Damping Rings ones. In particular, the ultra low vertical emittances, 7 pm in the LER and 4 pm in the HER, need a careful study of the misalignment errors effects on the machine performances. Studies on the closed orbit, vertical dispersion and coupling corrections have been carried out in order to specify the maximum allowed errors and to provide a procedure for emittance tuning. A new tool which combines MADX and Matlab routines has been developed, allowing for both corrections and tuning. Results of these studies are presented.

The operation of a Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) Free Electron Lasers (FEL) at soft and hard X-ray wavelengths driven by a high brightness electron beam imposes strong requirements on the stability of the accelerator and feedback systems are necessary to both guarantee saturation of the SASE process as well as a stable photon beam for user experiments. Diagnostics for the relevant transverse and longitudinal beam parameters are presented and various examples of feedback systems for bunches with low repetition rate as well as systems for intra bunch train feedbacks are discussed.

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This report provides a Chronology on Federal Agency Actions Following the Supreme Court’s Climate Change Decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.This report provides action mainly by EPA that involve climate change.

Strategic plan for Midwestern State University outlining goals, objectives, measures, and other information about working with Historically Underutilized Businesses (HUBs) during fiscal year 2013.

By operating SPEAR3 in low-{alpha} mode the storage ring can generate synchrotron radiation pulses of order 1ps. Applications include pump-probe x-ray science and the production of THz radiation in the CSR regime. Measurements of the bunch length are difficult, however, because the light intensity is low and streak cameras typically provide resolution of only a few ps. Tests are now underway to resolve the short bunch length using cross-correlation between a 60-fs Ti:Sapphire laser and the visible SR beam in a BBO crystal. In this paper we report on the experimental setup, preliminary measurements and prospects for further improvement.

The report describes results of experiments to synthesize and characterize uranium(VI)-silicates from solutions containing dissolved U(VI), Si, Na, and nitrate as a function of solution pH and Si:U ratio under ambient conditions. Solids characterization was accomplished by X-ray diffraction, attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), and high-energy X-ray scattering (HEXS) analysis. The purpose was to develop a framework for describing the formation of U(VI)-silicate solids that might form in contaminated soils and sediments under oxidizing conditions in the presence of aqueous uranium, and are known to exist naturally in geologic uranium deposits.

The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) has been reconfigured as a test accelerator (CesrTA) for a program of electron cloud (EC) research at ultra low emittance. The instrumentation in the ring has been upgraded with local diagnostics for measurement of cloud density and with improved beam diagnostics for the characterization of both the low emittance performance and the beam dynamics of high intensity bunch trains interacting with the cloud. A range of EC mitigation methods have been deployed and tested and their effectiveness is discussed. Measurements of the electron cloud's effect on the beam under a range of conditions are discussed along with the simulations being used to quantitatively understand these results.

Recent progress at the SPEAR3 includes the increase in stored current from 100 mA to 200 mA and top-off injection to allow beamlines to stay open during injection. Presently the booster injects 3.0 GeV beam to SPEAR3 three times a day. The stored beam decays to about 150 mA between the injections. The growing user demands are to increase the stored current to the design value of 500 mA, and to maintain it at a constant value within a percent or so. To achieve this goal the booster must inject once every few minutes. For improved injection efficiency, all RF systems at the linac, booster and SPEAR3 need to be phase-locked. The present booster RF system is basically a copy of the SPEAR2 RF system with 358.5 MHz and 40 kW peak RF power driving a 5-cell RF cavity for 1.0 MV gap voltage. These requirements entail a booster RF system upgrade to a scaled down version of the SPEAR3 RF system of 476.3 MHz with 1.2 MW cw klystron output power capabilities. We will analyze each subsystem option for their merits within budgetary and geometric space constraints. A substantial portion of the system will come from the decommissioned PEP-II …

Important efforts have recently been dedicated to the improvement of the design of the baseline collimation system of the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). Different aspects of the design have been optimized: the transverse collimation depths have been recalculated in order to reduce the collimator wakefield effects while maintaining a good efficiency in cleaning the undesired beam halo; the geometric design of the spoilers have also been reviewed to minimize wakefields; in addition, the optics design have been polished to improve the collimation efficiency. This paper describes the current status of the CLIC collimation system after this optimization.

Model based control plays an important role for a modern accelerator during beam commissioning, beam study, and even daily operation. With a realistic model, beam behaviour can be predicted and therefore effectively controlled. The approach used by most current high level application environments is to use a built-in simulation engine and feed a realistic model into that simulation engine. Instead of this traditional monolithic structure, a new approach using a client-server architecture is under development. An on-line simulator server is accessed via network accessible structured data. With this approach, a user can easily access multiple simulation codes. This paper describes the design, implementation, and current status of PVData, which defines the structured data, and PVAccess, which provides network access to the structured data.

Short single-stranded nucleic acids are ubiquitous in biological processes and understanding their physical properties provides insights to nucleic acid folding and dynamics. We used small angle x-ray scattering to study 8-100 residue homopolymeric single-stranded DNAs in solution, without external forces or labeling probes. Poly-T's structural ensemble changes with increasing ionic strength in a manner consistent with a polyelectrolyte persistence length theory that accounts for molecular flexibility. For any number of residues, poly-A is consistently more elongated than poly-T, likely due to the tendency of A residues to form stronger base-stacking interactions than T residues.

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