Coal is our largest domestic energy resource with recoverable reserves estimated at 268 billion short tons or 5.896 quads Btu equivalent. This is approximately 95 percent of US fossil energy resources. It is relatively inexpensive to mine, and on a per Btu basis it is generally much less costly to produce than other energy sources. Its chief drawbacks are the environmental, health and safety concerns that must be addressed in its production and consumption. Historically, coal has played a major role in US energy markets. Coal fueled the railroads, heated the homes, powered the factories. and provided the raw materials for steel-making. In 1920, coal supplied over three times the amount of energy of oil, gas, and hydro combined. From 1920 until the mid 1970s, coal production remained fairly constant at 400 to 600 million short tons a year. Rapid increases in overall energy demands, which began during and after World War II were mostly met by oil and gas. By the mid 1940s, coal represented only half of total energy consumption in the US. In fact, post-war coal production, which had risen in support of the war effort and the postwar Marshall plan, decreased approximately 25 percent between 1945 …

The objective of the Consensus Building process for a national energy strategy would be to generate several concrete products, including: (1) An inventory of possible packages which could represent acceptable energy strategies for most key constituencies in developing a fair, efficient wise, and sustainable national energy policy; (2) An inventory of strategic dead ends and policy positions that could generate fierce opposition from specific stakeholding groups if they emerge as part of the eventual strategy, absent compensating trade offs; and, (3) An inventor of the interests and assumptions of the many opposing constituencies. The process would be a sophisticated proving ground where collaborative problem solving techniques could be applied and evaluated. This report in the American Energy Assurance Council`s 12-step recommendation for consensus building. They recommend an eight-month timeframe for this project, although they recognize that many interested parties may perceive this as too long. If a shorter timeframe is required, these 12 steps could be time compressed and still produce meaningful results.

Newsletter of the Texas Bureau of Disease Control and Epidemiology discussing the news, activities, and events of the organization and other information related to health in Texas.

This report highlights activities, events, and analyses of interest to public and private sector oganizations associated with the natural gas industry. Volume and price data are presented each month for natural gas production, distribution, consumption, and interstate pipeline activities. Producer-related activities and underground storage data are also reported. 33 tabs.

This report surveys the preliminary work of P. J. Ebert, a proponent of the Magnetic Bubble'' Effect, as well as conclusions reached by L. F. Wouters and others. The idea behind the Magnetic Bubble Effect is that an exploding fireball from a surface or subsurface nuclear explosion releases electrons which circulate around the earth's magnetic field lines and create an expanding magnetic dipole which persists underground for {approx equal}0.01 sec. This dipole radiates a low-frequency electromagnetic field through the earth in a diffusive manner because the earth's conduction current overwhelms the displacement current at VLF and ELF frequencies. By using this concept of diffusive fields it might be possible to estimate the yield of an underground nuclear test from transient low-frequency field measurements on or near the ground in the range 1--5km from ground zero. We closely examine the diffusive-field description of the transient fields by L. W. Miller. Miller's work enables us to derive rather easily the Green-function'' fields in space and time of a spatially and temporally impulsive vertical magnetic dipole, m{sub z}, and horizontal dipole, m{sub x}, in a homogeneous earth of scalar electrical conductivity {sigma}, magnetic permeability {mu}{sub 0}, and relative dielectric constant, {var epsilon}{sub r}, …

High gain Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) targets require a highly uniform drive. In the case of direct drive, the inherent non-uniformities in a high-power glass laser beam are large enough to prevent high compression of targets. In recent years two methods for smoothing the laser drive, Induced Spatial Incoherence (ISI) and Smoothing by Spectral Dispersion (SSD), have been proposed. Both methods break the original laser beam up into many beamlets that then interfere at the target to produce an illumination pattern with large instantaneous intensity variations over a wide range of spatial scales. This interferences pattern dances around at the coherence time of the laser and averages out to produce a smooth beam on longer time scales. Indirect drive schemes shine the laser on high-Z material, usually gold, which converts the laser energy into x-rays. The x-rays are then used to drive the target. Non-uniformities in the laser beam can imprint themselves on the emitted x-rays and potentially cause problems, although the spatial transport of the x-rays to the target tends to smooth out these non-uniformities. As a result, ISI and SSD schemes are also being considered for indirect drive laser systems. We address this problem by modeling the effects …

The traveler attended the 10th International Conference on Conduction and Breakdown in dielectric Liquids held in Grenoble, France, September 10--14, 1990. He chaired the opening session of the conference, presented one paper, co-authored a second paper presented at the meeting, participated in the discussions during the formal sessions, and had informal discussions with many of the participants.

This report covers the activity of the traveler participating in a workshop entitled The 13th Werner Brandt Workshop on the Interaction of Charged Particles with Solids and conducting collaborative research with two physicists at Tokyo University. The Werner Brandt Workshops are organized by members of the traveler's group, led by Dr. R. H. Ritchie, with advice from an international committee. The traveler participated in planning for the next in the series of workshops, which will be held in or near the traveler's home base. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in early 1992. He interacted with scientists from Japan, Spain, USSR, Israel, and other countries, initiated plans for a new collaboration with a Japanese scientist, and renewed existing collaborations, At Tokyo University, the traveler performed collaborative research with Professors Y. Yamazaki and K. Komaki on two topics of importance to the traveler's programs with the Department of Energy (DOE).

This report presents estimates of proved reserves of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids as of December 31, 1989, and production volumes for the year 1989 for the total United States and for selected states and state sub-divisions. Estimates are presented for the following four categories of natural gas: total gas (wet after lease separation), its two major components (nonassociated and associated-dissolved gas), and total dry gas (wet gas adjusted for the removal of liquids at natural gas processing plants). In addition, two components of natural gas liquids, lease condensate and natural gas plant liquids, have their reserves and production reported separately. Also included is information on indicated additional crude oil reserves and crude oil, natural gas, and lease condensate reserves in nonproducing reservoirs. 28 refs., 9 figs., 15 tabs.

The Plutonium Experimental Facility (PEF) will be used to develop a new fuel pellet fabrication process and to evaluate equipment upgrades. The facility was used from 1978 until 1982 to optimize the parameters for fuel pellet production using a process which was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The PEF was shutdown and essentially abandoned until mid-1987 when the facility renovations were initiated by the Actinide Technology Section (ATS) of SRL. A major portion of the renovation work was related to the restart of the hot press system. This report describes the renovations and modifications which were required to restart the PEF hot press. The primary purpose of documenting this work is to help provide a basis for Separations to determine the best method of renovating the hot press in the Plutonium Fuel Fabrication (PuFF) facility. This report also includes several SRL recommendations concerning the renovation and modification of the PuFF hot press. 4 refs.

This is a report of the progress during the past year of the shock-tube study of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability, initiated under the sponsorship of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in September, 1982. The purpose of this research program, as stated in the original proposal, is: to investigate the nonlinear processes initiated by shock wave interaction with gas-gas interfaces. In particular, the nonlinear stage of shock-initiated Rayleigh-Taylor instability, the secondary instabilities (e.g., Kelvin-Helmholtz instability) arising therefrom and the concomitant mixing of the two fluids are of interest.''

The development of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) as a power source will require demonstrating four principal objectives: ignition and propagating burn, adequate gain ({eta}G {approx gt} 10) at low drive energy for the reactor driver, reactor pulse rates of a few Hz, and the long-term reliability and economics of a reactor. Additionally, the potential value and applicability of special-purpose ICF reactors, such as tritium breeding reactors and reactors for burning high level fission waste (actinide and fission products) should be investigated. To keep development time and costs to a minimum these should be accomplished with as few major facilities as possible, and subsystems should be developed only as they are needed. A viable scenario for Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) would include establishing the first milestone in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Fusion Policy Advisory Committee (FPAC) recommended Nova Upgrade, and the latter three in an Engineering Test Facility (ETF)/Demonstration Power Plant (DPP), i.e. two major facilities. To be successful in so short a time, operations at the major facilities would have to be supported by off-line reactor driver and other technology development. The program plan discussed here assumes that enhanced funding is available beginning in FY 1992. It …

We have identified the Motorola 2N4014 and 2N5551 and the Raytheon RS3944 as three transistor types that exhibit avalanche characteristics and have long term collector breakdown voltage stability superior to other transistors tested. Stability on all types has been improved by power burnin. An automatic avalanche transistor burnin tester has been constructed to allow power burnin of up to 1008 transistors at a time. The tester is controlled by an IBM Personal Computer (PC) and can be programmed to acquire data, unattended, at any desired rate or period. Data are collected from each run and stored on a floppy disk in ASCII format. The data analysis software, RS/1, was used for analysis and display. Data runs were typically 3 to 4 months long, with readings taken weekly. The transistors were biased into the avalanche or Zener region by individual current sources set to about 20% of the self-avalanche current for each type of transistor. Motorola, Zetex and National transistors were operated at 100 microamperes ({mu}A), and the Raytheon units were operated at 20 {mu}A. The electric field causes migration of material in the high field region at the surface near the collector-base junction, creating the voltage instability. 7 refs., 9 …

Under the Phase II, Alternative Energy Resources Development (AERD) project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of India (GOI), five collaborative coal projects have been initiated in the areas of: (1) NO{sub x}/SO{sub x} control from coal-fired power plants, (2) slagging combustor development for high-ash Indian coals, (3) characterization of Indian coals for combustion and gasification. (4) diagnostic studies for prediction of power plant life expectancy, and (5) environmental and natural resource analysis of coal cycle. The Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center (PETC) has the implementation responsibility for these projects. The Indian collaborative institutions identified for these projects are the Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL), Trichy, (projects 1--4), and the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) for project 5. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is providing cross-cut technical coordination and support for these five projects.

In order to understand the coupling of a charged particle beam to modes in induction cells with gap width -- to -- beampipe radius ratio w/b > 1, the variation of the transverse Z/Q for both axially symmetric and axially asymmetric dipole modes in this regime is investigated. It is found that the gross behavior of the axially symmetric modes when w/b > 1 is at least consistent with the approximate analysis of Briggs, although a thorough comparison has not been undertaken. The axially asymmetric modes are found to be unimportant until w/b approaches 2, and they generally exhibit lower values of Z{perpendicular}/Q than the axially symmetric modes.

Experimental work is being performed by collaborators at LLNL, SLAC, and LBL to investigate relativistic klystrons as a possible rf power source for future high-gradient accelerators. We have learned how to overcome or previously reported problem of high power rf pulse shortening and have achieved peak rf power levels of 330 MW using an 11.4-GHz high-gain tube with multiple output structures. In these experiments the rf pulse is of the same duration as the beam current pulse. In addition, experiments have been performed on two short sections of a high-gradient accelerator using the rf power from a relativistic klystron. An average accelerating gradient of 84 MV/m has been achieved with 80-MW of rf power.

Recent studies concerning optimization parameters for e{sup +}e{sup {minus}} super linear colliders use multiple particle bunches for each rf pulse to increase the luminosity and overall efficiency. Requirements for final focusing of the beams severely restrict the bunch to bunch energy variation during the rf pulse. To accurately determine the accelerating fields and energy variation, the dispersion related transient behavior of the rf drive pulse must be considered. A numerical study of dispersion effects on several different accelerating structures is presented.

This report describes research on oil shale. Above ground retorting, process modeling, and shale oil coking kinetics over oxidized recycle shale are discussed. 13 refs., 13 figs., 12 tabs.

A linear, frequency independent model of the rf properties of unbiased, soft ferrite has been implemented in finite-difference, time-domain, electromagnetic simulation code AMOS for the purposes of studying linac induction cavities. The simple model consists of adding a magnetic conductivity term ({sigma}{sub m}H) to Faraday's Law. The value of {sigma}{sub m} that is appropriate for a given ferrite at a particular frequency is obtained via an rf reflection experiment on a very thin ferrite toroid in a shorted coaxial line. It was found that in the frequency range 100 to 1000 MHz, the required value of {sigma}{sub m} varies only slightly (<10%), and so we approximated it as a frequency independent parameter in AMOS. A description of the experimental setup and the technique used to extract the complex {mu} from the measurements is described. The model has been used to study the impedances of the DARHT induction cavity, and comparisons between these experimental measurements and AMOS calculations is presented. Implementation of a frequency dependent version of this model in AMOS is being pursued, and a discussion of this effort is given.

The traveler took the opportunity to participate in a mini-sabbatical at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE) in Edinburgh, Scotland, as a part of planned travel to Glasgow, Scotland, to attend the International Conference on Acidic Precipitation. The purpose of the sabbatical was to provide quality time for study and interchange of ideas with scientists at ITE working on physiological effects of acidic deposition and to allocate significant time for writing and synthesizing of results of physiological studies from the National Forest Response Program's Spruce/Fir Research Cooperative. The study focused on the very significant cytological and physiological effects of calcium deficiency in trees, a response that appears to be amplified in spruce by acidic deposition.

The combustion of chloroethane is modeled as a stirred reactor so that we can study critical emission characteristics of the reactor as a function of residence time. We examine important operating conditions such as pressure, temperature, and equivalence ratio and their influence on destructive efficiency of chloroethane. The model uses a detailed chemical kinetic mechanism that we have developed previously for C{sub 3} hydrocarbons. We have added to this mechanism the chemical kinetic mechanism for C{sub 2} chlorinated hydrocarbons developed by Senkan and coworkers. In the modeling calculations, sensitivity coefficients are determined to find which reaction-rate constants have the largest effect on destructive efficiency. 24 refs., 6 figs., 1 tab.

Research continued on catalysts of coal liquefaction. Estimates of liquid circulation rates were obtained from an analysis of the cold model data and a plot of these values versus stirrer speed appears to be unique for the 60{degree} axial impeller. The recycle ration is typically of the order of 1000/1 or greater, and for all practical purposes the reactor may be treated as a perfectly mixed reactor. The work up of hydrotreating Run PDJ03 is complete. The run was terminated prematurely due to a rupture disk failure, but eight of the ten planned balance periods were completed. Carbon material balances were slightly high, ranging from 100.7% to 106.7%. Reaction rates for hydrogen uptake, hydrodesulfurization and hydrodenitrogenation were calculated. The catalyst did not deactivate significantly for the duration of the run and no evidence of catalyst attrition was observed after 215 hours of service. 8 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

The field of Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy grew out of work done in the Photophysics Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As one of the original developers of this field the traveler has continued to attend this meeting on a regular basis. The traveler was originally asked to present an invited talk and to present part of a short course offered to graduate students attending the conference. Subsequently, the traveler was also asked to chair a session and to be a judge of the students papers entered in a contest for a $1000 first prize.

The light and velocity variations of the Sun and solar-like stars are unique among intrinsic variable stars. Unlike all other standard classes, such as Cepheids, B stars, and white dwarfs, the pulsation driving is caused by coupling with the acoustic noise in the upper convection zone. Each global pulsation mode is just another degree of freedom for the turbulent convection, and energy is shared equally between these g{sup {minus}}-modes and the solar oscillation modes. This driving and damping, together with the normal stellar pulsation mechanisms produce extremely low amplitude solar oscillations. Actually, the surface layer radiative damping is strong, and the varying oscillation mode amplitudes manifest the stochastic convection driving and the steady damping. Thus stability calculations for solar-like pulsations are difficult and mostly inconclusive, but calculations of pulsation periods are as straightforward as for all the other classes of intrinsic variable stars. The issue that is important for the Sun is its internal structure, because the mass, radius, and luminosity are extremely well known. Conventionally, we need the pulsation constants for each of millions of modes. Unknown parameters for constructing solar models are the composition and its material pressure, energy, and opacity, as well as the convection mixing length. …