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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 and how a private road may become a part of the public domain after long and continuous use by the public (RQ-679)

The purpose of this document is to provide the test plan and procedures for the acceptance testing of the handling tools enveloped for the removal of an N-Reactor fuel element from its storage canister in the K-Basins storage pool and insertion into the Single fuel Element Can for subsequent shipment to a Hot Cell for examination. Examination of these N-Reactor fuel elements is part of the overall characterization effort. New hand tools were required since previous fuel movement has involved grasping the fuel in a horizontal position. The 305 Building Cold Test Facility will be used to conduct the acceptance testing of the Fuel Handling Tools. Upon completion of this acceptance testing and any subsequent training of operators, the tools will be transferred to the 105 KW Basin for installation and use.

This report proposes a strategy for sampling the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) stored in the 105-K Basins (105-K East and 105-K West). This strategy will support decisions concerning the path forward SNF disposition efforts in the following areas: (1) SNF isolation activities such as repackaging/overpacking to a newly constructed staging facility; (2) conditioning processes for fuel stabilization; and (3) interim storage options. This strategy was developed without following the Data Quality Objective (DQO) methodology. It is, however, intended to augment the SNF project DQOS. The SNF sampling is derived by evaluating the current storage condition of the SNF and the factors that effected SNF corrosion/degradation.

Document 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 person who practices psychotherapy, hypnosis for health care purposes, hypnotherapy, or biofeedback without a license violates the Psychologists’ Certification and Licensing Act, V.T.C.S. article 4512c (RQ-686)

None

This Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) was prepared to determine the adequacy of system design and the reliability of the Compressed Air System (CAS) and its failures, which have a potential to impact Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) construction, testing, operations, and life support for Refuge Chambers. This FMEA is required by Section 5.9 of Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project (YMP) Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability Plan (Reference 5.1). The CAS FMEA identifies the failure mode of various components that could detract the CAS from normal operation.

Construction and setup of twin laboratory gas phase reactors with in-line Gas chromatographic analysers was completed. Calibration and C.G. analysis methods development were carried out, and spreadsheet programs were written for reduction of data to interpretable results. Initial tests were carried out with pentasil zeolite ASM-5 containing very low (0.1%) levels of mercury as potential catalysts for conversion of acetylene/methanol streams to 1,1-dimethoxyethane or to C{sub 2}{sup +} alcohols, both useful as high-oxygenate gasoline blending agents. Trace levels of both types of products were observed, although the predominant products were light olefins at lower reaction temperatures and aromatics at higher temperatures. It is anticipated that less acidic zeolites and/or Zn- containing catalysts will be more active for oxygenate production. Testing of these materials is underway.

Radioactive Pilot-Plant testing needs and alternatives are evaluated for enhanced Sludge Washing and High and Low-Level Vitrification efforts. Also investigated was instrument and equipment testing needs associated with the vitrification and retrieval process. The scope of this document is to record the existing March 1994 letter report for future use. A structured Kepner-Trego{trademark} decision analysis process was used to assist analysis of the testing needs. This analysis provided various combinations of laboratory and radioactive (hot) and cold pilot testing options associated with the above need areas. Recommendations for testing requirements were made.

The evolution of texture in thin sheets of metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 301 is affected by external conditions such as loading rate and temperature, by inhomogeneous deformation phenomena such as twinning and shear band formation, and by the concurent strain induced phase transformation of the retained austenitc ({gamma}) into martensite ({alpha}). The present paper describes texture measurements on different gauges of AISI 301 prior and after uniaxial stretching under different conditions.

Mathematical phantoms representing the adult female at three, six, and nine months of gestation are described. They are modifications of the 15-year-old male/adult female phantom (15-AF phantom) of Cristy and Eckerman (1987). The model of uterine contents includes the fetus, fetal skeleton, and placenta. The model is suitable for dose calculations for the fetus as a whole; individual organs within the fetus (other than the skeleton) are not modeled. A new model for the nonpregnant adult female is also described, comprising (1) the 15-AF phantom; (2) an adjustment to specific absorbed fractions for organ self-dose from photons to better match Reference Woman masses; and (3) computation of specific absorbed fractions with Reference Woman masses from ICRP Publication 23 for both penetrating and nonpenetrating radiations. Specific absorbed fractions for photons emitted from various source regions are tabulated for the new non;pregnant adult female model and the three pregnancy models.

The objective of this analysis is to correlate the results of a rock fall analysis performed for the 12 Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Fuel Assembly Interlocking Basket waste package (WP) in order to determine the size of rock that can strike the Multi-Purpose Canister (MPC) waste packages without breaching the containment barriers. The purpose of this analysis is to document the models and methods used in the calculations.

The purpose of this analysis is to produce coordinate geometry calculations sufficient to establish the position of the conceptual Geologic Repository Operations Area (GROA) as it relates to the position of the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) planned exploratory drifting and the physical site. The focus of this analysis is to show the mathematical validity of the arrangement. The documentation which supports the development of the configuration can be found in References 5.3 and 5.4. This analysis supports the production of the ESF/GROA Interface drawings which are used by the Project to demonstrate and control the physical interfaces between the ESF and Repository.

The objective of this project is to develop high yield syntheses of oxygenate products that are liquid at room temperature using as starting materials dimethy ether (DME) or methanol. The identified products include: Dimethyl Carbonate (DMC), 1,1-Dimethoxyethane (DMOE), C{sub 2}{sup +} Alcohols/Ethers (C{sub 2}AE). The technical strategy is outlined below: (A) Synthesis of DMC via oxidative carbonylation of DME instead of methanol. Since this synthesis would not co-produce water as a byproduct, there is a potential for very high DME conversions in contrast to the low (ca 20%) conversions obtained in conventional plants. Technical emphasis will be placed on development of a supported copper catalyst with a capability for cleavage of DME into its chemisorbed organic moieties. (B) Synthesis of 1,1-dimethoxymethane (DMOE) from acetylene/CO/H{sub 2} process streams obtained from commercial methane oxidative pyrolysis processes. In the overall processing scheme the syngas would be converted to DME. The wet acetylene stream would be partially condensed to retain an equivalent of water and then condensed with DME to produce EMOE. (C) Direct conversion of DME or DME/methanol to ethanol/propanol or their methyl ethers. Under the influence of functionalized alcohol condensation catalysts developed exclusively at Amoco it should be possible to achieve direct …

The authors are using resonant soft x-ray fluorescence at the Advanced Light Source to probe the electronic and geometric structure of novel materials. In the resonant process, a core electron is excited by a photon whose energy is near the core binding energy. In this energy regime the absorption and emission processes are coupled, and this coupling manifests itself in several ways. In boron nitride (BN), the resonant emission spectra reflect the influence of a ``spectator`` electron in an unoccupied excitonic state. The resonant emission can be used to distinguish between the various bulk phases of BN, and can also be used to probe the electronic structure of a monolayer of BN buried in a bulk environment, where it is inaccessible to electron spectroscopies. For highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) a coherent absorption-emission process takes place in the resonant regime, whereby crystalline momentum is conserved between the core excited electron and the valence hole which remains after emission.

Dispersion is effectively reduced in a 1550-nm subcarrier-multiplexed fiber link by using optical pre-filtering at the receiver. Recent experimental results demonstrate transmission of two 2.5 Gbit/s data channels over 220 km of ordinary single-mode fiber.

Further investigations of assisted pyrolysis by the addition of ethane as a free-radical initiator were carried out during this reporting period. The effects of temperature, space velocity, and ethane/methane ratio, in the presence of quench water, have been addressed. As expected, reaction quenching resulted in lower conversions than without quenching, but also in significantly lower yields of {open_quotes}tar-like{close_quotes} products. High C{sub 2}/C{sub 1} ratios and low space velocities result in significant increases in the {open_quotes}tar-like{close_quotes} product yields. Very low ethane concentrations were required to initiate methane pyrolysis at lower temperatures without a major negative effect on product selectivities.

The Department and its contractors have participated in at least six reviews since 1991 encompassing aspects of subsidies at the test site. Several of these reviews resulted in reports recommending reductions to the housing, food, and bus services. A strategic planning report completed in November 1994, for example, recommended closing certain food service facilities, increasing housing rates to fair market value, and studying a bus depot system. Other reports echoed the same themes. The Department should be credited for recognizing that actions should be taken to reduce subsidy costs. Moreover, the Acting Manager, Nevada Operations office, has been proactive in reducing the busing subsidy by decreasing the number of buses and bus routes. The Acting Manager has also been fully supportive of the effort to further reduce subsidies. We appreciate these efforts.

A finite element transport model has been developed and implemented to complement experimental efforts to improve the quality of ICF target shells produced via controlled-mass microencapsulation. The model provides an efficient means to explore the effect of processing variables on the dynamics of shell dimensions, concentricity, and phase behavior. Comparisons with experiments showed that the model successfully predicts the evolution of wall thinning and core/wall density differences. The model was used to efficiently explore and identify initial wall compositions and processing temperatures which resulted in concentricity improvements from 65 to 99%. The evolution of trace amounts of water entering into the shell wall was also tracked in the simulations. Comparisons with phase envelope estimations from modified UNIFAP calculations suggest that the water content trajectory approaches the two-phase region where vacuole formation via microphase separation may occur.

Reported are the safety-screening analytes required by the C-107 tank characterization plan. Also included are copies of the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) scans. Two core samples from tank C-107, obtained by the push-mode core sampling method, were received, extruded, and analyzed by the 222-S Laboratories. Drainable liquid was analyzed at the segment level for a separable organic layer, energetics by DSC, and percent water by TGA. Sludge samples were analyzed at the half-segment level by DSC, TGA, and for total alpha activity. No safety-screening notification limits were exceeded on any samples.

We report on our progress in developing a new technology to produce both Nova and NIF scale capsules using a depolymerizable mandrel. In this technique we use poly({alpha}-methylstyrene) (PAMS) beads or shells as mandrels which are overcoated with plasma polymer. The poly({alpha}-methylstyrene) mandrel is then thermally depolymerized to gas phase monomer which diffuses away through the more thermally stable plasma polymer coating, leaving a hollow shell. Since our last report we have concentrated on characterization of the final shell. Starting with PAMS bead mandrels leads to distorted pyrolyzed shells because of thermally induced creep of the CH coating. We found that plasma polymer coatings on hollow shell mandrels shrink isotropically during pyrolysis and maintain sphericity. We are now concentrating our efforts on the use of microencapsulated shells to prepare targets with buried diagnostic layers or inner wall surface texture.