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)

Concern has been expressed that hydrogen produced by corrosion, radiolysis, and decomposition of the waste could cause embrittlement of the carbon steel waste tanks at Hanford. The concern centers on the supposition that the hydrogen evolved in many of the existing tanks might penetrate the steel wall of the tank and cause embrittlement that might lead to catastrophic failure. This document reviews literature on the effects of hydrogen on the carbon steel proposed for use in the Multi-Function Waste Tank Facility for the time periods before and during construction as well as for the operational life of the tanks. The document draws several conclusions about these effects. Molecular hydrogen is not a concern because it is not capable of entering the steel tank wall. Nascent hydrogen produced by corrosion reactions will not embrittle the steel because the mild steel used in tank construction is not hard enough to be susceptible to hydrogen stress cracking and the corrosion product hydrogen is not produced at a rate sufficient to cause either loss in tensile ductility or blistering. If the steel intended for use in the tanks is produced to current technology, fabricated in accordance with good construction practice, postweld heat treated, and …

Uranium fuel assemblies and other uranium associated with the shutdown N Reactor are stored in the 300 Area N Reactor Fuel Fabrication and Storage Facility (Facility). The 3712 Building, where the majority of the fuel assemblies and other uranium is stored, is where there could be a potential for a criticality bounding case. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the probability of potential fires in the Facility 3712 Building that could lead to criticality. This study has been done to support the criticality update. For criticality to occur, the wooden fuel assembly containers would have to burn such that the fuel inside would slump into a critical geometry configuration, a sufficient number of containers burn to form an infinite wide configuration, and sufficient water (about a 17 inch depth) be placed onto the slump. To obtain the appropriate geometric configuration, enough fuel assembly containers to form an infinite array on the floor would have to be stacked at least three high. Administrative controls require the stacks to be limited to two high for 1.25 wt% enriched finished fuel. This is not sufficient to allow for a critical mass regardless of the fire and accompanying water moderation. It should …

The authors melted and cast an aluminum-uranium (Al-U) alloy by vacuum induction melting (VIM) prealloyed buttons made by arc melting. The resulting alloy casting displayed a large compositional gradient from top to bottom. The authors sampled the resulting casting for uranium to check homogeneity. The sampling revealed that the top of the casting contained 23.5 wt% uranium, and the bottom (an average of two samples) contained 42.4 wt% uranium. Although each button contained 36.5% uranium, these analyses show that the solidified casting was inhomogeneous. If the buttons were homogeneous, the segregation occurred during induction melting, and this method may not be feasible for making AL-U alloys. If the buttons were not homogeneous, perhaps arc melting the buttons more times would have helped. Bottom pouring the Al-U melt into a mold for faster cooling could also help prevent segregation.

Intense pulsed ion beams (500 keV, 30 kA, 0.5 {mu}s) are being investigated for materials processing. Demonstrated and potential applications include film deposition, glazing and joining, alloying and mixing, cleaning and polishing, corrosion improvement, polymer surface treatments, and nanophase powder synthesis. Initial experiments at Los Alamos have emphasized thin-film formation by depositing beam ablated target material on substrates. We have deposited films with complex stoichiometry such as YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7-x}, and formed diamond-like-carbon films. Instantaneous deposition rates of 1 mm/sec have been achieved because of the short ion range (typically 1{mu}m), excellent target coupling, and the inherently high energy of these beams. Currently the beams are produced in single shot uncomplicated diodes with good electrical efficiency. High-voltage modulator technology and diodes capable of repetitive firing, needed for commercial application, are being developed.

Machinability of Aermet 100, an ultrahigh strength alloy developed for Navy by Carpenter Technology as a candidate material for aircraft landing gear application, was studied by performing single-point turning tests. Coated and uncoated carbides, ceramic, and cermet cutting tool inserts of a square geometry (SNG 432 type) were used. Round stock workpieces were tested in the as - received, unaged condition and without using any cutting fluid. The turning tests for each tool material were conducted by (i) first establishing the cutting conditions that would allow the continued generation of broken chips during a given cutting test, (ii) measuring intermittently the flank wear as a function of cutting time under such established cutting conditions for discontinuous broken chips, and (iii) determining the tool life using the criteria specified in the ISO Standard 3685: 1993(E). Cutting tools except some uncoated carbide and ceramic were used with a mechanical chip breaker to induce chip breakage and avoid the generation of long continuous chips. The results obtained include the optimal cutting conditions for discontinuous chips, tool wear - cutting time curves, and records of tool life and tool failure mode for each tool material. From the measured tool life and cutting conditions, the …

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.

Periodical discussing the controversy over licenses to carry handguns, outlining the historical precedence for the handgun regulations and presenting arguments in favor and opposed to the issue.

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.