Newsletter of the Texas Department of Health discussing the news, activities, and events of the organization and other information related to health in Texas.

An analysis was performed of radiological and toxicological consequences of a conservative tank bump scenario which could occur if preventative measures fail and the local sludge temperature exceed the saturation temperature for a long enough period of time to produce a release of this type. Because of the nature of the release, there are no effective mitigative actions which can be taken other than prevention of the tank bump. The unmitigated scenario analyzed here exceeded both onsite and offsite risk guidelines for an anticipated accident.

The purpose of this document is to provide a single referenceable document that provides the X/Qs for all the facilities in the spent nuclear fuel projects, and includes the bases for the X/Q calculations. The X/Q values for the nuclear fuel projects were calculated over the past several years. The values currently used in the nuclear fuel project were documented in letter reports and as attached to various PSEs and Safety Analysis documents. Therefore, there is a need to consolidate these documents or reports into a single referenceable document. The final document includes the X/Qs for KE and KW Basins, the cold vacuum drying facility, and the canister storage building.

This report shows the benefits small businesses can realize by instituting cost-effective pollution prevention improvements. It is a series of pollution prevention assessments that were conducted at small businesses in Richland, Washington. It describes a technology transfer test of US Department of Energy (USDOE) pollution prevention methods to small businesses through eleven pollution prevention assessments conducted at small businesses in the city of Richland. The assessment method tested was first developed at the USDOE Hanford Site, located in Richland, Washington. Two pilot studies were initially conducted to determine the usefulness of the assessment method for small businesses. Then, four additional pollution prevention assessments were conducted using a refined process. In order to determine the assessment method`s usefulness by different practitioners, a number of the assessments contained in this report were conducted by the undergraduate and graduate students at Washington State University at Tri-Cities as part of their class projects. These students were trained in the pollution prevention assessment process by the author of this report and conducted five small business assessments using the same methods and materials as in the remainder of the study.

We have obtained charge-changing cross sections and partial cross sections for fragmentation of 1.05 GeV/nucleon Fe projectiles incident on H, C, Al, Cu, and Pb nuclei. The energy region covered by this experiment is critical for an understanding of galactic cosmic ray propagation and space radiation biophysics. Surviving primary beam particles and fragments with charges from 12 to 25 produced within a forward cone of half-angle 61 milliradians were detected using a silicon detector telescope to identify their charge, and the cross sections were calculated after correction of the measured yields for finite target thickness effects. The cross sections are compared to model calculations and to previous measurements. Cross sections for the production of fragments with even-numbered nuclear charges are seen to be enhanced in almost all cases.

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This report provides an overview of the economic aid and capacity reduction of commercial fishing.

The Reduced Enrichment Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) Program was established in 1978 at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) by the Department of Energy (DOE), which continues to fund the program and to manage it in coordination with the Department of State (DOS), the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The primary objective of the program is to develop the technology needed to use Low-Enrichment Uranium (LEU) instead of High-Enrichment Uranium (HEU) in research and test reactors, without significant penalties in experiment performance, economics, or safety. Eliminating the continuing need of HEU supplies for research and test reactors has long been an integral part of US nonproliferation policy. This paper reviews the main accomplishments of the program through the years.

This paper summarizes the conversion status of US research and test reactors and estimates uranium densities needed to convert reactors with power levels 21 MW from HEU ({ge} 20% U-235) to LEU (<20% U-235) fuels. Detailed conversion studies for each reactor need to be completed in order to establish the feasibility of using LEU fuels.

Feasibility studies have been performed to convert both the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (BMRR) and the High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory from the use of HEU (93%) fuel to the use of LEU (<20%) fuel. The studies are intended to determine suitable LEU fuels that will provide fuel lifetime and neutron flux performance similar to the current HEU fuels. Both reactors use MTR-type fuel assemblies: the BMRR has 18 fuel plates with 140g {sup 235}U (0.43 gU/cm{sup 3}) and the HFBR has 20 plates, of which 18 are fuel with 351 g {sup 235}U (1.1 gU/cm{sup 3}).

The results, which have been compared to numerical simulations and found to be in very good agreement, predict that diviations in composition on the order of several atomic percent (measured with respect to equilibrium compositions) are possible at the interface. Interfacial compositions are strongly time dependent and are also influenced by the stress state.

A thermal probe method, called REKA (Rapid Evaluation of K and Alpha) has been used for determining thermal conductivity (K) and diffusivity (Alpha) at both the Large Heated Block Tests and in the ESF. The REKA method involves a single borehole probe with a heater and temperature measurement section. An elliptical temperature field is generated by the heater, and the temperature distribution along the length of the probe is recorded at several locations and at given time intervals for a period of 6 to 24 hours. A trial-and-error evaluation procedure is used to determine the unknown thermophysical properties by minimizing the RMS error between the measured and calculated temperature fields. If a conduction-only thermal model is used in the evaluation, the thermophysical properties will include the rockmass and the moisture effects, and the values will represent effective properties. If a hydrothermal model is also used, the difference between the effective and the rock matrix thermophysical properties can be related to hydrothermal characteristics. A reusable REKA probe can be applied to measure in situ rock properties in a short, open hole, e.g., in a rockbolt borehole, at low cost. A permanent REKA probe has to be grouted in the insertion hole, …

We have refined a heat treatment to obtain coherent, heterogeneous nucleation of precipitates on dislocations in a high purity binary alloy. This allowed, for the first time, a quantitative comparison to be made for coherent heterogeneous nucleation. This part of the research resulted from our concern about the role of dislocations in sub-boundaries in aluminum alloys and directed us to first examine isolated dislocations in the binary Al-Li systems. We were able to design the experiment so the heterogeneous nucleation of AL{sub 3}Li occurred. Previously, only homogeneous nucleation of Al{sub 3}Li had been examined.

Work on the phenolic signals in Striga has provided evidence that the compounds are detected via a chemical reaction, quite distinct from our current models of hormone/growth factor detection by membrane localized binding proteins. Evidence ha been obtained that the recognition mechanism is a redox reaction most likely controlled by plasma membrane localized oxidoreductases. While the existence of these redox systems have been demonstrated in both plants and animals, only recently has convincing evidence connecting e- transport with plant development emerged. These discoveries have profound consequences for both the control of plant cell growth as well as strategies for general growth control.

The nitrogen fixing bacterium azotobacter paspali was first isolated from the roots of the sub-tropical grass, palpium notatum, and added to the clenus in 1996, by Dr. J. Dobereiner (Brazil). It is mentioned that this root association bacteria shows remarkable signs of host-plant specificity to one eco-type of this grass. This specificity is rare in non-symbiotic plant microbe interactions so far identified.

This Corrective Action Investigation Plan (CAIP) contains the environmental sample collection objectives and criteria for conducting site investigation activities at the Area 9 Landfill, Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 453/Corrective Action (CAS) 09-55-001-0952, which is located at the Tonopah Test Range (TTR). The TTR, included in the Nellis Air Force Range, is approximately 255 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. The Area 9 Landfill is located northwest of Area 9 on the TTR. The landfill cells associated with CAU 453 were excavated to receive waste generated from the daily operations conducted at Area 9 and from range cleanup which occurred after test activities.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeast New Mexico has been studied as a transuranic waste repository for the past 23 years. During this time, an extensive site characterization, design, construction, and experimental program was completed, which provided in depth understanding of the dominant processes that are most likely to influence the containment of radionuclides for 10,000 years. Nearly 1,500 parameters were developed using information gathered from this program and were input to numerical models for WIPP Compliance Certification Application (CCA) Performance Assessment (PA) calculations. The CCA probability models require input parameters that are defined by a statistical distribution. Developing parameters begins with the assignment of an appropriate distribution type, which is dependent on the type, magnitude, and volume of data or information available. Parameter development may require interpretation or statistical analysis of raw data, combining raw data with literature values, scaling laboratory or field data to fit code grid mesh sizes, or other transformations. Documentation of parameter development is designed to answer two questions: What source information was used to develop this parameter? and Why was this particular data set/information used? Therefore, complete documentation requires integrating information from code sponsors, parameter task leaders, performance assessment analysts, and experimental …

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeast New Mexico has been studied as a transuranic waste repository for the past 23 years. During this time, an extensive site characterization, design, construction, and experimental program was completed, which provided in-depth understanding of the dominant processes that are most likely to influence the containment of radionuclides for 10,000 years. Nearly 1,500 parameters were developed using information gathered from this program; the parameters were input to numerical models for WIPP Compliance Certification Application (CCA) Performance Assessment (PA) calculations. The CCA probabilistic codes frequently require input values that define a statistical distribution for each parameter. Developing parameter distributions begins with the assignment of an appropriate distribution type, which is dependent on the type, magnitude, and volume of data or information available. The development of the parameter distribution values may require interpretation or statistical analysis of raw data, combining raw data with literature values, scaling of lab or field data to fit code grid mesh sizes, or other transformation. Parameter development and documentation of the development process were very complicated, especially for those parameters based on empirical data; they required the integration of information from Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) code sponsors, parameter task leaders …

Iron aluminide weld overlays are being investigated for corrosion and erosion protection of boiler tubes in low NOx burners. The primary objective of the research is to identify overlay compositions which can be deposited in a crack-free condition and provide corrosion protection in moderately reducing environments. In the current phase of work, Fe-Al alloy weld overlays were produced by depositing commercially pure aluminum wire on to low carbon steel substrates using Gas Tungsten Arc Welding. A systematic variation of the wire feed speed and current, two major factors affecting dilution, resulted in a variation in aluminum contents of the welds ranging from 3--42 wt% aluminum. The aluminum content was observed to increase with wire feed speed and a decrease in the current. The aluminum content was also found to affect the cracking susceptibility of the overlays. At 10wt% aluminum, few to no cracks were observed in the deposits. Above this value, cracking was prevalent throughout the weld. In addition, two types of microstructures were found correlating to different concentrations of aluminum. A homogeneous matrix with second phase particles consisting of coarse columnar grains was found for low aluminum concentrations. With higher aluminum contents, a two-phase constituent was observed to surround …

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeast New Mexico has been studied as a transuranic waste repository for the past 23 years. During this time, an extensive site characterization, design, construction, and experimental program was completed to provide in-depth understanding of the dominant processes that are most likely to influence the containment of radionuclides for 10,000 years. The success of the program, however, is defined by the regulator in the context of compliance with performance criteria, rather than by the in-depth technical understanding typical of most scientific programs. The WIPP project was successful in making a transformation from science to compliance by refocusing and redirecting programmatic efforts toward the singular goal of meeting regulatory compliance requirements while accelerating the submittal of the Compliance Certification Application (CCA) by two months from the April 1994 Disposal Decision Plan (DDP) date of December 1996, and by reducing projected characterization costs by more than 40%. This experience is unparalleled within the radioactive waste management community and has contributed to numerous lessons learned from which the entire community can benefit.

A uranium enrichment plant utilizing Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) technology is currently being planned. Deployment of the Plant will require tens of thousands of commercial and custom optical components and subsystems. The Plant optical system will be expected to perform at a high level of optical efficiency and reliability in a high-average-power-laser production environment. During construction, demand for this large number of optics must be coordinated with the manufacturing capacity of the optical industry. The general requirements and approach to ensure supply of optical components is described. Dynamic planning and a closely coupled relationship with the optics industry will be required to control cost, schedule, and quality.