This report starts out with an overview of nuclear technology and then discusses the Department of Energy DOE advanced nuclear programs, global nuclear energy partnership, and different industry studies.

This report starts out with an overview of nuclear technology and then discusses the Department of Energy DOE advanced nuclear programs, global nuclear energy partnership, and different industry studies.

This report discusses Afghanistan's political transition; it was completed in December 2005, but insurgent threats to Afghanistan's government since then have escalated to the point that some experts are questioning the future of U.S. stabilization efforts. U.S. stabilization measures focus on strengthening the central government and its security forces and on promoting reconstructing while combating the renewed insurgent challenge.

The Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians was awarded a grant through the Department of Energy First Steps program in June of 2006. The primary purpose of the grant was to enable the Tribe to develop energy conservation policies and a strategy for alternative energy resource development. All of the work contemplated by the grant agreement has been completed and the Tribe has begun implementing the resource development strategy through the construction of a 1.0 MW grid-connected photovoltaic system designed to offset a portion of the energy demand generated by current and projected land uses on the Tribe’s Reservation. Implementation of proposed energy conservation policies will proceed more deliberately as the Tribe acquires economic development experience sufficient to evaluate more systematically the interrelationships between conservation and its economic development goals.

Intrabeam scattering (IBS) of electrons in the pre-cathode area in the electron guns know in the literature as Boersh effect is responsible for a growth of the electron beam energy spread there. Albeit most visible within the electron gun where the electron beam density is large and the energy spread is small, the IBS acts all along the entire electron beam pass through the Linac. In this report we calculate the energy spread induced by IBS in the FERMI@elettra electron gun.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States has long provided the Cuban people with alternative sources of news and information. As part of this effort, in December 2006 the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) awarded sole-source contracts to two Miami radio and television stations--Radio Mambi and TV Azteca--to provide additional broadcasting options. Additionally, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) annually awards millions of dollars in contracts for talent services--writers, reporters, and technical support--needed to produce and broadcast news and entertainment programming. GAO evaluated the processes used to award (1) the Radio Mambi and TV Azteca broadcasting contracts, and (2) talent services contracts. We reviewed contract files and other documentation and interviewed program managers and contracting officers to determine the process used to award the two broadcasting contracts and a nongeneralizable selection of 37 talent services contracts."

This report is a guide to one of the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. It summarizes the status of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related congressional activity, and is updated as events warrant.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense's (DOD) operational dependence on space has placed new and increasing demands on current space systems to meet commanders' needs. DOD's Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) concept is designed to more rapidly satisfy commanders' needs for information and intelligence during ongoing operations. Given the potential for ORS to change how DOD acquires and fields space capabilities to support the warfighter, this report discusses to what extent DOD (1) is developing ORS to support warfighter requirements and (2) has a plan that integrates ORS into existing DOD and intelligence community processes and architecture. GAO reviewed and analyzed ORS planning documents, the ORS concept of operations, and processes for meeting warfighter needs and also interviewed defense and intelligence community officials who are involved with the ORS concept."

We present a new linear scaling ab initio total energy electronic structure calculation method based on the divide-and-conquer strategy. This method is simple to implement, easily to parallelize, and produces very accurate results when compared with the direct ab initio method. The method has been tested using up to 8,000 processors, and has been used to calculate nanosystems up to 15,000 atoms.

The electronic structures of BiFeO{sub 3} (BF) and Mn-doped BiFeO{sub 3} (BF(Mn)) have been studied by X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and soft-X-ray emission spectroscopy (SXES). The BF and BF(Mn) have the mixed valence state of Fe{sup 2+} and Fe{sup 3+}. The valence band is mainly composed of O 2p state hybridized with the majority-spin t{sub 2g} and e{sub g} orbitals of Fe 3d state. The conduction band is composed of the minority-spin t{sub 2g} and e{sub g} orbitals of Fe 3d. The band gaps of BF and BF(Mn) are estimated to be 1.3 eV and 2.7 eV, respectively. The increase of band gap with Mn substitution contributes to the change of bandwidth of valence band.

The cleaning of Si{sub 0.85}Ge{sub 0.15} surfaces using HCl and HF solutions is studied using synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy. The HF solution is found to be effective in removing both the Si oxide and the Ge oxide while the HCl solution can only remove part of the Ge oxide. For samples treated with HF, four spectral components are needed to fit the Ge 3d photoemission spectra. One is the bulk component and the other three are attributed to the surface Ge atoms with mono-hydride, di-hydride and tri-hydride terminations, respectively.

At the Savannah River Site (SRS), near Aiken South Carolina, there is a crucial need to remove residual quantities of highly radioactive iron-based sludge from large select underground storage tanks (e.g., 19,000 liters of sludge per tank), in order to support tank closure. The use of oxalic acid is planned to dissolve the residual sludge, hence, helping in the removal. Based on rigorous testing, primarily using 4 and 8 wt% oxalic acid solutions, it was concluded that the more concentrated the acid, the greater the amount of residual sludge that would be dissolved; hence, a baseline technology on using 8 wt% oxalic acid was developed. In stark contrast to the baseline technology, reports from other industries suggest that the dissolution will most effectively occur at 1 wt% oxalic acid (i.e., maintaining the pH near 2). The driver for using less oxalic acid is that less (i.e., moles) would decrease the severity of the downstream impacts (i.e., required oxalate solids removal efforts). To determine the initial feasibility of using 1 wt% acid to dissolve > 90% of the sludge solids, about 19,000 liters of representative sludge was modeled using about 530,000 liters of 0 to 8 wt% oxalic acid solutions. With …

The electronic structure of multiferroic BiFeO{sub 3} has been studied using soft-X-ray emission spectroscopy. The fluorescence spectra exhibit that the valence band is mainly composed of O 2p state hybridized with Fe 3d state. The band gap corresponding to the energy separation between the top of the O 2p valence band and the bottom of the Fe 3d conduction band is 1.3 eV. The soft-X-ray Raman scattering reflects the features due to charge transfer transition from O 2p valence band to Fe 3d conduction band. These findings are similar to the result of electronic structure calculation by density functional theory within the local spin-density approximation that included the effect of Coulomb repulsion between localized d states.

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program is a temporary unemployment insurance program that provides up to 13 additional weeks of unemployment benefits to certain workers who have exhausted their rights to regular unemployment compensation (UC) benefits. The program effectively begins July 6, 2008, and will terminate on March 28, 2009. No EUC benefit will be paid beyond the week ending July 4, 2009.

This document describes highlights of science condcuted at EMSL during FY2008, 2nd Quarter.

Typically, when a new subsurface flow and transport problem is first being considered, very simple models with a minimal number of parameters are used to get a rough idea of how the system will evolve. For a hydrogeologist considering the spreading of a contaminant plume in an aquifer, the aquifer thickness, porosity, and permeability might be enough to get started. If the plume is buoyant, aquifer dip comes into play. If regional groundwater flow is significant or there are nearby wells pumping, these features need to be included. Generally, the required parameters tend to be known from pre-existing studies, are parameters that people working in the field are familiar with, and represent features that are easy to explain to potential funding agencies, regulators, stakeholders, and the public. The situation for geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) in saline aquifers is quite different. It is certainly desirable to do preliminary modeling in advance of any field work since geologic storage of CO{sub 2} is a novel concept that few people have much experience with or intuition about. But the parameters that control CO{sub 2} plume behavior are a little more daunting to assemble and explain than those for a groundwater …

Roofs that have high solar reflectance and high thermal emittance stay cool in the sun. A roof with lower thermal emittance but exceptionally high solar reflectance can also stay cool in the sun. Substituting a cool roof for a noncool roof decreases cooling-electricity use, cooling-power demand, and cooling-equipment capacity requirements, while slightly increasing heating-energy consumption. Cool roofs can also lower citywide ambient air temperature in summer, slowing ozone formation and increasing human comfort. Provisions for cool roofs in energy-efficiency standards can promote the building- and climate-appropriate use of cool roofing technologies. Cool-roof requirements are designed to reduce building energy use, while energy-neutral cool-roof credits permit the use of less energy-efficient components (e.g., larger windows) in a building that has energy-saving cool roofs. Both types of measures can reduce the life-cycle cost of a building (initial cost plus lifetime energy cost). Since 1999, several widely used building energy-efficiency standards, including ASHRAE 90.1, ASHRAE 90.2, the International Energy Conservation Code, and California's Title 24 have adopted cool-roof credits or requirements. This paper reviews the technical development of cool-roof provisions in the ASHRAE 90.1, ASHRAE 90.2, and California Title 24 standards, and discusses the treatment of cool roofs in other standards and energy-efficiency …

This report examines selected issues of the federal government's liability depending on the theory of the levee failures, and analyzes legal defenses available to the federal government. The report uses flood damage related to Hurricane Katrina as an illustration of these legal issues regarding federal liability, but the general principles in the analysis would apply to flood damage resulting from any such flood control project.

We present a fully 3D atomistic quantum mechanical simulation for nanometered MOSFET using a coupled Schroedinger equation and Poisson equation approach. Empirical pseudopotential is used to represent the single particle Hamiltonian and linear combination of bulk band (LCBB) method is used to solve the million atom Schroedinger's equation. We studied gate threshold fluctuations and threshold lowering due to the discrete dopant configurations. We compared our results with semiclassical simulation results. We found quantum mechanical effects increase the threshold fluctuation while decreases the threshold lowering. The increase of threshold fluctuation is in agreement with previous study based on approximated density gradient approach to represent the quantum mechanical effect. However, the decrease in threshold lowering is in contrast with the previous density gradient calculations.

This report examines the federal and state roles in the maintenance, inspection, reconstruction, and replacement of the nation's highway bridge infrastructure, as well as the emergency response and reconstruction role of the Department of Transportation.

The ultra-fast switching of power MOSFETs, in {approx}1ns, is very challenging. This is largely due to the parasitic inductance that is intrinsic to commercial packages used for both MOSFETs and drivers. Parasitic gate and source inductance not only limit the voltage rise time on the MOSFET internal gate structure but can also cause the gate voltage to oscillate. This paper describes a hybrid approach that substantially reduces the parasitic inductance between the driver and MOSFET gate as well as between the MOSFET source and its external connection. A flip chip assembly is used to directly attach the die-form power MOSFET and driver on a PCB. The parasitic inductances are significantly reduced by eliminating bond wires and minimizing lead length. The experimental results demonstrate ultra-fast switching of the power MOSFET with excellent control of the gate-source voltage.

The role of particle size during the hydrogenation/dehydrogenation of cyclohexene (10 Torr C{sub 6}H{sub 10}, 200-600 Torr H{sub 2}, and 273-650 K) was studied over a series of monodisperse Pt/SBA-15 catalysts. The conversion of cyclohexene in the presence of excess H{sub 2} (H{sub 2}:C{sub 6}H{sub 10} ratio = 20-60) is characterized by three regimes: hydrogenation of cyclohexene to cyclohexane at low temperature (< 423 K), an intermediate temperature range in which both hydrogenation and dehydrogenation occur; and a high temperature regime in which the dehydrogenation of cyclohexene dominates (> 573 K). The rate of both reactions demonstrated maxima with temperature, regardless of Pt particle size. For the hydrogenation of cyclohexene, a non-Arrhenius temperature dependence (apparent negative activation energy) was observed. Hydrogenation is structure insensitive at low temperatures, and apparently structure sensitive in the non-Arrhenius regime; the origin of the particle-size dependent reactivity with temperature is attributed to a change in the coverage of reactive hydrogen. Small particles were more active for dehydrogenation and had lower apparent activation energies than large particles. The selectivity can be controlled by changing the particle size, which is attributed to the structure sensitivity of both reactions in the temperature regime where hydrogenation and dehydrogenation are …

Four isotopes of rutherfordium,254-257Rf, were produced by the 208Pb(48Ti, xn)256-xRf and 208Pb(50Ti, xn)258-xRf reactions (x = 1, 2) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 88-Inch Cyclotron. Excitation functions were measured for the 1n and 2n exit channels. A maximum likelihood technique, which correctly accounts for the changing cross section at all energies subtended by the targets, was used to fit the 1n data to allow a more direct comparison between excitation functions obtained under different experimental conditions. The maximum 1n crosssections of the 208Pb(48Ti, n)255Rf and 208Pb(50Ti, n)257Rf reactions obtained from fits to the experimental data are 0.38 +/- 0.07 nb and 40 +/-5 nb, respectively. Excitation functions for the 2n exit channel were also measured, with maximum cross sections of nb for the 48Ti induced reaction, and 15.7 +/- 0.2 nb for the 50Ti induced reaction. The impact of the two neutron difference in the projectile on the 1n cross section is discussed. The results are compared to the Fusion by Diffusion model developed by Swiatecki, Wilczynska, and Wilczynski.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, are estimated to have resulted in insured losses amounting to $32.5 billion. Subsequent to the attacks, insurers largely stopped offering terrorism insurance coverage to commercial property owners, which raised significant concerns about potential negative economic consequences. To help restore confidence and stability in property insurance markets, Congress enacted and the President signed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA). Under TRIA, the federal government assumed significant responsibility for the potential insured financial losses associated with future terrorist attacks. While TRIA, which was reauthorized in 2005 and again in 2007, has been credited with stabilizing markets for commercial property insurance, some building owners, Members of Congress, and other industry participants remain concerned that there may still be gaps in coverage. In particular, they have expressed concerns about the ability of policyholders located in large urban areas that are viewed as being at high risk of attack to obtain terrorism insurance coverage. Under the 2007 statute that reauthorized TRIA coverage, GAO was required to conduct a study …