Available data pertaining to size distribution of the particulates in Hanford underground tank waste have been reviewed. Although considerable differences exist between measurement methods, it may be stated with 95% confidence that the median particle size does not exceed 275 {micro}m in at least 95% of the ten tanks selected as sources of HLW feed for Phase 1 vitrification in the RPP. This particle size is recommended as a design basis for the WFD transfer system.

Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is under consideration as a potential high-level radioactive waste repository situated above the water table in 12.7 Ma tuffs. A wealth of textural and geochemical evidence from low-temperature deposits of calcite and silica, indicates that their genesis is related to unsaturated zone (UZ) percolation and that the level of the potential repository has never been saturated. Nonetheless, some scientists contend that thermal waters have periodically risen to the surface depositing calcite and opal in the tuffs and at the surface. This hypothesis received some support in 1996 when two-phase fluid inclusions (FIs) with homogenization temperatures (Th) between 35 and 75 C were reported from UZ calcite. Calcite deposition likely followed closely on the cooling of the tuffs and continues into the present. The paragenetic sequence of calcite and silica in the UZ is early stage calcite followed by chalcedony and quartz, then calcite with local opal during middle and late stages. Four types of FIs are found in calcite assemblages: (1) all-liquid (L); (2) all-vapor (V); (3) 2-phase with large and variable V:L ratios; and (4) a few 2-phase with small and consistent V:L ratios. Late calcite contains no FI assemblages indicating elevated depositional temperatures. In early …

"Soft money" has become one of the major issues in the area of campaign financing in federal elections. The controversy surrounding this issue is due to the perception that soft money may be the largest loophole in the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). Soft money is broadly defined as funds that are raised and spent according to applicable state laws; that would be impermissible, under the FECA, to spend directly in federal elections and that may have an indirect influence on federal elections. This Issue Brief discusses three major types of soft money: political party soft money, corporate and labor union soft money, and soft money used for issue advocacy communications.

This report discusses the status and current developments of China's missile programs.

This CRS report contains three parts. The first part discusses ballistic missiles of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The second discusses the PRC’s cruise missiles. The last section offers concluding observations. Two tables summarize the discussion on current ballistic and cruise missiles in service or under development. The appendix, prepared by Robert Shuey, discusses China’s reported application of global positioning system (GPS) technology to improve the accuracy of its missiles. This report focuses on the status and current developments of China’s missile programs, rather than their history.

This report addresses the criticality concerns associated with process water handling in the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility. The controls and limitations on equipment design and operations to control potential criticality occurrences are identified.

Here we present designs for a static septum magnet with two adjacent apertures where ideally one aperture has a uniform dipole field and the other zero field. Two designs are considered. One is a true septum magnet with a thin layer of coils and materials separating the dipole field region from the null field region. During the beam switching process, the intense electron beam will spray across this material septum leading to concerns on beam control, vacuum quality, radiation damage, etc. due to the lost particles. Therefore, another configuration without a material septum is also considered. With this configuration it is more difficult to achieve high field quality near the transition region. Shaped shims are designed to limit the degradation of beam quality (emittance growth). Simulations are performed to obtain the magnetic field profile in both designs. A PIC simulation is used to transport a beam slice consisting of several thousand particles through the magnet to estimate emittance growth in the magnet due to the field non-uniformity.

The direct electrochemical conversion of carbon involves discharge of suspensions of reactive carbon particles in a molten salt electrolyte against an oxygen (air) cathode. (Figure 1). The free energy and the enthalpy of the oxidation reaction are nearly identical. This allows theoretical efficiencies ({Delta}G(T)/{Delta}H) to approach 100% at temperatures from 500 to 800 C. Entropy heat losses are therefore negligible. The activities of the elemental carbon and of the carbon dioxide product are uniform throughout the fuel cell and constant over discharge time. This stabilizes cell EMF and allows full utilization of the carbon fuel in a single pass. Finally, the energy cost for pyrolysis of hydrocarbons is generally very low compared with that of steam reforming or water gas reactions. Direct electrochemical conversion of carbon might be compared with molten carbonate fuel cell using carbon rather than hydrogen. However, there are important differences. There is no hydrogen involved (except from trace water contamination). The mixture of molten carbonate and carbon is not highly flammable. The carbon is introduced in as a particulate, rather than as a high volume flow of hydrogen. At the relatively low rates of discharge (about 1 kA/m{sup 2}), the stoichiometric requirements for carbon dioxide by …

Using an induction linac, ETA-II, we are studying the interaction of a 2 kA, 6 MeV electron beam focused to a <2 mm diameter spot on high-Z foils. A focus shift was noticed when changing from 5 mil to 40 mil tantalum foil targets. This shift was subsequently attributed to the effect of a substantial fraction of the incident electron beam backscattering from the target, reducing the net beam current. This fraction varies with the thickness and density of the target. The presence and magnitude of the backscattered component was confirmed using Faraday cup collectors and beam current monitors. Calculations confirm the magnitude of the focus shift is consistent with the observed backscattered fraction.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the steps the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is taking to help ensure departmentwide information systems security."

We describe a diagnostics system developed, to measure exponential gain properties and the electron beam dynamics inside the strong focusing 4-m long undulator for the VISA (Visible to Infrared SASE Amplifier) FEL. The technical challenges included working inside the small undulator gap, optimizing the electron beam diagnostics in the high background environment of the spontaneous undulator radiation, multiplexing and transporting the photon beam. Initial results are discussed.

GRB 990123 established the existence of prompt optical emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The Livermore Optical Transient Imaging System (LOTIS) has been conducting a fully automated search for this kind of simultaneous low energy emission from GRBs since October 1996. Although LOTIS has obtained simultaneous, or near simultaneous, coverage of the error boxes obtained with BATSE, IPN, XTE, and BeppoSAX for several GRBs, image analysis resulted in only upper limits. The unique gamma-ray properties of GRB 990123, such as very large fluence (top 0.4%) and hard spectrum, complicate comparisons with more typical bursts. We scale and compare gamma-ray properties, and in some cases afterglow properties, from the best LOTIS events to those of GRB 990123 in an attempt to determine whether the prompt optical emission of this event is representative of all GRBs. Furthermore, using LOTIS upper limits in conjunction with the relativistic blast wave model, we weakly constrain the GRB and afterglow parameters such as density of the circumburster medium and bulk Lorentz factor of the ejecta.

The authors understanding of multiphase physics and the associated predictive capability for multi-phase systems are severely limited by current continuum modeling methods and experimental approaches. This research will deliver an unprecedented modeling capability to directly simulate three-dimensional multi-phase systems at the particle-scale. The model solves the fully coupled equations of motion governing the fluid phase and the individual particles comprising the solid phase using a newly discovered, highly efficient coupled numerical method based on the discrete-element method and the Lattice-Boltzmann method. A massively parallel implementation will enable the solution of large, physically realistic systems.

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This paper attempts to develop supporting material in an effort to provide new options for licensing Laboratory-created software. Where employees and the Lab wish to release software codes as so-called ''Open Source'', they need, at a minimum, new licensing language for their released products. Several open source software licenses are reviewed to understand their common elements, and develop recommendations regarding new language.

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A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) review and approval of drug manufacturers' applications to market seven drugs that would be covered by H.R. 1598 and S.1172, focusing on: (1) the review and approval times for the seven pipeline drugs in comparison with other drugs and the factors that contributed to the time FDA required to approve the three of the seven drugs for which the manufacturers agreed to supply GAO with information; and (2) whether Congress based the 2-year patent extension granted to pipeline drugs on the assumption that FDA action on these drugs' applications would occur within the average length of time for FDA approval of new drug applications."

This plan describes the characterization work that will be performed on the second borehole to be drilled in support of the Immobilized Low-Activity Waste Performance Assessment

This plan describes the characterization work that will be preformed on the second borehole to be drilled in support of the Immobilized Low-Activity Waste Performance Assessment

The US Department of Energy's Hanford Site has the most diverse and largest amounts of radioactive tank waste in the US. High-level radioactive waste has been stored at Hanford since 1944. Approximately 209,000 m{sup 3} (54 Mgal) of waste are currently stored in 177 tanks. Vitrification and onsite disposal of low-activity tank waste (LAW) are embodied in the strategy described in the Tri-Party Agreement. The tank waste is to be retrieved, separated into low- and high-level fractions, and then immobilized. The low-activity vitrified waste will be disposed of in the 200 East Area of the Hanford Site. This report is a plan to drill and characterize the second borehole for the Performance Assessment. The first characterization borehole was drilled in 1998. The plan describes data collection activities for determining physical and chemical properties of the vadose zone and saturated zone on the northeast side of the proposed disposal site. These data will then be used in the 2005 Performance Assessment.

We present an update on our ongoing effort to establish a dedicated observation program with an automated 0.6 meter telescope system that can detect GRB optical signals from 30 s to many hours after the start of the burst. The Super-LOTIS telescope has a 0.8 x 0.8{sup o} field-of-view, is sensitive to V 17 {approx} 19 objects, depending on the integration times, and will be placed at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. This paper presents technical aspects of this telescope and first results from initial operations at LLNL. Utilizing real-time coordinates from BATSE, BeppoSAX, XTE, IPN, HETE-2 and INTEGRAL, our LOTIS and SLOTIS systems will measure prompt GRB optical light curves that will enhance our understanding of GRBs.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) reorganization plans, focusing on: (1) what factors, complicate the interactions between small businesses and IRS; and (2) whether IRS' reorganization plans address those factors."

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Construction of section 58.014(b), Agriculture Code, which relates to the voting procedures of the board of the Texas Agricultural Finance Authority.

This fact sheet describes the wind energy deployment efforts and green power programs in the state of Pennsylvania.