This issue of Alternative Fuel News discusses Executive Order 13149 which is designed to not only increase the use of alternative fuel by federal agencies but also to increase the use of fuel efficient vehicles in the federal fleet. Also highlighted is the 6th National Clean Cities Conference and Expo held in San Diego, May 7-10, 2000, which attracted nearly 1,000 people for three action-packed days of alternative fuel activities. The work to develop a market for alternative fuels is more important than ever.

A number of programs have been implemented on the Hanford Site that utilize the pumping and treatment of contaminated groundwater as part of their remediation strategy. Often the treated water is reinjected into the aquifer at injection well sites. The implementation of remedial pump and treat systems, however, results in hydraulic pressure responses, both areally and vertically (i.e., with depth) within the pumped aquifer. The area within the aquifer affected by the pump and treat system (i.e., radius of influence) is commonly estimated based on detecting associated water-level responses within surrounding monitor wells. Natural external stresses, such as barometric pressure fluctuations, however, can have a discernible impact on well water-level measurements. These temporal barometric effects may significantly mask water-level responses within more distant wells that are only slightly affected (< 0.10 m) by the test system. External stress effects, therefore, can lead to erroneous indications of the radius of influence of the imposed pump and treat system remediation activities and can greatly diminish the ability to analyze the associated well responses for hydraulic property characterization. When these extraneous influences are significant, adjustments or removal of the barometric effects from the test-response record may be required for quantitative hydrologic assessment. This …

Building America Developments on-line newsletter highlights the Erie-Ellington Homes publicly-funded housing project in Boston, Massachusetts. A Building America and industry partnership that produced energy-efficient manufactured homes built with foam core panels is featured. Also, Habitat for Humanity dedicates two energy-efficient test houses in East Tennessee, and affordable, healthy homes are offered in metro Atlanta. Upcoming events in the Building America Program are also listed.

The purpose of the Business Systems Planning Project System Requirements Specification (SRS) is to provide the outline and contents of the requirements for the CH2M HILL Hanford Group, Inc. (CHG) integrated business and technical information systems. The SRS will translate proposed objectives into the statement of the functions that are to be performed and data and information flows that they require. The requirements gathering methodology will use (1) facilitated group requirement sessions; (2) individual interviews; (3) surveys; and (4) document reviews. The requirements will be verified and validated through coordination of the technical requirement team and CHG Managers. The SRS document used the content and format specified in Lockheed Martin Services, Inc. Organization Standard Software Practices in conjunction with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standard 8340-1984 for Systems Requirements Documents.

This Report first discusses the critical holdings enunciated by the Supreme Court in Buckley, including those: upholding reasonable contribution limits, striking down expenditure limits, upholding disclosure reporting requirements, and upholding the system of voluntary presidential election expenditure limitations linked with public financing. It then examines the Court’s extension of Buckley in fourteen subsequent cases, evaluating them in three regulatory contexts: contribution limits (California Medical Association v. FEC; Citizens Against Rent Control v. Berkeley; Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC), expenditure limits (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti; FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life; Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce; FEC v. National Right to Work; Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC; FEC v. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; FEC v. National Conservative Political Action Committee), and disclosure requirements (Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation; Brown v. Socialist Workers ‘74 Campaign Committee; FEC v. Akins; McIntrye v. Ohio Elections Commission).

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Federal protection of the environment must hew to the same constitutional strictures as any other federal actions. In the past decade, however, the Supreme Court has invigorated several of these strictures in ways that present new challenges to congressional drafters of environmental statutes. This report reviews six of these newly emergent constitutional areas, with special attention to their significance for current and future environmental legislation.

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The magnet group at LBNL is currently in the process of developing high-field accelerator magnets for use in future colliders. One of the primary challenges is to provide a design which is cost-effective and simple to manufacture, at the same time resulting in good training performance and field quality adequate for accelerator operation. Recent studies have focused on a racetrack geometry that has the virtues of simplicity and conductor compatibility. The results have been applied to the design of a series of prototype high-field magnets based on Nb{sub 3}Sn conductor.

The Hanford wildfire in the summer of 2000 destroyed much of the vegetation on the Hanford Site, often resulting in soil erosion and dust storms. The 200 W Area has been affected by dust storms, and a re-vegetation project has been planned for the area to the west, the source of much of the dust. To determine if the seed bank in this area had been damaged by the fire, inhibiting natural re-growth, soil samples were collected from three burned areas and watered to see how much seedling emergence would occur. The soil was then sifted for grass seeds and the seeds examined for signs of fire damage. From this data it was concluded that significant damage to the seed bank probably occurred in the 200 West Expansion Area, and slight damage may have occurred primarily to monocot seeds in the seed banks farther west.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed federal advertising contracts awarded to advertising firms, focusing on: (1) the discretion that federal agencies have in determining a contract's scope of work and the contractor requirements for awarding advertising contracts; (2) whether contractor requirements in the solicitations for contracts were consistent with the scope of work described in the solicitations for the advertising contracts with first-time obligations in fiscal years 1998 and 1999 that were awarded to large advertising firms through full and open competition; and (3) whether there was required documentation for the sole-source justification and approval for the advertising contracts with first-time obligations in fiscal years 1998 and 1999 that were awarded through sole-source procedures."

A briefing report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed international parental child abduction issues, focusing on German, Swedish, and Austrian handling of U.S. cases."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the circumstances surrounding the process used by a consortium of eight Michigan intermediate school districts to contract with Deloitte Consulting LLC for medicaid consulting services."

The authors an uncertainty analysis of data taken using the Rossi technique, in which the horizontal oscilloscope sweep is driven sinusoidally in time ,while the vertical axis follows the signal amplitude. The analysis is done within a Bayesian framework. Complete inferences are obtained by tilting the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, which produces random samples from the posterior probability distribution expressed in terms of the parameters.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS), as well as other third-generation synchrotron light sources, uses permanent magnets in the insertion devices to produce x-rays for scientific research. When placed in a high-energy storage ring, these permanent magnets are subjected to irradiation from synchrotron radiation, high-energy bremsstrahlung, and bremsstrahlung-produced photoneutrons. Previous investigations have exhibited varying degrees of degradation in the intensity of magnetization of these magnets due to irradiation from electron beams, {sup 60}Co {gamma}rays, and high-energy neutrons. The APS specifically uses Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets in their insertion devices. Although no detectable radiation-induced demagnetization has been observed in the APS insertion devices so far, partial demagnetization has been observed in at least one insertion device at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), where Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets are also used.

The basis for development of the Multi-Canister Overpack (MCO) Monitoring Plan was established in HNF-3312, MCO Monitoring Activity Description (Sexton 1998), with the following specific objectives: The safety of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project processes for retrieving, packaging, handling, conditioning, and storing the N Reactor spent nuclear fuel has been demonstrated by conservative analyses, as compiled in the project safety basis and licensing documentation. Appropriate quality assurance and independent checking of engineering, fabrication, and construction are being applied, and there will be in-process monitoring and verification of MCO loading and conditioning actions. Once the MCOs have been placed in storage, there is no safety requirement, regulatory requirement, or precedent to monitor them. Although not required, a monitoring program which would acquire data for use by Process Engineering is considered valuable for several reasons (Sexton 1998): Good engineering practice--Acquiring data at a reasonable cost that may be useful in developing a fuller understanding of the behavior of an engineered system is good engineering practice. Actual data on full scale MCOs is otherwise unavailable--Previous investigations have been limited to small fuel samples or simulant prototypes and have been relatively short in duration. MCO monitoring can provide data on large loads of actual …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on Medicare home health care's recent declines in spending, focusing on: (1) the declines in service use underlying the changes in spending; (2) the extent of the changes in use across beneficiaries, home health agencies (HHA), and locations; and (3) identify any implications these new patterns of home health use have for the impact of the prospective payment system (PPS)."

Our goals in this project were to (1) develop a new design concept for a high reliability microrelay, (2) build a prototype, and (3) demonstrate high force relay closure in the prototype. During FY1999, we designed a microrelay to meet commercial specifications: 3 g (or 0.03 N) closure force and 30-mA actuation current at less than 0.5 V. Our microrelay not only occupies less than 1 mm{sup 3}--about 1% of the volume of the smallest commercial part--but also its fabrication takes advantage of semiconductor processing, which has the potential to automate microrelay production. Conventional relays are fabricated by assembling many discrete parts. The process includes a number of nonautomated assembly and inspection steps, which increase fabrication cost and limit possible size reductions. Microrelays based on electrostatic forces can be fabricated by thin-film techniques employed in the semiconductor industry; however, the voltages required to make reliable electrical contact in an electrostatic relay significantly increase the cost of the driver. Microrelays based on electromagnetic forces, on the other hand, provide reliable contacts at low voltage. Reliable metal-to-metal contacts require sufficient contact force to plastically deform contact surfaces at asperities-thereby increasing the contact area. On the other hand, contact metallurgy and the gaseous …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the: (1) number of borrowers insured by the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund who might have been eligible to receive dividends from their mortgage insurance if the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) had been required to pay distributive shares in FY 1999; and (2) amount of annual premiums these individuals paid."

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) will use the world's largest laser to compress and heat BB-sized capsules of fusion fuel to thermo-nuclear ignition. NIF experiments will produce temperatures and densities like those in the Sun or in an exploding nuclear weapon. The experiments will help scientists sustain confidence in the nuclear weapon stockpile without nuclear tests as a unique element of the DOE'S Stockpile Stewardship Program and will produce additional benefits in basic science and fusion energy.

Nuclear Energy Research Initiative: Development of a Stabilized Light Water Reactor Fuel Matrix for Extended Burnup

The main objective of this project is to develop an advanced fuel matrix capable of achieving extended burnup while improving safety margins and reliability for present operations. In the course of this project, the authors improve understanding of the mechanism for high burnup structure (HBS) formation and attempt to design a fuel to minimize its formation. The use of soluble dopants in the UO{sub 2} matrix to stabilize the matrix and minimize fuel-side corrosion of the cladding is the main focus.

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on government funding and support for the Olympic Games, focusing on: (1) the amount of federal funding and support provided to the 1984 and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, and planned for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and the types of projects and activities that were funded and supported; (2) the federal policies, legislative authorizations, and agency controls in place for providing the federal funds and support to the Olympic Games; and (3) whether federal funding for certain Olympic-related projects was provided in accordance with applicable laws and regulations."

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