This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water. It summarizes the current legislative status of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related legislative activity. The report lists the key CRS staff relevant to the issues covered and related CRS products.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This Report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This Report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies of the House Committee on Appropriations the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and General Government of the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to determining whether the State's salary structures are competitive with the appropriate labor market, whether classified employees' salaries are competitive with those of employees in similar jobs in government and industry, whether the Position Classification Plan (Plan) requires any realignment, additions, or deletions of positions, and whether other aspects of the State's compensation system could be enhanced.

A legislative appropriation request for the biennium 2004-2005, in order to provide more effective claims administration and risk management services and ultimately result in savings to state agencies in the form of reduced workers' compensation claims and costs, reduced insurance purchases and improved insurance coverages, and more effective risk management programs.

The purpose of this report is to help understand how the budget increases of the last ten years have been allocated.

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This report documents the results of the L-Basin Corrosion Surveillance Program for the fiscal year 2004. Test coupons were removed from the basin on February 12, 2004, shipped to Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), and visually examined in a contaminated laboratory hood. Selected coupons were metallurgically characterized to establish the extent of general corrosion and pitting. Pitting was observed on galvanically coupled and on intentionally creviced coupons, thus demonstrating that localized concentration cells were formed during the exposure period. In these cases, the susceptibility to pitting was not attributed to aggressive basin water chemistry but to localized conditions (intentional crevices and galvanic coupling) that allowed the development of oxygen and/or metal ion concentration cells that produced locally aggressive waters. General oxidation was also observed on all of the coupons with localized corrosion observed on some of the coupons. These coupons were not pretreated to produce a protective oxide layer prior to exposure in the basin water. Non-protected coupons are more susceptible to corrosion than fuel cladding which has developed a protective oxide layer from high temperature reactor operations. However, the oxide on spent nuclear fuel (SNF) stored in L-Basin is not necessarily in pristine condition. Some of the oxide may …

The Yucca Mountain site was recommended by the President to be a geological repository for commercial spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The multi-barrier approach was adopted for assessing and predicting system behavior, including both natural barriers and engineered barriers. A major component of the long-term strategy for safe disposal of nuclear waste is first to completely isolate the radionuclides in waste packages for long times and then to greatly retard the egress and transport of radionuclides from penetrated packages. The goal of the Materials Performance Targeted Thrust program is to further enhance the understanding of the role of engineered barriers in waste isolation. In addition, the Thrust will explore technical enhancements and seek to offer improvements in materials costs and reliability.

The 2004 visual inspection of four Uruguay nuclear fuel assemblies stored in L-Basin was completed. This was the third inspection of this wet stored fuel since its arrival in the summer of 1998. Visual inspection photographs of the fuel from the previous and the recent inspections were compared and no evidence of significant corrosion was found on the individual fuel plate photographs. Fuel plates that showed areas of pitting in the cladding during the original receipt inspection were also identified during the 2004 inspection. However, a few pits were found on the non-fuel aluminum clamping plates that were not visible during the original and 2001 inspections.

This report describes the preparation and application of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for the highly selective analysis of target signature compounds. The overall goal of this project task is to exploit the high selectivity of MIPs to generate a pure and enriched fraction of target analyte from environmental samples, either during the sampling stage or immediately thereafter. Due to the high purity of analyte fraction obtained, simplified field portable instrumentation that is capable of high performance trace analysis can be constructed. Major sections contained in this FY 2004 Final Report describe: (1) the synthesis and evaluation of MIPs specific toward explosives, (2) the design, construction, and performance of a novel instrument for the trace aqueous analysis of G-series nerve agent hydrolysis compounds, and (3) interfacing MIP separations with ion mobility spectrometric detection.