Jiggs and Other Stories

Jiggs and Other Stories represent a diverse sampling of my work as a UNM graduate student and a writer of fiction. The works presented here are a pastiche of genres that include magical realism, tragedy, absurdist fiction, and fantasy and adventure. Beyond those significant categories, however, these stories are the product of my imagination. The power of fiction itself—Id like to believe—depends upon the capacities of the mind. When knowledge, experience, restless imagination and bold creativity are combined—good fiction supersedes the boundaries of literary categorization. My intention, in part, is to have these stories serve as an homage to many of my preferred authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers, John O\u27Hara and other American writers as well as a panoply of African, British, Irish, French, German and Russian novelists, short story writers and playwrights. The collection is prefaced by an introduction intended to give a full sense of what kind of enrichment these stories hope to achieve. Each story is summarized and examined to present an overview of the theory and the craft that defines it.\u2

The Component Test Facility: A National User Facility for Testing of High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) Components and Systems

The Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) and other High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) Projects require research, development, design, construction, and operation of a nuclear plant intended for both high-efficiency electricity production and high-temperature industrial applications, including hydrogen production. During the life cycle stages of an HTGR, plant systems, structures and components (SSCs) will be developed to support this reactor technology. To mitigate technical, schedule, and project risk associated with development of these SSCs, a large-scale test facility is required to support design verification and qualification prior to operational implementation. As a full-scale helium test facility, the Component Test facility (CTF) will provide prototype testing and qualification of heat transfer system components (e.g., Intermediate Heat Exchanger, valves, hot gas ducts), reactor internals, and hydrogen generation processing. It will perform confirmation tests for large-scale effects, validate component performance requirements, perform transient effects tests, and provide production demonstration of hydrogen and other high-temperature applications. Sponsored wholly or in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, the CTF will support NGNP and will also act as a National User Facility to support worldwide development of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor technologies