Nepa NO.6 Board of Consultants Meeting

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THIS DOCUMENT CONSISTS OF ATOMIC ENERGY ACT OF 1946 NEPA 86 BOARD OF CCNSULTAN"S MEETING BEST COPY AVAILABLE

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NEPA #6 BOARD OP CONSULTANTS YSGTING (a) The Lexington Project Report (b) Same Remarks about Operations (a) Status of Facility Construction ( b ) Some Aspects of Security 5. Technical Resentation of NFSA 16 6. Open Discussion by %!ember Cunpanies

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Capt. A. L. Baird, Bureau of Aeronautics Capt. C. Y. Bolster, Office of Naval Research Maj. H. F. bze, Office Deputy Chief of Staff, Materiel Capt. William B. Ehh, AsdC &E. Field Office, Oak Ridge Mr. Frank Pi. Caldwe:Ll, United Aircraft Corporation col. Frank C. Cook, Office Deplty Chief of Staff, Materiel Lt. Col. Jay P. Dawley, PkO Division, Department of h p Col. M. C. Deder, Office Deputy Chief of Staff, Yateriel k. Ivan H. Driggs, Bureau of Aeronautics Mr. Carl Frederick, Fredric Flader, Incorporated Maj. Donald J . Grant, Air Yate riel Command Col. V. R. Haugm, Research & Development Board Col. 0. G. Hapod, Office Deplty Chief of Staff, Operations Capt. Vi. T. Hines, Bureau of & ron au tics Can, E. W. Hrlbar, Ul it ary Liaison Committee Capt. J. A. Jordan, Office of Naval Research UF. Andrew fal it in sky, Fairchild - NEPA Col. D. J. Kein, Atai cbe re Cownission Dr. Yorrla Kolodney, NBPA Consultant Capt. R. A. Lavender, NEPA Associate Consultant

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Mr. Charles Meyer, Westinchouse Electric Corporation &. Reeves Morrisson, United Aircraft Corporation &. Lee Ohlinger, Northrop Aircraft Incorporated Brig. Gen. J. IT. Phillips, Research & Development Board MI-. Benjamin Pinkel, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Maj. Gen. E. Y. Powers, Office Deputy Chief of S t a f f , Materiel Brig. Gen. D. IL. Putt, Office Deputy Chief of Staff, Materiel Col. J. W. Sessums, Office Deputy Chief of Staff, Materiel Corn. J. L. Shoenhair, Office of Naval Research &. Carleton Shiicc, Atomic Energy Commission Maj. J. P. Tavlor, Research & Developnent Roard Mr. Racer S. Yarner, Atomic Energy Commission Col. Ralph Wassell, Air Materiel Cormand Rear Adm. C. 11. Wheelock, Bureau of Ships Brig. Gen. R. C. milson, Military Liaison Comittee Mr. 0 . B. Woods, Office of the Under Secretary of the AF

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stra fg ler s who have been caught in this bad reether would arrive. Gentlemen, i f You will all come t o order, we will start 'de have waited about ten mfnutes hoping that some of the If you can ' t hear very well i n here, I wish you would signal this table, because w e have around the table with u s members of the Board of Consultan ts.I think w e have two that are absent, Frm time t o time as cluestions may be asked and answers given, it may not be too easy t o hear inthe back of the roan. It would be a great favor if you would signal us. I will ask everyone t o speak as loudly and clearly as he can and notto speak up at this end of the room, but so t o speak that his vloice can b e heard atthe rear. experience in this roam, and Idon ' t know the acoustics too well. This is our first In starting off the meeting, I would like to review a little bit some of the milestones of last year, and in some degree establish the platform on which we are standing atthe moment aa far as the NFSA Project A nunber of thinca happened last year that are quite significant, and I think it mirht be well first t o review our own act ivf ties. The best way t o do that is t o enunerate the rneetincs that have been held and the objects of those meetinrs, which brings us really to Report No, 6, the one that you have todav. I n January of last yeatr w e issued Report No. 5 . Those reports,t ~ p u n t i l Pepart No. 6, have alwavs been issued i n two Corms, one form that has been cleared for Board of Consultants membership, and that has never been t h e complete report. R e ? Ort No. 6, therefore,isa milestone because for the first time all of the material will he found i n it and all of the consultant member conpanis now have aceeas tothe full information. We consider this very important, and we have felt that it has been a hendicap for the consulting companies not t o have access to the full I n April we had - Iwill call it -- a refresher seminar on the basic science underlying the needs of this project. ce as ful meetinc. information that Is of concern in this project, and I think it polished up a little bit some of those of us who were i n need of another injecJt :;;.rved t o brine: some new people into the later

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h June we had our sympositun on materials, particularly for hiph ternper a ture use. The report on that symposium, I think, contained aere at deal of material that is of interest outside of this project and may have been sort of a gathering instrument for puttinft i n one place dl of the material on this subject. In August w e had a meeting of t h e consultant companies, which was not a regular Board of Consultants meeting. thereof because we were not able at that the to present Report No. 6. It was not organized insufficient fashion. It was held ina sense in lieu AlthouEh our or iE in al intention had been t o hold a meeting at that time, for reasons thatI will touch on ina moment o r two it seemed inadvisable, and instead the consultant rne9bers .were broucht t o Oak Fiidre i n place of a meetine here, and were show the prorere?? of the I n other mrds, they were briefed much as we had briefed the members of the Parker Connittee, the Advisorp Comaittee tothe Atoqic p aer ty Commission, on industrial uses of atomic energy, and PS ne briefed the Eroups from the Lexineton Pro i ect. A very interest in qat tm pt was made at that meeting t o find out, if we could, what sort of at in e scale we were working on for the coapletion of t h e project; and each associated cornpmy of the Board of Corlsul-tant group was asked t of on its own opiqion of a probable scale of acccmplishment in point of time, based on information they were fiirnished The, studv of those estimates is ill un in a ting and interesting. were presented as amaxi.mq and a minimum, with a sort of a statistical mean of the composite opinions of all the companies. It is interesting to see those cornpanies that have, shall we say, a relatively dim vim; and those companies that had a very brie ht view of the situation,the spread between them, and then what would be the It was ina sense a mental exercise in crystal ball cazing, with such experience a s each company could ccntribute from its own attempts t o build apparatus on which much scientific information had t o be derived In December we had the symposium on radiation effects on material. That, Ifeel, Was also a very interest her contribution and represented, as far as we could get it, all of the up-to-date information on that

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Those were the major formal activities of lest year; and while we had only one official Board of Consultants meetinc of the character weare having tday,as you can see, there were a great nany activities, and they take a treat deal. of preparation. Along with all these nieetinns, theN EPA group had some very serious work t o do that was not, ina sense, of the norn al constructive work of planninb and develoment, which was broucrht about by the briefing activities that were necessarv and reports that were needed for the Lexington Project and for similar activities ; althoumh the Lexington ProJect was outstandin& the one that needed the most thoucht riven t o it and the most preparation. If you ~ 5 1 1mentally, now, go over this list of meetincs, svnposia, and the like, you can zet sone idea of the call on the tine,attention, and effort of the NEPAL science croups, eneineering groups, i n order t o prepare for this array of meetings. That brings us to today's meeting as far as that phase of the work is concerned; and Iqain would like to mention that that Report No. 6is a complete, unabridged report on the subject presented i n it. The reason I have emphasized that twice i s because our Board of Consultan t members, these companies, have been opera tin r under a considerable handicap lip until now. I mentioned. A particular one has been the fact that these Board of Consultant contracts for each particular cmpany have been alow while those will be sicned within a week. The other one, we think, ouEht t o be signed within the next two weeks, letus say. That one company is having sane difficulty on a matter of policy. is a large cmpany, and I think it is clearing through the various echelons of that large organization. There are other handicaps besides the one Allof them are now conlpleted but two, and one o f Except for that one company, o r these two, they were not p edt ted the full and unabridged report. The rest have now had it and had an opportunity t o study It. We cannot give that information until the conTherefore, it is a matter of considerable importance tothe project es well as, I ucnild hope, t o those companies that this fon al signing occur as quickly as they can effect it through their own orranizations. That places ++e Board of Consultant companies for the first time now inthe inner circle. With the sicned contracts and the full info ma - tion,I have only one other thouaht, and I consultant companies atthe moment. am really speaking tothe

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That is the desirability of their sending fill-time workinr Dersonnel tothe project for educational purposes and i n order to better in tee rate themselves into the operation of the Droject. It should be obvious t o them and t o everyone present that it is like all activities of a Eroup nature. and to carry out, some of the specific subcontracts on the specialized phases of the work that many of these companies have taken on i s also subject and throwing their full wei Eh tinto it is t o jump right in and get their feet wet. You :et o u t of them what you put To read the reDort i s no doubt st imu latin r and interesting, But the only way of really getting into the heart of this The way t o do thiat isto have people working on the project that will ultimately, at their convenience, E O back t o those conpanies aid cerry forward from there. I would like also in this little brief introduction to mention a few of the accomplishments that are definite enough t o be worthy of mention. I have tried to put down only what seemed t o us like significant contri but ions. I think one of the first ones tobe mentioned is our attempt t o attack the problem of what happens to lubricants under irradiation, surprising results on that subject, as many of you know. We had It was very clear that many of the usual lubricants are unsuited t o onerating i n any radiation area. They either jell or semi-solidify o r become viscous and have little value as a lubricant. It could have been a very serious problem. However, w e have gone f w enouch into it, that is, one of our subcontractors, the California 9evelopcnent Corwration, that we now are informed by them that 111bricants can be pit toeether t h a t can operate under these conditions and retain their lubrication properties. tri but ion.Ve think that is a definite conWe also attacked in a fairly early stage the question of what will haupen to electronic elements subjected t o radiation. While our work is not conclusive in that area, it is rather hearteninr; and we feel that it also is a contribution. As far as we know, and a s f e r as our experiments could determine, it is going t o be possible t o expose electronic elenents i n radiation areas and have them functtion properly. I think much more work has t o be done on it, but weare not i n an area of total ignorance on that subject to-

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The next one is,in my opinion, a most important one. call it an accomplishnent, and pet you can. Yet you can ' t Ve were naive enourh i n Uay 1946 and i n subsequent meetincs t o assume that we could establish a practical working combination of engine and reactor by usiqa conventional turbo - jet en r in e which we thought we could simply extract from what was then the state of industry developnen tin the turbo-jet field. Last year it became extremely clear that the engineering phase of the pro.iect is as difficult, as, let us say, the nuclear phase, for want of a better word. It is not a strict definition, because there is nuclear engineering just as there is power plant engineering. It seems easier to describe the power plant side as the engineering phase because it is an art that has extended t o such a degree frun the scientific information that it i s leircely an applied art. W e now find that the engine portion of this project,the power plant portion of the project, is dictated by the nuclear considerations, and vice versa. The nuclear considerations are dictated by the limitations That becomes readily aplDarent when you consider the conditions under which an aircraft power Dlant mst operate,the mention of getting the heat out of the nuclear nrocess and into the enEine cycle. The inter - relation will be clearly demonstrated, I think,later in this meeting, when you see soae of the studies that have been made on the parameters that dictate the type of nuclear reactors which ne shall probably concentrate on. So, i n sumarizinc, f would say that we now recognize, and our Air Force mons or s recocnize, that the broblem of engine developnent is of equal matnitude tothe probleim of the nuclear reactor development. I think it fair also to mention one other characteristic, and that is that the jet engine will undouhtedly be remi red to have, and will have, a m~ichh irher cmpressilrm ratio than has been conceived necessary for The …