Document text
Machine-read from the scan, so expect some errors. Lines that couldn’t be read are left out.
Page 1
CONSIDL,rlATIOPJ OF A f,eTHOD FOR TEEIR FZCOVERY From maldo E, Cohn Before reading this, sign and date below: Go No Elliott
Page 2
Such quantities of the common radioactive fission uroducts may In themselves be useful as sources of sbecif'ic Etable isotoms (see Table 11). hn examule of such secondary nroduction is the ~r95-~b95-~095 chain; a quantity of purified Zr-Cb mixture produces stable 14095 continu- .cusly. This isotope occurs i n natural No t o $he extent of 16,3%. larly, from Sr90 one c m obtain Zr9O; from BaA440t he C eu o isotow results, and so on. fission products as tracers, requiring small quartities, and as partable sources of A and J" radiation, requiring larger qm nti ties (see Table 111) one must add their intrinsic chemical and ohysicl?l values both as snecific artificial isotopes and a s moducers o f specific natural isotopes, Thus, to the commonly recognized t-alize of t9e radioactive The urgency of getting t h e Hanford nroct:!ss under way t o aroduce plutonium in quantity effectively mecluded the consideration either of processes or of developmental and operations1 mbu'tmwer directed at rscovering all the moducts of t h e Hanford ufPes, This urgency is now a thing of t h e past; furthermore, the radioisotobe senaretian wcrk a t Clinton taboratories by Section C-IV has evolved a nrocess which goes B long way towards the goal of extracting "everything from t h e ~ 3 . gexcept the squeal' isl vae, carrier-free, usable form. Smcifically, we have a Drocess, mesentlg operating on a 1-2 kilogram ( ~ 2 0curie) scale by remote controP, which La, Sr, Ba, Cs, Ru and Te. It is also capable of iscrlathg other b e h - t iv ely minor) fission products and slug im.puritles and of concentrating, purif'ying and metathesizing each o r aPP of these without the use of carriers g thus permitting each to be obtained in m e form 9nd mall volume, This is an all-adsorptian process, ext.e&ing i n t h e directioo noted above t h e process poposed and developed by Boyd snd coworkers f o r Pu extraction (some semi-works development of this crucess along Hanford lines hes already been accomplished). It i s cabable of comjination with other tpes af vocesses, fncluding the solvent extraction nrmess now under deaelomnent a t Chicago for Hanford use, As a matter of fact, me have been using a solventextraction process as a routine preliminary s t e p -91our adsorption colmn fractionation procedure, The urocess is canable r<fdevelopnent to the mint where mat or all of the Hanford produce may be Drocessed to isolate the many speclal materials now being wasted, me propose, on the basis of the co-sxl:&tence af a continuing su'~p?J and of the processes f o r isolation, that considcretion be given t o combhlng the two to arepare large quantities of these nev nateria3.s.
Page 3
Rea A SuMBllARY OF FXSSION PRODUCTS AVAILABLE AT HAIWRD AND A PROPOSAL FOR CONSID WI ON OF A hETEOD FOR THEIR RECOVERY The many isotopes, radioactive and stable, which a r e Dreduced 3x1 the nom1 operation of existing Diles have hitherto been regarded as 80 many interesting, but annoying and bothersome, waste oroducts. They have been used as tracers and as radiation sources in maj ect mo - cess and health studies dfrected nearly exclusively towards accomplishing t h e i r complete disposal as waste. Currently, with the expanding interest in the uotential value of piles and oils products, positive uses of the fission products as tracers and as radiation sources m e being reexamined. To these tmo valuable moperties one may add t h e i r intrinsic values as elements or isotopes which either do not OCC ~fn nature at aPP or e l s e occur in different isotonic abundances, The current Hanford chemical process is designed t o extract one such new element, Pu. 9 a t Peast three other new synthotic elements, produced lxi t h e pile - NJg9, 43, 61 - are discarded along with the U and all the other fission products in a waste solution, the commsftion of which makes reclamation difficult if not impossible. In addition, there a r e certainly new and important trans-plutonic elements to be conIn this aroc Hitherto, with t h e exceution of Pu, the many isotopes thus treated as waste prroducts have been considered principaplgr in terms of t h e i r radioactivities, While from a decontamination standmint this is immrtant, it has precluded the proper realization that Hanford produces, contaminates and discards, ina useless form, mounts of these new, aytificial elements m d isotopes which can be exmessed in grams ner day as w e l l a s in mega-curies m r day (see Table I). There is thus a steady sumly of Parge masses of t h e unknown elements, 43 and 61, of I4937 and trans-plutonic elements, and o f specific iaotopes o r mixtures thereof
Page 4
ISOTOPES PRODUCED IN PIU PER MOL PU SIMm&TOzTSLY PROLUCEI? AT ENIOF 100 DAY RUN AND 60 DAYS COOL^ (CAZULATED FROM FISSION Element Atomlc Amount Isotow Abundance Radioactivity Half - l i f e Daughter None Stable None
Page 5
Element Atomio Amount isotope Abundance Radioactivity Half -life Daughter Rh 103 301 100 99.92 None Stable Nona
Page 7
(100 DAY RUN, 60 DAY COOLIE > Parent Amount Produced D e r Day Natural Daqhter me: Curies Abundance 106 0.8 None 27,21 ye Ru G05d o Ba (vis La) 3611 None 90
The text continues in the original scan (10 pages).