Hanford Laboratories Operation Monthly Activities Report April, 1962

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HANFORD LABORATORIES OPERATION MONTHLY ACTIVITIES REPORT THIS DOC WENT HAS BEEN SCANNED AND IS STORED ON THE OPTICAL DiSK DRIVE HANFORD ATOMIC PRODUCTS OPERATION

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This report was prepared as an account of Government sponsored work. Neither the United States, nor the Commission, nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission: A. Makes any warmnty or representation, expressed or implied, with respect to the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the informotion contained in this report, or that the use of any information, apparatus, method, or process disclosed in this report may not infringe privately owned rights; or Assumes any liabilities with respect to the use of, or for damages resulting from the use of any information, apparatus, method, or process disclosed in this report. As used in the above, ”person acting on behalf of the Commission’ includes any employee or contractor of the Commission, or employee of such contractor, to the extent that such employee or contractor of the Commission, or employee of such contractor prepares, disseminates, or provides access to, any information pursuant to his employment or contract with the Commission, or his employment with AIC - 0 1 RICULAVOD. WASU.

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Route To: P. R. No. Location Route Date Signature and Date HANFORD LABORATORIES OPERATION MONTHLY ACTIVITIES REPORT Compil ed by HANFORD ATOMIC PRODUCTS OPERATION This report was prepared only for use within General Electric Company i n the course of work under Atomic Energy Commission Contract AT(45 - 1)- 1350. Any views o r opinions expressed in the report are those of the author only.

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Atomic Energy Commission, Hanford Operations Office F. P. Baranowski, Director, Division of Production Savannah River Operations Office, lliken, South Carolina

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Force Report and Personnel Status Changes . Reactor and Fuels Research and Development Physics and Instrument Research and Development Chemical Research and Development Operations Research and Synthesis Operation . Radiation Protection Operation . Finance and Administration Operation Test Reactor and Auxiliaries Operation .

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BUDGETS AND COSTS April operating costs totaled $2,057,000, a decrease of $263,000 f r o m the previous month; fiscal year-to-date costs a r e $21,966,000 or 79% of the costs for April, compared with last month and the control budget are shown Hanford Laboratories research and development (Dollars in Thousands) Current Previous FY Month Month To -Date RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 1. Reactor and Fuels U 0 2 fuel, irradiated in PRTR to a maximum exposure of 2075 MWD/T, continues to show no mechanical distortion or corrosion. Hydriding of the Zircaloy-2 cladding on a cold-swaged element irradiated in VBWR to an exposure of 3400 MWD/T is believed to have caused the break in the fuel jacket subsequent to discharge. A new electrode design for cathodic etching of both the fuel tube and end cap p r i o r to magnetic force welding has been successfully demonstrated.

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Short sections of inverted -cluster and single -rod fuel element cladding have been successfully fabricated by high voltage electron beam welding. Remote fabrication studies continue with the successful simultaneous compaction of all three components of a Mark II-C nested tubular fuel element. Cladding interactions w e r e determined to be minimal. Electron microscopy examination of irradiated U02 crystals at 500 C and 980 C revealed little change in surface appearance due to irradiation. Six irradiation capsules containing cylindrical specimens of U02 for thermal conductivity studies have been discharged after four y e a r s of Capsules containing six U-U diffusion couples have been discharged from the reactor. Preliminary examination reveals that the specimens are in good condition and that swelling has been nominal. The operation of in-reactor swelling capsules has been improved by the addition of automatic control equipment which w i l l maintain temperatures during reactor outage periods. are accumulating exposures before the application of load. The creep capsules now in the reactor The development of a fast flux monitor containing a thin film of depleted UO2 is under way. At the present time the r e s u l t s look quite encouraging. of the ETR h a s been recharged and irradiation is proceeding satisfactorily. Examination of irradiated fuel closed by production brazing methods reveals the closure to be of high integrity. No cracks or areas of insipient failure were detected. Five NPR inner tube prototype elements exposured to 3000 MWD/T appear to be in exceptionally good shape. T h e r e is no evidence of surface bumping, clad striations or warp. The brazed closure area appears free of excessive Reconsideration of the design of the NPR fuel supports has given r i s e to several concrete recommendations. Included are additional inspection, stress relief, and the forming of buggy spring supports to proper height after assembly of the elements.

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Autoclave tests of stressed and unstressed Zircaloy-2, rolled strips revealed that zirconium hydride precipitates preferentially in a direction parallel to the rolling direction. directions had no effect on the hydride precipitation. The application of stress in various The weight gains of etched and pre-autoclaved Zircaloy-2 samples exposed in-reactor to a simulated NPR gas atmosphere at 350 Cwere about twice that of samples exposed to the s a m e atmosphere out of the beyond breakaway and exposed to the gas atmosphere at 400 C. Similar results were obtained for a sample pre-oxidized The KER-1, carbon steel loop was decontaminated. There was no change in the central c o r e temperature of a thermocouple slug after decontamination nor w a s there an increase in the corrosion rate of the carbon s t e e l as measured by dissolved hydrogen content of the A random selection of 102 process acceptable, standard 8-inch I & E fuel elements has been autoclaved 110 hours in steam at 325 C and 2000 psi without failure. Voids in the Al-Si w e r e detectable as depressed areas on the aluminum jacket surface, most of which w e r e on the inner hole. In preparation for studies of the propagation of brittle cracks in pressure tubes, experiments established the proper projectile shape and powder charge to introduce an initial crack twice the wall thickness in length at the inner surface of pressurized tube samples. to propagate in 50 per cent cold worked, Zircaloy-2 tubes pressurized to 90 per cent of burst pressure at 150 and 300 C. the crack propagated the full length of the sample at a pressure of 80 per cent of the ultimate b u r s t pressure. An initial crack length of eight times the wall thickness propagated 6 0 per cent of the specimen length in an annealed Zircaloy-2 tube pressurized to 90 per cent of i t s ultimate This length crack failed At room temperature, The first test irradiation of NPR graphite has been completed at the GETR. Samples were irradiated at 700 C to an estimated exposure of 1.9 x 1021 nvt; was the same as K-Reactor (TSGBF) graphite and the CSF reference standard: 0.025 per cent transverse to the extrusion axis and about three times this amount parallel to the extrusion axis. Samples from the same and contracted 0.03 per cent in the transverse direction.

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Room temperatu-e burst tests were performed on specimens from the annealed portion of PRTR pressure tubes irradiated to exposures up to 1020 nvt. Irradiation increased the uitimate strength by 30 per cent. Fracture occurred after 14 to 25 per cent increase in diameter. exposure increased, the deformation appears to be confined to local bulging of the diameter in the region of fracture. Irradiations in the ETR at 600 to 1000 C have demonstrated that high density graphite produced by impregnation with furfural alcohol actually shows an increase in the rate of radiation-induced contraction. the impregnated samples were heated to graphitization temperature (2500 to 2800 C), the increase in the contraction rate was reduced slightly, but the contraction r a t e is still higher than that of non-impregnated, lower density samples. Studies to determine the amount of boiling present when fuel elements a r e not situated in a coaxial position within process tubes showed that the presence of supports on the heated surface allowed the initiation of boiling at greatly lowered heat fluxes. A hydraulic investigation to determine the thermal hydra dic effects of a process tube leak caused by a failed front nozzle Vanstone flange disclosed that the leak could be as much as 2 - 1 / 2 gpm, resulting in an 11 C t e m p e r - ature rise in a fringe zone tube. It was also concluded that the leak would not always be detected by a change in Panellit pressure. Tests to determine the effectiveness of water mixers placed in process tubes of the presznt production reactors showed that a mixer consisting of a 180-degree ..piral w a s very effective in producing even coolant temperatures for the case where the water between the ribs was originally hotter than the rest of the coolant. Evaluation of four proposed plutonium fuel element designs (-0-PuO2, 19-rod clusters)for irradiation in the PRTR showed that they w i l l not exceed PRTR tube power, heat flux, or initial reactivity limits. Supplement 4, Gas -Cooled Loop Analysis, w a s published. Analyses revealed no s e r i o u s adverse effect on the nuclear safety of the PRTR.

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irradiation in t ite PRTR and have accumulated an exposure of about 9 MWD/T. Rods for an additional 30 clusters were loaded during the month, with rods for 18 elements processed through autoclaving. 19-rod clusters, made by swage compaction, are under Results of the accelerated fabrication program w e r e even better than anticipated for the vibrational compaction project. Fabrication of fuel elements containing Pu02was started and the process debugged so that four to eight fuel rods were produced per shift. quality of the resultant fuel elements w e r e excellent thus establishing that it is possible to make vibrationally compacted fuel elements in large numbers despite the additional problems associated with handling PuO Over 200 fuel rods were produced during the month. Both the quantity and Some process control problems were encountered i n the early fabrication phases of the 400 U 0 2 - P u 0 2 r o d s which were loaded and swaged during the month. Variations in U 0 2 particle s i z e distribution caused a 200 to 250-gram variation in the amount of oxide loaded into the rods. X-ray diffraction patterns from ten PuC alloys annealed at 610 Cfor 65 hours have been analyzed. Between 3 2 and 41 a / o C, the lattice constants decreased in a uniform fashion with composition extending f r o m 4.9718 to 4.9677 A; below 32 a / o C, the cell size of the PuC phase remained constant at 4.9718 A; lines other than PUC on the films w e r e very weak and appear to conform t o a mixture of alpha and delta plutonium; between 41 and 52 a / o C, the lattice parameters were constant at 4.980 A and again Pu2C3 was Plutonium hydride can be converted to the mononitride by heating in anhydrous ammonia, though first attempts yielded a two -phase product, plutonium dioxide plus plutonium nitride. attempt to obtain a single-phase plutonium nitride by this means. Further experiments will be performed in an 2. Physics and Instrument Research and Development In support of the production reactor program, the first of 24 gamma spectrometers to be built by GE-APED for the NPR fuel Failure Monitor was thoroughly tested, returned to the vendor f o r modification of the high voltage supply, and received back for final testing. Delays encountered in process tube replacements at the production reactors due to breakage of tube splitter blades are expected to be reduced through establishment of blade testing procedures; eight of thirty new blades tested were found to have cracks.

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Buckling measurements were resumed on a mockup of the C Reactor lattice. These measurements had been suspended while the plutonium -beryllium neutron sources used to drive the exponential pile were examined, re-canned, and calibrated by Mound Laboratories. The current measurements a r e intended to provide a basis for determining the change in the physics parameters of C Reactor associated with overboring the process tube Nuclear safety and control in the handling of enriched uranium will be aided by development of t h r e e gamma spectroscopy methods for measuring the enrichment of pieces of uniform or varying s i z e s and shapes; accuracies up to 2% of the enrichment level a r e feasible. Critical m a s s physics experiments on the reflecting properties of 1/ 2 " and 1" thick paraffin were continued. made with plutonium nitrate solutions having a concentration of 220 g / l . This is about twice the concentration used previously. savings determined from the experimental data are about the same as obtained with more dilute plutonium nitrate solutions. The measurements this month were Refined analysis of PCTR data has yielded an improved value of the limiting critical concentration of Pu-239 i n aqueous solutions. higher than calculated values, The new value is still about one g / 1 The previous experimental value w a s 9.1 g/l. In the Rutonium Recycle Program,a series of critical approach experiments has been completed using Pu-A1 fuel in light water moderated lattices. The fuel contains 1.8 w / o plutonium in 1/ 2 " diameter rods. critical mass and material buckling were obtained for five different spacings between rods, The results of the study will be useful in furnishing basic data on plutonium as a fuel for light water lattices as well as for making estimates of the nuclear safety in processing PRTR fuel. supplements previous measurements made with fuel containing 5 w /o Pu -Al. Values of the Both zero- and one-dimensional analysis methods w e r e used in analyzing in some cases and poor in others. The range of discrepancy in terms of the multiplication constant w a s 0.270 to 570in Lu(. The studies pointed out the severity of the neutron spectrum determination problem in these s m a l l The methods gave results in excellent agreement with experiment

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The planned exposures on two low exposure Pu-A1 fuel elements reached, and the elements were removed from the PRTR during The six modified U 0 2 elements a r e scheduled to be loaded in the core during the shutdown around the first of May. were obtained on the low exposure Pu-A1 fuel element 5075; the remainder should be forthcoming in May. Additional burnup data Off-site work in connection with the atmospheric diffusion program at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was completed, embracing a total of 76 experiments during a variety of meteorological conditions. In addition to successfully providing the required diffusion predictions in support of advanced missile firings, the data comprise an important additionto the Hanford and Vandenberg data for evaluating …