Hanford Laboratories Operation Monthly Activities Report July, 1959

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HANFORD LABORATORIES OPERATION MONTHLY ACTIVITIES REPORT THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN SCANNED ANDIS STORED O K 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: Makes any warranty or representation, expressed or implied, with respect to the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the information contained in this report, or thot 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 thot 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

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This document consists HANFORD LABORATORIES OPERATION MONTHLY ACTIVITIES REPORT Location Route Date Signature and Date HANFORD ATOMIC PRODUCTS OPERATION This report was prepared only for use within General Electric Company in the course of work under Atomic Energy Commission Contract AT(45-1)-1350. Any views or opinions expressed in the report are those of the authors only.

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Atomic Ehergy Commission, Hanford Operations Office, E. J. Bloch, Director, Division of Production, Savannah River Operations Office, Aiken, South Carolina

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Force Report and Personnel Status Changes . V General Summary . . vi through xiii Reactor and Fuels Research and Development Physics and Instrument Research and Development Chemical Research and Development Operation . C- 1 through C-26 Professional Placement and Relations Practices,, I- 1 through 1-51

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Manager, Hanford Laboratories . Manager, Chemical Research and Development . Manager, Laboratory Auxiliaries . Manager, Operations Research and Synthesis . Manager, Physics and Instrument Research and Manager, Reactor and Fuels Research and Manager, Professional Placement and Relations

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BUDGETS AND COSTS Costs for July were $1,669,000 o r 870 of the annual operating budget of $21,917,000. The only program which appears out of line with budget is IPD-NPR Research and Development which experienced c o s t s of $90,000 in July o r 14% of the $650, 000 control budget with the following changes occurring in July: The F Y 1960 budget prepared last spring has been used as the IPD Metallurgy I and I1 IPD Reactor I and I1 Environmental Sciences Research Serv ic e Ass e ssmen t s Reduced to amounts RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PRTR Phase 111is about 1070 complete versus 1070 scheduled. seriously curtailed during July as a result of a construction labor dispute not related to this work. complete versus 10070 scheduled. and bottom shields was stopped a t the vendor's plant as a result of the steel Fabrication of the calandria and the top Results of calculations of tritium build-up in the PRTR D20system are The PFPP building was accepted, with exceptions, from the Phase I1 contractor on June 30, 1959, and was partially occupied by Plutonium Metallurgy Operation in July. Installation of equipment ( P h a s e 111) is estimated at 6970 complete versus 81% scheduled. orally accepted from construction, with exceptions, on July 6, 1959, and shakedown work h a s been initiated. One major equipment item, the swage, was The use of thick-walled centrifugally cast Zircaloy-2 stock has materially reduced the scrap loss incurred in the fabrication of end fittings for the nested Vibratory compaction of 0. 505-inch tubes, eight feet long, filled w i t h fused UO, has resulted in acore density of 89 to 9 0 percent of the theoretical

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The Zyglo fluorescent dye penetrant test h a s been successfully adapted for the inspection of the internal surface of Zircaloy-2 PRTR fuel tubes with the aid of a small borescope. Ultrasonic inspection techniques have a l s o been developed which will detect an internal crack defect 0. 002-inch in depth. The results of two i n - reactor tests of wire-wrapped U02cluster elements clad in Zircaloy-2 both show that fretting corrosion does not appear to be a serious problem with these fuel designs as long a s the wire remains attached at both ends. Conclusive evidence has been gathered to show that the tracks observed in irradiated thin U02films are indeed the consequence of the fission event. Studies on the sinterability in hydrogen of the s y s t e m UO -PuO mum density in the range from 20 to 40 w / oPu02for any temperature up to 1600 C, and sintering times up to eight hours. pU02 (produced by decomDosing the oxalate at 300 C )s i n t e r s in hydrogen to appreciably higher density than ball-milled PWR grade U02 under the same Thermal cycling tests of Lircaloy-clad aluminum and plutonium-aluminum elements under PRTR conditions have demonstrated generally satisfactory performance up to 19 cycles. bowing, bumping, and distortion occur. One full length element was s a t i s - factory after 100 cycles. Between 19 and 50 cycles different degrees of Tests to establish optimum conditions are Successful weld closures have been made on 0. 5-inch diameter, 0. 005-inch wall17 - 7 precipitation hardened stainless steel jacket tubing, and on 0. 5-inch Sixteen A1-Pu capsules , two -02-impregnated graphite capsules, and one 3-foot long, 7-rod A1-Pu cluster are now being irradiated in the MTR o r ETR. Four capsules and one 4-rod cluster of A1-Pu are now being evaluated after Work has been completed on the Irradiated Slug Ruptare Prototype Loop to be used to study NPR decontamination procedures, and shakedown runs are Fabrication of ribbed Zircaloy-2 BDF process tubes has been started at each of four contractors ' plants. late this year. Zircaloy-2 process tubes and NPR process tubes has also been started. Delivery of the f i r s t pilot lots should be made Fabrication of small lots of rib less,C Reactor size,

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Four experiments containing NPR candidate graphites are now installe'd in the ETR. The first two experimental assemblies for HAP0 graphite irradiation s a t 800 to 1000 C in the GETR have been completed and a r e scheduled for installation the week of August 3. In studies of molybdenum, it has been shown that highly immobile clusters of point defects are formed by irradiation above lo1' nvt. A considerable amount of damage can be built up, since as irradiation proceeds, clusters formed by the neutron bombardment add nucleation sites for further cluster growth. Little o r no dependence of dimensional stability upon clad thickness (in the r a n g e 0. 020 to 0. 030-inch) w a s demonstrated on the irradiation of 1. 6 percent enriched, coextruded uranium fuel to an integrated exposure of 1200 MWD/T A s i m p l e ultrasonic test has been developed to evaluate the quality of welds on Copper plating of coextruded fuel rods prior to draw-sizing continues to appear Alternate application methods employable on tubular elements a r e A double ring projection weld for closing the tubular NPR element appears feasible as the result of preliminary tests. 2 . Chemical Research and Development An improved process for cerium recovery was developed which is specific for recovery of a purer cerium fraction from the Pure x waste crude sulfate was free of trivalent rare earths which are found in the sulfate crude material. The cerium peroxy acetate precipitate produced in the new process Neptunium concentration ratios between 300 and 1, 000 were demonstrated in a laboratory mixer - settler designed to simulate a proposed Purex plant 3WB backcycle waste stream while the Purex plant operates. The proposed column would ''trap" neptunium f r o m the Completion of fundamental studies of ur any l nitrate mass transfer across the water - T B P interface showed the basic mechanism changes a s equilibrium is approached and the rate-limiting process is clearly a physical phenomenon. Sufficient testing of the Radiant Heat Spray Calciner w a s achieved to establish excellent de-entrainment characteristics of the laboratory pilot scale in one million leaving the unit in the non-condensible off-gas. Solids and non-volatiles were removed with less than one part

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Pilot scale study of a flooded-tray dissolve r concept showed, in initial tests, that conventional Hanford fuel elements dissolved as rapidly in the new geometry as they do in a conventional dissolve r. satisfactory initial operation was achieved for a prototype recirculating dissolve r utilizing air -lift pumping. the operation of a pilot-scale sulfex dissolver system. Along a competitive conceptual line, Satisfactory results were also reported on No instability w a s evident in uranium-molybdenum alloy dissolver solutions which were stored for periods of nine to eighteen weeks to check their longer term characteristics. Solutions were typical of the Darex process and conventional nitric acid stabilized with ferric ion. Well defined U02crystals were smoothly electrodeposited froma solution of ur any l chloride in fused alkali halide salt. application for chemical processing of ceramic reactor fuels o r the preparation of reactor fuel material. The process was simple and has Laboratory experiments of fission product behavior in irradiated uranium specimens subjected to heating in as team atmosphere showed that a considerable amount of the radioxenon remained non-volatile in the uranium dioxide phase formed by steam oxidation of the uranium metal. two and one-half hours at 1100 C. The test was run for A method was devised to sample ground water from deep wells a t elevations far below the ground water surface. Samples taken 400 feet below the surface of the water table one mile south of the 200 East - Area showed measurable beta activity and nitrate ion concentrations up to 13 ppm, a value higher than that measured at the ground water surface. Physics and Instrument Research and Development In the Improved Production Reactor Program, exponential pile measurements began with tube and r o d geometry fuels. measurements on cluster and tube in tube elements which were carried out knowledge of neutron behavior in such lattices. This rounds out the program of Large diameter solid elements are included to achieve improved PCTR experiments on an enriched uranium cluster type element revealed a reactivity n e a r l y 270 k lower than predicted for this fuel by IPD computations. Sources of possible trouble in the computer code used for prediction are being A study of the possible consequences of a nuclear incident in a Redox dissolver a final charge takes the dissolve r to anear prompt critical situation. The maximum credible incident was found to be one in which of the fission heat is retained in the fuel elements

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chemical reactions would likely follow. The available energy release i n such a n incident would be sufficient to rupture the dissolve r,cause severe damage to process lines and possibly to the dissolve r cell. A re-evaluation of previous work on k f o r U 0 3 - H 2 0 mixtures has confirmed earlier results ; namely, k is less than unity for U235 enrichments less than A new concept for a fuel failure detection system for the NPR has been favor - ably received and is being included in the design c r i t e r i a by CEO. It involves rapid scanning in blocks of samples from 100 process tubes followed by amore leisurely examination a t higher sensitivity. which use individual detectors to monitor samples from each tube, this proposal offers an opportunity for substantial initial and operating cost savings, improved reliability and reduced ambiguity of interpretation. A program for development of demonstration prototypes for this system is being prepared. Compared to alternate systems The experimental phases of the Gas Cooled Reactor core experiments in the PCTR have been completed for the f i r s t fuel enrichment measurements of reactivity parameters, control rod strengt.h and fuel temper - Routine full-scale operation of the joint AEC-AF atmospheric dispersion experiments w a s achieved when favorable meteorological conditions became persistent. As of July 31, fifteen experiments had been completed. Orderly progress was made on the many projects in the radiation monitoring instrument field, among which was preliminary investigation of a concept which may improve by a factor of 1 0 the sensitivity of detection of airborne In the basic data field, work is under way to filla long existing need in reactor calculation of the automatic machine type by compiling all this data on ta e Also, a final tabulation of the HLO-measured fission c r o s s section of Pu has been prepared and revised values of the resonance parameters have been reconfirmed with a foil containing 99. 7570 PU 2 4 0 . The fission cross section of Pu240 a t the 1ev resonance has been Radish and lettuce plants were driven to an AirForce test site in Utah where they were exposed to fission products released by a fuel element burn. These plants will be treated with various chemicals and techniques in decontaminaIn gonad studies using chronically administered Cs137 to r a m s , the liver, kidney, and testes were found to receive the highest internal gamma dose

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In a preliminary observation it was noted that DTPA effectiveness for the removal of plutonium was significantly improved when glutathione was administered with it. Something of a break-through occurred in Biological Analyses during the month. After several months of attempting to develop a satisfactory electron microscope autoradiography technique, success was achieved. The method has been applied to identify radioactive particles collected on Computer calculations on the irradiation of a mixture of Th-232 and Th-230 showed that a reasonable yield of Pa-231 could be expected in a practical length of time. This material could then be recovered and further irradiated f o r an annual production of kilogram quantities of U-232 for power production Compilation of the cross - section library for use in the full scale application of the RBU computer code is about 30 percent complete. Through July, 44 lectures and 21tours were completed for the participants in the SINE program. on special subjects. Numerous off-site speakers were brought in to lecture TECHNICAL AND OTHER SERVICES Work in the area of FP D process control and experimentation included a thorough investigation of the can cleaning process as a means of eliminating non-wet" rejects and a n evaluation of the effects of several variables on dimensional distortion during heat treatment in the co-extrusion process. Work on 10 operations analysis programs continued during the month. statistical and mathematical assistance on 14 problems was given within HLO and to other departments and operations. There were 22 authorized projects at month's end with total authorized funds of estimated cost of these projects is $8, 658,100. No projects were completed during the month and no new projects were authorized. awaiting …