Hanford Laboratories Operation Monthly Activities Report July, 1960

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ment cons ist s FOLDER o \ p pages. Copy No. Lj: HANFORD LABORATORIES OPERATION --,, MONTHLY ACTIVITIES REPORT 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 o r opinions expressed in the report are those of the author only. Route To: I P. R. No. 1 Location I Route Date I Signature and Date

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Atomic Energy Commission, Hanford Operations Office, G. F. Quim, Director, Division of Production, Savannah River Operations Office, Aiken, South Carolina

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Force Report and Peraonnel Status Changes . Reactor and Fuels Reeearch and Development Physics and Instrument Research and Development Chemical Research and Development Operation Operations Research and Synthesis Operation , . .,b Vi through Xiii Professional Placement and Relations Practices . . b 1-1 through 1-6

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Manager, Physics and Instrument Research and Manager, Reactor and Fuels Research and M.anager, Professional Placement and Relations

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vi HW-66237- conttol budget BUDGETS AND COSTS July operating costs aggregated $1, 757, 000 o r 770 of the te Hanford Laboratories research and development costs had the following relationship with the tentative control budget as of July 31: The Preliminary Financial Plan did not include funds for the Specific Fuel Cycle Analysis o r Fabrication of DMA elements; however, HOO-AEC has indicated that funds will be available. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT L Reactor and Fuels Research and DeveloDment The Phase I11 portion of PRTR construction is about 96% complete a s of August 1, 1960, versus a scheduled 100% complete based on a contract completion date of June 24, 1960. estimated to be about 97.570 complete versus a scheduled 98.370 based on the official AEC schedule. The river pump facility, including the condenser, w a s accepted from the contractor. Sixteen PRTR shim control assemblies were delivered to the reactor contractor along with two plugs to allow helium pressure testing. tested and available. Tko additional assemblies are now Approximately 9670 of the PRTR S t a F p Process Specifications have been written and reviewed initially by the Start-up Council. per cent of the specifications have been approved by the council, and 7070 have been published in approved form. The Gas Loop (Project CAH-822) Phase A package remains 9570 complete awaiting new heater tubing and a few valves. No significant improvement in blower test performance has been reported by Bristol-Siddeley. The in-reactor test section is essentially complete and is being prepared for

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~ Zircaloy-4 tubing now being received, although of improved metallurgical quality, still lacks precise control of internal diameter. Further tests confirm the unlikelihood of the Zircaloy process tube hydriding rapidly as the result of proximity (one-fourth inch away) to a rupturing fuel element. Further Zircaloy fretting studies demonstrate reduced attack by lowering the unit load, temperature, and/or rubbing rate. However, contrary to a previous report, increasing the clearance between the vibrating parts increases rather than decreases the rate of fretting attack. Cold s h g e d U02 fuel specimens have achieved an exposure of Forty-eight extrusion billets of Pu-A1 alloy containing 2% Ni were cast during the month and all exhibited satisfactory corrosion resistance verifying earlier work. limit of nickel content a r e under way. Experiments to determine the effective lower Injection casting of one =-A1 rod per day is proceeding in recently activated prototype equipment. fabricated for PRTR testing. Two complete 19-rod clusters will be Measurements of radiation dose rates at the front face of B Reactor indicate that the principal neutron dose is coming from dry tubes which a r e currently shielded with steel plugs. It is estimated that the neutron dose could be reduced by a factor of two by using concrete-filled plugs in place of the steel plugs. Transient heat transfer experiments were run with a full-scale mockup of I & E fuel elements in a K process tube to investigate possibilities of cooling by boiling fo owing a loss of pumping power. An initial analysis of the data indicates that such a cooling method might be quite A tubular element failed in KER apparently by a clad split mechanism similar to that which earlier caused failure of two rod elements. Two hot p r e s h d fuel elements have been successfully irradiated in the MTR to 1400 IvfWD/T at an average power generation of 140 kw/ft. Low carbon steel supports in NPR fuel have been shown to eliminate scratching of the process tube. If, however, the feet a r e rubbed on stainless steel before contacting the tube (as in the charging machine) extensive galling of the process tube results.

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Preliminary tests show that satisfactory fuel closures - - Nearly a 40-fold reduction in rupture severity was demonstrated for a predefected, irradiated, NPR-type fuel rod by adopting a more rapid cool-down cycle from 300 C to 230 C, followed by slower cooling 2. Chemical Research and DeveloDment In connection with Salt Cycle process development, an electrolysis cell sized to permit production of pound lots of U 0 2 was placed in operation. The first batches of UO2 produced had good chemical and physical The simultaneous use of steam (vice air) for feed atomization and bed fluidization in the operation of the fluid-bed, waste calciner prototype was successfully demonstrated. Although some increase in agglomerate formation occurrbd , optimization of operating conditions is expected to circumvent this effect. Operational difficulties encountered in the batch calcination of simulated, neutralized Purex waste can be owiated by acidification of the waste with sulfuric acid prior to calcination. In addition to smoother operations, adpitional benefits realized a r e a lower volume of solids per ton of uranium, and improved physical properties of the product. The long-lived radioisotopes (cesium and strontium) in high level Purex waste can be converted to a compact solid by adsorption onto clinoptilolite providing the waste is first diluted with water. Volume reduction factors for cesium of about 30 and 7 are'&tained when the high level waste is diluted by factors of 20 and 3-1/2, respectively. The use of an inorganic ion exchange material, Decalso YG, also shows promise of utility for converting a purified, strontium-90 solution into a compact solid form. About 4000 curies of strontium-90 c a n be C ~ R - tained in one liter of resin. The potential use of tfls material for offsite shipment of strontium-90 is being determined. Isotopic analysis of strontium in the Purex lWW stream showed that greater than 90% of this material is of fission product origin and, therefore, quite suitable for use in thermoelectric power units. A pilot scale facility to test the decontamination of reactor effluent water by means of an absorption bed packed with aluminum turnings w a s completed and placed in operation.

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A test of the peroxy-acetate process f o r the recovery of cerium-144 from Purex waste w a s successfully carried out in the High Level Radiochemistry Facility using one liter of full level plant waste. A hot cell experiment to demonstrate recovery technology for strontium-9 0 from Purex waste- is nearing completion. Preliminary studies show that the standard neptunium-239 separation procedure with minor modifications can be applied as a bioassay separation method for nepGnium-237. 3. Physics and Instrument Research and Development Graphite for the exponential mockup associated with the NPR program has been stacked and measurements will begin as soon as the fuel elements a r e received. Delivery of these elements, originally scheduled for February, has been pushed back in four successive postponements to August 1. The final design decision on the NPR fuel failure monitor was announced each individual sample line for gross gamma activity and the HLOdeveloped slow-scan gamma energy monitor for backup, It will use the IPD-developed G-M tube system for monitoring Satisfactory progress was made in the development of remote area monitoring equipment for the NPR with continued successful field tests of the linqar monitor and delivery of the logarithmic monitor to IPD for field tests. Fabrication on a prototype air monitor continued. The Critical Mass Laboratory has been accepted from the contractor, and personnel of the Critical Mass Physics Operation are in the process of occupying the new balding and planning the startup of experimental work. &anwhile, experi&nts of the subcritical variety have continued with 273, 21 6'70, and 3% enriched uranium. In connection with the Plutonium Recycle Program, work continued on developing techniques for measuring the prompt neutron lifetime in the PRTR, on instrumentation for in-reactor process tube inspection, on calibrations for lattice experiments and on development of the program Nondestructive testing of fdel elements by electromagnetic methods may be materially advanced by the application of advanced techniques of signal interpretation which have been developed offsite for other purposes. Meanwhile, improvements were obtained in the application of infrared

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A major obstacle to the complete collected last summer was overcome with successful development and of a method for measuring t r a c material collected on filters 'el-simultaneously and unavoidably collected dust. Measurements on all filters and data reduction procedures a r e being Improved ability to treat reactor physics problems is expected to result from new mathematical developments in handling neutron captures in plutonium resonances, and from the development of a more sophisticated model of the neutron rethermalization process. In the basic data field, measurement of the scattering of neutrons from water has been completed for neutrons of one energy (0.147 ev) and the data have been analyzed to give the spread in energy of the scattered neutrons at various scattering angles. Contamination of Columbia River and terrestrial life forms was greater than that observed a year ago. Research with Zn65 in large animals has suggested that some of the secondary parameters used for permissible limits in Handbook 69 may have to be revised. An interesting outgrowth of this work is that a technique may become available for determining viability of red blood It was determined that there is no difference in uptake by lambs whether the radioiodine is administered as the iodide ion in the milk o r cycled through the ewe to appear in the milk later. Research with Np237 has started. Early results indicate t neptunium In connection with this work, some of the actual m a t e r i q which is causing concern was received for experimental purposes. and its daughter protactinium a r e separately treated in the%limal body. The necessary physics calculations for the study of plutonium enriched fuel cycles in the Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor were substantially attempt to find a long lasting, Phoenix type, fuel composition. Attainable fuel reactivity lifetime of more than 60, 000 MWDIT w a s calculated for feed of 7.5% Pu-239, 1570 Pu-240, and 77.570 U-238. A comparison case using 370enriched uranium with boron poisoning gave lifetimes about one-fifth as great. This included a few highly successful calculations in an

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A complete description of PRTR critical tests w a s written and issued. The Plutonium Recycle Program Ten Y e a r Plan report was issued. Concurrent with establishment of nickel instead of silicon a s the preferred alloying agent for Pu-A1 cores for the PRTR spike fuel elements, revised material standards were determined and issued. Negotiations were completed for the shipment to Hanford for Plutonium Recycle Program use of 2 kg of high exposure (16% Pu-240)plutonium for use in PCTR tests. This will enable the first lattice parameter tests ever made for material of this Delivery is expected in September. All Hanford Laboratories research and development programs for the Division of Reactor Development were reviewed for benefit of top DRD personnel on July 14 and 15. A paper summarizing progress to date on the Plutonium Recycle Program was written for oral presentation at the IAEA sponsored conference on Small and Medium Power Reactors to be held at Vienna, Austria, TECHNICAL AND OTHER SERVICES Further work on the problem of determining optimum crew size has resulted in the general expression for the probability that a given number of reactors will be "down" during a given shift, and that of these a given number w i l l be performing charge -dis charge work. The statistical analysis of zirflex data w a s completed. which appropriately defined the dissolution rate of zirconium as a function of solution pH and fluoride ion concentration. A mathematical model w a s developed to express the transfer of thorium ions from solution to resin balls by unrestricted diffusion. was devised for checklrg the theoretical model against experimental data and good agreement has been realized for all experiments to date. A preliminary analysis was completed of post-irradiation data from 48 tubes of fuel elements discharged under the quality certification program. Technical assistance is being given in developing a mathematical theory of the metallurgically-idealized continuously dislocated crystal. somewhat unusual in that it employs a s its major tool the pure mathematical discipline of generalized tensor calculus for non-Riemannian geometry. The analysis is

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Special vegetation and milk sambles were approximately 54 curies of iodine-131 from the Redox blant during a ten-day period. These samples did not show abnormal iodine-131 content. Approximately 0. 08 curie of activity, principally Te-132 and 1-131, w a s emitted from the 105-KW Reactor stack a s the result of the discharge of a burning fuel element on July 7, 1960. Initiation of the fog spray system prior to discharge of the ruptured fuel element apparently prevented discharging of additional There w a s one new case of plutonium deposition confirmed during the month. This brings the total cases which have occurred at HAP0 to 257 of which 188 a r e currently employed. One CPD employee sustained a minor injury during installation of a pump in the solvent extraction hood of 23445 Building. P r e - liminary bioassay results indicate plutonium deposition to about 10% of the maximum permissible body burden. There are 21 currently active projects having combined authorized funds in the Four of the five a r e more than 370 behind schedule. The total estimated cost of these projects is All but five of those authorized are on o r ahead of schedule. A review of Hanford reports in the now out-moded categories C-66, C-67, and C-68 has been completed and a final report made to the Commission. The Commission has also been supplied with a microfilm of the review sheets for future reference if needed. The automation of the Classified Files issuance and routing procedures is getting down to the details of practical operation and initial programming is efficiency and reduce costs. Prospects a r e that a well worked out system can increase The physical inventory of movable cataloged equipment in the custody of Reactor and Fuels Research and Development Operation resulted in a writeoff of $6, 000 for 27 pieces of equipment that could not be located. At the end of July, the Laboratory Equipment Pool consisted of 387 pieces of equipment amounting to $167, 000. A rise in the cost-of-living index has resulted in a L 18% …