Technical report presenting preliminary results obtained in the static corrosion test program to screen promising construction materials for a proposed liquid fuel power breeder reactor.

Technical report describing the downtime of the Brookhaven National Laboratory nuclear reactor and changes made to the reactor facility in March 1952.

This report is a summary of the neutron attenuation data which have been obtained at the Brookhaven shielding facility on a mock-up of the fuel-rod-unloading plug used in the KAPL Reactor. Before this program was initiated, a number of small scale tests had been made in the ORNL lid tank on carbon steel mock-ups of components of the rotating plug. The results of the tests indicated considerable neutron streaming through the vertical steel and air members of the plug. However, the lid tank source strength and dimensions did not permit the tests to be extended to the full plug height. In view of the concern aroused by the ORNL tests and the absence of fundamental information on the transmission of neutrons through steel and the addition height (12') available here resulted in a request for BNL to construct and test a mock-up of a sector of the SIR top plug in accordance with KAPL specifications.

Report issued by the Brookhaven National Laboratory discussing the work conducted by the lab during the fiscal year of 1954. As stated in the introduction, "the progress and trends of the research program are presented along with a description of the operational, service, and administrative activities of the Laboratory" (p. v).

The following report concerns the application of a relaxation mesh method for the determination of the average flux within the moderator of a light water moderated, 1.027 per cent U-235, hexagonal lattice with a volume ratio (V_H2O + V_Al)/V_Uranium of 4:1. It was hoped that the calculation would enable one to determine any differences in flux which might result from the fact that the unit cell is a hexagon instead of a cylinder. Because we were primarily interested in the effect due to geometry we applied the same theory, diffusion theory, to the hexagon by means of the mesh method and to the equivalent cylinder.

Recently, there has been some evidence to point to possible ordering in the α-brasses. Masumoto et al. have concluded from their specific heat measurements that there is a possibility of ordering in the α-brasses. In particular they observed an anomaly in the specific heat curves for the α-brasses for the temperature range from 200 to 260°C and explained these results upon the basis of a change in local or short range order in α-brasses at these temperatures. In connection with the study of radiation damage effects in α-brass ordering has been suspected. Rosenblatt has annealed 70-30 α-brass previously annealed at 350°C and cooled to room temperature at 190°C for six weeks. He observed a decrease of .90 ± .03% in the electrical resistivity of α-brass measured at -196°C after the anneal at 190°C.

In a third run with the fluorine torch, the settling chamber wells were kept hotter than before (≥ 625°C); the flame was cooled by diluting the fluorine with helium. In the analysis of the products, 99% of the thorium fluoride fed in was accounted for, but only 64% of the protactinium activity. Part of this was carried in the exhaust gases past the cold trap and into the soda line disposal column, where it was detected by survey meters. The stripping of protactinium from the solid was somewhat more efficient than before; 77% of the feed which was recovered from the settling chamber had lost 72% of its original specific activity. About 15% of the input activity was trapped on the cold fingers with very little thorium fluoride.