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During the last few months the Redox plant has been plagued with an excessive number of problems which have resulted in its inability to meet forecasted production schedules in November 1953, January and February 1954. The following paragraphs are intended to indicate some of the problems faced at Redox and the steps that are being taken to remedy them. It should be emphasized that the plant has been operating far above original design capacity and this fact tends to aggravate some of the problems. For example, although steps have been taken to increase the throughput capacity of certain of the head-end steps and some of the columns, it is most possible to install a second centrifuge, oxidizer or D-12 waste evaporator in parallel so that when any of these -- one of a kind -- pieces of equipment is out of service the entire plant is unable to operate.

This report, dated March 22, 1954 details work procedures for the 200- West Area at HAPO. Topics discussed include emergency procedures, safety and housekeeping practices, policies and procedures, instruments and equipment located at the 622 tower, instruments and equipment located offsite, observational procedures, form entries, and card punching, and weather forecasting.

This is a progress report of the production reactors on the Hanford Reservation for the month of February 1951. This report takes each division (e.g., manufacturing, medical, accounting, occupational safety, security, reactor operations, etc.) of the site and summarizes its accomplishments and employee relations for that month.

This report details activities of the Chemical Development Unit during the month of March 1954.

This report discusses procedures have been established for determining the absolute activities of Sr{sup 90}, Sb{sup 125}, Cs{sup 137}, and gross beta in First Cycle Supernatant. These procedures are also valid for other samples such as scavenged Radioactive Waste (RAW), the primary restriction being that the age of the material be at least 250 days so that any Sr{sup 89} activity (53 day half-life) is negligible. With the exception of the gross beta analysis the results are believed to be accurate to within 10%.

The tables and graphs of this publication are essentially an expansion of the 'Range-Energy Curves' of Aron, Hoffman, and Williams (AECU-663). The original work of Aron et al is extended to include pions, protons, deuterons, tritons, and He{sup 3} particles in selected absorber elements and in some compounds that are useful either as target materials or as scintillating materials. This extension is an outgrowth of needs that arose during the course of certain experiments that have been carried on for the past several years at the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. Some of the work was done in a random fashion as needed chiefly for pion production experiments with scintillation counters. It seemed worthwhile to unify and complete this work for its utilitarian value to experimenters in high-energy physics, who have found similar needs.

The following modifications are planned to facilitate greater usefulness of available target space in the west tangent tank: (1) A 3/32-inch x 6-inch x 106-inch aluminum window is to be added to the outer radius tank wall. (2) One 12-inch x 6-inch air lock is to be added on the inside centerline of the reentrant section on the west tangent tank. (3) Two 24-inch x 30-inch openings are to be cut on the beam centerline in the top of the west tangent tank, one at each end. These openings will accommodate photographic plate wells of various kinds and also a large air lock that is being designed. It is suggested that any other modifications to the target area be presented to E. Lofgren as soon as possible so that the modifications can be programmed with respect to operations. The same general policy holds for target location, viz: (a) Small targets - allocations in west tangent tank; and (b) Large targets - allocations in south tangent tank. The design of two general purpose magnets is in the final stages. Copper for the coils will be ordered soon. The characteristics of these magnets are given. Results of magnetic field measurements on the …

The main purpose of Chemistry Division personnel in using the Bevatron will be to learn as much as possible about nuclear reactions in the Bev energy range using the radiochemical approach. The type and extent of these experiments will depend greatly on the beam intensity. Significant results can be obtained at 10{sup 6} or 10{sup 7} protons per pulse, but it is highly desirable that this figure ultimately be raised to 10{sup 10} or greater.

On February 2, the first 10 Mev proton beau was injected from the linear accelerator. Injection parameters were varied to study first turn beams with the magnet excited by a d-c generator. A few minutes after the magnetic field had been adjusted to the value calculated from magnetic measurements. the 180{sup o} beam was observed on fluorescent flags and measured with Faraday cups. During the remainder of the week several radio frequency components were installed and operated. Ground current signals in various pieces of equipment were a limitation in detecting.

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Work has continued on high temperature methods for processing irradiated U fuel. Additional results have been obtained with fused halide treatment, solid scavengers, and direct Pu distillation. With fused fluorides about 95% of the Pu was removed from a U sample,whiletreatment of U with HCl gas removed almost all the Pu and many fission products. Treatment of molten U with UO/sub 2/ removed a substantial fraction of the fission products without removing Fu. Uranium carbide treatment results were similar to the oxide but not as effective. A small scale distillation of Pu from U showed that Raoult's law is obeyed. (auth)

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