The build up of contaminated film on the internal surfaces of high temperature in-reactor recirculating water loops has created serious radiation exposure problems to operational and maintenance personnel. A considerable amount of work has been applied to develop an effective decontamination process for the decontamination of these loops and their components.

The Atomic Energy Commission has recently developed an enlarged program for the study of graphite moderated, gas cooled power reactor systems. It has been recognized, however, that understanding of radiation damage and radiation induced chemical reactions of graphite at the proposed high moderator temperatures is inadequate and that improved understanding is essential if the design of such reactors is to be optimized. Accordingly, the Atomic Energy Commission requested Hanford to organize a modest research and development program directed toward the study of these graphite problems.

Laboratory studies involving fluid flow through porous media require use of fluids having low dissolved gas content. Water is the major fluid used in various and box model and soil permeability studies carried out by the Geochemical and Geophysical Research group. Tap water supplied to the 222-U Bldg. contains a large amount of dissolved air. Under the reduced pressure encountered during model studies, the air is released from solution and gradually clogs the pores of the sand or other porous material. This, of course. leads to anomalous results and cannot be tolerated in precious studies. A system was required to effectively remove the air and make available a continuous supply of desired water for the model studies.

A multi-purpose program for processing exponential data has been prepared for the 709 computer. The main purposes of the program is to compute the material buckling from raw data (given counts, time, and counter information) or from previously calculated Athermal's. It is also possible to compute only CeCh (end and harmonic corrections) for a given B11 or series if B11's no counting data being entered. In every case, pile measurements must be submitted as input for corrections.

The Interim Power Fuels Reprocessing Program, as established by the Atomic Energy Commission, provides the service of recovering uranium, thorium, plutonium, etc., from irradiated fuels discharged from non-production reactors of both public and private ownership. To provide this service on an interim basis and at minimum capital investment, the Commission has assigned the processing responsibility for the various fuel types to several AEC sites. The sites are to be assigned fuel types most similar to their normal production. As a result, HAPO has been assigned the responsibility for processing the low enrichment uranium and uranium oxide type fuels with isotopic content up to 5% uranium-235. In addition, some plutonium base fuels will be processed at Hanford.

Disposal on a specific retention basic of certain radioactive liquid waste solutions emanating from separations from separations plants has been practiced at Hanford since 1944. As used at Hanford, the term "specific retention" is defined as that volume of waste liquids that may be disposed to the soil* and be held against the force of gravity by the molecular attraction between sand grains and the surface tension of the water, when expressed as percent of packed soil volume. In practice it represents the volume of liquid that may be discharged to a disposal pit of known dimensions without leakage to the ground, water, expressed as percent of the total volume of a column of soil with the same cross section as the pit, and extending from the bottom of the pit to the water table. It is recognized that some degree of lateral spreading will occur which has the effect of enlarging the volume of soil contacted by the liquid.

In the past several years the use of neutron monitors for Pu concentration monitoring has been expanded in the Chemical Processing Department. Most of these monitors have been quite successful, and considerable effort is being made to improve the operation of both existing and future monitoring systems. One of the major improvements has been the development and use of a transistorized pre-amplifier or impedance matching circuits. This unit solves several problems associated with the use of boron trifluoride (BF3) neutron detectors in process monitoring; e.g., vacuum tube pre-amp failure because heat is not being conducted away.

The evaluation of the inductance of an electrical component is often important in understanding and operating an electrical circuit. Inductance is defined by several equations, the most common being e= -L d1/dt . This equation defines inductance as the constant which relates the back emf produced in an element to the time-rate-of-change of current.