The corrosion resistance of four types of austenitic stainless steels to Purex process first and second acid concentrator bottoms was determined. Although the compositions of the two solutions were very similar, tests in simulated solutions of both compositions were conducted to strengthen the basis for the conclusions which were to be made.

The uranium recovery processes which are in operation or under construction at the present time--TBP, Redox and Purex--yield an aqueous uranyl nitrate solution as the recovered uranium product. For conversion of this recovered uranium to UF6 for feed to the gaseous diffusion plants, the uranyl nitrate in the solution is concentrated with or without prior organic stripping, calcined to UC3, reduced to UO2 with hydrogen, hydro-fluorinated to UF4 with RF, and finally fluorinated to UF6 with elemental fluorine.

Ionization measurements of water vapor in vapor-liquid equilibrium were made with a series of chambers on a tritiated water sample which was prepared by burning T2 to T2O and diluting it with H2O. A correction was made for the difference of vapor pressures of HTO and H2O. The effect of HTO adsorbed on chamber walls and electrodes was eliminated from the final result. Using Gerbes data on the number of electron volts to produce an ion pair in air, agreement obtained between the measured source strength and the source strength as computed from pressure, temperature, volume, purity, and dilution data on the original gaseous T2 sample.