"Scale-up work on high temperature fuel recovery processes has progressed to the point where the (high temperature) vacuum furnace for several operations to the hot cells has been completed and tested under operating conditions. Small scale experiments on high temperature methods for processing molten irradiated uranium fuel have been made with spent X-10 fuel slug pieces. The results of direct Pu evaporation, treatment with fused fluorides and oxide scavenging were every similar to those found with tracer experiments."

"Engineering pertinent to the development of the sodium-cooled, graphite-moderated type of reactor was continued. This included work on problems related to the zirconium canned moderator, low enrichment uranium fuel, sodium piping, secondary coolant system, shielding, and the control and safety elements. A large fraction of the work was devoted specifically to problems of the proposed Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) configuration. In this connection, an integrated effort was initiated to prepare a complete preliminary design of the SRE by an early date. In addition, two alternate sodium-graphite reactor configurations were studied. One was an intermediate size, 145 thermal megawatt, unit optimized for the production of low cost plutonium. The second was a low power 10 thermal megawatt intended for power production, but in which sodium circulation through the core was entirely dependent upon thermal convection."