The purpose of the test used to make this report was to determine if anodizing could become a part of the canning operation prior to autoclaving, other factors permitting, or if it must follow autoclaving.

At the request of the Hanford Operations Office of the Atomic Energy Commission, a criticality instrumentation meeting was held at Hanford on August 17 and 18, 1959. The purposes of the meeting were: (a) to review types of criticality control and/or alarm instrumentation at each site, their problems, shortcomings and potential obsolescence; (b) to discuss instrumentation in the area if approaching criticality; and (c) to consider for material balance purposes, the feasibility of devising instruments to detect the buildup of plutonium and enriched uranium bearing residues in process systems.

An analytical method for Cu-64 in reactor effluent has been studied based upon electrodeposition of the active copper with inert copper carrier. A two hour plating time was employed at a current density of 10 ma/sq cm and four volts across the cell. A stainless steel cathode plate was used. Carrier yields of greater than 80% were obtained with a standard deviation of the yield-corrected counting rate as low as 0.24%. Very little, if any contamination by other radioactive elements present was shown by decay curve studies. Self-absorption and self-scatter factors to correct the counting rate were obtained.

Relations governing the measurement of Stainless Steel corrosion rates by activation analysis are derived and discussed. The principal neutron induced radioactivities are calculated and graphed. Shielding requirements are considered and it is concluded that six inches of lead shielding should be sufficient for the proposed experiments if the samples are allowed to cool for one day in the reactor storage basin.

R. H. Fillnow and H. Pennington of WAPD visited HAPO on September 14-15, 1955, to discuss HAPO special irradiation facilities and review fuel element problems with HAPO personnel. During their meeting with Metallurgy Research personnel, the progress of the evaluation of UO₂ elements for the PWR and the results of recent HAPO irradiations of oxide type fuel elements were discussed. Although brief, this information exchange was particularly valuable as many of the problems associated with the application of oxide fuel materials was reviewed. A summary of these discussions is outlined below.