The use of quartz tubing for sampling molten plutonium and for casting rods is described. These procedures offer cheap and easy-to-use methods for obtaining molten samples and for casting long rods with small diameters.

The stability of a linear pinch is investigated by means of the "6W" formalism of E. A. Frieman. It turns out that when attention is confined to the surface layers of the plasma, convenient stability criteria can be deduced for very general cylindrically symmetric distributions of magnetic field and plasma.

Thermal neutron measurements made on five weapons during Operation Teapot indicated that these neutrons contribute at most 2 per cent of the total neutron dose in air. However, the total fluxes were high and thermal neutrons may become important under shielding conditions and may significantly affect the responses of the film badges and certain sensitive dose detectors, especially when the neutron to gamma flux ratio is high.

A spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of aluminum in plutonium-aluminum alloys. The alloys are dissolved in parchloric acid and the diluted solution electrolyzed using a mercury cathode to remove any iron present which would interfere in the subsequent analysis. Then plutonium is then separated from the aluminum by precipitation as the insoluble iodate, and the aluminum determined in the supernatant solution using aluminon as a color reagent.

Due to laboratory interest in devices capable of production of high current with short rise times in gaseous discharges (plasmas), an experimental machine has been built and tested to obtain data applicable to the design of a high gradient magnetic induction machine. This machine consists of a condenser type energy storage bank air core coupled to a toroid in which the plasma is produced. It has been used to determine circuit parameters and the effect of these parameters on the plasma.

The transmissions of neutrons through spherical shells of normal uranium, oralloy, and Pu239 are reported. One group of measurements was made using a pure fission neutron source produced by thermal neutrons. The other group of measurements was made using monoenergetic neutrons. From both groups of measurements, the inelastic scattering cross sections have been determined according to methods developed in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Report LA-1429 (Jaunary 1955).