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This document presents a summary of work and progress at the Hanford Engineer Works for August 1956. The report is divided into sections by department. A plant wide general summary is included at the beginning of the report, after which the departmental summaries begin. The Manufacturing Department reports plant statistics, and summaries for the Metal Preparation, Reactor and Separation sections. The Engineering Department`s section summarizes work for the Technical, Design, and Project Sections. Costs for the various departments are presented in the Financial Department`s summary. The Medical, Radiological Sciences, Utilities and General Sciences, Employee and Public Relations, and Community Real Estate and Services departments have sections presenting their monthly statistics, work, progress, and summaries.

Two-group constants have been prepared for a range of steel-water volume ratios. A calculation of critical mass and flux distribution has been made for an existing steelwater critical experiment. In order to check the experimental critical mass the age was increased. The effect of this adjustnnent on flux distribution was noted. The critical mass and flux distribution were calculated for the clean APPR critical experiment using the adjusted curve of age vs steel- water volume ratio. The calculated critical mass of the clean APPR critical experiment was 9.04 kg of U/sup 235/. (auth)

Data from a survey of the literature and other available information on zirconium--uranium alloys have been reviewed for the purpose of obtaining a coherent picture of current knowledge about the properties and behavior of zirconium--uranium alloys. The results of the survey were used to revise and extend the presentation of material gathered earlier in a similar study and reported in BMI1030 in August 1955. The constitution of zirconium-uranium alloys is discussed, and a constitutional diagram for the system is presented. The effects of oxygen and nitrogen, which are present in these alloys as contaminants, on alloy constitution ars shownin the form of ternary diagrams and in terms of their quantitative effects on the phases present. The transformation kinetics and the nature of the transformation of the high-temperature body- centered-cubic gamma phase to the phases stable at room temperature are described. Two regions are discussed: in the 20 to 70 wi. % uranium composition range, gamma, which is retained on quenching, transforms isothermally to the intermediate epsilon-phase structure by a diffusion-controlled nucleation-and- growth process; in alloys containing less than 20 wt.% uranium, gamma transforms martensitically to a strained alpha-zirconium structure on quenching, with the diffusion-controlled transformation of gamma to either epsilon …

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An automatic reader was developed for scanning 4 x 9in. filter papers from systems that monitor particulate airborne activity. Paper tape shows alpha and betagamma activities, together with counting times and identifying data, for any samples exceeding a predetermined value a special indicator mark is added. (auth)

A proposal by ``S`` Division that operations be simplified by adding fixed amounts of calcium and iodine in the reduction step as a time saving device has been investigated. Ten test runs in the 410--430 gram range have been compared with twenty normal runs made in this period. The average yields were 98.27% for the normal method and 98.26% for the test runs. No effect on individual yields by the variance in percent calcium and the iodine ratio was observed. Seventy percent of the runs normally fall into the 410--430 gram range. By controlled compositing of the feed batches, it should be possible to increase the percentage of the PuF{sub 4} runs that fall in this range.