This report is a comparative cost study of radioactive waste disposal for the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (UCRL). In particular, it compares the costs of sea disposal in depths of 1000 fathoms and of 2000 fathoms off the California coast with land burial of the wastes at the Hanford Atomic Products Operation (HAPO), Richland, Washington, at the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), Idaho Falls, Idaho, or at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), Nevada. In the comparison, the cost of utilizing a commercial waste-disposal firm is also shown as well as a tentative cost of using the Military Sea Transport Service (MSTS).

A method is presented for measuring the average energy of the neutrons from a source. The attenuation of the neutrons by polyethylene is measured by the use of a long counter in good geometry. The attenuation length is a sensitive function of the neutron energy. The average neutron energies from several (o, n) sources have been measured and agree well with values obtained by other techniques.

The last fifteen years have seen the discovery of ten transuranic elements. This paper (presented at the Mendeleev Chemistry Conference in Moscow) deals only with the transplutonium elements, i.e., those elements with atomic number greater than 94. This will be a detailed discussion of the techniques that have been devised for producing and identifying elements 101 and 102 and the possible applications of these methods to elements beyond. There will also be a brief review of the discovery of all the transplutonium elements to show the gradual change in experimental methods from the early days.

It is the purpose of this paper (from a talk given at Mendeleev Chemistry Conference in Moscow) to give a brief progress report on work which is being done on very heavy elements at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley. The subject matter is divided into three broad classifications. The first classification includes production of the isotopes, the second deals with investigations of their chemical properties and the third includes studies of the nuclear properties.

With the increasing availability of accelerators capable of producing beams of heavy ions it has become useful to know the cross section for a heavy ion to form a compound nucleus by interaction with a target nucleus. The results of calculations based on two simple models are presented here in order to give some idea of the magnitude of this cross section as a function of the energy of the bombarding particle.

This report was prepared at the request of the Subcommittee on Radiochemistry of the Committee on Nuclear Science of the National Research Council as a contribution to a proposed master file on the radiochemistry of all the elements. All known material on the radiochemistry of thorium is included in this report.

This study is concerned with a class of circuits which employs two tubes in a series connection--sometimes referred to as the stacked-tubes connection. This study will be concerned with two configurations that have shown considerable promise in the field of high speed circuitry. In Part I a configuration called the dynamic plate load amplifier is dealt with. In Part II a configuration called the White cathode follower is examined.

An empirical approach for the evaluation of shielding materials for macrochemical manipulations of spontaneously fissioning heavy elements (curium and californium) has revealed interesting comparisons. High-density metal halide solutions were compared with lead glass and with rare earth glass for use as shielding windows. Laminated shields of lead-paraffin and uranium-paraffin were compared with water and with paraffin for shielding walls.

In another paper there was reported an attempt to observe the charge-exchange process in a counter-triggered multiplate cloud chamber at the Bevatron but the interpretation was ambiguous. Shortly after the close of that experiment the 30-in. propane bubble chamber at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory was completed and able to be used for a combined engineering test and experiment. The existence of Reaction (1) has been confirmed in this experiment, and an approximate cross-section value for carbon is calculated.

This report is an outgrowth of the MURA Users' Conference of June 1959. At that conference the group on beam separators discussed the problem of whether particle separation could be achieved at the machine energies under consideration. A preliminary version of the scheme outlined here was given at the conference. Later, after flaws were discovered, it was modified. The attempt is not to show that this is the way it should be done, but to show with reasonable certainty that there is at least one way it can be done.

An experiment was designed utilizing a charge-exchange reaction to study the decay and interactions of the neutral K mesons produced. The experiment produced no events that could be interpreted as either the decay or interaction of neutral K mesons. The nature of the experiment and the possible explanations of this unexpected result are presented in this paper.

A group at the Berkeley Bevatron constructed a rapid beam ejector to produce the brief pulses of particles required for optimum bubble chamber photographs. Energy stored in a capacitor bank is transferred to an air-core magnet surrounding the proton beam of the Bevatron. The protons are displaced from their normal orbit and strike a suitably located target; particles from this target can then emerge from the Bevatron. A capacitor bank of 120 pf stores 13,500 joules at 15,000 volts. Two ignitrons in parallel connect the capacitor to the magnet. The magnet current rises to 52,000 amperes in 55 microseconds; at peak current a register is connected in parallel to damp the current decay.

Since 1940 ten transuranium elements have been discovered. This lecture describes the history of these elements and the methods used in their discovery.

To date limited agreement has been obtained between theory and experiment for 4f to 4f transitions for Tm (IV) (4f12). It is clear from the considerations that have appeared so far in the literature that intermediate coupling is important in the case of Tm (IV). Solutions of the intermediate field equations yield [formula], and [formula]. Experimental agreement to [formula] was obtained.

This report describes the design and testing of a 1.17-Bev/c separated K{sup -} beam designed in the fall of 1958 in connection with a 15-in. hydrogen bubble chamber experiment.