The Biology Operation, Hanford Laboratories, required plutonium dioxide particles in five different micron and sub-micron size ranges. These were to be supplied as a water suspension in small containers. It was necessary to design equipment, suitable for hood operation, which would give a satisfactory separation of these particles.

This document will be concerned with the design, operation and maintenance of an automatic fuel element stamping machine. In order to take advantage of automatic unloading and length checking at the Acme-Gridley lathes in the 313 Building, automatic stamping of fuel elements is desirable. This, along with the need for a permanent canning line identification, resulted in a request for a machine to automatically stamp HAPO fuel elements on a production basis.

In some engineering applications it has become necessary to operate equipment containing small diameter rods or tubes oriented parallel to flow stream. In the case of several nuclear reactors such as the Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor and the S. S. Savannah Maritime Reactor, bundles of small diameter rods are used as the fuel elements. The situation also has application to heat exchangers. A method for accurately predicting the pressure drop characteristics of various bundle configurations would be helpful in the design and selection of equipment. Some progress has been made toward gaining a greater knowledge of the bundle characteristics under low temperature conditions. This report includes the development of relationship for the effect of temperature on pressure drop.

Considerable work has been done on decontamination procedures for both corrosion products and fission products. Testing of promising procedures under typical rupture conditions is an important phase of this work. The Irradiated Rupture Prototype (IRP) has been used since August in this evaluation work. This document is one of a series reporting these data.

To insure a full evaluation of the effects of in-reactor loops with respect to all phases of the Plutonium Recycle Program, a separate study of each loop has been undertaken. An initial study was carried out which analyzed the effects of in-reactor loops using the design criteria for the gas loop as a basis. As soon as the design criteria for the H2O high pressure loop became available, a more detailed evaluation was completed for that loop. Recent completion of the scope description of the PRTR fuel element rupture test loop now permits an individual evaluation of this loop.

One of the problems encountered in the design of the EGCR has been the possibility of bowing in the outer six rods of the seven rod cluster. The power distribution in an outer rod is asymmetrical with respect to the center of the rod. This causes a variation in the cladding temperature, and might result in unven thermal expansion, or bowing.

This report describes and evaluates the Hanford 105 reactor building structures' ability to withstand an internal pressure increase. The means by which their roof and wall surface would contain a pressure buildup 0.3 psi, and prevent contaminant release which might accompany a nuclear incident are discussed. Prototypes of the B, D, DR, F, and H reactor block wall configuration, the corrugated transite roof of the K reactors, and the corrugated transite walls of the K and C reactors are evaluated. Methods of securing certain building components are described, and a comparison of several candidate sealant coatings presented for consideration. These tests were performed at the request of the Design Operation, as part of CG-791, an existing reactor containment program. This series of tests represents only a part of the overall modifications program. A study of the reactor building containment design criteria is available in a Hanford document, HW-59236, by T. O. Brown.

Organic compounds with high boiling points and low corrosion qualities have been considered for use as reactor coolants and moderators. Those being considered, however, have a greater tendency to leak than does water. A program to evaluate mechanical closures to be used for a leak-tight system for organic fluids has been established. Report HW-59446 covered descriptions of the facility used in this study and the primary results of tests covering two liquids, fittings, and instrumentation. This report will cover final results and other pertinent information.

An ex-reactor test stimulating the charging of a tubular fuel element in a Zircaloy-2 process tube showed a problem of severe process tube scratching and galling may occur if metal sliding contact fuel element supports are used. Both the fuel supports and the process tubes were autoclaved. Although the conditions of this test were severe in that the sharp edges rather than a flat surface of the supports were in contact with the process tube, it pointed out the potential problem of galling by point on small area contact supports on heavy fuel elements. This difficulty had not been observed with the lighter tubular or cluster fuel elements used in KER irradiation. In addition to the loss of metal and thinning of the process tube after a number of charge-discharge operations, these scratches may lead to localized corrosion or act as points of stress concentration.

The design of NPR shows large quantities of carbon steel pipe and fittings in the front and rear face areas. These are also the area where the most work must be done during an outage, and consequently lower radiation levels are needed here than elsewhere in the piping system. A single pass decontamination of the front and rear piping without going through the entire loop is desirable. Because of the quantities of chemicals and available down time, an effective shorty interval process is needed. This report gives some recent laboratory data on this subject.

The decontamination of the present Hanford reactors involves a once-through cleaning operation. Considerable interest has also been shown in determining the feasibility of this once-through technique for cleanup of certain portions of the NPR system. This report contains information on a series of tests performed in the 242-B single pass flow facility. Information concerning the following are presented: (1) Efficiency of decontaminating KER Loop 1 and 2 contaminated specimens. (2) Efficiency of decontaminating present reactor pigtails by different methods. (3) Areas that need further study.

During normal operation the NPR will function as a closed system and the coolant will be maintained at a high degree of purity. Periodically, however, the system will have to be opened for fuel element discharge and/or decontamination. During these periods the reactor will be operated on single pass cooling. The use of deionized and deoxygenated water as the single pass coolant is not economically feasible due to the large quantities of coolant that will be required. At present it appears that filtered water will be used for this purpose. Since filtered water contains substantial amounts of dissolved solids (approximately 100 parts per million), and since it is saturated with air, this type of operation will have to be investigated with regard to corrosion problems. A particularly serious problem will be present after the system has been decontaminated, since the high temperature oxide films will have been removed and the bars metal surfaces will be exposed to the coolant.

Report discussing information relative to the pyrophoricity of uranium for the purpose of reactor core fire safety. The report includes physical and chemical properties of uranium.

High speed data handling and computing systems are coming into increasing use in the automatic control of complex industrial processes. One of the next significant developments in reactor design is believed to be the application of high speed data handling and control systems to nuclear reactors. This document is a study of such a system intended for use with the Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor.

A part of the development activities of the Process Equipment Development Group, Chemical Development, HLO through the year 1959 has consisted of test evaluation of some of the never products of manufacturers, design and refinement of novel units to do certain specialized jobs and development of improved components for existing plant equipment. Modification of present chemical processing methods and investigation of new basic procedures have made it necessary to utilize different and "exotic" materials, titanium, has given rise to another problem-- that of the selection of adequate and compatible bearings where the titanium is used as moving or rotating part.

This report describes the development of an ultrasonic instrument for resin level measurements in an ion exchange column.