The traditional feedstock for plutonium recovery at the Savannah River Plant (SRP) has been spent reactor fuel elements and irradiated targets. Feed sources have included both onsite reactors and a wide variety of domestic and foreign reactors. For the past few years, a growing and increasingly varied mix of unirradiated plutonium residues has been purified through SRP aqueous-based processes. Recently, plutonium residues generated in various chloride salt melts have become a significant offsite source of feed for SRP recovery operations. Impure plutonium metal and plutonium alloys have also been processed. A broader range of molten salt and other high temperature residues is anticipated for the future. The major advantage of solvent extraction for scrap purification is the versatility of the solvent extraction system which allows numerous contaminants to be removed by routine operations. Major concerns are nuclear safety control, corrosion of equipment, and control of releases to the environment. SRP's past, present, and future interfacing of solvent extraction in processing pyrochemical and other plutonium-containing residues is reviewed.

Perpendicular electron-cyclotron emission (PECE) is used on TMX-U to diagnose thermal-barrier hot electrons (T/sub H/ approx. 100 to 400 keV); yielding the time history of the temperature of these relativistic electrons. We describe an improved quasi-optical viewing system for these measurements that uses high sensitivity superheterodyne receivers at fixed frequencies of 60, 98, 130, and 196 GHz. The improved viewing and transport system consists of an off-axis ellipsoidal mirror that images the plasma onto a V-band conical collection horn, an overmoded circular waveguide (7/8'' diam) that transports the radiation outside the vacuum vessel where the polarization is selected, and a high absorptivity Macor beam dump to prevent internal wall reflections from entering the viewing system. A relativistic code is used to calculate optically thin PECE signals from relativistic electrons for various energy and pitch angle distributions. 4 refs., 4 figs.

We have developed a detailed configuration-accounting kinetic model for calculating time-dependent ionization-balance and ion-level populations in non-local thermal-equilibrium (non-LTE) plasmas. We use these population estimates in computing spectral line intensities, line ratios, and synthetic spectra, and in fitting these calculated values to experimental measurements. The model is also used to design laboratory x-ray laser experiments. For this purpose, it is self-consistently coupled to the hydrodynamics code LASNEX. 20 refs., 14 figs.

Parallel programming promises improved processing speeds for hydrocodes, magnetohydrocodes, multiphase flow codes, thermal-hydraulics codes, wavecodes and other continuum dynamics codes. This paper presents the results of some investigations of parallel algorithms on three parallel processors: the CRAY X-MP, ELXSI and the HEP computers. Introduction and Background: We report the results of investigations of parallel algorithms for computational continuum dynamics. These programs (hydrocodes, wavecodes, etc.) produce simulations of the solutions to problems arising in the motion of continua: solid dynamics, liquid dynamics, gas dynamics, plasma dynamics, multiphase flow dynamics, thermal-hydraulic dynamics and multimaterial flow dynamics. This report restricts its scope to one-dimensional algorithms such as the von Neumann-Richtmyer (1950) scheme.

The nova outburst is the second most violent explosion that occurs in a galaxy. This review presents the recent observational and theoretical studies that have demonstrated that there exist two classes of nova outburst. One type of nova occurs on a CO white dwarf and the other type of nova occurs on an ONeMg white dwarf. The second class of outbursts are much more violent and occur much more frequently then the first class of outbursts. Hydrodynamic simulations of both kinds of outbursts are in excellent agreement with the observations. 51 refs.

Recent observational and theoretical studies of the ZZ Ceti variables (DA degenerate dwarfs), the DBV variables (DB degenerate dwarfs), and the GW Vir variables (DO degenerate dwarfs) have shown them to be pulsating in nonradial g/sup +/-modes. The pulsation mechanism has been identified for each class of variable star and, in all cases, involves predictions of the stars envelope composition. The ZZ Ceti variables must have pure hydrogen surface layers, the DBV stars must have pure helium surface layers, and the GW Vir stars must have carbon and oxygen rich surface layers. 44 refs.