A common and useful assumption is that the front-to-rear power distribution is a shortened cosine curve. This fact led to the calculation of slug factors'' for the longer charges to be used at K-Pile. It is hoped that the publication of these numbers will save time and prevent duplication of effort by those concerned in any way with slug power, surface temperatures, reactivity effects, etc. For the sake of completeness, slug factors for the older piles are included. Another useful ideal is that tube power distributions can be approximated by the assumption of a cylindrical pile and a cosine distribution of power outside of a central flattened region. This led to another double set of numbers since the values for the 2004 tube piles were again included for completeness. 2 figs., 6 tabs.

The occurrence of a fault April 7 caused a short in the stator winding of one of the main generators. Repairs will require at least one month and the total time the generator will be down can be determined only after a further inspection of the damage. In a week or two, after a thorough inspection of the generator and the ignitron system, Bevatron operation will be continued on one generator. Since the targets of use in a Bevatron experiment will depend greatly on the nature of the experiment and the techniques to be employed the ideas presented here relate primarily to the area of research which involves the detection with counters of heavy mesons emitted in the backward direction in the laboratory system. These mesons and their decay products have low kinetic energy over the entire range of Bevatron energies above threshold for production. For this reason discrimination by means of momentum resolution, collimating slits, ionization density and range will be possible.

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Improved graphites for use in fuel elements were developed from artificial graphites and phenolic resins. These materials are particularly well suited for fuelelement preparation. The resins do not soften during baking, so bodies hold their shape and show good dimensional uniformity. The physical properties of graphite were obtained without heating at "graphitizing" temperatures, which would be detrimental to UO/sub 2/ or other inclusions of nuclear fuel. High densities and bending strengths, viz., 1.80 g/cm/sup 3/ and 15,000 psi, were obtained directly without the usual impregnation of the baked product with pitch and rebaking. At 2770 deg F, one of the experimental bodies had a tensile strength of 8250 psi as compared to 4700 psi for Type ECA, a commercial graphite of irterest for fuel ele ments. UO/sub 2/-bearing bodies were prepared by using the improved graphites as matrices. The UO/sub 2/ was added during primary fabrication of the bodies by several different methods which produced a wide range of particle sizes. Consideration of the qualitative effects of UO/sub 2/ particle size and of some of the experimental results indicates that the use of UO/sub 2/ nodules between 100 and 800 microns in diameter may have three important advantages: (1) less …

From data obtained from two loops, the use of beryllium in Inconel systems containing molten sodium appears feasible if the temperature is held below 1200 deg F. (J.E.D.)

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Current operation of the Redox plant dissolvers results in evolution of ammonia during the slug jacket removal step. Staggering the schedules of the dissolving cycles of the three dissolvers is being practiced at present to prevent the formation of ammonium nitrate crystals in the stack gases, but this procedure limits the dissolver capacity. Steps are being taken to provide ammonia scrubbers for the dissolvers to eliminate this need for close scheduling of dissolving operations. It has been proposed (HW-30838) that mercury-catalyzed nitric acid dissolving of the jackets be adapted to the Redox plant. Such a process would eliminate ammonia from the off-gases and would offer several other advantages as well. A flowsheet was proposed based on work in the Process Chemistry laboratory and developed by runs in the 321 Building 1/20-scale dissolver. However, the off-gases resulting from this flowsheet were found to contain hydrogen, and further laboratory work was thus undertaken to provide a solution to this problem. It is the purpose of this paper to summarize the recent development work on the mercury-catalyzed nitric acid slug de- jacketing and dissolving procedure, and to show how these findings may be applied to the Redox operation by the use of alternate …

The Redox ruthenium contamination problem has two distinct phases; the environs contamination as a result of stack emissions, and the in-canyon contamination which controls time and cost factors for plant maintenance. On stack emissions, the probability of serious environs contamination exists so long as the batch-type, permanganate headend ruthenium volatilization process is used. Knowledge of the characteristics of volatilized ruthenium is not adequate today to give complete assurance that the off-gas treatment facilities will satisfactorily remove the particulate and gaseous forms of ruthenium on every headend batch. Until the required knowledge of ruthenium reaction rates is developed, the filtering and scrubbing efficiencies are determined, and the requirements to guarantee 100 percent reliability of equipment operation are solved, the prediction of frequency and amounts of ruthenium emission must be based on the experience factor gained in actual plant operation.

While the concept of a biological system as a balanced network of chemical transformations is not a new one, experimental definition of specific systems has been lacking. This paper defines theoretically and experimentally a number of such networks and their behavior and response to some limited environmental changes.