This progress report discusses activities at the P Division for the month of November 1948. All piles operated at 275 megawatts (MW) throughout the month except for outages listed under Area Activities in this report and except that F Pile operated at a reduced level during the first half of the month. This operation at reduced level was incident to the leaking process tube reported last month. A total of 81.4 tons of metal was discharged from the piles during the month. The 300 Area canned a total of 150 tons of acceptable slugs during the month to establish a new production record. On November 29 the operating schedule for the Melt Plant was changed from a three-shift to a two-shift, six-day week schedule. The backlog of material largely had been worked off and the new schedule is adequate for processing the current accumulation of scrap.

This report summarizes the contamination observed at the Hanford Works and vicinity for the period October, November, and December, 1947. Trend charts showing trend of contamination for the various sampling locations are only included where a true trend can be established for the three month period; a thorough analysis of all trends will be considered in detail in the annual report from this section. The report is divided into the following topic sections: Meteorological -- dissolving data; beta contamination in the air and the radiation levels in air; alpha and beta contamination in the Columbia River; beta contamination in the rain and snow; alpha and beta contamination in drinking water; beta contamination on vegetation; and alpha and beta contamination in Hanford Wastes. An appraisal and review of all the results is considered in detail for each section. Statistical analysis is used whenever possible to determine significant values and differences in levels of contamination measured.

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The reaction C{sup 12} (p,pn)C{sup 11} which has been studied by McMillan, Chubb and Miller for energies up to 100 Mev is an example of a reaction whose high energy behavior cannot be explained by a compound nucleus process. The purpose of the study was to investigate this reaction at the high resolution possible with the Berkeley linear accelerator near the excitation threshold. The excitation curve was obtained by stacking specially molded polystyrene (composition C{sub n}H{sub n}) foils of high uniformity and bombarding them in the proton beam. The resultant activity was then counted on a Geiger counter in standard geometry. The resultant curve is shown in Figure 1. An immediately evident feature is the sharp threshold of the reaction. The second derivative curve, illustrated in Figure 2, of the excitation shows an RMS width of 270 kV, the theoretical straggling width due to the foils of 170 kv, and the remaining width in accordance with the energy spread of approximately {+-} 100 kv half width of the linear accelerator. The data therefore are compatible with a sharp threshold for this reaction. This curve, incidentally, furnishes independent evidence as to the energy homogeneity of the linear accelerator beam.

This document details activities at the Hanford Works during the month of July 1948. (JL)

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