Annual report with the objectives of evaluating, producing, and maintaining an up-to-date set of basic nuclear data; producing and evaluating multigroup constants; and improving of present day methods of neutronic calculations as related to microscopic and macroscopic nuclear data, for unclassified research sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission during FY 1968.

Quarterly report with the objectives of evaluating, producing, and maintaining of an up-to-dat set of basic nuclear data; producing and evaluating of multigroup constants; and the improvement of present day methods of neutronic calculations as relates to microscopic and macroscopic nuclear data, for unclassified research sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission during FY 1968.

A crystallographic study of the transition element beryllides was undertaken in support of phase diagram work. These beryllides are very high melting, and the use of ordinary methods make it difficult to determine stoichiometry. We have succeeded in establishing the compositions and complete crystal structure description of all of the room temperature stable or metastable compounds of the beryllides of niobium, tantalum, titanium zirconium, hafnium, vanadium, chromium and molybdenum. Since some of the structures found were not previously reported, complete structure determinations had to be done.

Abstract: A method is given for the rapid and accurate numerical integration of integrals of the form [integral] [superscript infinity] [subscript infinity] f(x) [golden ratio constant] (x) dx, where f(x) is "smooth."

Graphs have been made which show the nuclearly safe parameters for uranium rods in light water with uranium enrichments up to five weight percent U-235. These data were to serve as a guide to those persons who may be involved with the maintenance of nuclear safety in handling and processing operations with slightly enriched uranium fuel elements. The data are applicable to fuel element fabrication and processing operations, and in general to those operations involving the handling and storage of fuel elements apart from reactors.

Abstract. The peacetime application of nuclear explosives to the conservation and development of our national water resources is, at this time, of sufficient promise to present some of the possibilities publicly. In nuclear explosives man has at his disposal and service, a powerful source of energy - a new tool - that we believe can be utilized safely to excavate channels and lake basins, or to create conduits of broken permeable material and underground reservoirs. In surveying the possible applications of nuclear explosives, the following ideas are among those worthy of serious consideration: (a) the use of nuclear explosives for the economic movement of large volumes of earth in the construction of earth fill dames, (b) the use of nuclear explosives for the diversion of a stream from a river system, whose flow is largely lost to the sea, into another stream channel leading to an arid section or a closed basin, (c) the use of nuclear explosives to create a recharge basin or a conduit to a subsurface aquifer for fresh water recharge, and (d) the use of nuclear explosives to create off-channel reservoirs for the elimination of saline waters through recharge to a mineralized aquifer and by evaporation.