This is the monthly report for the Hanford Laboratories Operation, November 1964. Reactor fuels, chemistry, dosimetry, separation processes, reactor technology, financial activities, biology operation, and physics and instrumentation research.

This report presents the results of a recent analysis to determine if there is a practical method for using carbon dioxide for pH adjustment at the 100-K Reactors. Carbon dioxide could be recovered from the boiler stack gas and introduced into the K Reactor process water. The approximately $240,000 installation cost would be repaid in about one year by the reduction of sulfuric acid costs. The proposed system would consist of a blower, a purification system, and a distribution system for conducting the gas from the boiler house stacks to spargers in the process water clearwells. The blower would draw gas from the boiler stacks and then blow it successively through the purification system and the distribution system. The purified gas, consisting primarily of carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen, would bubble up through the water in the clearwells, where the carbon dioxide would be absorbed by direct contact with the water. The development work necessary before the use of carbon dioxide can be recommended consists primarily of in-reactor single tube tests followed by a half-reactor test. These tests are necessary to show the effects of carbon dioxide on aluminum corrosion, effluent activity, and reactor hydraulics. The single tube tests already …

Each of the 25 monitor tubes at B and D reactors have been gauged four to six times since they were installed in late 1961 or early 1962. Since October, 1962, the WTG data indicates the average corrosion rate, is 0.25 to 0.30 mils per month. The corrosion rate of the thinnest tube is about the same as the average tube. As expected, the corrosion rate is low and believed to be a measure of top-wall corrosion. It is estimated that it will take approximately one more year (at 6.6 pH) before the bottom wells will have the same average minimum wall thickness as the top walls. During this period, the main problem will be to determine whether the top wells will continue corroding at rates between 0.25 to 0.30 mils per month. it is recommended the 25 tubes at B and D reactors be gauged with the WTG every metal cycle during the coming year. The Process Engineer will continue to analyze the WTG data as it accumulates and recommend further monitoring or replacement, subject to the details authorized in the parent test.

Progress report for the Piqua Reactor Operations Analysis Program describing observations and analyses at the Piqua Nuclear Power Facility (PNPF). The program goals are to monitor operations and collect data in order to ensure that the plant's operation is safe, to improve design and performance, to evaluate the performance and lifetime of the plant's components and systems, to evaluate plant safety and safeguards, and to disseminate all information to the scientific community.

None

None

None

From Abstract: "Procedures for interpolation as a function of k and extrapolation to larger J values are discussed."

None