The following report describes the process of the determination of nitrous oxide with the infrared spectrometer.

This progress report discusses the work during the fourth quarter of 1951. During this quarter, "the uranium raw materials program at ORNL has been devoted to studies of uranium chemistry and to the development of processes for deriving uranium and byproducts from various types of ores" (From introduction).

This report discusses a nuclear spectroscopic study of the radiations resulting from the electron capture decay of Ta-176, Ta-177, and Ta-178, analyzing data of nuclear decay schemes.

Objective: "Production Test 235-1 and an amendment, were written to outline the procedures for reducing the outgassing time and evaluating the effects of these reductions."

The following report describes the injection and trapping of high current electron beams in order to construct an electron gun and the first 2 Mev section of the accelerator.

Abstract: "For defects between interior and coating, or between successive layers of coating, a simple, fairly accurate formula is established. The temperature rise at the edge of the defect is briefly discussed."

Report discussing two methods for "the elimination of sulfate and second group interferences in the extraction of tuballoy from residues which have been processed by the pyrosulfate fusion method." Advantages for one of the methods are mentioned.

During normal operation the NPR will function as a closed system and the coolant will be maintained at a high degree of purity. Periodically, however, the system will have to be opened for fuel element discharge and/or decontamination. During these periods the reactor will be operated on single pass cooling. The use of deionized and deoxygenated water as the single pass coolant is not economically feasible due to the large quantities of coolant that will be required. At present it appears that filtered water will be used for this purpose. Since filtered water contains substantial amounts of dissolved solids (approximately 100 parts per million), and since it is saturated with air, this type of operation will have to be investigated with regard to corrosion problems. A particularly serious problem will be present after the system has been decontaminated, since the high temperature oxide films will have been removed and the bars metal surfaces will be exposed to the coolant.

In some engineering applications it has become necessary to operate equipment containing small diameter rods or tubes oriented parallel to flow stream. In the case of several nuclear reactors such as the Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor and the S. S. Savannah Maritime Reactor, bundles of small diameter rods are used as the fuel elements. The situation also has application to heat exchangers. A method for accurately predicting the pressure drop characteristics of various bundle configurations would be helpful in the design and selection of equipment. Some progress has been made toward gaining a greater knowledge of the bundle characteristics under low temperature conditions. This report includes the development of relationship for the effect of temperature on pressure drop.

This study was designed to determine how swaging stainless steel over unground pellets will affect the integrity of fuel rods, and to find maximum pellet diameter variation that can be tolerated.

A multiple controller system for a single process is formulated in block diagram form. It is shown that for the general case of n controllers and one type of cross coupling, the system equations can be reduced to the standard forms of servomechanism theory. The effects of failure in individual controllers are examined, and it is demonstrated that the system shows considerable promise for both reliability and maintenance without process interruption.

A cross section tape has been prepared containing data for elements of most interest for aqueous homogeneous reactor multigroup diffusion calculations involving combinations of 150, 200, 240, 260, and 280°C temperatures. This tape permits multigroup analysis of a reactor in which two or more regions are at different temperatures.