The work of the BNL Waste Processing Development Project has been concerned with developing means to accomplish three main objectives in handling radiochemical wastes. One is to reduce the corrosiveness of the waste. At present some wastes must be stored in SS vessels at high cost, since other tankage would not resist corrosion for any length of time. Hanford has solved a part of this problem by storing a neutralized or alkaline waste which can be contained more cheaply in 1020 steel vessels, although neutralization increases its total volume 50 percent over the original acid solution volume. Another aim in waste disposal is to reduce the mobility of the water. Although equipment is checked and double checked, and corrosion resistance is assured by extra thick-walled vessels, the possibility exists that a leak in such storage tanks may develop. At such times the solution may be carried by ground water into populated areas, whereas a relatively immobile waste would remain a local problem. A third and very important consideration is a desirable reduction in total waste volume. Since costs of waste storage are propositional to the volume stored, any reduction in total volume will reduce the total cost.

In recent months, experiments investigating the total, non-elastic, transport, etc., cross-sections of U-238 have been performed. It is the purpose of this memo to examine these data and to obtain from them information which will be of use in refinements pile calculations. In cases, e.g. transport cross-sections, where experimental data do not suffice, the theory developed pertaining to the continuum model of the nucleus has been depended upon. One of the fundamental requirements of this model is that the spacings of the energy levels in the compound nucleus are small compared to their widths and that consequently many levels are excited by the incoming particles. As a result there are many more modes of decay and the continuum model is an average over these levels.

The method of spherical harmonic tensors developed Mark for solving the Boltzmann transport equation in isotropic media is herein extended to anisotropic media for cylindrical geometry. A formal solution is given for the case of two concentric cylindrical media, A and B, but no numerical work has yet been done. The following treatment differs from a similar one by the H. K. Ferguson Co. in that the external medium B is assumed to be both a neutron absorber and finite in extent rather than a non-absorber and infinite in extent.

The polymerization of vinyl monomers can be initiated by heat, ultraviolet radiation, and various catalysts. More recently, ionizing radiation has been shown to effectively initiate vinyl polymerization. However, polymerization in the solid state by ionizing radiation is not reported in the literature, although several papers have been published that describe briefly the thermal polymerization of divinyldiphenyl, Leuch's anhydride and in greater detail the peroxide catalyzed polymerization of acetaldehyde. The purpose of this note is to describe some experiments which demonstrate that crystalline acrylamide undergoes polymerization upon irradiation with γ-rays from an intense Co-60 source. Below its melting point the monomer shows little or no tendency to polymerize thermally.