Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Will Wilson, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Minimum recording fee to be charged by County Clerks for recording any paper or record under the provisions of Article 3930, Vernon's Civil Statutes.

Report documenting the progress of the Army Gas-Cooled Reactor Systems Program to develop a mobile nuclear power plant for military field operation.

Chain reacting conditions for plutonium nitrate in water solution have been examined experimentally for a variety of sizes of spheres and cylinders.

Analytical methods were employed to determine the maximum volume-to- stress ratio for a two-radii-contour diaphragm pump. A proposed failure criterion considers the effect of biaxial stresses on fatigue failure through. the use of the Mises-Hencky criterion for fatigue failure. By use of the proposed criterion, it was determined that an optimunn ratio of the two radii does exist, its value being dependent on the ratio of diphragm thickness to diaphragm deflection. Values for the optimum ratio of the two radii (where the ratio of radii is defined as the radius of the central pcrtion of the diaphragm contour divided by the radius of the outer pontion of the diaphragm) range from 1.94 to 7.33 as the ratio of diaphragm thickness to diaphragm deflection varies from 0.5 to 0.05, respectively. (auth)

This report examines the pertinent features in the hazards analyses of the Hanford Reactors which may be affected by the substitution of zirconium tubes for the present aluminum process tubes. Resized I & E slugs, designed to preserve present pressure drops across the active zones and to minimize corrosion, are used as examples to compare the characteristics of the zirconium tubes reactor with the present.

R and D is reported in the following: Reactor and Fuels (PRTR, Pu fabrication pilot plant, KER, NPR, materials); Chemical R and D (Pm recovery, fission products, Purex column, non-production fuels reprocessing, Salt Cycle process); Physics and Instrument R and D (PCTR, NPR, critical experiments, PRTR); and Biology (monitoring, irradiation experiments).

One of the problems involved in the design of NPR is the method to be used for decontamination, Considerable effort has been made in both laboratories and pilot plants in developing and evaluating decontamination processes under ideal conditions. Promising processes must be tested under prototypical conditions of velocity, water quality, manner of make-up, type and degree of contamination, addition of decontaminating solutions, and so on.

Thorium Procedure: As was mentioned in the last report, ammonium nitrate was substituted for ferric nitrate as a salting agent. Also, the acidity of the nitrate solution was reduced from 3.0 molar to 0.5 molar. the revised thorium procedure is described in the report. Radium Procedure: Work has ben initiated on the procedure of Petrow, Nietzel and DeSesa (Winchester Procedure) to determine if the procedure is suitable for very low level concentrations of radium.

A stainless steel autoclave for superheated water corrosion test was installed and "conditioned". Tests were begun to investigate the feasibility of densifying slip cast stainless steel by means of liquid phase sintering. Attempts to prepare tubular fuel elements by vacuum forming were resumed. Although thick-walled vacuum formed casting have been sintered on the aluminum mandrels without cracking, this has not yet been accomplished with the think sections of interest.