This report summarizes the research and development work carried out during December, 1959, and January and February, 1960, for Budget Activity 2790 - Separations Development for Non-Production Reactors. The major effort on Activity 2790 has been completed. Current efforts on the remaining problem areas will enable Hanford to begin reprocessing fuel elements from power reactors which employ depleted or slightly enriched uranium fuels in July, 1962.

Description of Purex plant process for irradiated uranium for the separation and decontamination of plutonium and uranium from each other and from fission products.

The final percentage of xenon created by fission in uranium and plutonium is a function of the neutron flux intensity. The flux dependence results because axenon 133 and 135 can be converted to a a stable xenon isotope by neutron capture instead of decaying into cesium.

A study of the fabrication failures for zirconium and zircaloy-2 process tubes was made. In the tube reducing operation, a non-uniform reduction in area for the cross section was found to be a major cause of failure. In annealing studies, a cycle of 2 hours at 820 deg C in vacuum followed by furnace cooling produced the greatest ductility of extruded zircaloy-2 for the annealing treatments studied. The ductility of cold worked and annealed zircaloy-2 was found to be superior to that of extruded and annealed material. The strain rate of a cold working process was found to affect the ductility of zircaloy-2.