This report contains the reports of progress and the plans for future work of Douglas United Nuclear, and Atlantic Richfield on the Basic Production Mission. This mission covers the Research and Development work associated with operating the Hanford production complex in its present mode. For the conventional reactors this means primarily the production of weapons-grade plutonium. For the N Reactor this primarily concerns the production of plutonium of 12 percent Pu-240 content, or such other Pu-240 level as may be assigned by the Commission. For Atlantic Richfield this entails isolating and purifying the products of the above described reactor operations. The report describes scope and objectives, progress during report period, evaluation of effort, budget period plans, milestones, references, and statistical summary schedules for the Hanford low pressure reactors, the N reactor, and spent fuel processing activities.

The Hanford production complex is potentially capable of producing and processing a wide variety of isotopes. Some of these have been identified as specific R & D missions (i.e., plutonium-238, transplutonium elements and tritium), and the technical programs supporting these efforts are described elsewhere in this series of Five-Year Program documents. Capability to produce other isotopes has been demonstrated in the successful production of `clean` uranium-233, in the recovery of large quantities of selected fission products, and in the development of process technology for polonium-210. Active R & D programs are underway to improve the technical bases for producing these isotopes, and for demonstrating the capability of producing others. Formerly, several R & D missions were identified and conducted to define the technical factors for initiating production of these isotopes. Either the efforts on these missions have declined because of decreased emphasis (polonium-210) or because of the advanced status of the technology (uranium-233), or the efforts have generally been modest (cobalt-60). These several efforts are now combined into one R & D mission, other isotopes, and they are described in the following pages of this document.

There are three principal facets to the Pu-238 Program which are important to Richland. First, reactor neptunium production rates can be materially enhanced by judicious fuel management plans. Second, significant improvement in production efficiency and costs may be made if the Pu-238 production step (irradiation of Np-237) were sites at Richland. Further, Richland reactors have ample capacity, without reducing power, to irradiate all neptunium from government and commercial reactor sources which has been forecasted well into the 1980`s. Third, a separate Pu-238 production process, that of irradiating Am-241 (obtained from power reactor plutonium returns), offers an attractive and competitive means to materially supplement Pu-238 from the Np-237 route. The first two of these aspects of the Pu-238 Program are being pursued actively, particularly in light of firm and predicted requirements for Pu-238. Technological development for irradiating and processing Am-241 will be performed in the near future.

While the safety status of the Richland facilities has in the past been deemed adequate, all aspects of nuclear technology have progressed and evolved including standards of nuclear safety. Hence, the national nuclear safety environment within which the Richland facilities are operated is grossly different now than was the case ten years ago; a commensurate change can be expected in the future. Further, the urgency of national security aspects of Hanford operation seems less acute now than in the past and may become less so in the future. Finally, the isolation of the Hanford site has been reduced by the release of land, and the concentration of people and valuable property in near proximity may increase in the future. While some program modifications and changes in emphasis are to be expected, the five-year outline shown here is considered to be a reasonable representation of the safety work of highest priority to be studied. The Nuclear Safety Program consists of seven, concurrent subprograms. These are: 8RLa--fuel temperature transients under accident conditions; 8RLb--chemical and metallurgical reactions and fission product release from overheated fuel; 8RLc--control of fission gases; 8RLd--meteorological studies; 8RLe--ground fixation of radioactive material in liquid wastes; 8RLf--particle formation and release from …

This document contains the reports of progress and the plans for future work of Douglas United Nuclear, Inc., on the Target Space Enhancement Mission. The DUN research and development program is based on a long-range operating plan which recognizes a continuing need for the production of special nuclear materials in AEC facilities. Among these expected needs are increased requirements for non-defense plutonium, tritium, and other isotopes. The purpose of the target space enhancement mission is to establish an improved irradiation capability in the Hanford reactors to respond to these needs. Programs are included to reduce the unit costs of non-defense plutonium, to develop the use of Oralloy to meet future enrichment requirements, and to increase the flexibility of the reactors to produce isotopes such as plutonium-238 and uranium-233. The paper describes the scope and objectives; incentives for the study; progress during this report period; evaluation of efforts; budget period plans; and program schedules. Four studies are being undertaken: channel enlargement; highly enriched fuel use; high power density fuel; and advanced technology which includes reactor kinetics, instrumentation, and control systems improvements and transient analysis.

This program is directed to the production of higher weight plutonium isotopes and transplutonium isotopes from the irradiation of transuranic elements, particularly plutonium. Since production of Pu-238 from the irradiation of Np-237 and Am-241 is the subject of Mission 4, Pu-238 Program, it is excluded from this Mission. Specific products which are of prime interest are Cm-244 and plutonium containing a high concentration of either the Pu-240 isotope or the Pu-242 isotope. Because of the potential interest in Cm-244 as a heat source in the 1970`s, the main emphasis has been to provide the capability for producing this isotope. In support of this program, irradiations have been performed to obtain isotopic buildup rates, and a production and economic calculational model has been prepared for determining production methods and costs of producing Cm-244 in the Richland complex. The Richland production reactors have particular advantages in producing higher weight plutonium isotopes from the irradiation of plutonium because of a desirable neutron flux spectrum and a high heat removal capability. Specifically, the high temperature thermal neutron flux maximizes the capture-to-fission ratio of the Pu-239 and Pu-241 isotopes; the high heat removal capability provides for the large decrease in heat generation in the plutonium …

In anticipation of a continuing trend for reductions in military plutonium requirements, reactor programs at the Richland site are being directed toward other long-term production objectives. For the general case of an alternate reactor product, uranium-238 would be displaced from the reactor by another target material, e.g., lithium (for tritium production) or neptunium-237 (for plutonium-238 production), and the remaining fuel would require higher enrichment (increase of uranium-235 concentration) to maintain reactor reactivity. The operating fuel reprocessing facilities at Hanford were originally designed for the processing of fuels containing less than one percent U-235 (pre-irradiation basis). Today, limited amounts of a ``spike`` fuel, averaging about 1.15 percent U-235, are included in the production load, and demonstration quantities of 2.1 percent enriched coproduct fuels have been processed under special test support conditions. Anticipated reactor programs requiring higher enrichment fuels pose new problems of reprocessing technology. These problems have their bases in the increased U-235 content of the fuel, and in the material and design features provided to obtain a higher specific power in the reactor. The programs required to develop the technological bases for reprocessing proposed Hanford fuels of greater enrichments, generally in excess of one percent U-235, are described by this …